City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Before we begin, I would just like to, I'm going to go ahead and call to order the 1,634th regular meeting of the Thornton City Council. Before we begin, just like to remind everyone in the audience to please turn off or silence all electronic devices. The audience seating area is provided for observing council meetings from a seated position only. Audience members wishing to stand must stand in the aisle along the rear wall opposite the council dais. Also, if there's anyone in the audience who needs assistance in listening to or participating in the meeting and has not indicated so on the sign-up sheet, you can raise your hand and a staff member will provide assistance. Item two is the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you. Item three is a moment of silence. Please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. Item four is the land acknowledgement. Mayor Protamayala, would you please read the land acknowledgement this evening?

Yes, just a moment, please, my computers. being weird, sorry. The city of Thornton respectively acknowledges the land on which we stand is the traditional territory of the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Navajo, Pueblo, Shoshone, and Southern Ute tribes and nations who were the original stewards of the land. We honor the history, culture, and contributions both past and present of these indigenous nations and tribes. Okay, here we go. I can actually read it now. I'm sorry. We pay respect to their ancestors, elders, and present-day community members and extend our gratitude to the Indigenous peoples for their ongoing care and stewardship of the land, water, and resources. We also recognize the lasting impact of colonialism, forest removals, and continued injustices that have affected Indigenous communities throughout history and into the present. We also acknowledge the labor of enslaved Africans and their descendants who worked the stolen land for the colonists and who continue to disproportionately face economic oppression, racism, violence, and exploitation. May this acknowledgement serve as a reminder of our responsibility to be mindful and respectful of the land, its history, and the Indigenous communities who call Colorado home and use it to guide our policies and decision-making for the people of Thornton. Thank you.

Item five is a roll call of the Council. Clerk, would you please call the roll of Council?

Mayor Coleman?

Here.

Council Member Acunto? Council Member Algi? Mayor Potemayela? Here. Council Member Byrd?

Here.

Council Member Martinez?

Here.

Council Member Morris?

Here.

Council Member Russell?

Here.

Council Member Salazar? Here. Quorum is present, Your Honor. Thank you.

Item six is approval of the agenda. Are there any staff changes to the agenda this evening? Thank you, Mayor. There are no changes. Council, are there any changes to the agenda? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented?

So moved. Second.

Thank you. Approval of the agenda as presented has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, clerk, please poll the council.

Mayor Putamayela. Yes. Council Member Byrd?

Yes.

Mayor Coleman? Yes. Council Member Martinez?

Yes.

Council Member Morris? Yes. Council Member Russell? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Item 7 is Presentations. Item 7A is a resolution conveying the City Council's gratitude and appreciation to John Orr on his retirement from the City. Mayor Pro Tem Ayala, would you please introduce this item and read it in its entirety?

Sorry, just a second. I'm having a little bit of an issue with my computer. okay this is a resolution conveying the city's council's gratitude and appreciation to john orr on his retirement from the city whereas john orr has served the city as a regular full-time employee for 17 years and in a professional and lawyer loyal manner and whereas john began employment on may 29 2009 as a water resources administrator and whereas john received a team distinguished service award in 2012 for his foresight hard work and creativity in responding to the 2012 drought and whereas John received an individual Distinguished Service Award in 2019 first contribution to both water resources and citywide initiatives and whereas John received an on-the-spot award in 2022 for being a facilitator for the leadership cohort program and despite never going through the program and whereas john has approached his job in a professional skillful and dedicated manner and with a strong commitment to serve the community and whereas the council wishes to recognize john for the contributions he's made over the years of service to the city now therefore be resolved by the city council the city of thornton colorado as follows that john that the City Council hereby recognizes the commitment, dedication, and loyalty of John Orr and conveys his earnest appreciation and thanks for the many contributions he has made during his 17 years as an employee of the City of Thornton. And I move for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to approve the resolution. Is there any additional discussion? Mayor Potem, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

Yeah, thank you. I think one of the jobs that goes under appreciated in our city is working in our water resources departments. Water is a very important aspect to all of our lives. We can't live without it. And one of the things I always usually bring up during these times is how the people of Thornton, whether it's water, garbage, you know, our sanitation services, police, fire, so many different jobs that make our city actually work and happen. And so I just want to give my gratitude to John for the 17 years of service in our water resources department. And thank you from me personally. And I'm sure the rest of council feels that gratitude as well. Thank you. Council Member Morris.

Where are you, Mr. Orr? Awesome. Hey, I just want to say you have an incredible record of service with the city. Thanks so much for what you've done for us as residents and for the staff. I wish you the best in retirement.

Any additional discussion? I'm going to hold mine for just a moment and make you do it up here in front of everybody. All in favor, please say yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Any opposed, please say no. The motion passes unanimously. And at this time, I would like to ask Don and his family as well as Emily Hunt to join me in front of the dais. Well, John, 17 years, and what you have done for the city is nothing short of amazing. For those of you who don't know, he has been extremely helpful in the drought situation that we're in today, making sure that we have grant focuses, making sure that we have the communications ready to go, making sure that we are set in a place that puts the city in a way that we can be successful through situations like this drought. And the work you've done over the last few years has been incredible. And I just want to say, on behalf of the city and the residents, thank you for everything that you have done for us. We're going to give him a round of applause, but I'm going to let Emily give a few talking points here first.

Thank you, Mayor. John and I have worked together the entire time he's been here. We hired him back 17 years ago to help us with our water rights accounting group. He brought some really great systems thinking into the group. These are reports that we owe the state every month, and they required a lot of discipline and a lot of structure, and he did that. Over the course of his career, he's contributed to a lot of kind of special projects, including the drought plan the mayor mentioned. He's helped us with our non-potable rate study. John is an absolute whiz at all things water, climate, weather, and so we've relied on him for his work. short and long-term forecasting abilities. I want to just specifically say that I've always admired John for his creativity, his innovation, his enthusiasm, his curiosity, and he also has a tremendous commitment to continuous improvement and continuous learning. And he is one of the most tech savvy people I have ever met in my entire life. So he's kept us in water resources up to date with all of our tech stuff. So John, we'll miss you. I appreciate your contributions. And I hope you get lots and lots of miles on your bike and during retirement.

Would you like to say a few words?

No, I'm okay, sure.

Well, let's give him a round of applause.

all right one more okay

It is always impressive to me what an incredible staff that we have in the city of Thornton, not just in what they do for us every day, but in their longevity and their commitment to the community. So again, thank you, John. Appreciate everything you've done for us. Item 7B is a resolution recognizing July 2026 as Disability Pride Month in the city of Thornton, Colorado. And Mayor Pro Tem Aiello, would you please introduce this item and read it in its entirety? Yes.

Oh my gosh. Okay.

I'd like to introduce a resolution recognizing July 2026 as Disability Pride Month in the City of Thornton, Colorado, whereas Disability Pride Month is observed each July to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA landmark civil rights legislation signed into law on July 26, 1990 that affirms the rights of individuals with disabilities promotes equal opportunity full participation independent living and an economic self-sufficiency and whereas the city of Thornton is committed to fostering welcoming accessible and inclusive community where all residents employees and visitors are treated with dignity and respect and have a opportunities to fully participate in civic, cultural, recreational, educational, and economic life, and whereas people with disabilities contribute their talents, experiences, perspectives, and achievements to every aspect of community life, strengthening the city of Thornton throughout their leadership, innovation, service, and resilience. And whereas Disability Pride Month recognizes disability as a natural and valuable part of human diversity and encourages greater understanding and acceptance and inclusion while working to eliminate barriers that may limit access and opportunity. And whereas the City of Thornton continues to support accessibility and inclusion through its programs, services, facilities, and public space, striving to ensure meaningful and access to individuals with all abilities. And whereas recognizing Disability Pride Month provides an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of individuals with disabilities, promote awareness of disability rights, and reaffirm the city's commitment to building a community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Now, therefore, it will be resolved by the City Council of the City of Thornton that July 2026 is hereby recognized as Disability Pride Month in the City of Thornton, Colorado, and I move for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to approve the resolution. I'll open it for discussion. Mayor Potemi, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to say that I'm proud to read this resolution tonight recognizing Disability Pride Month in the city of Thornton. As a special education teacher, I get to see every day how many how many ways people with disabilities show up for their community, and I truly believe in the differences that make Thornton stronger. They make us more creative, more compassionate, and more connected. One thing that I think is important to me is to move just beyond feeling sorry for people with disabilities. Compassion matters, but So does respect. People with disabilities aren't here for us to save. They're here as our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our family members, and they deserve to be heard. That means we need to listen more, make room at the table, and support people in speaking for themselves. Self-sufficiency isn't just an idea. It's about making sure people have the chance to make their own choices, share their own experiences, and have a real say in the decisions that affect their own lives. That also means giving people the time and space they need to process information, think for themselves, and make their own decisions. Not everybody communicates the same, learns, or responds in the same ways. And that's OK. Real inclusion means meeting people where they're at, being patient, and respecting the fact that everybody's path looks a little bit different. And sometimes that means supporting people with disabilities when they step up to lead, whether that's running a business, leading an organization, serving on a board, or even running for public office. They deserve the same opportunities and respect as everyone else. Our community is better when everyone's voice has a chance to be heard. And so I just want to take this opportunity today. I do this every day with my students. I have a few students in my class. I don't have a lot because I have significant need students. But we have these discussions every day because growing up with a disability is difficult. And it takes a lot of... being able to look inward and think about how you can show up places, but also what I like to do in my approach is also think about how the rest of us can show up in spaces to make sure that they feel heard, understood, and respected. So I'm glad to bring this forward tonight and recognize Disability Pride Month. Thank you.

Any additional discussion? I'll just add, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, for bringing this forward and very well said. All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Any opposed, please say no. Motion passes unanimously. Item 7C is a resolution recognizing July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month and July 17th, 2026 as Parks and Recreation Professionals Day in the City of Thornton. Council Member Morris, would you please introduce this item and read it in its entirety?

I'd like to introduce a resolution recognizing July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month and July 17, 2026 as Parks and Recreation Professionals Day in the City of Thornton, Colorado. Whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of communities throughout the United States, including the City of Thornton, and contribute significantly to the health, well-being, and quality of life of residents of all ages and abilities. And whereas the City of Thornton Parks, Recreation, and Community Programs Department provide safe, welcoming parks, trails, open spaces, recreation facilities, cultural opportunities, community events, and recreational programs that foster healthy lifestyles, strengthen neighborhoods, and bring people together. And whereas Thornton's parks and recreation system enhances environmental stewardship by preserving natural resources, protecting wildlife habitats, expanding the urban tree canopy, and promoting sustainable practices for future generations. And whereas parks and recreation opportunities support the physical, mental, and social well-being of residents by encouraging active lifestyles, lifelong learning, inclusion, creativity, and meaningful community connections. And whereas the dedicated parks and recreation professionals who plan, maintain, and enhance Thornton's parks, trails, recreation facilities, programs, and community events work year-round to ensure residents and visitors have access to exceptional recreational experiences and well-maintained public spaces. And whereas July 17th, 2026 has been designated as Parks and Recreation Professionals Day to recognize the commitment, expertise, and public service of the professionals whose efforts enrich the lives of Thornton residents every day. And whereas the National Recreation and Park Association has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month to celebrate the vital role that parks, recreation, and park and recreation professionals play in building stronger, healthier, and more resilient communities. Now, therefore, be resolved by the City Council of the City of Thornton, Colorado as follows. That July 2026 is hereby recognized as Parks and Recreation Month and July 17, 2026 as Parks and Recreation Professionals Day in the City of Thornton, Colorado. And I move for its approval.

Second. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to approve the resolution. I'll open it for discussion. Council Member Morris, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

Sure, appreciate that. It's great to bring this forward. I truly believe one of our greatest strengths as a city is our park and recreation system and our team. So I just want to take a moment to express gratitude for the men and women who make our parks, our open spaces, our trails, our rec centers and programs and our community events such an important part of life in the city. Our parks and recreation system is not just providing amenities, it's definitely improving quality of life. We see that every day. It's where families gather, kids play, seniors stay active, neighbors connect, residents enjoy the outdoors, and our community builds a stronger sense of belonging. I'm consistently impressed by our parks and recreation staff. Whether I see them at a city event, on a trail, in a park, or at one of our recreation centers, they're always helpful, professional, and clearly committed to serving residents well. So with that, I want to also thank our Parks and Rec leadership team for setting that tone and standard of service from the top down. As a city, we should continue making parks, open spaces, trails, and rec centers a priority. These are investments in health, community safety, beauty, and long-term quality of life. So, again, thank you to our parks and rec team for the work you do for Thornton every day, and I'm happy to support this resolution.

Council Member Byrd?

Yeah, I'll just second what Council Member Morris spoke to there, and also that These individuals who work in our Parks and Rec department are the ones who are out setting up for parties and celebrations and different events while the rest of us are barbecuing and having fun. And a lot of thoughts and a lot of time and commitment goes into these things. And it shows, and we're very, very appreciative. For any of you that went to the July 4th celebration and saw it, it was an incredible event put on by an incredible staff. So thank you for all that you guys do.

Council Member Russell?

Yes, I just wanted to express the same sentiment of appreciation for our parks and rec team. Coloradans are very outdoorsy people. It's why many of us live here and the majority of the work that you guys do is enriching our outdoor experience. And I think what separates our city from a lot of other cities is the fact that. you're constantly trying to make it better and rich from the previous year's events. You know, we have an amazing 4th of July, but it's great to see, like, how can we make that better? We have a great golf course. How can we make that better? It's all it's never satisfactory, even though I think we're at the tip of the spear. You continuously push to make it better. And that is very.

noticeable on my end and i think most of our residents would agree with that so thank you thank you very much for all that you do for our city mayor patamayala thank you um i just want to reiterate what all my colleagues have said we appreciate everything you do for our festivals um and everything you do on a daily basis to make sure that our recreation centers run well there's just so many things that our parks and rec department has under its umbrella, and it's really, really needed in our community. I think one thing that I, we have a few, we have programs in our youth area as well, which is super important, but also under that is our active adult programs as well, and so you know, basically helping people through all spans of life to gain and appreciate those leisure skills that keep our lives enriched and keep us all from, you know, sinking into mental illness. I don't think that we appreciate that enough, how much our community can really help people find that sense of community and just enrich their lives. So thank you all for what you do.

