City Council - workshop

Right. Roberta's running a few minutes late. Dave, I think Randy has something to drink, but we'll go ahead and get started. Anything from you tonight, Tansy?

I just have two very quick items. First, I do want to recognize that we have a sea of amazing superstars with us tonight. I will ask Heather to stand up. And wave. So, Heather, again, I just started yesterday. So Heather is the city's new transportation department. She is very knowledgeable already after 24 hours. So thank you. I'm excited to see you joining our organization and leading the new transportation. So just wanted you to put a face with a name there. Thank you. Thank you. And then second, I did just want to try to get some clarification about prior direction. I think it was provided by Council Member Russell a couple of meetings ago. So Ms. Panato, there was discussion about a follow-up report to the Council, and then there was also some discussion about a planning session. So you've got a very detailed report. both in terms of more current activity and support to Ms. Panato and then prior interactions. Happy to schedule something for a future planning session. Frankly, we just needed a little more direction about what the scope of that was intended to be. So you do have a lot of background information. We can walk through that. There's a lot of interactions and it's very detailed. So again, we just wanted to make sure we were clear of the expectations.

I think at this point, I don't need anything formally presented. We all saw the email that was documented very thoroughly. It didn't take a while to get through, but I read everything and it seems like, you know, there are some issues with the community itself, not doing enforcement, but that doesn't seem to be the liability of the city. So language barriers, other things like that. of that, but the background report that was put together said it was super thorough. Took me a while to get through, but that's my intent to find out why she kept coming in and why did it seem like maybe she wasn't getting as far. If anybody else wants more information, then that's fine. I think it was a really good report from Chief Baird and staff and everything. Now I know that she has been Coming in, we've also been doing work in the back. And it's not all a response.

Council's okay with that approach? If you have additional questions, you can follow up via email. Great.

Okay. Thank you. That was it for me.

Short timer.

Yeah. Nothing for me tonight. Thanks.

All right. We will jump right in. Let's talk about the strategic plan. I'm actually going to shut this door because I can hear the speaker on the back. Okay. Thank you.

Well, yeah, so this is a fun night for me. I actually feel like I'm walking into a family reunion or something. Although I know we didn't have food to make for, so that's the only thing with a family reunion. So we do have in the audience here many, many of our strategic plan operation team leaders. So I do just want to thank everybody in the room that is providing really meaningful leadership to make sure that The strategic plan is not just a plan on paper, but is actually influencing the future of our city and impacting our operations. So thanks. Everybody on our SPOT teams is spending considerable time, but the members of our strategic plan advisory team and the members and our leads of our strategic plan operation teams are primarily driving us forward here. So I want to acknowledge everybody. So as we go through tonight, the presentation, just for time and efficiency, mostly our strategic plan advisory team lead will be walking through the presentations. We've highlighted a couple of initiatives kind of throughout the areas of the plan. Again, you have a really detailed report with lots of information about all the status of all of the actions and the strategic plan. And we'll try to bring forward the operational teams that are relevant feeding each of the updated sections. So with that, I'll give the floor to Kevin Borgett and he can give additional information about what to expect tonight.

Great. Thank you, Tansy. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. So, yes, tonight we'll provide City Council an update on the implementation of the strategic plan. We will walk through the framework of the plan just to sort of the pressure. We'll talk to the structure of the implementation teams, provide an update on progress, and then discuss next steps. So just again, as a reminder and as a refresher, strategic plan is organized around four strategic focus areas. Those are vibrant and purposeful development, connected communities, safe, supported and livable community, and organizational excellence. Each of the four areas are then further defined by 17 goals and 65 actions, along with some adopted outcome measures. We use lots of acronyms with the strategic plan and in government in general. So you've probably heard us speak about SPOTS and SPATS, and we've now introduced SPOTLS. So I just wanted to walk through how the teams work and kind of the structure of the implementation structure. So starting first with the strategic plan advisory team, and you'll hear that and will be known as SPATs. That's organized around our strategic focus areas and goals. There's about four to five members per strategic focus area of organizational leadership, and the SPATs are there to provide guidance, oversight, leadership, and be there to help with issues and questions and solutions from the strategic plan operations teams. Next is the strategic plan operation teams, or around our strategic plan actions. So again, there'll be 65 teams. It is implementation focused. There's three to seven members of each spot or of each action. And just, it's important to highlight that the spots are cross departmental and they are across all levels of the organization. So really great perspective across the organization. The main implementation focus of the spots are to develop action plans develop milestones and schedules, and then to work on deliverables. So just wanted to walk through how we are highlighting each of the actions in the presentation tonight. The status is based upon action plans that have been developed by the spots as they plan for the action itself. So as you'll see throughout the presentation, green does reference on track, yellow is indicating the status is just slightly behind schedule, and then red is kind of equivalent, so behind schedule or on hold. I also just wanted to mention that in your packets, you will find, as Tansy mentioned, a more comprehensive report, which does provide an update on all 65 of the actions related to strategic focus areas in the 17. So you'll find that in more detail in your packets. So in terms of the items that are being highlighted this evening, just wanted to kind of walk through how those were formulated. And each of the goals will have at least one action. So the plan, the items that are highlighted tonight are really organized by the strategic area, the focus area, your goals and your actions. You can actually, it'll be followed along through your book if you have your hard copies or online, the actual strategic plan. And then we based the items on three criteria to present to you all tonight. First is being it's a high priority item for city council. The next piece of criteria was whether or not we have reached a milestone or will soon be reaching a critical milestone. And then if there's a future pending decision or a future policy decision is how we highlighted the first actions that are being presented to you this evening. So with that, I will pass it over to Adam. He'll introduce his strategic focus here and his team.