Any additional discussion? I think my colleagues have done an incredible job talking about what a great department this is. I've seen them at five o'clock in the morning getting the golf course ready or getting the ball fields ready. in the evenings cleaning up after the events that people have loved and enjoyed. I've seen them never turn away a resident who has a question. I've seen them work hard to make sure that even questions that may not be in the wheelhouse of the Parks and Rec Department are still handled with honesty and efficiency, no matter what the question is. From our staff at our rec centers, our golf courses, the ones fixing up our parks and our trails. These are an incredible group of people that it is an honor to be able to work with and very much appreciate everything they do for us in the city. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Any opposed, please say no. All right, it passes unanimously. Item eight is audience participation. This is a time for members of the community to speak on any item that is not on the agenda as a public hearing or going to be on a public hearing in the future. Pursuant to City Council's rules of order and procedure, speaking time is limited to three minutes per person with a one-hour limit on this segment of the agenda. In-person speakers will be heard first, followed by remote speakers registered before the end of the in-person comment segment. Residents of the City, as indicated on the sign-up sheet, will be given preference in the order heard in each segment. The podium located on the dais of the Council Chambers must be used to offer public comment during the audience participation or public hearing sections of the meeting agenda. In the event of physical inability or preference, the public may offer comment by microphone while seated in the audience seating area, but at no time shall public comment be made while moving through the chambers. Ms. Long, is there anyone who signed up to speak under audience participation?

Yes, Your Honor. We have five individuals in person and three online.

All right. In just a moment, once again, each speaker will be given up to three minutes to speak and the segment of the agenda is limited to one hour. Please make sure that you watch the light on the podium. When it turns yellow and you hear a single beep, you'll need to wrap up your comments. And when it turns red and you hear multiple beeps, your time is up and I'll have to interrupt you as your three minutes are over. When you are called, those in person, please come to the podium. And those who indicated on the webinar registration that you wish to speak will be allowed to unmute and speak when the clerk calls your name. Ms. Long, who's the first person signed up to speak?

Bob and Sue Talbot, 11960 Kearney.

No worries. We can move on to the next one.

Francesca Mays, 93 Harris Street.

Okay.

Can you hear me? Yes. My name is Francesca Mays. And let me fix this first. I've lived in Thornton for 35 years. That doesn't include my childhood. I moved out and I left, I came back in 92 when I've never left. So Thornton is my home. I've been an advocate for older adults and individuals with disabilities for the past 14 years. During my time as an advocate and an individual with a disability, I have served on many legislative and city committees. Most recently, I have served on the TAF committee. At the last meeting, I was unable to provide an update on what the TAF committee decided to fund. I was not recognized by any council member or had the ability to speak. In fact, there was no recognition or acknowledgement from the City Council regarding the long hours I and other TAF committee members devoted to making sure the policy and process were completed as required by the TAF rules in charge. Now I understand that you disregarded all our work and commitment. that we, as citizen volunteers, provide to make sure the limited city funds were to go to the best and appropriate grantees. This is not right. This is my second time serving on the TAF committee, and during this time, the committee has always followed the strict and detailed policy developed by the TAF committee and approved by city council. So why has this process changed and why after we completed the work? If you just wanted to give money to each grantee that applied, why did you need a committee? On what grounds does a city council have the right to forego their own approved policies and processes? If the city council wants to disband this committee, then it should do so in the next funding year, and then this year should only be fund the grants we chose. Because we abide by the request of this council and fulfilled our duties, you should never honor them. You should honor them, excuse me, if not appropriate to discard work just because the City Council did not like who we as a committee chose to fund. You don't change this amid process. This is being dishonest and the grantees and the City of Thornton. I'm requesting that you honor the work of the TAF committee and that the choices we made to fund those grantees. My frustration is with the mechanism, timing, and choice of your not honoring your commitment to the TAF committee. I'll stop there. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time mayor and council members And would you please call the next person Mary Payne Ward 3?

Good evening. Yes, I'm back. I can't see can't hear but I'm back I And I would like to thank you for the support of the Fire Museum. I don't know if you know, but Mary Freebird passed away the 18th of May. And of course, Ken had passed away a couple of years ago. I would like to thank Chief Kelly, Stephanie Harpering, Fire Marshal, and all the rest of the people that have worked hard on the committee, former fire chiefs, former fire people, the present fire people, the present community people that keep this going. Hopefully that we'll be able to have our grand opening in January. And anyone that feels flush can donate to the fireman's fund to help with the opening of the museum. Thank you.

Thank you. Would you please call the next person?

Tom Lampo, no address provided.

Hello to Thornton. Hope all are doing well and you enjoyed your celebration of independence. Happy 250 to everybody. I'm Tom Lampo and I'll continue to speak of your ugly attack on and hatred of white people. Your dishonest land statement serves only to divide. I know the majority in front of me want to disregard truth. You have an agenda and it's more important than truth. As we move forward, we need to remember how we got to where we are with your lies. Senator Kaine, The Harvard-educated attorney believes America created slavery. That's a lie. Then we took a look at Saida Grundy, a graduate of Spelman College, a prestigious private historically black women's liberal arts college who holds a master's degree and PhD from the University of Michigan. She's an associate professor of sociology, African American and black diaspora studies, and also of women and gender studies at Boston University. She teaches that no race outside of Europeans made slavery a personhood. We explored that a few weeks back. That is also a lie. Her message caters to the majority of you in front of me, and you are the people that register for her classes hoping to obtain a degree where these lies are taught. Ms. Grundy goes on to state, there's also no race except Europeans who kidnapped and transported human beings in order to enslave them and their offspring for life. Again, she is purposely misleading, making a false statement. The Mohawk Seneca Kayaga on... Onondaga, Oneida, Cherokee, Shawnee, Huron, Aglaquin nations, to name a few, here on this land known as United States of America, would constantly raid other nations, take captive of the male members of these raided nations, transport them back to their areas they were living in, and assimilate. Please remember that word, assimilate. assimilate them into their culture to replace a male in their nation who had died. This captured, transported, assimilated male had no say in his outcome. He was stripped of his identity and forced to take on the name, social standing, and familiar role of the deceased member of this new nation. He was now the property of this new nation. There was no fair compensation for the work he accomplished. He was stripped of his personal rights and bodily autonomy. These individuals were deprived of their freedoms, of the life they wanted to live. They and their offspring and the generations that followed were in the same bondage. The majority of you before me need these lies Ms. Grundy exposes to be true. Her lies form your dishonest statement and perpetuate a narrative that won't last. Your agenda of hate will be defeated. It will take time. Enjoy the rest of your night. America is not perfect, but it is the best nation out there. Thank you.

Thank you. Would you please call the next person? Jessica Whitney, 9500 Civic Center Drive.

Thank you. That is my work address, but I am not here in my official capacity tonight. Rather, I'm here as the proud wife of a wildland firefighter. My husband serves with Flatiron Hell Attack and is currently assigned to the Ferris Fire. I'm here as a proud member of the wildland fire family to honor the three wildland firefighters who lost their lives and the two who were severely injured in the Snyder Fire burn over and share ways that you can help. Since I originally wrote this, we have lost one more. A firefighting helicopter went down over Silver Jack Reservoir, and the pilot did not survive. Wildland firefighters are a different breed. They don't risk their lives to protect property. Rather, they protect our forests, our grasslands, our watersheds, our wildlife, the vital, awesome nature that belongs to all of us. We all see the news coverage of these fires with the devastatingly beautiful pictures of smoke and flames. But understanding what wildland firefighters do gives you a deeper appreciation for the courage, sacrifice and commitment that their work requires. They hike miles in harsh conditions, carrying everything they need on their backs. They often sleep on the very ground that they are working to protect for weeks at a time, spending long days in heat, smoke and uncertainty. Those we lost were members of Rightful Hell Attack, an elite group of wildland firefighters who step out of a helicopter into steep mountainsides and dense forests with little more than the equipment they can carry. They rely only on their training, their physical endurance, and the absolute trust they place in one another. It takes a rare combination of courage, skill, and humility to do that job. That is why their loss is felt so deeply. These firefighters embody the very best of public service, professionals who willingly go where few others would or even could to protect something bigger than themselves. Tonight, please remember Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson, Sydney Watson, and pilot Nicholas Dale, and keep the two injured firefighters in your thoughts. Honor their courage and mourn their loss. May we also remember and thank every wildland firefighter who continues to answer the call, knowing the risks and putting their lives on the line because they believe the work that they do is worth it. If you are able to donate, Alpine Bank has set up a benefit account, which will be open for donations until August 31st. Also, there's the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, whose mission is to support wildland firefighters and their families through financial aid, physical and emotional support, advocacy, and community to ensure that wildland firefighters and their families never have to face the struggle alone. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Would you please call the next person?

Gabriel Cervantes, 9371 Ellen Court, and I do not see him online. You can press star 9 and raise his hand. Kia Griteras, 11900 Kearney Circle.

Hello, can you hear me? We can. I'm so sorry. I think I was not supposed to sign up to talk. I think I'm just here to listen. So my apologies on my registration. No worries. Thank you.

T. Garcia's 11722 Kearney Way. They should be able to unmute.

I believe that was the last one that was signed up to speak. Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to speak that didn't know you needed to sign up? You can come to the podium. I know you know you need to sign up.

Ready? I'm Dr. Jackie Phillips, Colorado House of Representatives. Until January, congratulations to Gabriel Cervantes. Tonight I want to thank Councilmember Morris for leading the coffee event on Saturday. So I represent Wards 1, 2, and part of 3, and your effort to engage community members outside of Ward 4 was super appreciated. Thank you for doing that. Now I've knocked a few doors lately, and so tonight I just wanted to share some of the things that I'm hearing from people on doors that are local concerns. So what I would tell them is, oh, that's something I can bring up to Thornton City Council. So tonight I only have time to do three. The first one is public safety. So public safety concerns in southwest Thornton, not where you live, Roberta, not where John Elge lives either. But there are two memorials, one for Jaden on Huron, one in Sky Park. There have been multiple overdose deaths. They don't count as crime, but nobody should find a body in the park or at American Furniture Warehouse or anywhere. So I heard a lot of concerns. about that, about homeless coming to Thornton to buy drugs, specifically at I-25 and 84th and Grant and 88th and by Outback Steakhouse on 120th. Some people want that community engagement team back, but a lot more just want connection with Thornton Police Department because we love them so much. Number two, speaking of 88th, lots of military families live there from Afghanistan. These are military heroes that fought with the US military against the Taliban. The clubhouse is full of a lot of flyers of services that the city of Thornton provides, but they're only in English and Spanish. So that's a barrier. They can't access those services. So please, it would be great if those flyers were in a language that they understood. Of course, they're learning English. And big shout out to Thornton Middle School teachers because they volunteered to teach these moms from Afghanistan English. Pretty cool. Number three, I talked with a lot of people in their 80s and 90s, and they are not able to access City of Thornton services. They're not doing QR codes, they're not doing websites, they're not doing email, but they do need help with basic cleaning, with food, with yard and home care, with transportation. and with technology, a lot of the services that the City of Thornton offers require a laptop or even just skills with a phone. But what they need is a trusted person that can stop by their house and engage with them and see what they need. We're not going to call that saviorism, because people really do want to help others. So those are the three things. Community policing, language on those flyers, and support for seniors in their homes. That's all I have for tonight because I only have three minutes, but as always, I am always happy to support your work, and I know that you all enjoy community engagement. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I didn't see any other hands, so I think we can move on to item nine, which is council comments and communications. I think we'll start online tonight with Council Member Martinez.

Okay, thank you. Mayor Coleman. So I would like to start out by recognizing and giving a few shout outs to some outstanding community members. 1st, I want to give recognition to the Reese free half. Sorry, if I butchered your name, but Reese has been a super volunteer and anchor for our community garden at the community connections. Not only has she handled the watering schedule and the weeding schedule and lots of other garden duties, but she's recruited a whole bunch of volunteers to help us out. So, she's and she's also on top of helping us donate what we harvest from that garden. I think I spoke about it before, but if you recall. We're going to take all of the growth, the output from that garden and donate it to families in need in our community. And so Reese is leading the way on that. Thank you Reese. And I'm really excited to see what we can do next with this program. The next person I want to recognize is Arlene Buchholz. Arlene is an original Thornton resident and her and I have become good friends in the past few weeks as we work together to problem solve around a broken utility pole. Arlene is also one of our older residents and, um. She having no other way to reach out to the city fortunately was able to contact my contact me and I was able to put her in touch with some of the people from the city to talk about some of our volunteer programs. To help her clean her yard, the code cap program, but ultimately we were able to get lumen to come in and schedule that light pole utility pole to be replaced. So, thank you Arlene for continuing the advocacy for your community. But also, thank you to the staff who was able to get a hold of lumen and get that scheduled quickly. So appreciate all the help on that to our staff. I also want to thank out members in our community who really taking their time and effort to reach out with compassion to care for our neighbors and friends who are struggling with illness or disability. There are several people in ward one who are loved by the community. And, you know, it's just been really great to see the community come together and support that person and her family, you know, and, and, So, everybody who is involved with that, there's too many names to. To list out, but if you know who you are, if you were part of that, and it's just a great way to see the community to take care of each other. I also want to thank all of our firefighters from fire station number 2, which covers the West side. They were had a big role in the fire many months ago in the winter. They, our community down there by North star was so appreciative. They had reached out to myself and council member cells are to ask how we could thank them. So we put together a card and a lot of people in the community signed it and donated snacks. And provisions for the fire station council member and I were able to go over there earlier this week and drop off the donations. So, but I just want to say, thank you to those firefighters. And we're also going to be doing the same thing for fire station 1. And the last group I want to acknowledge is the TAF committee. I just want to say, I appreciate the hours of hard work that went into the recommendation process and I can totally understand how frustrating this year's process has been. I've always believed that the TAF committee plays a crucial role in allocating the grant awards and I want to work with our staff and council to ensure that TAF committee continues to have a role in that process as we improve the program. And I'm online tonight because this week I'm attending the NALEO conference in LA, which is why I'm online today. Today was day one. We've already covered so many important topics, including data centers, election integrity, immigration. As many of you know, Ward 1 has a very significant Latino population, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to meet with and learn from experts and leaders on policy affecting Latinos at this conference. More to come in future meetings. I'll give you a full update of the conference. And before last week, I just want to say, thank you to Ward 3 for hosting their walk in the wards. I thought it was a very successful event. I got to learn more about the skylight branch open space. It was great to meet with residents and hear some history on that project again. Appreciate the parks department. For all that they do, I thought some great things were said tonight and I agree with all of them. Um, in particular, the 4th of July, once again, another incredible event. So much had to go into that to make sure that it was hit and went off successfully without any major problems. Specific. Thank you to the fire department for keeping the event safe from fires. I've received many calls from residents about. expressing their fear of fire in this drought conditions. And I just reassured those residents, or I tried to, that our fire department, if they gave the go ahead to do the fireworks show, then I'm going to be behind them because we have such a great A fire department that is does all their all their due diligence. So thank you for the fire department. Um, also want to thank the police department and the parks department for keeping everybody safe planning and organizing the event. Um, I think I heard over 60,000 people attended. It was just every year. It seems like it gets better and better. A couple of additional updates. I do want to acknowledge that the, um, the alliance business center held its 1st food manager certification program, uh, testing session. Um, and and almost all the participants passed the exam. So this was a program was significant because it marks the 1st time our alliance business center has served as an offer official proctoring site for the food manager certification exam. I think these are great little things to call out just to show how much our city helps small businesses thrive in the city. So good job on that for the alliance business center launching that program. And then finally, I want to provide an update on our drought. We just heard this recently council got an update in our city city notes and the update is our historic drought conditions have continued into the early summer with record low stream flow and hot and dry conditions. We've all been there. But despite all of this, Thornton's drought response under its Stage 1 drought declaration is going as planned, and the City is currently on track to meet its water savings goals. Thornton's reservoir stage at the end of June was 85% of capacity, which is typical. Um, this is all thanks to our Thornton customers has been for the most part in doing a great job adhering to our stage 1 drought water use rules. Um, so at the end of June, our total water usage was down almost 6%. So, I think that's just a good call out to the whole city. Everybody who's put in their effort and done their role to try to reduce water consumption during this drought. It's very much appreciated from my end. And from, uh, I think the city's end as well. Lastly, I'll say that we have an upcoming Ward 1 coffee coming up this weekend on Saturday at 9 o'clock. We're going to be having it at the Truderia Dulce Luna on Huron and Thornton Parkway. Happy to have you there. We're going to be talking about all things Ward 1 and anything throughout the city. So even if you don't live in Ward 1 and you want to talk about what's going on in the city, please join us. You're welcome to. That's my update.

Thank you.

Councilmember Salazar?

Good evening. Thank you, Fran, for highlighting the TAF issue. I appreciate you being on board. The long hours you put into the decision you made for the recommendation and would like to also apologize for not acknowledging you last week. And thank you, Jackie, for your continued efforts in speaking on how important it is to make our neighborhoods safe. I have taken on I have taken note on the lack of services our city offers to seniors and the flyers needing to be in other languages. I will follow up with community connections and see how we can make that change. And thank you, Mary Payne, for speaking on the Fire Museum. I know how passionate you are about this project. And we all want a community that is safe, clean, and a place we are proud to call home. But to maintain that standard, we have to be honest about where we are falling short. Tonight, I want to address an issue that directly impacts the daily lives of our neighbors, our current code enforcement efforts, which are simply not meeting the mark. Over the past several months, I've heard from countless frustrated residents across our city. We are seeing a noticeable rise in unaddressed violations from overgrowth. neglected lots to persistent zoning issues. But the most alarming feedback I receive isn't just the violations themselves. It is when the residents reach out to report these issues, they are met with silence. Code enforcement is simply not responding to our citizens. When phone calls go unanswered and emails disappear into a void, it erodes public trust. It sends a message that no one is watching, and worse, that no one cares. As council members, our primary duty is to represent the people who elect us and to ensure that city services are running effectively. When a homeowner takes pride in maintaining their property, only to look next door at a hazardous, neglected lot that has been ignored for months despite multiple reports, we are failing them. When a local business owner follows the rules but sees zoning infractions down the street going completely unchecked, we are failing them. This isn't just about aesthetics. It's about public safety, protecting property values, and maintaining municipal accountability. Our residents are not asking for miracles. They are asking for basic communication. They are asking for a system that works and a city that listens. We cannot expect our community to take pride in our city if we as a body do not enforce the standards we have set on paper. We need to look critically at why this breakdown is happening. Is it a lack of staffing? Whatever the root cause, the status quo is entirely unacceptable. Tonight, I'm calling on my fellow council members and our city manager to direct an immediate comprehensive review of our code enforcement department. We need to implement a transparent, accountable tracking system, one where a resident who takes the time to file a report receives an immediate confirmation, a clear timeline for investigation, and an update on the final resolution. Let's restore faith in our city. Let's clean up our streets, support our neighbors, and bring accountability back to this city. Thank you.

Mayor Potemayala.

Thank you. It's been a little while since we've had a formal meeting, so I just want to say hello to everybody. First, I want to just recognize the success of the 4th of July celebration. It was really amazing, as always. It was a great community event, which I love, and I just want to again thank our Parks Department for their hard work in making that happen. It's a lot to accomplish. take on. So I really personally appreciate it. And I know a lot of folks in Thornton and beyond Thornton also appreciate it. I want to give a special thank you to the young folks that came around afterwards to clean it up. I live right up the street from this event, and I used to always walk home. Now I usually drive down and then go walk back up, but the trash can be a bit much. It's pretty extreme, and so to see young folks come and pick up trash and help out is super appreciated, and I just want to really give them props for that. And, uh, speaking of cleaning things up, um, council member LG and I are having a cleanup of the Grandview Ponds open space this weekend at, um, 4401 East 104th Avenue. It's, um... in ward two so kind of the most southern part of ward two it'll be this weekend july 18th from 10 a.m to 12 p.m we want to make it you know um as painless as possible because it's going to be hot so if we can just go through there do a quick cleanup of like a lot of trash items we do have a lot of volunteers coming who've signed up with the city as well this is an open space that unfortunately sometimes has folks that like to litter a lot and you know misuse it a little bit so my hope is that we can all just kind of pitch in and start doing more mutual aid and take like community action to take accountability for our open spaces and and clean up things together because it's just important to make everything welcoming, accessible to everybody. And I think we can do our part to help our city workers to do that as well. And Council Member Alge and I will have some treats afterwards to make sure everybody can get cooled down and we stay hydrated and not overheated. So also, I had the opportunity to attend local progress convening in Baltimore, and I came back with a lot of new ideas. Some of the things that we talked about were, of course. affordable housing, data centers, issues around immigration. But I think the most important lesson I took away was that as local leaders, we have to spend as much time as we can building things and building programs and building community to make the difference in our community as we do trying to stop things and ban things. And I think if we continue to have that mindset, we can make our community better and we can work across the aisle with our leaders on councils and hopefully at the state legislature and hopefully the bigger, wider country to make our world just a little bit of a better place. So I feel like our job is to create opportunities, strengthen our communities, and leave our city better than we found it as elected leaders, but also just as community members as well. So my idea there, and I learned this last year at Local Progress, and I've been studying it for quite a while as mutual aid. How do we work together on things instead of continuously trying to think about who else can help us? How do we just help each other? And then lastly, I want to acknowledge the fire at Wood Glen. There was a significant structure fire in my neighborhood yesterday, and my thoughts are with everyone who was impacted by this. It was devastating, and to lose your home is... unimaginable so just an important reminder for all of us to be mindful of fire risks I'm not exactly sure what caused this structural fire but there's a lot of things obviously that can cause a fire and with the programs we have as far as like our community meetings and our our different activities we have throughout the city. Usually our fire department shows up and talks about some of the risks, whether that's putting those fire pits in your backyard, obviously fireworks is another one. I don't know what caused this, but there's a lot of things that we have to take into accountability when we're in our homes. So just keep that in mind. I know that was the first thing I thought of is like, what can I do at home to make sure nothing like that ever happens to us? And especially during this time of year with the drought, it's pretty scary with how dry things are getting. So just keep an eye out and take care of each other. And then as I learn more ways that we can support the folks that were impacted by this, I'll be sure to share that on my social media. So if anybody wants to support those families, they can, or the family. And then additionally, I just want to thank our firefighters for their quick response. I think South Metro Fire was also involved in it. It was a pretty significant event. And I was at work at the time teaching, but on my way home, I drove by and I still saw them there. And, you know, it was hot outside and it was... Pretty significant events of the whole neighborhood kind of smelled of fire. So just a pretty significant issue that happened yesterday So thank you to our fire department and our fire marshal Stephanie for being there to support that situation And that's all I have for tonight. Thank you Councilmember Byrd Thank You madam mayor

A lot has happened since last time we had a meeting. Specifically in Ward 3, we had our Ward 3 community meeting with a very nice, large turnout. We had our walk in the ward at Sky Lake Ranch Park, which was great. We were able to see some of the new solar-powered lights on the sidewalks that were put in. These are a great addition to our community, and I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the other areas that we get them put in through out the city. We also had our Rhythm and Rills event since last time we were here, where we were able to see the Michael Friedman Band and watch the movie Hopper. My daughter loved that one. Let's see, we had, of course, the July 4th celebration. I don't need to reiterate everything we've said thus far, but thank you to Police, Fire, Parks and Rec for everything you guys did to make that an amazing event. It was incredible. Another big event we had was the Sashko Anniversary. This is a good prime company within our city, and they're celebrating, I believe it was their 90th anniversary, which was incredible. If anybody hasn't seen that facility, it's beautiful on the inside. It's definitely not what you would expect when you're walking into a manufacturing facility. And lastly, I want to give a big thank you to Representative Gabe Evans for his support in getting the city access to some funding for the North Star Mobility Project. That was a big task to help us with some of the ADA efforts around the city, so big thank you to him as well. Outside of that, looking forward to being back in the chambers.

Council Member Russell?

Good evening mayor colleagues staff and everyone joining us tonight. Over the past few weeks, things have been busy while we were on break, but I'd like to share some of those events with you. I was honored to attend Thornton's 3rd, annual Juneteenth celebration, a meaningful event, recognizing an important chapter in our nation's history while celebrating freedom, culture and community. I also enjoyed attending the Thornton Pride Festival, which brought together residents from across our city and beyond for an evening of inclusion, support and celebration. Thank you to all the staff, volunteers, sponsors and community partners to make both events so successful. I also attended the annual Colorado Municipal League Conference in Westminster, also known as the CML Conference. It's always valuable to connect with elected officials from across the state, share ideas, discuss the challenges facing municipalities, and learn about innovative approaches that can benefit Thornton and our residents. Congratulations to K1 Speed on their ribbon cutting and grand opening. It's exciting to see new businesses continue to invest in Thornton, creating jobs, expanding entertainment options, and contributing to our local economy. We appreciate their decision to make Thornton a part of their future. Another highlight was touring the Amazon Den 3 fulfillment facility. It was impressive to see the technology, robots, if you haven't been there, they offer tours all the time. There's a lot of robots, it's actually really cool. Uh, logistics and other dedicated workforce that keep the operations running every day 24 7, 365. it is a remarkable facility. I'd like to extend a special thanks to Kate, Brenda and Wendy from the city of Thornton as well as Sam and Nick with Amazon for taking the time to provide such an informative tour and for the warm hospitality. I also attended the 470 board of directors meeting alongside council member bird. Where we discussed the ongoing agreement negotiations and updates on annual projects that will continue to improve the regional mobility and support our growing community. Before I close, I'd like to invite everyone to our upcoming Ward 4 Rhythm and Reels event next Thursday at Fallbrook Farms from 6 to 9.30 p.m. We'll have live music from Lucky Catch, followed by a movie in the park. It's a great opportunity to spend an evening with family, friends, and neighbors, and I hope to see many of you there. As always, thank you to our city staff, volunteer, community organizers, residents who continue to make Thornton a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family. Thank you.

Councilmember Morris.

Good evening, everyone. I just wanted to, I won't recap any events here, but I do want to, I have a few thank yous that I want to work through here. So thank you to the four Thornton firefighters with Bryce 71 who deployed to the Gold Mountain Fire in Ouray about two weeks ago. According to reports, they've been assessing, prepping and protecting homes and structures in the fire's path since arriving on scene. It sounds like they're hopefully coming back later this week, so we'll continue praying for an effective fight the last couple of days and a safe return. For the 4th of July fireworks show, we have a local photographer. His first name's Nick, and you've probably seen him on Nextdoor if you haven't. He's got some pretty amazing photos. I just want to highlight him. He captured some more incredible shots during the fireworks show July 4th, so I just want to give him a shout out and thank you for doing that. I want to highlight another organization, the Thornton Youth Community Outreach crew. They helped out with North Glen Thornton Rotary Club Duck Derby on the 4th of July as well. And from our website, I'll read a little bit of info about the Thornton Youth Community Outreach, known as TYCO. In 2018, the City of Thornton Fire Department created a new volunteer program for the city. This program was named the Thornton Youth Community Outreach, or TYCO program. It set out with the simple objective to provide the youth of our community with a positive volunteering experience. The volunteers who have been selected are from the youth of our community who have a passion in one day becoming a career first responder. Since 2018, our TYCO volunteers have given their dedicated, hardworking, positive attitudes and skills to the citizens of Thornton. Some examples of events that our members have been involved with are supporting city festivals, street cleanup team, planting trees, water conservation efforts, and assisting the City of Thornton Fire Department with training, just to name a few. The members of TICO not only build interpersonal skills while helping others, they also receive mentorship and guidance in their desired career path of being a first responder. So thanks, TICO. I want to highlight local business owner, Tuan. He's the owner of the coffee shop at 120th and Colorado Cafe. It's a Vietnamese coffee and banh mi shop. Actually hosted the coffee meetup there this last Saturday. Beautiful interior, great coffee and food options. If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend you do that. I also want to highlight Thornton resident Josh, who spearheaded the repainting of the dance floor in front of the East Lake Station Pavilion in preparation for events being hosted there this summer, including the Blessed Barbecue Setup beginning this Friday and the Bites on the Block event by the Thornton Chamber on 29 August. So thanks, Josh, and the team that you put together. To kind of piggyback on what Councilmember Russell said, I just want to encourage everyone to attend the Ward 4 Rhythm Reels. That is next Thursday, July 23rd. And if the other ones aren't rescheduled, that might be the last one for the summer. Live music by Lucky Catch. So Lucky Catch looks like a pretty fun band. I just want to point out, this is maybe enticing you guys to show up for anybody listening online or maybe here. Here's a sample set list. Let me just read some songs here. Give Me Some Lovin', Spencer Davis Group. Smooth by Santana. Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. Pretty awesome. Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. Proud Mary by Credence. Valerie by Amy Winehouse. Mustang Sally. Jet airliner by Steve Miller, a sweet child of mine, Guns and Roses. So pretty awesome selection. So I highly encourage you to be there. If you're there, please come say hello. We'd love to chat with you, get to know you. And of course, if you have any questions, please reach out anytime. Have a great night.