Yeah, thanks, Kevin. Good evening. It's exciting, the energy in the room tonight. Got a lot of room full of friends here, which is pretty cool. I do have, I'm excited about the squad we have up at the table today, a pretty broad range of folks from the city, all representing different spots for vibrant, purposeful development. On the end here, we got Paul Burkholder with Parks, Jen Howe with Economic Development, We've got Aaron Rogowski with city development. We've got Desiree Lovato with city development. Of course, Adam with economic development. So pretty broad strategic focus area. I'm not going to read this. I know you guys have seen this before. I will point out that there's five goals under vibrant purposeful development and 19 different actions total. We're going to talk about six of those tonight, which really this group represents those items. And then... do want to recognize the other spot leaders that we have are spottles, I guess, just to add more confusing terms, spottles, which are spot leaders in the room tonight. So if you're a spot leader for vibrant, purposeful development, can you please stand up to be recognized? team has really done an amazing job of leading these different groups. Everybody's spent a lot of time and effort, and I think it's been really exciting for me, and I think a lot of people in the city just kind of see all these folks step up. I also want to recognize the SPAT that manages all of Vibrant Purposeful Development, and some of those folks, actually, I think all of them are in the room tonight. They've also been helping be point people for all the different spot leaders and that is mike garrett mike you can stand up if you're here doug buchanan i saw doug back there chris stanky um todd rulo i saw todd and jessica prosser so and me yes uh all right thanks guys you can stay standing if you want but Okay, so the first goal for vibrant purposeful development is really about building an identity and a brand for the city. By increasing unique businesses in the city, maximizing our development opportunities, both through new development and redevelopment of the city. The action that we are going to highlight actually we're supposed to pick one. for each goal. And I was a rebel and I picked two. But the reason I did is they're both tied together and they're both managed by Chad Howell. So I think you'll see how they kind of fit together as I walk through them. So it's the only time I picked two, I promise. But basically this first action is really about creating a redevelopment plan for the city. So what are the best opportunities? And this was the focus. What are the best opportunities for development what are some barriers for those sites to develop? And I'll show you an example here in a second. So whether that's zoning, whether that's challenges from an infrastructure standpoint or access, what tools might be needed to help spur the development of this site. And then this includes both privately owned sites and then also some city owned sites. So this group identified 46 sites. I'm sorry. Yeah, this group had 46 sites. And this is just an example. This is a high level example of the initial pass through they did for some of these different sites to try to identify, you know, each site is unique and each site has different challenges and potential barriers. And so what As they came up with these 46, now they're in the process of evaluating those 46 and narrowing them down by kind of ranking them based on very specific criteria on what are the development opportunities here? What could this be? What do we think the highest opportunity sites are? So they've created a number of these. They've been going through that to prioritize the ones that they think would be the best fit. Ultimately, that information will come back to council. That was just showing an example of kind of one of the 46 sheets they put together. And then the second component of this, which is a different action, but again, led by the same spot leader in Chad, is really looking at the city has a number of sites that we own throughout. And while the focus is on these private development opportunities, sites that will work for private development, We also wanted to really take a look, a larger picture, look at all of the sites the city owns and divide them into categories and make sure that there's a true database and recognition of what we have and who's kind of in charge of managing that area. So that site's reserved for departmental use. So what might be an eventual fire station or something else the city needs. What small undevelopable parcels do we have? There's a number of those throughout the city. These ones are all related to, again, sites that the city owns. So what do we have throughout the city that is undevelopable? And there's various reasons why those might be. And what is the long-term plan for those sites? What sites should be developed as parks long-term? And there's more that we'll talk about that later. And then, of course, the fourth one, which is the one that has its own real action here, is that private development one. So that is why we tied those together and wanted to present both because they do really work pretty closely together. And actually they work with a couple of other spots too as we talk about private development opportunities. Next goal that we have is on, you know, we're a growing city and we need to plan for that growth. So this is really about that future planning and how are we going to build out as a city and what are we going to ultimately look like. The action that we chose here is managed by Ms. Desiree Lovato. And it actually has a couple of different components to it. There's a number of components. I think the city does a good job of continuing to work on process improvement and identifying where we can do better in certain areas. But a big component that we've been working on here is the regulatory justice initiative. I know council is aware of those. We did receive those recommendations from those folks. We