All right. Well, thank you so much. And good evening, everyone. The city is currently advertising for the Thornton Art Sciences and Humanities Council Board of Directors for Ward 2. The deadline is June 15th at 5 p.m. The city is also advertising for the Thornton Art Sciences and Humanities Council. Oh, sorry, I already said that. Deadline is July 15th, and Ward 3 is July 20th. Parks and Open Space Advisory Commission for Wards 1 and 3, the deadline is July 22nd. The Building Code Advisory Board for Ward 1, the deadline is July 26th. The Election Commission for Ward 2, the deadline is June 26th, July 26th. Planning Commission and Board of Adjustments for Ward 2 and 3, and the deadline is July 31st. And the Thornton Active Adult Board, Ward 2, and the deadline is August 8th. And all of these applications are due in by 5 p.m. The City has several regular contract and temporary seasonal positions available, such as aquatic specialist, meter technicians, and police officer for both lateral and recruits. And you can find out more information about these and other vacant positions by visiting our website at thorntonco.gov slash jobs. And it has been a busy and rewarding few weeks representing Thornton both here and across the country. I had the opportunity to chair the National League of Cities Energy, Environment, and National Resources Committee in Louisville, Kentucky. We spent several days exploring innovative approaches to urban forestry, geothermal energy, flood mitigation, water infrastructure, data centers, and the future of energy generation. And it was such an incredible opportunity. I can't wait to bring these ideas back to the city of Thornton and sharing all the work that our community is doing with my colleagues across the country. And I was especially pleased to welcome Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mabalad to the committee. I also enjoyed spending some time with many of you at our incredible 4th of July celebration, from the Thornton Community Band to live music, food vendors, and what I believe is the best and safest, thanks to our fire department, fireworks show in the state of Colorado. It was another reminder of what makes Thornton such a special community. And thank you again to our Parks, Recreation, and Community Program staff, public works, police, fire, and everyone who worked behind the scenes to make this event such a success. And over the past few weeks, we celebrated the grand opening of K1 Speed, the one-year anniversary of Billy Birch. We supported the nonprofit community with the Illuminate Gala, hosted by the Thornton Area Chamber of Commerce. And we had a great turnout for the Ward 3 community meeting. And I've continued working with several regional organizations, including the Metro Mayor's Caucus and the Mile High Flood District, where we collaborate on transportation, water resources, regional resilience and other issues that affect all of our communities. I also attended the Colorado Municipal League Conference to celebrate and collaborate with elected leaders from all over the state. And I do want to offer just a little bit of thought from some comments made earlier. I know that we all share the same goal of having responsive city services in great neighborhoods. And from what I've seen, our code compliance staff works really hard every day to serve our residents, often in situations that are not easy. And like any organization, we should always look for ways to improve, but I appreciate their professionalism and commitment to our community. And I know there are times when residents are frustrated, and we should always look for ways to improve. And at the same time, I've seen our staff work hard to respond and help resolve concerns. And I'd also encourage all of us, wherever possible, to start with a conversation with our neighbors, because a lot of these issues can be resolved through some simple communication and mutual respect before they ever require city involvement. Our staff are here to enforce our ordinances fairly and consistently, and the strongest neighborhoods are built when neighbors support each other and work together. And that's the kind of community that I know we all want Thornton to be. And finally, I'd like to thank our residents for continuing to stay engaged, whether it's attending community events, supporting local businesses, or participating in council meetings, your involvement helps make Thornton the vibrant community that it is. And I think we also forgot to mention the Ward 2 community meeting is on July 30th. It is being rescheduled to that date. Or is that the music in the park? The Rhythm and Reels will be July 30th. All right, with that, we'll move on to item 10, which is the quasi-judicial public hearings. Before we begin tonight's land use hearings, I will briefly explain Council's role in the quasi-judicial process. For matters such as development applications, site-specific rezonings, and similar requests, the Council acts in a quasi-judicial capacity. In this role, we are legally required to base our decisions solely on the evidence and testimony presented during the public hearing. Because of that, we must avoid ex parte communications, which are any discussions about the merits of a pending application outside of this forum. This means that council members cannot discuss these cases with the public beforehand, cannot take positions in advance, and must keep an open mind until the close of the hearing. These requirements are not meant to distance us from the community, but they are designed to help protect the fairness and integrity of the process, and to ensure that any decision we make is legally defensible. Tonight's record, which includes the staff analysis, the applicant's presentation, and the public testimony, will form the basis of our decision, and we appreciate your participation and your understanding of these procedural obligations. And with that, at this time, I would ask anyone in the audience intending to give testimony, including citizens who have signed up to speak, to please stand so you can be sworn in.

Please raise your right hand. Do you hereby swear or affirm that your testimony before this council will be true and correct to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Thank you. Thank you. Item 10A is a public hearing concerning the findings of fact, annexation, zoning amendment, and conceptual site plan, a plan situated in the east half of the west half of Section 5, Township 2 South, Range 67 west of the 6th Principal Meridian, County of Adams, State of Colorado, generally located south of East 120th Avenue and east of Holly Street, and assigning the annexed property to Ward 3 and the service plan for an intergovernmental agreement with the Thornton Sunrise Metropolitan District or Sunrise Annexation. Public hearing is now open at 8.11 p.m. Kara Stoller, Senior Planner, will present this item. Please state your name, address, and whether you've been sworn, and if not, please respond to the clerk after she gives the oath.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. Keira Stoller, Senior Planner for the City at 9500 Civic Center Drive, and I have been sworn. Agenda items 10A, 1 through 5, pertain to requests for approval of an annexation zoning amendment, conceptual site plan, and metropolitan district for approximately 87 acres of land for the purpose of a proposed single-family residential development. The applicant has satisfied the signposting notice requirements, and the corresponding affidavit has been delivered electronically to be entered into the official public record for this hearing. This presentation will include an overview of the project from city staff and the applicant, a summary of the public input received, as well as staff's evaluation of the applicable code criteria and corresponding recommendation. So these applications were reviewed under the 1992 development code, which required the submittal of a conceptual site plan, or CSP, in conjunction with a zoning amendment. This, in turn, requires approval by city council. The subject site is highlighted in yellow on this slide. It is composed of three different parcels of land and is generally located south of East 120th Avenue and east of Holly Street. Here is a closer view of the subject site. The property, again, is approximately 87 acres in size and is currently in unincorporated Adams County. Surrounding zoning includes parks and open space, single-family detached legacy, and agricultural zoning, including unincorporated Adams County parcels. The photo at the right shows the four radio towers which currently exist on the property and are to remain in place and therefore necessitate a unique development design. The next few slides provide photos of the subject site and surrounding area. The vantage point from which the photos were taken is designated by the red dot on the key map at the bottom right of each slide. So this first slide showcases photos of the surrounding area from the northern property boundary. so the top left photo is looking southeast from east 120th avenue towards the mayfield subdivision the top right photo is looking west along 120th avenue you can see the cobblestone car wash in the distance and the bottom photo is looking across east 120th avenue to the north at the jasmine estate's townhomes that are within unincorporated adams county These photos highlight the eastern side of the site. They were taken from the current dead end of East 118th Avenue. The top left photo is looking southwest towards the Sky Lake Ranch subdivision and showcases two of the radio towers on the property. The top right photo is looking north toward East 120th Avenue and features the buffer along the eastern edge of the property, which contains a easement for the Thornton Water Project. And the bottom photo is looking southeast at the Mayfield subdivision again. Lastly, this slide of photos were taken from the southern property boundary. The top left photo looking east towards unincorporated Adams County land. Top right photo is again looking towards the Mayfield subdivision, and the bottom photo showcases the four radio towers again. and the Sky Lake Range subdivision in the distance. I will now pass the presentation over to the applicant team to provide some additional information regarding the proposal. And then I will wrap things up with the public input and evaluation of the code criteria before we take questions.

Thank you for your time this evening. My name is Scott Carlson. I have been sworn. I'm representing several of my brothers and other family members that are the applicant and developer for this project. My address is 12460 First Street in East Lake, Colorado. I appreciate the time that your staff has spent with us over the last few years in bringing this project along tonight. There are 2 consultants that are going to be presenting some of the presentation to you. 1st will be at least Applegate from Norris design. Talking about the land design itself, and the 2nd will be Matt ruling giving a presentation and answering questions regarding the metropolitan district. If after those two consultants are done, you have questions of me, then we can answer, or any of the other members of the team, you're welcome to ask those. Or after the project is done and there are additional questions, we're here to answer them for you. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Ilias Applegate-Klink. I'm a planner at Norris Design, 1101 Bannock Street in Denver. And I'm providing an applicant presentation covering the annexation, PUD, initial zoning, and CSP. As Kira explained... And were you sworn in? Oh, gosh, yes. And I'm sworn in. Thank you. Thank you. As Gary explained, the site consists of three parcels, and that's what you see on the annexation map here. There's also a little sliver of East 120th Avenue that is not currently incorporated into Thornton, so that's why there's some of the annexation map boundary that extends beyond that site. The two larger parcels that you see in this map are owned by iHeart Media, and the smaller parcel along 120th Avenue is owned by an LLC created for this development. The site is surrounded on all sides by Thornton, with the exception of the eastern boundary at the very south, which was touched on earlier. So even though the site is not currently annexed into Thornton, it is contemplated in the Thornton comprehensive map because the city proactively prepares for annexations such as this. The entire site is designated single-family neighborhoods, which matches the majority of the surrounding land. And according to the comprehensive plan single family neighborhoods that the land use designation is intended to provide areas for low density residential development with recreational amenities. So primary uses include what we've proposed a single family detached homes supporting uses are associated recreational amenities and parks and the density is typically between one and 8 dwelling units per acre. With the comprehensive plan in mind this application proposes an initial zoning to plan development to meet the goals of the comprehensive plan and the code and provide thoughtful design standards that meet the unique conditions of this site. Planning area a one permits residences and open space and that sort of the majority of the site following the boundaries. Planning area a 2 is at the center of the site and that's a sub area for the neighborhood Park. And we have two planning areas B. Those encompass the two separate land areas surrounding the radio towers. And those both have the same permitted use of commercial radio or TV facility. The radio towers are going to continue to operate into the future. And there is nothing actually permitted within these planning areas. They will be fully fenced. The radii from the towers are 355 feet for the 350-foot tower, so creating a little bit more than a one-to-one setback from those towers. So now we'd like to focus a little more on the conceptual site plan. The PUD limits the site to a maximum of three dwelling units per gross acre or four per net acre. The proposed 199 single-family detached homes on the site yield 2.3 per gross acre or 3.5 dwelling units per net acre, so a little lower than what the PUD would permit. Lots must be a minimum of 35 feet wide at the frontage, but that's sort of specifically used in the areas where you see curves or cul-de-sacs. A pretty typical lot width is 45 feet wide. And our minimum lot sizes are 3,825 square feet, which is actually a little larger than the minimum front load lot for SFD in the new RM zone district. That did not exist when this project first started. Access to the site comes from the North East and West. There are stubbed roads on the East and West connecting 118th and 117th avenues into the adjacent neighborhoods. And our access on 120th Avenue is very intentionally aligned to extend Locust Street, which extends north beyond our neighborhood. In this plan, you can see that the vast majority of the site boundary is occupied by landscaped area along the South and West boundary. That's a forty foot buffer that was designed after multiple conversations with neighbors and planning staff. To create a little bit of buffer between the new development and neighbors since they've had this undeveloped space near their homes in the past And then on the east side there are two different easements in which nothing can be built that totals a hundred feet in width So that accounts for the eastern buffer and then on the north we've got some buffer as well from 120th Avenue I do want to note that in the buffers on the West and South side next to existing residences. No trails are planned it's only trees and native grasses. Lots within this neighborhood will have open fencing if they back or side to trails open spaces or buffers and privacy that fencing if they back or side to other lots within the sunrise neighborhood. Looking a little closer at the amenities provided here the team very intentionally designed the areas around the radio towers to serve as amenities and not just empty space. In these areas there are trails several exercise stations and in a dog park and all of those exist between the homes and the tower buffer fencing we do want to know that the fencing is actually similar to a dog park so no one's dog is going to be hopping off into there. At the center of the site, there's the proposed neighborhood park with a splash pad, shade structure, restrooms, an open play lawn, a playground, and all the typical park furnishings. On the eastern boundary, where those two sets of easements prevent any sort of development, the site is designed with a 10-foot wide concrete trail that connects from north to south. It also has connections that spur off into Mayfair and a little bit south into the neighborhood directly south of us to make sure that we provide a full local trail connection to trails outside of the site. That area also includes five sets of benches and trash cans to provide rest and pet cleanup stations along the way. With the exception of the play lawn and the neighborhood park, all open areas will be planted with native grasses and plants. And in key areas around the trails, planting beds will be planted with native pollinators supporting plants to support native insects and birds. So no sort of underutilized turf that would be using more water than is necessary. Bringing those trails and zooming out a little bit, the trails make connections to Sky Lake Ranch Trail and trails within the Mayfield neighborhood. And from there, those provide connections to a lot of other trails and bike lanes around Thornton for commuting or recreating. Turning now to vehicular access. A traffic impact study was a key part of this application, and it was reviewed multiple times during the process. Per guidance from Thornton staff, our traffic engineers studied traffic impacts at the intersections shown on this map. And the intersections are identified as full movement, three-quarters movement, and roundabouts to sort of highlight the options that drivers have when they're at each of these intersections. As we noted earlier, people will enter and exit Sunrise from 120th and Locust and from the neighborhood extensions of 117th and 118th Avenues. Near the site, there are already three signalized intersections along 120th Avenue. At our site entry on 120th, there's already an agreement or a line in the development agreement that if that intersection of Locust and 120th ever warrants a traffic signal, this neighborhood will contribute funds to that. Another important item to note is that Thornton traffic department has already determined that the intersection of 117th Avenue and Holly warrants a traffic signal. Construction funding for the signal is to be explored in the Thornton 2027 capital improvement program. So that's an improvement that's coming to the neighborhood a little bit ahead of this project, but will certainly make a difference in the way that people experience traffic in this area. Part of the traffic impact study is to project trip generation so on an average weekday sunrise will generate 1,877 vehicle trips over the course of a 24 hour period. Within that we like to look at morning and evening rush hour so in the morning that's 139 trips including the in and out and in the evening 187 trips. So from there, we try to understand how that spread among all of the intersections nearby. So the level of service is a term used in traffic engineering that indicates the amount of delay experienced at an intersection. Level of service grades A through F are deemed acceptable in this, oh, I take that back. There are levels of service A through F. Thornton deems A through D to be acceptable. So with that, the added trips from the site at 117th and Holly will account for 6% and 5% increases in morning and evening peak hour traffic respectively. But that those projections are before. or they do not assume the traffic signal. That's a new update from the last time this was studied. So even without the traffic signal, that intersection is projected to function at a level C with the added traffic from the site. Sunrise accounts for 3% of morning and evening traffic at 120th and Holly, 3% and 4% in the morning and evening at Locust and 120th, And then just 2 and 1% of local traffic at 120th and Niagara in the morning and evening rush hours. We also want to touch on the roadway improvements that this site will be making in our frontage of 120th Avenue. In order to ensure that 120th keeps moving efficiently, the neighborhood will make improvements to turn lanes, adding transition taper areas and stacking space for southbound turns onto Locust Street into the site from both east and westbound 120th Avenue. And there will be a space for those train from eastbound 120th Avenue into northbound locust Street so really making the 2 left turn options a lot safer and providing a way for people to peel off and decelerate when they're headed eastbound and South into the site. And then to touch on citizen traffic concerns these are. Concerns that were brought up in the neighborhood meetings and other conversations that we've heard or had with neighbors There is a lot of concern about the existing condition at 117th and Holly So we're pleased to know that the city has already started working to identify funding for that Intersection and that it will be functional by the time all of this is built or I take that back it wouldn't we hope that it will be functioning by the time all of this is built and And we also want to remind everyone that should a signal ever be needed at 120th and Locust, this site will contribute funds toward that signals construction. That wraps up my portion of the presentation and I'll hand it over to talk about the Metropolitan District.