are having internal teams review those recommendations so that there's various departments that impacts. Those departments are reviewing those now and then for working towards what the implementation of those would look like. And then we're gonna bring that to council so council can see the recommendations and then the process for implementation for those recommendations. Another component of this though is some things that we're already doing. So on the technology side, which is a part of this action, Desiree has already been managing, kind of migrating all of our components of the development applications piece into CityView. So that makes it much more streamlined for not just city to see where everything's at, but also for the applicant to see where everything is at. So it's all going to be in one place. So that is being worked on as well. So there's a number of things I think the city has been doing on a process improvement side from a spot standpoint. These are kind of the two main ones we want to highlight. The third goal is evaluating housing products. It's really about diverse housing choices in the city. We know this is high importance to council and residents in the city. So there's a lot going on. You've heard a lot of presentations on housing with the housing choice code, some of those components. This particular action is being managed by Aaron Rogowski. we're kind of like a seventh grade dance. Somehow we're divided boys and girls. Either way, I guess it makes it easy with these goals. So Aaron Rogowski is managing this one and it's really about a rapid response team. So I think council is aware of prop one, two, three, and some of the requirements there for affordable housing and expediting those reviews. This ties, certainly ties into that. But Aaron's group has, Has their rapid response team set with alternatives if there's someone's out of town and they need to do a meeting, something like that. We're also researching a toolkit concept for developers that would include both affordable and market rate housing to get the information out to stakeholders on this service. So it's great to have it, but we've got to make sure that we're communicating it. That's what they're working on now. I will point out, I have not been putting up the streetlights yet, but I will point out this is a yellow one and really the only reason that it's yellow is this was Ty Robbins action item and Ty Robbins left the city and Aaron has taken over about a month or so ago and he's been doing a great job with the group, but that's why it's yellow just that change in leadership. The next goal is really about public-private partnerships. How can we work better with developers to encourage some of the amenities and components that we want to see in some of these sites? And that might be, that ranges from everything from infrastructure to art to public spaces. The action that we have chosen to talk about this one is actually being managed by Heidi Zeltinger, who could not make it tonight. She had a previous vacation set. I guess that's fine. So she couldn't make it tonight, but she certainly has been very engaged. And so this one has really been about what tools can we use to encourage developers to include some of these amenities in their developments. And this group has done an amazing job doing outreach. They've done meetings. They have capitalized on. We have regular meetings with developers. They have come to those and presented. They have done surveys on trying to get feedback from developers on how can we incorporate these? What could we do as a city to encourage some of these amenities? And they are currently in the development of a matrix of these tools to determine what would be effective from a developer and a city standpoint to achieve this goal. And then understand what potential impacts that might have longer term if we were to adjust fees or something. If you include some of these things, what would that look like, bottom line? And so that's really where they're at now is they've got kind of some good feedback from the development side. Now they're looking to figure out what these tools are and what those impacts could be. This is also yellow. And the main reason is Heidi has been the lead of this the entire time, but she has had a number of folks that have gone on to other, have left the city. And so because of the turnover on the spot, we did feel like it was probably a good fit to have this one be yellow. And fifth and final goal for vibrant purposeful development is similar to playing growth of the city from a private development perspective, this one is planning the growth. From a parks and trails perspective you guys have seen this goal before, so I won't spend a number of any more time on it, but that's really what this is about. The action being managed by Paul Burkholder is really about making sure there's a number of plans out there and efforts being made, making sure that those are aligning, they're not being done in a vacuum. So his group has spent a lot of time assessing the different plans and with key themes that they have pulled out from goals that they know council has and that the groups that have put these together have gotten from the community on what are some of these key themes and how are we aligning them? That parks master plan, as council has seen, is coming on the 8th of September, I believe. And so you will see parks and master plan there. And this has been, this has all been kind of incorporated. So you can see that some of the different plans here, parks, rec, community programs, arts and culture, master plan, even working with some of the utilities on the water side to review and make sure that there's alignment there. So they've been part of work on some of those components and just making sure a lot of research through that team on those plans. I flew through that, but those are the actions and goals that we had for vibrant and purposeful development. Certainly, we can pause here and answer any questions that you might have.

Nobody's button works. Justin?

Yeah. First of all, I want to thank everybody for putting in the extra work and doing the SWAT and the SPAT teams. I know it's a lot of extra work, but it's definitely I can see already how much it's taken off. My question is really about the different actions in general and what kind of measures you have tied to actions or even the goals that will help you evaluate how well each one is performing and then guide us when we try to adjust it next time around.

Yeah, that's a great question. We do have some measures for each of our strategic focus areas on a broader term, and we will certainly implement measurements as we have gotten closer to, as we get closer to kind of formal recommendations with council. I don't actually have the measurements in front of me for vibrant and purposeful development. I should have those, but I don't. Kevin, do you have those handy? I do.

So outcome measures, first is around the community survey questions. First is how satisfied are you with the balance of land uses, residential, commercial, employment centers being pursued in Thornton? And then the second part of the community survey question is how satisfied are you with the availability and accessibility of parks, open spaces, and cultural amenities in Thornton? Number two is jobs to housing ratio. The third is housing cost burden percent, own to rent ratio. And then trust for public land park score. Awesome. For the four adopted outcomes for this strategic focus area.

Great. And that was for the entire goal?

Those outcomes are more generally for this specific strategic focus area.

That's right. All right.

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Devin?

The BP D1A action that was on there for the action plan mentions the 46 different locations that were being looked at for redevelopment identity information around it. I'd be curious to know out of the 46 sites, how many were looked at for more commercial area compared to residential? And I ask simply because The one that's up there for the example, there's an apartment complex literally on the south border of it. But if we compare our city to like Westminster, North Glen, North Glen's 88% residential, 11% commercial. We're 87 and 11. But then Westminster is 56 and 40. And since our main driving factor for the city is going to be sales tax, I'm curious on how many of the 46 are actually being looked at for something where we can get more driving sales tax into the city.

That's great. That's a great point. I should have mentioned that. Actually, it's primarily commercial development. There could be some mixed use, which is like the opportunity that we showed there. You've got two sites, one with some good frontage of 104th, the other one tucked more behind. A mixed use opportunity there might be something. And that's actually what the group identified. But the goal, I should have clarified that, is commercial development. But mixed use is certainly a path on some of these sites that might make sense.

Any other questions? Oh, go ahead, Jeremy.

First of all, it doesn't work. Oh, yeah, I guess not. Now it does. First of all, I'll say it's, thanks for sharing. I was super excited to see the redevelopment actions kind of be worked through. You mentioned one of the goals, targeted areas and industries for the city, planning for that. What's going into that process? How are we finding, we're determining like which businesses to target or which industries So which goal is that you're referencing there? It's slide 13. plan for the future build out, authority to include goals for annexation and growth, targeted areas and industries for the city and fiscal impacts. I see the whole goal itself.

Yeah. So that really ties in with the plans that we have represented with council on what the types of things that we would like to, I think that we've heard from council and community too, what would we like to see for the city kind of long-term? And that's that mix of, of, you know, more local businesses, more restaurants, more entertainment and things that drive sales tax. Some of the things that we presented kind of in the overall kind of focus areas that we've identified through economic development, working with council. And then it's also there is certainly residential included in and kind of how the city builds out as well. Other opportunities more for some of these more mixed use and that's kind of ties into space, more mixed use developments where you'd have more of that 24-hour activity, not just during the day. And so we've really been looking at the types of direction that we have received from council and heard from the city on things that they want to hear and see and where those opportunities lie. Higher paying jobs, where those opportunities lie, kind of all the things that we've identified through our focus areas and discussions with council.

And as far as targeted industries, are there targeted industries that don't exist in our city that we're targeting that have come out of the discussions and roundtables?

I would say that I have not, I'm not aware of that. That would be a great follow-up that I can certainly do with the spot teams and see if there's been any targeted industries that have been identified through their work that they've done thus far. So we can follow up with you on that if that's helpful.

Anyone else? Keep going.