Good evening, Council. Matt Ruhland, and I have been sworn in. I'm with the law firm of Kager Law, and I represent the applicants for the service plan. My address is 44 Cook Street, Denver, Colorado. So I'm here tonight to go over some items related to the Metropolitan District. Kier's report, the Council communication does a good job of detailing what Metropolitan Districts are generally, and about the project and what we're trying to do here, but I'm gonna head on a couple of high points for you. Districts are independent local governments independent from the city They are local governments similar to a city or county and we must adhere to many of the same laws that other local governments such as the city has to maintain and obtain to The districts are in put in place to finance construct maintain own various public improvements that will deal with or be touched by this district and The districts are governed by an elected body from eligible electors of the districts, and they are authorized to impose taxes, impose fees to pay for services and improvements. So what are the benefits of the district? The help development pay its way is one of the biggest development, our biggest benefits. We don't need to go to the city and have the city at large pay for development. The development here will impose taxes, issue debt, and pay that debt off to pay for a portion of the public improvements that will serve this community. As stated before, we are a local government, so we have to adhere to various transparency laws like any other local government, which include open meetings. open records requests, we have to have budget hearings, approve budgets and have audits and similar things that the city has to do to keep in compliance. So the development, this district will overlay the development as stated previously, it is a residential development. It's anticipated that there'll be 199 units, which will, anticipated to have 569 residents as part of the population at full build out. This site is not currently within Thornton, as you all know. The service plan here tonight would be approved subject to the annexation being approved and the annexation ordinance being recorded. So a quick overview of the service plan. You guys have a model service plan and we adhere to it. We made no material modifications to it other than filling in the blanks that need to be filled in for the service plan to be complete and providing the exhibits. Pursuant to the service plan, the district has the ability to plan for, design, acquire, construct and install various public improvements, which include things like water, sewer, roads, park and rec, public improvements of that nature. So for this project, the cost of the public improvements are anticipated to be just north of $14.4 million, and the service plan would authorize up to $15 million of debt. I want to make it very clear that if the district is not able to fund it all, which is anticipated, there should be a shortfall, that will be covered by the developer. There's no obligation from the city to cover any of the costs related to the public improvements. In addition, we're following the model service plan for the city, but I want to reiterate on what the mill levy rates are for residential districts. It's 50 mils for debt and 10 mils for operation, both subject to adjustment if there's changes in how the assessment rate is imposed. However, both of those could be To go away if and when the residents control the boards, if residents control these boards and make the determination to exceed the 50 miles for debt or the 10 miles for operation, they can do. So, if there's a desire to do so before residents control the boards, we would have to come back to you as a district and get your authorization. So it ensures that the residents control their destiny. So that's what we have tonight. Once again, we're seeking approval of our service plan, subject to approval of the annexation and recreation of the annexation ordinance. I will be here for questions if you have anything after a staff presentation. Thank you.

All right, so moving on to public input. Two neighborhood meetings were held for this proposal. One took place in September of 22 and the second took place in September of 2024. Just shy of 1,500 property owners were sent notice for both meetings and we had just shy of about 50 residents attending the most recent meeting. Questions at the latest neighborhood meeting pertain to the proposed home designs and potential price points. There was a lot of discussion around the type of fencing that would run along the outer boundaries of the development and debate on whether trails were desired behind the existing homes. Some people voiced concerns about the proposed density, and others felt the setback buffers to be provided around the existing radio towers was not large enough. Additional feedback pertained to how the project might impact surrounding property values and noted possible traffic issues. There was also a general curiosity about the specific amenities and landscaping that would be provided. The applicant conveyed a willingness to hold additional small group meetings with the immediate neighbors to get a better feel for what design elements were preferred for the trails and fencing, and the final layout along the south and west edges of the development does align with this feedback. So this slide is a new addition to the presentation and provides an overview of the next steps in the review process. So if the annexation, zoning, and conceptual site plan are approved, the applicant will move on to the development plan for overall landscaping of the site and residential design reviews for the proposed home models. They will also have to process a subdivision plot and civil construction drawings before they would be able to obtain any building or construction permits. The timelines noted here estimate the minimum amount of time that would be needed to complete each of these next steps. And the remaining applications are to be reviewed administratively and therefore do not require any additional neighborhood meetings. Moving on to the corresponding criteria for annexation the property to be annexed meets the requirement and state statute for one six continuity with the existing city limits and aligns with several comprehensive plan policies as outlined in the communication. In correspondence with the annexation, the subject site requires establishing a zoning designation on the property. The proposed plan development or PD zoning is consistent with the future land use designation of single-family neighborhoods, as the intent of this categorization is to provide areas for low-density residential development. Looking at the planned development zoning criteria, most of the properties adjacent to the proposed district already contain single family detached units. Therefore, allowing for the development of additional low density residential would align with the area. The PD standards require a 40 foot landscape tract along the south and west boundaries of the development. So the proposed zoning is not expected to have a significant adverse impact on the area. Finally, for the CSP or conceptual site plan criteria, as noted in the impact analyses which are attached to the zoning communication, adequate facilities and services exist or will be provided by the developer. No significant impacts were anticipated to city services with the proposal, and the CSP complies with all applicable use, development, and design standards within the proposed PD and code. CREATION OF THE METRO DISTRICT WILL BE IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE AREA TO BE SERVED GIVEN THAT THE EXISTING SERVICE IN THE AREA IS ADEQUATE FOR THE PROJECTED NEEDS AND THE DISTRICT WILL PROVIDE ECONOMICAL AND SUFFICIENT FACILITIES WITHIN ITS BOUNDARY AND HAVE THE ABILITY TO DISCHARGE THE PROPOSED BOND FINANCING ON A REASONABLE BASIS. Following a public hearing on June 16, the Planning Commission recommended approval of the annexation, zoning amendment, and conceptual site plan by a vote of 6 to 0. The findings of fact in Metro District do not require review by the Planning Commission, so they did not vote on those items. Three residents spoke during public comment and had questions on whether duplexes were being proposed, what the timeline for construction would be, whether the establishment of the Metro District would impact surrounding properties, as well as potential drainage impacts to surrounding areas. The packet includes three public comments that were submitted prior to the Planning Commission meeting, and staff did not receive any additional written comments following publication of the Council packet. In summary, the proposal complies with the criteria outlined in Sections 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, and Chapter 66 of the pre-2025 City Code pertaining to annexation, zoning amendments, plan developments, conceptual site plans, and metro districts. This proposal requires five actions, and the recommendations based upon the findings in the communication are as follows. For the findings of fact to approve the resolution, for the ordinance on the annexation to approve this. However, it should be noted that the developer has requested the effective date of this ordinance be deferred to 60 days following the second reading to allow them time to complete purchase of the property before annexation takes effect. So this essentially just means that we would hold off on recording that annexation formally with the county until we have hit that 60-day mark, or at least not do it any sooner than that. Um, approval of the ordinance for the PD zoning is recommended with the corresponding overall development and plan development standards. And, uh, resolution for the proposed CSP is also recommended. Again, for the Metro district, we are recommending conditional approval of the resolution based on the fact that the property is not yet in city limits and therefore. The service plan and IGA are only effective once city council takes action on final reading of the annexation of the property and that annexation gets recorded with the Adams Clowning Program Recorder. This would need to take place before September 25th of this year in accordance with state statute. This concludes the presentation, but staff and the applicant are available for any questions.

Council, are there any questions of staff at this time? Council Member Russell?

Yes. I believe this would be for Elise with Norse. It's regarding the light on LOCUS and the future needs of it. Early in the presentation, you had mentioned neighborhood will contribute, and then later on, Sunrise will contribute. So my question is, who's contributing per the development agreement? Is the developer now banking it, or were you referencing that future reference would pay for it via the Medicare district and that $3 million that was slated for road improvements?

I was referring to the Sunrise neighborhood, and I believe that would be the Metro District that would handle that. Yes.

Okay. Councilmember Byrd.

Thank you for the presentation. Do you have an idea around the home sizes and pricing that will be going into the subdivision?

I wish I had that on top of my head. The property is currently under contract to Lennar Homes. And I don't know exactly the home sizes or the prices that are there. I know that it is consistent with some of the other Lennar product that's being built right now in the Parterre subdivision. So I can certainly look that up and get back to you with that. But I should have come with that information and didn't. Sorry.

No worries. And then I have a question for the city staff, too. Do we have anybody from traffic here? Sweet. The light at 117th and Holly, do we have a timeline around that? Because this is actually something specifically I asked about during our last planning session, so I know that there's other residents already looking into it.

Okay. Matthew Koenig, traffic at Bank. civil engineer in traffic engineering, city of Thornton, 12450 Washington Street, and I have been sworn. Your question is, do we have specifics on the timeline for the 117th and Hawley signal? Right now, as brief we are pursuing budget for the construction of the signal um following that we'll move forward with construction because design will occur concurrently in-house we handle our own traffic signals typically in-house here at city of thornton especially ones that in an established area like this where there's not a lot of extra development that needs to occur so we'll be processing that design in the coming months, and when the budget ideally is approved towards the end of the year this year, we'll be able to procure signal poles, which is the longest portion of that timeframe, takes about four to six months to get them, and then at that point, we should have everything in order to move forward with selecting a contractor, so.

Okay, so the expectation's usually about this time next year? Potentially. Thank you.

Council Member Russell.

yes additional question for you uh what is the cost you know currently of what you would anticipate for that intersection traffic signals for locus uh question is costs are in terms of uh raw material purchase that's the one of the bigger items that's the signal pool procurement um it ranges it depends on obviously the size of the mass arms that are required but it ranges anywhere from like Trying to think of recent projects we've managed. Less than $200,000 typically for poles, and then an additional $200,000, $250,000 for construction. So depending on, again, depending on the complexity of the project, a signal can be completed under $450,000 typically.

And so for that intersection, we would need four of those poles correctly?

yes there'd be four signal pools about 1.6 million or thereabouts no no that would be the full full cost that's polls cabinet all that construction yeah okay thank you all right any additional questions for staff or the applicant at this time we'll get another chance if we need it

All right, I will open the public hearing for comments. Ms. Long, do we have anyone that signed up to speak in favor of or in opposition to the proposed development?

Yes, Your Honor. We have one individual signed up online.

All right. So in just a moment, if there's, we're going to make sure that the person online is able to unmute when the clerk calls your name. Make sure you state your name and address and whether or not you were sworn for the record. And if not, we'll have the clerks. Where are you in? Would you call the first person?

Teresa Alvarez, 11426 Newport Street.

Hi, this is Teresa Alvarez. I have been sworn in. And your address? 1146 Newport Street. Thank you. Yeah, I'm currently the president of the Skylake Ranch Phase 3 Homeowners Association. I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of our board regarding the proposed conceptual site plan for this project. As was seen in the map and discussed in the proposal, our community lies directly to the south and the west of the proposed Sunrise development. And because of this layout, the homeowners whose properties sit adjacent to this project along Carney Way and 116th Street will experience a significant change in their immediate home environment. Recognizing this impact, our board has been interacting with the developer, Mr. Carlson, throughout this year to address the specific needs of our neighborhood. Prior to this, after the September 24th community meeting that was mentioned, Mr. Carlson was meeting with a small group of owners from Skylake Ranch as well. I want to state tonight that the developer has been highly receptive to the concerns of the broader Sky Lake Ranch community. Through several rounds of discussions, we have a mutual understanding of several critical protective measures. To the extent possible at this stage, the requests of our community were directly reflected in the presentation shared this meeting, but are not reflected in the last posted January 30th, 26 conceptual site plan. However, they were mentioned in the planning meeting and this evening. Specifically, we appreciate the modification Mr. Carlson mentioned regarding the trail connection layout, which eliminates the path behind Kearney Way and 116th, as well as commitments to enforce the 40 foot buffer and other minor items. While we are successfully aligned on these protective actions should the development move forward, our communication with the developer is ongoing. We look forward to continued collaboration in this process with Mr. Carlson and the City of Thornton as the project moves to its next formal stages. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. And we only had the one sign up to speak?

Yes, Your Honor.

Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to speak but didn't know you needed to sign up? If so, you can come to the podium now.

I'd like to ask a question.

You can come to the podium now. You state your name and address and whether or not you were sworn, and if not, then we can get you sworn in.

You have to do it at the microphone, just so that everybody can hear, for the record.

David Roberts, 11764 Jasmine Court. I have not been sworn. You look over to the clerk.

Do you hereby swear or affirm that your testimony before this council will be true and correct to the best of your knowledge and belief?

I do.

Thank you. Thank you. I just want to ask the question, This metro district is kind of a new thing to me. How is this going to impact our properties? From the standpoint, are we going to get drawn into this metro district, or is this just for the area that they're stating that they're going to build it? That's my question.

Thank you. So the way this works is you'll make the question, and we'll have the council ask questions, but I'll follow up with that question in the next round. Thank you. Thank you. I'm assuming that was the only person in the audience, so we'll go ahead and close the public comment. To address the gentleman's question on the Metro District, can you confirm that the surrounding neighborhood is not part of that Metro District?