Okay, thank you. We will be here if you have other questions.

There's going to be a huge logistical trade-out.

25% through. All right, yes, so let's go.

Mayor, as we make this transition, one thing I did want to mention actually, Council Member Byrd mentioned VPD 1A. And so we did, you may have noticed both in the presentation in the report, I mentioned this earlier, we did kind of come up with an identifier. It is meant to coincide with each of the focus areas and goal in both this presentation and in the work plan. So VPD 1A was, you know, if you had your book, it would align with goal one, and then the action. So a little bit confused. I wanted to thank you for prompting that, but there is an identify so that if you have a question, you know, we can align.

All right, as we're getting shifted around, I'll go ahead and start. So the next focus area was connected communities. As you may recall, this was all about using the transportation system and trying to leverage the transportation system, basically to connect different parts of the city and different areas. as far as different ways to support active lifestyles, to build inclusive communities, expand meaningful connections between neighborhoods, activity centers, and the region. So a lot of transit and transportation focused items, but it's all the purpose of trying to connect the broader community. So as we'll follow the same format, if folks could stand up in the room that are leading the different spot activities, but we have Bob, Erica, Kelly, Renee's sitting up here with me, Paul, Theo, Oscar's sitting up here with me as well, Daryl, Marta, and Todd. So shout out to all the folks that are leading the different connected community spots. I also want to recognize Stephanie Carpering, Paul Hawkins, and Jason O'Shea. They are our SPAT liaisons as well for helping provide further advice to these groups. So within Connected Communities, there were three different goals. And I kind of like to break it down in my head as far as the first one was really related to safety, which I'll talk about. The second one was related to mobility and reliability of the different transportation systems. And the third really related to the experience of that transportation system. So again, the first goal, transportation system provides safe connections for movement throughout the city. The action that I want to report on here, there's four actions with this goal, but I want to report on this one, which is CC1C, if you're referencing your document. They've been working on feedback to basically identify barriers to using the transportation system. Ultimately, this spot's going to produce a report based on different community feedback as far as those barriers within using the transportation system and then how we might be able to address it. And keep in mind too, sometimes we are talking physical barriers, so they might be infrastructure projects. Sometimes they're perceptions, sometimes it's messaging information. So barrier can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, depending on what we're talking about. So just to provide an example, and again, these measures haven't been put into place yet, but some preliminary feedback was received regarding security being a potential barrier to using RTD as far as getting on the transportation system that way. And so potential remedies to that barrier might be working not only with Thornton PD, but RTD police and figuring out if we can increase patrols. It could be messaging around the patrols that are already out there, safe routes to get to the the different stations and so there's a variety of different actions depending on more specifically the concern and how we might be able to address that. The spot is on track right now indicated by the green traffic signal but ultimately once we're wrapping up kind of the first phase of this action we'll be producing that report certainly be able to share that with council. Depending on the complexity of that as well, that might be a prime one to come back with council as well and solicit additional feedback based on what you're hearing from your constituents or identifying different priorities as well, especially if we start to tiptoe towards that infrastructure side on, again, how we might be able to prioritize some of those actions. And thanks to Oscar for leading this one. So shifting into the second goal, again, this one's movement to the destinations throughout the city, so being reliable, easy to use, timely, and accessible. If you don't have those things, then you're probably not going to use the transportation system. The action, there's actually five different actions related to this goal, but I wanted to speak about CC2A. And this is Theo Gonzalez's goal. Unfortunately, he had a personal family thing come up tonight. Otherwise, he would have loved to be here to talk about it. But this is about determining a reliable, real-time notification of major traffic incidents on our key corridors. So if you think about any time there's a vehicular accident or something else, PD and fire, they're routing through CAD and dispatch, and obviously they're on the scene responding immediately. Sometimes, you know, for example, our traffic engineering team who's managing all the traffic signals might not be aware of that. Darrell might look out his window and be like, geez, Washington's all back up. I guess I-25s, you know, have had another accident again today. But what we're trying to attempt to do with this is as soon as our emergency responders are noticing or getting the call that there's been an incident, it doesn't have to be severe, but something enough to start backing up traffic. At that same time, our traffic engineering group is getting that notification as well. And so they can start to take action. So, OK, well, not only can we maybe address congestion for the traveling public because we're able to adjust our traffic signals, but think about we might also be able to get emergency responders there quicker if they're not trying to get through a few of people that are all of a sudden backed up from an incident. A lot of different things listed on there about the way we're exploring it, but right now this is on track and really the deliverable coming out of the near-term action for this is building a foundation for kind of those real-time notifications and then expanding upon that, basically how far we can go. So not just within Thornton priority responses, but neighboring jurisdictions as well. I kind of gave the CDOT I-25 example, but I'm really trying to expand that. So we're all talking real-time and then making adjustments to help resolve the issue. And then finally, the last goal, this is where I kind of spoke to where we talk about safety and mobility and being on time, but this is all about that user experience. So connections provide unique and enjoyable experiences that engage our senses and bring people together. I thought this was a neat one that Renee was leading. And so it was recommend programming to support multimodal transportation to major city events. And again, this is pretty neat. We started a little small scale. We wanted to tiptoe into us and not trip over, I guess, over our skis as we started this out. But we were piloting a small scale secure bike parking at Thornton Fest. And then we also are planning on piloting again at Harvest Fest this year. There wasn't a lot of advertising intentionally starting it. We wanted to see kind of logistically how we could work it out and make sure that we are providing the proper service. We will do a little bit more advertising going into Harvest Fest in October. to, again, start to increase the awareness with the community, continue to hopefully get more participation and learn lessons from that as well, how we can potentially continue to scale it, both good and bad on what might be the user experiences with that. This could expand in the future too. Really, we're looking at anything that can kind of connect our getting folks kind of in and out to our events, if you can picture, well, I guess the recent July 4th or anything else. I mean, it can be pretty busy as you're trying to get in and out, especially at those peak times. And so Not only do we want to provide a good experience to folks, you know, if they choose to bike or do something else, but think about it, the more people we also provide those options for the multimodal connections, the less congestion in a vehicle we're going to have as well because you're dispersing how the traffic and transportation system is working to get those folks in and out. So the last bullet on there too, I want to call out as far as exploring logistics. to even potentially offer shuttle service trying to leverage our inline stations within Thornton and so there's a lot to that one potentially costs how do we actually make sure the shuttle's not also sitting in traffic but this is the way we'll continue to kind of expand and modify and learn as we pilot these different experiences and kind of engage the community on the feedback as well as far as what was what was a good experience what wasn't real quick before you move on Drew