That is correct. The taxing authority for the metro district is limited to the project itself. 1 of the things the metro district will do, though, is own and maintain parks and trails through the subdivision that will be open to the public. So, 1 of the things we strive to do in our plan is to make connections trail connections. through the city of Thornton to connect Sky Lake Ranch to Mayfield and Sky Lake Ranch up to 220th. So to create some regional connections that haven't been there before. And those trail connections will be owned and maintained in perpetuity by the district.

Thank you. All right, council, are there any further questions before I close the public hearing? Council Member Morris.

I do have a question about, first of all, I appreciate the presentation, all the information. The radio towers that are there, which are still, they'll remain there after these homes are surrounding them, which is kind of a unique feature of the neighborhood, we'll say. Is there any special accommodations need to be addressed or looked into around like safety of the neighborhood or residents that are there? I mean, is it a fenced off, will it be fenced off after construction or is it just like, hey, don't touch the guy wires and stay away from the radio towers, you know, that's like a HOA directive.

Right, yeah, there's the good question. You know, there are really three layers of protection. One is that there will be a perimeter fence around the 355 foot setback. So it won't be open to the public that way. The second is that the individual guy wire anchor points are fenced off with 6 foot chain link fence. And then around the base of the tower where all the operational things are and the buildings and the real excitement happens, that's also fenced off with chain link fencing. We submitted to the staff a radio frequency interference report that was created by Hatfield and Dawson, which is an AM specialist. they concluded that there are no significant radio interference or health issues that extend beyond about 30 to 50 feet out of the base. And so really there's no difference in RF exposure from the homes that are already there to the homes that will be placed there. And then the other final reason, the reason why there's a 355 foot setback is that there are 350 foot towers. The towers are designed not to fall straight, but to crumple straight down. That's why there's a series of guy wires that come. So if there ever is a failure, the failure goes straight down to the earth the only way that it could possibly even get close to the boundary is if all the guy wires were all cut simultaneously so and even in that case we added the extra setback in order to accommodate that very remote possibility that's great i appreciate it thank you thank you all right council last call for questions

All right, I will close the public hearing at 8.52 p.m. Councilmember Byrd, would you please introduce item 10A1?

Yes, thank you. A resolution adopting certain findings of facts for the annexation of certain unincorporated territory of approximately 87 acres of land situated in the east half of the west half of Section 5, Township 2 South, Range 67 West of the 6th Principal Meridian County of Adams, State of Colorado, generally located south of East 120th Avenue and east of Holly Street, and assigning annex property to Ward 3, Sunrise Annexation, and ask for its approval.

Second. Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. Before I open it for discussion, just to note for the record, Council Member Martinez has to recuse himself as he is online and it's a violation of our rules of order to allow him to participate in quasi-judicial public hearings. He may have actually logged off because I know he has a recusal he has to do on a future item on the agenda as well. So with that, I'll open it for discussion. Council Member Byrd, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

I will hold all of mine to the end. Thank

Anyone else? I'll actually give mine at the beginning then. I want to say thank you very much to Mr. Carlson for being willing to work with the HOA. It is extremely rare that the neighborhood surrounding a new community like this is willing to testify and say how much you've worked with them. And that makes our job a lot easier to know how much of a partnership that you have created with this group. So thank you for that. So I will be supporting. Would you please pull the council?

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Council Member Byrd, would you please introduce Item 10A2?

Yes, ma'am. An ordinance concerning the annexation of approximately 87 acres of land situated on the east half of the west half of Section 5, Township 2 South, Range 67 West of the 6th Principal Meridian, County of Adams, State of Colorado, generally located south of East 120th Avenue and east of Holly Street, and assigning the annex property to Ward 3, Sunrise Annexation. And I ask for its approval. Second.

Thank you. Approval of the ordinance on first reading has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Clerk, please pull the council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Council Member Byrd, would you please introduce item 10A3?

An ordinance approving a zoning amendment with the associated overall development plan and plan development standards for approximately 88 acres of land generally located south of East 120th Avenue and east of Holly Street, the Sunrise Annexation, and I ask for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the ordinance on first reading has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Clerk, please call the council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Councilmember Byrd, would you please introduce item 10A4?

A resolution approving a conceptual site plan for a residential development on approximately 86 acres of land, generally located south of East 120th Avenue and east of Holly Street, the Sunrise Annexation, and ask for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Clerk, please call the council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. And Council Member Burr, would you please introduce Item 10A5?

A resolution conditionally approving the service plan for the Thornton Sunrise Metropolitan District and an intergovernmental agreement between the City and Thornton Sunrise Metropolitan District regarding the service plan for the district. And I ask for its approval. Second. Second.

Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. Council Member Byrd.

I will second what the Mayor said earlier. It's great to hear that we have developers come in and work with the communities around them to kind of weed out some of the issues and questions and concerns that they have. It's a rare occurrence and a lot of times where developers are willing to do that. So I'm greatly appreciative of that. And I am really looking forward to seeing how the subdivision turns out. So thank you, guys.

Council Member Russell.

Yes, I just want to congratulate you guys on taking what could be a difficult site for many to develop and finding the highest and best utilization based on the lot sizes. They seem like they'll probably be starter homes or cottage style housing, which is something that's greatly needed. And I know that the community has been seeking more of that within our city. So really appreciate you moving on something that others have probably passed on for quite some long time, but also bringing a product that's highly desirable to our city. So thank you.

Any additional discussion? Clerk, please call the council. Council, please cast your votes.

Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you very much. Item 10B is a public hearing concerning the findings of fact annexation and zoning amendment of land situated in part of the southeast corner of Section 10 and west half of Section 11, the northwest quarter of Section 14, and the northeast quarter of Section 15, Township 1 South. Range 68 West of the 6th Principle Meridian, County of Adams, State of Colorado, generally located along Washington Street at East 152nd Avenue and East 160th Avenue and assigning the annex property to Ward 4, 152nd and Washington Right-of-Way. The public hearing is now open at 8.58 p.m. Erin Rogowski, Senior Planner, will present this item. Please make sure you state your name and address and whether or not you were sworn, and if not, please respond to the clerk after she gives the oath.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and council members. I'm Erin Rogowski, senior planner for the City 9500 Civic Center Drive, and I have not been sworn in yet.

Do you hereby swear or affirm that your testimony before this council will be true and correct to the best of your knowledge and belief?

I do. Thank you. So now I have been sworn. This public hearing pertains to item 10 B of the meeting agenda the items include an annexation findings of fact and a zoning amendment application this project contains 8 parcels totaling approximately 4 acres of city owned right of way that is currently located outside the city boundaries in an inquiry unincorporated Adams County. The annexation and zoning have been proposed to the city to or by the city sorry to officially annex the right of way. These applications are mainly for clean up of the city owned and maintain parcels which were not annexed or zoned in the city at the time of improvement there is no development proposed as part of the applications being presented tonight and most of the parcels have already been built out according to thorns transportation and mobility master plan. This presentation will include an overview of the project from staff. A summary of the public input received, staff's evaluation of the applicable code criteria, and corresponding recommendation. The applications for this proposal were evaluated under the new standards of the 2025 development code. This means that a site plan was not required to be submitted in conjunction with the zoning amendment application. Again, there is no proposed development with the annexation and the zoning of these parcels. Here is the vicinity map for the proposal there are 8 parcels which are highlighted in yellow on the map and I'll show a close up in the next slide mailed notices were sent to property owners within 1500 feet of the parcels shown here with the purple line. In addition, the public hearing was posted at city facilities and on the city's website, according to requirements and the development code, the city has also. Satisfied the sign posting notice requirements and the corresponding affidavit has been delivered electronically to be entered into the official public record for this hearing. This slide is a little bit better view of the parcels this is the overall annexation map 5 of the parcels are located on both sides of Washington Street near the intersection of East 152nd Avenue the remaining 3 parcels are located on the east side of Washington Street just south of East 160th Avenue the parcels act as city right of way and are maintained by the city though they're currently located outside city limits. To give some visuals, here are the site photos. We'll start with parcels 1 and 4 at the intersection of East 152nd and Washington. This is looking north at the intersection. Parcel 1 is across the street on the left, while parcel 4 contains the grassy area along the right turn lane and portions of East 152nd. These are additional photos of parcel four. The first photo is looking south along the east side of Washington Street, and the second photo is looking north toward that intersection of East 152nd and Washington. Here are views of parcels one, two, three, and eight on the west side of Washington Street at 152nd. The left-hand photo is looking north, and the right-hand photo is looking south. And finally, we have the northern parcels 5 through 7 on the east side of Washington Street, directly south of East 160th Avenue. The first is the very south end of parcel 7. The second photo is further north on Washington Street. And following are just the individual parcels represented in the annexation map. This is parcels 1 through 3. Parcels 4, 5, and 6 are on this slide. Parcel 7 is located directly south of 5 and 6 on the east side of Washington Street. This is also adjacent to residential properties that are in the county to the east. Oh, sorry. And then there's parcel 8 on the east side of Washington, or west side of Washington Street, adjacent to parcel three, south of east 152nd. On this slide, you'll see the proposed zone map. All parcels are proposed to be zoned as development reserve, depicted by the gray shading. The development reserve zone district is for newly annexed land with no anticipated change of use in addition this zoning does not allow for subdivision or development of land without an additional zoning amendment with exception to infrastructure improvements. The zoning is appropriate for the subject parcels as they are currently or are designed to be used as right of way. All parcels are owned by the city of thornton and no additional development is being considered as a part of this zoning amendment. For public input, we did have a neighborhood meeting on December 22nd, 2025 at the city's infrastructure maintenance center on 120th and Washington Street. An online attendance option was also offered. One person attended this meeting and there were no concerns with the zoning or annexation. On June 16, 2026, the Planning Commission held a public hearing for the annexation and zoning amendment. The Planning Commission voted 6-0 to recommend approval of both applications to the City Council. Annexations must meet the criteria on the slide here. All eight parcels meet the requirement and state statute for one sixth contiguity with existing city limits for annexation. Additionally, the proposal is in conformance with the comprehensive plan and it is in the best interest of the city to annex the city owned right of way, which is maintained by the city. Similarly, all zoning amendments must meet one of the criteria outlined on this slide. In this instance, while there's not necessarily an error in the zoning map to rectify, this zoning is supplemental to the annexation of the parcels, which has been initiated to make up for the fact that it was not annexed at the time of original improvements. So this zoning meets the required criteria on screen. Additionally, the zoning amendment must meet all the criteria outlined on this slide. There are no additional facilities and services required to annex and zone this property. There are no proposed uses for the parcels other than right of way. No change in use is allowed under the zone district and no development is proposed. In summary, the applications comply with the criteria in Sections 18-55 and 18-62 of the 2025 Development Code pertaining to annexations and zoning amendments. This proposal requires three actions, and the recommendations based upon the findings within the communications are as follows. To approve the findings of fact, to approve the annexation of the eight parcels, and to approve the zoning amendments. And that concludes the presentation, but I am available for any questions.

Council, are there any questions of staff at this time? Council Member Byrd.

You mentioned the only changes that could be taking place are going to be infrastructure improvement. One of the photos that was listed, it shows the overhead power lines. Is that something the city's going to be taking on, or would they be relying more on Excel or who the power company is to adjust those?

At this time, I am not aware of a project for undergrounding, but that might be a better question for our infrastructure department.

Emily Hunt, 12450 Washington Street, and I have been sworn in. I also would need to check into that. I'm not aware of any additional plans for changes to the overhead. We'll look into that for you.

Any additional questions? All right. I will open the hearing for public comment. Ms. Long, do we have anyone signed up to speak in favor of or in opposition to the proposed development?

No, Your Honor.

Is there anyone in the audience that wanted to speak but didn't know you needed to sign up? All right. I'll ask one more time for City Council to, if there are any additional questions. right of way right of way technically you're supposed to get up and say your name and whether or not you were sworn in if you want to ask a question i'm sorry all right any additional questions from council all right i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing at 9 0 8 p.m council member russell would you please introduce item 10 b1

Yes, I'd like to introduce a resolution adopting the adoption of certain findings of fact, for the annexation of certain unincorporated territory, approximately 4.08 acres plan situated 8 parcels in part of the Southeast quarter of section 10, the West half section 11, the Northwest quarter of section 14 and the Northwest quarter. SEC UP SECTION 15 TOWNSHIP ONE SOUTH RANGE 68 WEST OF THE SIX PRINCIPAL MERIDIAN COUNTY OF ADAMS STATE OF COLORADO GENERALLY LOCATED ALONG WASHINGTON STREET AT EAST 152ND AVENUE AND EAST 160TH AVENUE AND ASSIGNING THE ANNEX PROPERTY TO WARD FOR 152ND AND WASHINGTON ROW RIGHT OF WAY ANNEXATION AND I ASK FOR ITS IMMEDIATE APPROVAL SECOND

Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Council Member Russell, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

No comment for now. It's good to go.

I'll just say thank you to staff for doing the cleanup. I know sometimes it gets a little complicated when a lot of work is done out there, and I'm glad to see that we're taking care of it. Would you please pull the council?

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Council Member Morris, would you please introduce Item 10b-2?

I'm introducing an ordinance approving the annexation of eight city-owned parcels of right-of-way along Washington Street at East 152nd Avenue and East 160th Avenue, totaling approximately four acres of land, 152nd and Washington ROW annexation. And I move for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the ordinance on first reading has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion?

Great work, Seth. Thanks for bringing this.

Clerk, please call the Council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honour.

Council Member Russell, would you please introduce Item 10B3.

Yes, I'd like to introduce an ordinance approving a zoning amendment for eight city-owned parcels of right-of-way along Washington Street at East 152nd Avenue and East 160th Avenue to zone the properties Development Reserve 152nd and Washington ROW Annexation, and I ask for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the ordinance on first reading has been moved and seconded. Is there any additional discussion? Clerk, please pull the council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Item 11 is legislative public hearings. There are no legislative public hearings this evening, so we'll move on to item 12, which is staff reports. Item 12A is the quarterly development update, and I'll turn this over to Adam Kruger, Economic Development Director, to present this item.

I'm coming. Take the right away.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. Appreciate your time tonight, as always. I am Adam Kruger, Economic Development Director. I'm going to give the Economic Development Commercial Development Report for the second quarter of this year. A lot to talk about, so I'm going to dive right in. Council might remember last quarter we talked about modifying this presentation to include a little bit more on the strategy side and some of our focus areas, and then I'm going to weave in some of our new announcements that I know people care about as well. try to kind of touch on some of that. Another thing we're going to do here is we've combined our market-aided youth reports, formerly known as Thornton Shopping Center, with these quarterly updates to try to be a little bit more streamlined. I'll break these down more. Our four pillars, retail attraction retention and primary employer attraction retention, redevelopment, and then small business support. We're going to dig into each one of these here. in more detail. Starting with retail, why does it matter? Pays the bills. Sales tax accounts for about 60% of our general fund, as I think a lot of folks are aware. It also provides much-needed amenities for residents. I'm not going to run through all of these. I do have a chart that breaks this down. But some of those percentages of our general fund, I think, are really interesting from some of the revenue that these retail categories bring in. Three of those are our top, three of our top five categories, and then restaurants, we'll show you the other categories here in a second on a chart. I do want to touch on some of these key performance metrics, though. So we measure a couple of different things in our department. Internal metrics, so some of the outreach and effort that we put into trying to bring in new projects, and then we also measure external. What I've got here are some of our more internal metrics. So how many brokers, developers, tenant reps we've reached out to. 57 is a pretty big number for a quarter for us, but a lot of that has to do with we do have a new retail specialist you might have Met her already Stephanie, she replaced Julie Jacoby who left earlier this year. So we've been doing a lot of a lot of outreach. Good opportunity to get to interact with some new new brokers and developers by introducing her. We're also on a couple of panel for Colorado real estate journal. I'll spell out those acronyms for you. Sorry about that. And the International Council of shopping centers conference that we went to as well. So fair amount of outreach there. We also did outreach to some of our shopping center partners to introduce Stephanie to them. And then we do outreach to our top sales tax producers every year. We are going to pick up that number more as Stephanie gets more more ingredient in what we're doing. This next chart Council did see at the last update, but I did just want to talk about, so these are our top five sales tax categories over the last three years, and then restaurants is in there, even though it's not one of our top five, just because we know there's a lot of interest in that. Wanted to share just a couple things on this, and Council might remember, all of these categories over the last three years have gone up, with the exception of two, and that is the auto sales and the construction and building materials. So, this is 2023 2024 and 2025 numbers just wanted to show that we are, you know, we are seeing some success in some of these areas, but there are certainly factors that, um, uh, that we are seeing some, some negatives on, which I know council has heard. Do did want to point out that since 2023, our new retailers have added, uh, 10Million dollars to our base sales tax, which is. Which is pretty good number. Okay, focus area goals retail council has seen these in various forms over the last couple of years. Sit down restaurants and entertainment, we know those are huge needs for the community. I did just want to touch on a couple of these. In Q2, Deja Foods opened down at 84th and K1 Speed, I know a number of council members referenced that tonight. I got an opportunity to race a few of our council members and lose those races to them earlier this year, or earlier this quarter, which was cool. That's a really nice venue. Wing Check took over the old Fuzzy's taco shop, and they are open, and they have really good pollo fries. If you haven't had those, Brenda in my office just loves them. And then coming soon, actually, I should say, I don't know how Handel snuck down in this coming soon. They are open. Anybody that's been up there has seen the line around the corner. They are open up in Larkridge, so I apologize for that mistake. On the coming soon side, Crab and Grab Seafood, they are taking over the former Old Chicago space at 120th and Colorado. Texas Roadhouse will be open probably 2028 would be my guess. Could be late 2027 up in Larkridge. Real Dominio should be open any time now. They are taking over the other Old Chicago's off of Grant Street. And then Viewhouse should be breaking ground here soon. They did inform us that they are very, very close. Hopefully they do break around here soon. And then we have here on each of these, you'll see all these focus areas are kind of laid out the same. We make some strategic plan connections on each of these items. Next piece I want to talk about is our neighborhood retail developers. Council's heard me talk about 4% vacancy rates for retail space in the city. We don't have a lot of places to put these businesses. Most businesses don't want to build something new. So trying to bring in some of these developers, some of our recent successes there. Just broke ground this quarter, Thornton Commons, which is at 144th and Washington. Um, so we're excited to see that project get moving, uh, and then control commercial, which is out, uh, as part of part here at 144th and Quebec. You can see the strategic plan connections there as well. Sales tax I mentioned pays the bills. That is another one of our focuses. We were the first city to hire a retail administrator to focus specifically on these. Over 10 years ago, that was Julie Jacoby and now Stephanie Otte. And so we do focus very hard on sales tax. I want to just touch on a couple of these points. New announcements, Dick's House of Sports should be open in early August. So we're really excited about that. That's up in Larkridge. Waldo's Chicken and Beer, taking over there with Taco John's. They should be open by the end of this year, we believe. And then Winco is probably going to be 2028. That's a grocery store up in Larkridge. And then retail centers with large vacancies, this may seem at odds with saying we don't have any space, but what we're really talking about there is space for smaller businesses. We do have some large vacancies that we have been trying to fill. We had some success in Thornton Town Center last year, but there's still about 70,000 square feet of vacant space there. And then Thornton Marketplace, which is just off 102nd and Grant. also has some vacant space. So those are a couple of areas that we're continuing to focus on, try to fill some of that space. Primary employment, why do we care? I'm not going to run through all of these in detail, but it does create jobs that provide good benefits and wages for residents of Thornton. You do have a multiplier effect. I will spend just a brief minute on this. So when you talk about multiplier effects, there's really the direct impact of the job that's being created, the indirect benefits, which are supply chain jobs that come from these employers, and then induced, which is people that work there that go spend money at lunch, go shopping after work, those types of things. And so those generate those secondary jobs that are really important. I guess I will run through all of these. I said I wasn't going to, but here we are. Drives economic growth and stability, does provide revenue for the city, brings that daytime population in, which helps provide more people for, if you talk to any of those retail developers that we talked about, Oops, but they will tell you that having that daytime employment is huge for them and attracting new tenants and then attracts and retains talent. People want to live where there's good jobs to have. So, again, measure measures, we're using the same general format. These are more internal metrics. We do track the external as well. We have less control over those. Broker Developer Site Selection Outreach 53. This is Wendy that does this in our office. New Retained Primary Jobs 400. That is one, actually that is just this quarter and that's just one company. I'll talk about them in a minute. Existing Primary Employer Contacts of 60. Activities pretty strong on the employment side. Some of our main goals in the focus area side, fill vacancy with high-paying employers. So we do have a lot of space. I know Council's aware of a lot of space that's been built. Trying to fill that up with good companies. Design Mechanical is the one I referenced that's 400 jobs. That is a new headquarters design. They'll have good-paying jobs, $80,000 a year, roughly, jobs there. They just announced they're going to be at... Creekside. No, I'm sorry. I'm trying to blank on the name of that business park up just north of where confluent is going to be 144th and Washington. I'm sure that name will come to me as soon as I'm done. Lumos solar is another headquarters that's coming in. That's that's that's operating in the city. Now they announced earlier this year and then engineering also announced earlier this year. The other 2 kiosk is their headquarters. They're moving into the space at 126 in Washington. And then, as he announced last year, they are. continuing to occupy their space. So 425 new primary jobs, that doesn't count ISEO or kiosk. That's just this year. An average wage of around $75,000 to $80,000 a year. You can see the strategic plan connections. We want to get council into some of these buildings. One of my favorite things about economic development when I first got into it was seeing what's going on inside of some of these buildings. Council Member Byrd referenced earlier with SASHCO. Really cool stuff to see what's happening inside these buildings. And so we wanted to continue to familiarize council by getting those tours set up. We've done five this year. We've got more planned. And I know businesses really love showing off their space to council. So thank you guys for taking the time to do those. I know they do take some time, but they do mean a lot to us and to our businesses. And then similar to the retail address, vacancy issues and some of our large office buildings. So we really have 2, 2, big ones, 12, 1, 2, 1 grant street, which is where via is and then North Valley tech center, which is 84th and I, 25. We've been working with. Those property owners, uh, quite a bit to try to try to fill some of that vacancy. Starting to see some good activity, particularly on 12, 1, 2, 1, but, um, but nothing, nothing solid there yet that we did have mere group expand there a couple of years ago. All right redevelopment. I'm going to just fly right through some of the points I want to make. Why does it matter? I will not read all of these. I know Council is familiar on our redevelopment efforts and the benefits of doing some of that work. I will say one area, the fourth bullet point is kind of an interesting one. As we do redevelopment, we bring in different new uses that are probably a little bit more current and driven more by the market than maybe what was there before. So that does help with that sales tax and that kind of amenity side of things. Um, These key performance measures are a little different. It's more difficult to try to pull redevelopment metrics over the course of just a couple of quarters. So we pulled these from the TDA plan that we put together that we shared with council earlier this year that reflects 2025 numbers. And so business licenses in the TDA South 477, that's about on par with where they were in 2024. But vacancy rates did decrease quite a bit in the South URA from 4.9%. Sorry, from 10.9% 2024 to 4.9% in 2025. That doesn't even actually take into account Thornton Town Center, which isn't in the TDA South. A lot of that's businesses like where Gordon Foods went in that space. Retail lease, $18. That's pretty much on par with where it was in 2024 as well. Some of our focus area goals, so we did mention we're combining the Market at 88th presentation with this, and so I do want to spend just a little bit of time talking about the Fortin Shopping Centre. We did the rebranding the market 88th so excited for that. That is out. Those responses are due here in about 3 weeks. We have, there are different checkpoints throughout this process. We are checking off the final 1 here tomorrow. So we had a. meeting where a voluntary meeting where developers could ask questions then we had an opportunity for them to send us written questions and then tomorrow is when our written questions are due and we will get those sent back from the development community then so we are hearing good activity on it but hopefully we will get good responses here in a few weeks we will find out but we're feeling cautiously optimistic that we'll get some good responses there so that should be coming here august 6th If you've been out there recently, Chad loves this picture that I share. He made me share it. I think he's got this hanging up in his office somewhere. This is the redevelopment site. We dug out the contaminated soils and are getting ready to put back the clean soils in that site. So it's pretty exciting, particularly for Chad, but I think it's pretty exciting for everybody to see the redevelopment work that's been happening on that site. We have been Pleasantly surprised so far and with what you know, when you dig into something, it's like when you're repairing something in your house and you don't exactly know what the people before you did similar deal, you start digging in the ground, you don't really know what you're going to find. We have been pleasantly surprised with what we have found. There has not been any any significant surprises down there. So we are tracking under budget for this project at this point.

You can see the strategic plan connections there as well.

So the other point, there are a couple points. Businesses with aesthetic issues. So we are working, as Council has heard before, I think Meteora came in, I don't remember if it was this quarter or at the end of last quarter, the former village pub there on a redevelopment. We're working with them and then two others on undergrounding their lines in front of their properties, which makes a big difference. As Council Member Burge was just referencing with the last project. And then we are working on multiple spots for tackling kind of this visioning of the city-owned TDA property. You'll hear more about this next week at the strategic plan discussion and then in the future as those spots continue to move forward. But we do have a number of TDA-owned properties that we are working to try to figure out where the best commercial development opportunities lie. And so that's really kind of the focus of that spot team. Small business. Again, I'm not going to read through all of these. I know council is really supportive of small business. Um, we appreciate we appreciate that. Some of our counseling session, the number of counseling sessions, we had 104 this last quarter. Uh, so really busy on the counseling side, 52 business outreach visits. And then we had 9 workshops with 252 attendees. That's pretty big number more than more than normal for those attendees. And we had 1 workshop that had over 90 people that we did with score. So. Trying to trying to fine tune kind of where those, uh, where that demand is. We had 1 for AI for business 1 for, um. Uh, actually, it's comes from our Martinez that reference the. Uh, food safety he's right. We did we did Proctor that for our 1st time we got 15 of the 20. Uh, that passed, which is really cool. Um, and that was actually in Spanish, uh, that particular group and then we did 1 for QuickBooks workshop. Focus area goals, increased productive outreach. So this is an important piece. We don't just wait for people to come into the Alliance Center. We do go out and talk about what resources are out there for businesses and try to build on those outreach efforts. How do we better position ourselves to make businesses aware of all the resources that are out there, not just Thornton's, but all the resources that we have available. Uh, 1 thing that we started this year, our shopping center meetings, I think Council's heard about these before where we are actually going to shopping centers and inviting all of the businesses there and others that might want to join. And we're bringing in different departments to talk about place has been a part of it. Fire's been a part of it. Um. Uh, other other partners of ours have been involved to talk about what resources there are. They're specific to that area and hear the concerns on the challenges specific to that center. So, we started that earlier this year. Uh, it's been, it's been very successful. Uh, grow and evolve programs talked about the food safety classes. Um, we have seen a huge influx in that and so we're going to continue to grow those. The small business cohort, um, so the idea here is 1 of the things that we have been, we have been hearing and we are, we have been seeing, um. Is a lot of businesses have the ideas, but it's very difficult to kind of get that past the ideation stage into the startup side. And that is a lot of the work that we do, but we are trying to kind of like, we've done with the food classes start to come up with maybe a group of like businesses and a series of classes to help businesses better understand specific to Thornton. What you have, what it takes to start these businesses, and then the process that you go through specific to Thornton to get that business open. The idea is that it's kind of a 1 stop shop for some of these businesses that are involved in this multiple. Multiple classes, multiple times, and then and then they can learn, not just from the counselors and us, but from. Each other a little bit too, and kind of go through that experience together. So that is the plan for those courts. And then identify opportunities to build an existing partnerships. Obviously, you have some great partners in the city and we know we are a small team. We can't do it all. And we are really fortunate to have great partners. So, continuing to work with with them on how we can better work together. And then improvements in the permitting process. Uh, I promise I'm almost done small business support team. So this is we've called this a rapid response team sometimes in the past as well. Uh, this is a group of city staff that when we have a business that is looking to move into a space. We bring them on site and say. Everybody's on site with this business telling them this is what you need to do. This is the processes that you need kind of helping to hold their hand. So they can better get a sense on on what needs to happen because it can be a complicated process. We also started doing earlier this year, these final stretch meetings. I don't know if that's the best name for him, but that's just kind of what we settled on. Uh, and that's really about 3 to 4 months before a business opens. Uh, or they're projected to open we are, we are getting the whole team together for a, the whole team being. All the different departments that are involved in getting a new business open in the city. And we are saying you want to be open in 4 months. Here's the things that we see kind of common problems, because we have seen a lot of consistent problems in these and similar similar challenges. And so the idea of these is to identify those before it's 2 weeks before they want to open and it's and then now it's emergency time. And then the regulatory justice items, we are going to come back and talk to council in much more detail about the regulatory justice issue. They're finishing. I think they sent the final report here today. I just haven't just look at it yet. So we will come back and have a whole update with council on the regulatory justice items and some of the recommendations from that. And then that isn't done. Once that point happens, that is going to be an ongoing thing with some of those some of the feedback that we got there. Okay, events, just want to touch on two quick ones. We partnered with the Thornton Area Chamber and we hosted our networking party on May 14th. We had almost 100 people there. Appreciate the Chamber and all the work they do with us and for the city. That was at Satire Brewing. A lot of fun, so just wanted to give a shout out to them and then this Friday Councilman Morris mentioned it earlier starts this East Lake front porch event, which is going to be a couple of days a week every week throughout the rest of the summer in East Lake to try to kind of bring people together and do some fun place making. So, those are really exciting things that we wanted to mention 1, thanks to the Chamber into excited about this East Lake event. Okay. I flew through that. I am happy to answer any questions that you guys have.