So to me, it's a pretty exciting action item. I think Smart Commute does some of this as well. Are they part of the conversation? Because it seems like they've implemented a few of these kind of e-bike and bike storage places across.

I don't believe we've specifically engaged a smart community yet, but certainly reaching out with Carson priests and trying to get them engaged and especially once we're really trying to get the word out and get heavy participation. That will absolutely be part of this point. Thank you.

Justin, going back to your last CC to a action real time. Major instance. One, I think that's a really cool action plan. I love it. My question, though, is about what kind of technology platforms or solutions you're identifying in this process, or if that technology side is a part of the action itself. And also related, how does this action item coordinate with the CAD upgrade that

I think early on, we thought it might be a little simpler in some of these cases to auto alert. And we're learning that it's not always possible. Technology may be as simple as what we think. The intention is absolutely no, not to have to purchase additional technologies just to make it work, but work within the existing The nice thing is, because it is being integrated into notifications through cat, it's not like it's a separate thing that we're using, trying to get it to then be a third party to integrate with it. So, as far as the cat replacement system, this would still go hand in hand with those alerts, but. And I think you probably haven't heard some of the conversations in the past, too, as far as the neighboring jurisdictions. That's also been a complication of how we get neighboring jurisdictions to also talk with us and then get the information back out as well. And so. I know it's not a very detailed answer. I'm happy to follow up more on the actual technologies, but generally speaking, we're not trying to introduce new technologies to leverage what we have and then obviously make sure it's future-proof with the upgrades.

Yeah, and I would just emphasize what an opportunity you would have in terms of building out a really strong use case for some of the features that we might get from the upgraded CAD platform. And so if you, you know, just reiterate, keep this action in mind when you're working with, you know, that process as one of the requirements or needs that we would have for that new system. And maybe we'd be able to get some extra, you know, functionality out of it by becoming prepared like this. I'm so really happy to hear that. Thank you.

Keep going.

And I think, yep, that would be my last one. So I do want to wrap up and say, Councilor Martinez, you had asked about the specific deliverables. I wanted to pull that up. So outcome measures for success. And again, this is for the entire strategic focus area, not broken out yet. Kind of as Adam mentioned, I do envision as we get further along with all of our spots that we will have more specificity and be able to identify potential other outcomes. But for the overall strategic focus area, There were two community survey questions that we were including. So how safe do you feel when walking, biking, or driving in Thornton? How satisfied are you with the reliability and timeliness of traveling across Thornton using different modes of transportation? So those were survey questions. As far as actual data, a metric we use quite commonly, I've been tracking for many years, is killed or seriously injured accidents per capita. So we want to measure that and make sure we're actually reducing that per capita. Trail and bike lane miles per capita. And then transit coverage, which obviously we don't directly control, but we have some influence over it and then also influence on maybe how easy it is to get to the existing transit that we have within the city. So transit coverage was another one we're going to look at for measures of success. So, again, I know I spent through that happy to answer additional questions, but we'll be coming back in the future with a couple of follow ups where we might need council direction or feedback on priorities, but. Otherwise, if not, thank you for listening. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

And next up will be Chief Kelly talking safe, supported, and livable kids.

As he's coming forward, I will say that I do think largely, and we can definitely divide which actions tie to my influence, which outcomes. So I think of the at some of the individual action. Well, it might be easier for us to identify input or output measures for that, but those inputs or outputs likely are still contributing to those larger outcomes. Good evening.

Good evening.

I will be updating safe, supportive, livable community as the focus area. Definitely an exciting night for all of our teams to be able to buy this out. This focus area is really focused on building a safe, inclusive, sustainable, resilient community. The focus areas are really public safety, volunteerism, utilities. I'm going to highlight the four goals in this focus area. And under those goals are a total of 14 actions. I'll be highlighting four of those actions. With me tonight, I've got Chad Parker, a police division commander. I've got Ryan Doyle. He's our emergency manager. And I've got Mayra Galaviz Martinez. She is our community connections division manager. The fourth member could not be his name. That's Martin Postman. Also, as with the previous focusers, I'd like to highlight the other spot leads that are in the audience. So if you're here, please stand up. They are all working quite hard on their teams. I'd also like to highlight the SPAT team. That is Chief Baird. That is Stacey Romito. And that is Emily Hunt. So thanks to them for leading these groups as well. All right. This first goal in SSLC is really about talking about engaging informed communities and making sure that our community has access to a variety of different resources, community programs, and are taking pride in that in our community. the action I'm highlighting, and this action is being led by Ryan, is developing a plan to expand public awareness and engagement, really improving community resiliency, preparedness, and support. I think the first thing that comes to mind with this, but this is not the only piece of this action, is our Thornton Ready Alerts program. We spent a lot of time this year implementing this new system, working on additional signups, implementing a testing plan, But in addition, this team is focusing on other preparedness initiatives for the community and really working on a plan to provide outreach to our most vulnerable populations. That's going to be a key piece of this plan that Ryan's team is developing. The outcome from this team is going to be a written plan that we can then work on implementation of. The only reason it's highlighted yellow, the team itself is working as on track for developing the plan. Why I highlighted it as yellow has to do with where we're at with current Thornton Ready Alert signups. Our goal was to be further along at this point in the year than we are right now. And so that's something that we continue to work towards. We put a lot of emphasis on, but we're not where we'd like to be. Our second goal that I'll be highlighting is creating an inclusive community. welcoming that all individuals in the community have access to the resources that they need to both improve quality of life and meet their individual needs, create a sense of belonging in the community. The action I'm going to be updating here is regarding our review of homelessness initiatives. I won't spend a lot of time on this. Actually, you have an update. When we wrote this, the update was a little farther out, but it is now tonight. So Myra will be providing an update on where we're at with safe parking and looking for direction from council. In addition, the team is working on a review of all the homelessness initiatives, hours of operation, the different partnerships in the community. Her team has also engaged with a consultant to assist with the review of those initiatives. The third goal is this is really a public safety goal and focuses on safety and security in the community. This action item is developing a public safety technology plan. Technology is a huge part of public safety. We rely on technology every single day. This action team is trying to take all of our organizational requirements, both from police and fire and dispatch, and put them together in a very purposeful, thoughtful, driven plan. that both focuses on maintaining existing technology, the process for implementing new technologies, assessing what supporting those technologies looks like, and puts that horizon pretty far out as well. Not just looking at what we need today, but what do we think is going to be in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 year timeframe. A few things that we've been working on as well with this that have been going in parallel are reviewing a CAD replacement, as we were just talking about with connected communities, and now implementing that new CAD system in our dispatch center. You will have a council update on this coming up on December 8th. Also, system security standards is a big part of technology, but thinking about it all the time. The fourth goal in this focus area has to do with our utility infrastructure system, making sure that we have a public works system that is very responsive to the needs of our community. This action item is directly related to the environmental sustainability master plan. And this is, like I said, Martin Postman, he could not be here tonight. I'm gonna do my best to channel him and channel Emily Hunt. So a couple of things have been going on with this team. applied for and received the Dr. Cogg decarbonization grant. That was $1.2 million. A key part of that was hiring the sustainability program manager. That process is no longer in progress. It is now complete. The start date for that program manager is September 8th. The team, and including the new program manager, will be working on the implementation plan for the environmental sustainability master plan, working on prioritizing all the action items out of that plan, and then coming up with what that implementation will look like, identifying funding sources, and so on, additional grants. We have also applied for the round two of the decarbonization grant. That was a $750,000 request. A portion of it pays for a consultant and a portion of it will go towards implementing the recommendations from the consultant to buildings in the community. With that, I know that was very fast. I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Questions?