Council Member Byrd.

Thank you for the presentation. It was great. Really looking forward to seeing some of the new restaurants and businesses come up, specifically the Cajun one at 120th and Colorado. It's really close to my house. I'm going to love that. The design mechanical that you mentioned, is that in the old Meadey complex?

It's not, actually. So the old Meadey building does have some activity on it. I know I've said that before, but they have toured it. They do have some interest. But this is actually a new build. This will be just north of... So 146th, and it's called Creekside Innovation Park. I knew I'd get there eventually.

And so it's just north of where the...

The development that I mentioned, it's like 146th and Washington, basically. It'll be a new building that's out there.

And then the 12121 grant, that's the Viya building. I'm assuming that's the multiple tech floors that's the issue?

It is, yeah. The way that building was built, I think some of you are aware of this already, 30,000 square foot floor plates. Half of that is... um office and then the other half the side without the windows is really set more for the data data center side and so um they are they got about 60 000 square feet of that but it's mostly it is vacant um the office space is what we've seen more more activity on over time so there is there is activity there are businesses in there um but it is um it's got like uh oh i can't remember how many square feet vacant but a fair amount of floors still think i think it's about 70 or 80 000 square feet roughly so

Council Member Russell.

I just wanted to comment on the new format for the presentation. I absolutely love it. So thank you, Adam, Tansy, and the rest of the staff for making those changes. I find this presentation is one that residents commonly talk about. They're always wanting to know what's coming to the city in terms of entertainment and businesses. So this is, I think, of a higher level of interest than maybe some of the other city business for our residents, but this really puts things into context and why we're seeing some of those larger employment centers. the explanation i think will go a long way with the city additionally i have mixed feelings about your dig site with thornton shopping center i'm a little bummed we didn't find another dinosaur that could have been some really cool marketing for the redevelopment of that site uh but it is far more cost effective and advantageous to the city that we didn't so uh thank you for sharing that and uh share that with chad please as well i will absolutely councilmember morris

Yeah, I'll echo Councilmember Russell's comments. Enjoy the new brief format. A little more detail, love that. You mentioned the Thornton Commons, and I am not familiar with that. Can you share a little bit about what that is?

I can, yeah. So that is, I think it's around 20-acre development. It will ultimately be mixed-use. They did come to Council last year for... Some level of process I'm trying to remember. Oh, we're doing some work with them on the infrastructure side and then they had to come for their site plan as well. And so they've got a large portion of that site with some retail along 144th and Washington. And then they've got some residential behind it. This is the plan ultimately, so they'll be coming forward with with more projects here. In the future, they are just starting if you drive by there now, they are just starting to. You guys drive by there every day, just like I do. They're just starting to break around on that. Most of what they're doing now is the infrastructure side. So they're going to add a lane to 144th. They're moving that detention pond streamlining that more instead of being on the hard corner. to take advantage more of that hard corner for the retail, so some of that type of work. They're also doing something in Washington Street to help with the traffic flow from Stargate.

I'll just jump in, because I don't know that that name has been used. I think the council, we've talked about confluent development, but we can redistribute some of the prior information about the ways that the city has partnered on that project.

Yep, sorry, Thornton Commons is what they're calling it now.

Any additional questions? All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate all the work that your team does.

Thank you. Have a great night.

Item 13 is the consent calendar. Is there any member of council who would like to remove an item from the consent calendar? Hearing none, is there a motion to approve the consent calendar as presented? So moved.

Second.

Approval of the consent calendar as presented has been moved and seconded. Clerk, please read the appropriate title into the record and poll the council.

An ordinance approving a zoning amendment for approximately 29 acres of land generally located on the northeast corner of East 112th Avenue and York Street Dodge Ranch. Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Item 14 is action items. Item 14A is a resolution authorizing the distribution of the 2026 Thornton Assistance Funds to nonprofit organizations that help Thornton residents meet their basic needs and enhance their ability to be self-sufficient. I'll turn this over to Jessica Prosser, Assistant City Manager, to present this item.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and members of Council. This is not the first time that you've seen this. We're back here after a few different iterations of bringing these recommendations forward. This provides you background over the past about six weeks where we've come forth with recommendations, taken feedback from Council and made changes to the resolution. So tonight you will be considering a funding resolution which provides equal funding to each of the agencies listed here. These were all applicants that met minimum qualifications that applied during 2026. The distribution will be about $8,729,000 for each of the agencies. We will move forward with Council's approval this evening with funding award letters as well as distribution checks. And the agencies will also be required by the end of the year to provide an impact report to us that will go out for them to fill out, and that will come back to us. So tonight, staff is recommending that council pass the resolution as stated before you, and staff will follow up on the back end with communication to the agencies. Happy to take any questions. Any questions from council?

Councilmember Byrd, would you please introduce item 14A?

Yes, I'd like to introduce a resolution authorizing the distribution of the 2026 Thornton Assistance Funds to non-profit organizations that help Thornton residents meet their basic needs and enhance their ability to be self-sufficient. Second.

And that was a second. Second. Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. I'll open it for discussion. Councilmember Byrd, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

Yeah, I want to start by thanking my colleagues and the staff for supporting the changes that are put forth. I also want to be clear that this was never intended to undermine the TAF committee or diminish the many hours its members dedicated to reviewing these applications. Their work is appreciated, and I understand that some committee members may be disappointed with tonight's decision. However, our responsibility as council is to ensure the process itself is fair and transparent and consistent. It became clear that there was a disconnect between scoring recommendations and final allocations, and it's our responsibility as council members to address that before we write checks for over $315,000. Tonight's action allows us to get the funding out to our community organizations quickly while giving us the opportunity to improve our methodology going forward. My hope is that next year's process provides greater clarity for the community, applicants, council, and taxpayers, so everyone has the confidence in how we are making these recommendations and everything is being developed. Thank you.

Any additional discussion? I'll just thank the staff for being willing to work with us on this. I will take ownership as council of not providing the direction to get that granularity of data to the committee. That's on the council for not asking for it. The committee did what they had been tasked with with the information that they were given. The council came in and decided that we needed to change some things in order to have that accountability. And so we do appreciate the amount of work that that committee did, and we very much appreciate staff being willing to work with us so that next year's process is much more clear for all parties. Would you please pull the council?

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Item 14B is an ordinance adopting the third amendment to the 2026 budget, amending Section 1 of Ordinance 3751, making appropriations for the City of Thornton, Colorado, for the fiscal year 2026. For all funds except that, appropriations for certain individual projects shall not lapse at year end, but continue until the project is completed or canceled. And I'll turn this over to Erica Sena, Budget and Operations Director, to present this item.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. So tonight I'm presenting the Third Amendment to the 2026 budget. And each slide has an overview of the three items on this amendment. So the first item appropriates $54,716 in the general fund to cover the purchase installation and training for seven grappler police bumper systems for the Thornton Police Department. These would be utilized to reduce risk of collisions, injuries, and property damage during vehicle pursuits. This would be fully covered through federal forfeiture funds. The second item appropriates $695,000 in the governmental capital fund to cover the design and construction of intersection improvements at Riverdale Road and 128th Avenue to include a southbound right turn lane and eastbound left turn lane. These improvements would be covered in part by a reimbursement from Adams County. That would be a 50% reimbursement with the other 50% coming from unappropriated fund balance. And then lastly, the third item appropriates $11,351,065 in the water fund to provide additional funds necessary to complete the construction of the new PFAS treatment plant at the Thornton Water Treatment Plant. These costs have been offset by $12 million in revenue received by the city from the national PFAS settlement. Staff recommends approval of this ordinance and happy to take any questions you may have.

Are there any questions from Council? All right. Council Member Morris, would you please introduce Item 14B?

Yes, introducing an ordinance adopting the Third Amendment to the 2026 budget amending Section 1 of Ordinance 3751, making appropriations for the City of Thornton, Colorado, for the fiscal year 2026. For all funds except that appropriations for certain individual projects shall not lapse at year end but continue until the project is completed or canceled. I move for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the ordinance on first reading has been moved and seconded. I'll open it for discussion. Council Member Morris, you have the option to go first as you made the motion.

No comment. Thanks.

I'll just add thank you very much for the work. Very much appreciate it. Would you please pull the council?

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you very much. All right, item 14C through F are an ordinance amending ordinance 3681 regarding the city council policy for reimbursement of expenses for travel, training, subsistence, and other business expenses, a resolution repealing and replacing council policies 5.1 and 5.3 regarding education foundation funding and youth event funding and adding nonprofit funding to consolidate into one policy regarding sponsorships, a resolution amending council policy 4.1 to establish recreation and community engagement benefits, for current and former mayors, council members, and immediate family members, and a resolution adopting the council policy on informal ward meetings hosted by a council member. I'll turn this over to Kevin Forgett, assistant to the city manager, to present this item.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of city council. Kevin Forgett, assistant to the city manager. I'm here to present, for your consideration, updates to city council travel policy, informal ward meetings, and related council policies. All right, I will cover the background and then go into each of the council policy areas up for your consideration this evening. I will just also note that I will be making 1 presentation for each of the changes under 1 presentation. And then there are 4 actions, which include 1 ordinance and 3 resolutions as the mayor has read. So, starting off with background staff did present at the June 2nd planning session and council provided direction. Uh, to bring forward updates to city council's policies pertaining to travel, informal board meetings hosted by council members and related policies for your consideration. This evening updates do include in ordinance updating the expense reimbursement policy, reflecting changes to travel and memberships to organizations, a resolution, creating a new policy on informal board meetings hosted by a council member. A resolution updating council policy 4.1 related to council pay and benefits and a resolution repealing and replacing council policies. 5.1 and 5.3 to create a new consolidated policy, which covers council sponsorships. So, starting with the travel policy updates for your consideration include updating the scope under section 2.1. it will reflect that membership dues and travel expenses will be budget as part of the annual budget process. It does update the policy to reflect the number of authorized annual trips relevant to council's role in the city. This will include 3 out of state trips. 1, 1, in state overnight trip located farther than 25 miles from the city. Any trip beyond those authorized annual limit trips, exceeding 2000 dollars in a calendar year will require a majority of support of council. And travel outside of the United States will is not allowed without a majority support of council. Sponsored travel where 100% of all the costs will is covered will not count against the authorized annual trip limit. And this policy will update will also memorialize that the DC lobbying trip. The council retreat and city initiative travel will not count against the annual limit. The final update to the expense reimbursement policy would add a new section 2.2, which states that council shall receive general consensus of the city council before joining in volunteering to serve on committees subcommittees of subcommittees of membership organizations beyond and when volunteering as an officer for a member organization. Next, we are moving on to the consideration of a of creation of a new policy, which would cover informal ward meetings. The policy does include 3 main sections. 1st, it limits the free use of city facilities to once per quarter per council member. Just as a reminder, customers do have an existing allowance of up to 200 dollars per year under the expense reimbursement policy for expenses, such as facility rental. The section 2nd section is related to posting of meetings where staff will post all informal word meetings that occur at a city facility. And then 3rd, finally, in final is the city staff role for informal meetings will be limited to securing a facility at the council members request. Next, we'll talk about the council policy. Um, amending 4.1 regarding council pay and benefits. Council 4.1 is being amended to add recreational and community engagement benefits. This will include up to 242 for some thorn creek golf passes per calendar month. For current in previous mayors and council members, uh, free recreation center passes for current mayor and council members and their immediate family members and other complimentary VIP. and general admission access to city-sponsored events, festivals, and programs as made available to the city. The final update this evening, your consideration is related to sponsorship requests. This resolution will repeal and replace. Council policies 5.1 and council policy 5.3, and we'll create a new consolidated policy covering council sponsorship opportunities. This includes the following sections. a section regarding education foundation funding the section regarding youth event funding requests a section on non-profit sponsorship requests and then it does create a new section to formalize prior direction by city council on golf pass donations to city operated golf courses for auctions or other giveaways this concludes my presentation and happy to open it up to any questions are there any questions from council

Councilmember Russell, would you please introduce item 14 C?

Yes, I'd like to introduce an ordinance amending ordinance 3681 regarding the City Council policy for reimbursement of travel or reimbursement of expenses for travel training substance and Other business expenses and ask for its approval Second, thank you approval of the ordinance on first reading has been moved and seconded.

Is there any discussion? I Clerk, please call the council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you very much. Council Member Salazar, I'll call on you at the end when we get through these others. Council Member Byrd, would you please introduce Item 14D?

It's ordered to introduce a resolution repealing and replacing Council Policies 5.1 and 5.3 regarding education funds foundation funding and youth event funding and Adding nonprofit funding to consolidate into one policy regarding sponsorships and ask for its approval Second approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded.

Is there any discussion clerk? Please call the council counts.

Please cast your votes Motion passed unanimously your honor.

Thank you councilmember Salazar.

Would you please introduce item 14 e I? A resolution amending council policy 4.1 to establish recreation and community engagement benefits for current and former mayors, council members, and immediate family members. And I ask for its immediate approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Clerk, please call the council.

Council, please cast your votes. Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you. Mayor Potemayala, would you please introduce item 14F?

Yes, I'd like to introduce a resolution adopting the City Council policy on informal ward meetings hosted by a council member, and I move for its approval.

Second.

Thank you. Approval of the resolution has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Please call the council. Council, please cast your votes.

Motion passed unanimously, Your Honor.

Thank you very much. Council Member Salazar, I think you have a correction to the record.

Yes, I would like to change my TAF vote from yes to a no. So it's a technical change.

Is there any objection from council? Just for the record? All right, no objection from council to make that technical change.

Thank you.

Item 15 is adjournment and having no additional business, we are adjourned at 9.54 p.m.