Chris? Yeah, so you, one, I just want to say I'm very pleased with the rate, like we're getting the notifications all the time. I feel like I don't even need the weather because if it's a bad day, I'm going to get notified and that's much faster. But you had mentioned being a little bit behind the schedule on the outreach for the Thornton Ready. So I guess, could you share a little bit more of, you know, how that is significantly different from the emergency system and what it is that maybe that's slowing you down there or that you're trying to achieve that's not making you think that you're behind, or what is causing you to think that you're behind schedule? Because that happened quick, the raid.

That was awesome. Yeah, I think the transition was very, very rapid to implement the new system and get individuals signed up. The challenge has been the magnitude of outreach that we want to do. and that being actually to meet that, what we're trying to get to. And so I think we have a lot of meeting with HOAs, being out in the community, physically getting individuals signed up. We have an active at the, an example would be the active adult center. We've had a number of signup sessions. Those have not been as highly attended as we've anticipated. And so some of the signups from those sessions are, significantly less but we might have felt like we'd get in the range of 20 to 50 people per sign up we may have only seen a couple sign ups throughout some of those sessions so i think those are some of the factors that are driving us to not be where we're at in totality with the number of individuals on thorn regulars being tough on yourself so i can appreciate all of yourself to the standard but what would be some of the i guess content then that thornton ready is going to be delivering

once enacted that's, you know, going to be relevant to the city, you know, other than, you know, stuff that I might see in the newspaper?

Yeah, for the Thornton Ready Alerts, specifically the content that's going to be coming out through that system. It's very much going to be specific to taking action during significant events in the city, whether it's taking action for a weather alert, which are coming through the alerts right now, or taking action, whether it's a shelter in place, a notification, a boil water notice would be another example of a use of Thornton Ready Alerts. And we do have other, as we've talked about before, we do have other tools to utilize in the event that we don't have. in addition to the Thornton Ready Alerts. So we have access to the IPAWS system where we can notify to portions of the community or the whole community as well.

So to be clear here, RAVE is the company's name. We have branded that locally as Thornton Ready Alerts. So I think part of the goal is if we ever change providers, we can keep the branding of Thornton Ready Alerts. It's one and the same. We're just trying to brand locally Thornton Ready and LearnSpeak. And right now, Rave is our tool for that.

One and the same, but I understand the Thornton Ready branding. That's why I was like, well, what additionally and why is it separate? I can't forget that we are branding ourselves.

Evan?

Well, I was actually going to say that I really appreciate the Thornton Ready stuff because I was driving home the other day and got the alert that the road was flooded and closed off. So it was pretty helpful already. So it's great.

John? Yeah, great presentation so far, everybody. Thank you. Yeah, I want to mirror Council Member Burr as well because when the rain came, I was down in Alamosa for the Mayor's Caucus thing, but still very appreciative that the text came through so our neighbors can be aware of that. an ongoing situation so we can you know help out thank you thank you i will turn it over to erica

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. I'm Erica Sena and tonight I'm coming to you as the advisory team leader for the strategic focus area organizational excellence. So joining me tonight is Amy Agredano. She is a senior HR analyst and one of our spotles. Michael Green, GIS manager. Doug Buchanan, our deputy finance director. and Rob Kolstad, who is our city manager. And tonight we're going to again focus on organizational excellence. So really this focus area is all about creating a culture of accountability and continuous improvement to respond to the evolving needs of this community. And so before we get into the different action items, I did want to recognize our very enthusiastic and hardworking spottles as part of the organizational excellence team. So if you all don't mind standing to be recognized. So as I mentioned, it's an enthusiastic and hardworking bunch. Thanks. Very enthusiastic. So before I get into the goals, I just want to mention within organizational excellence, there are five total goals and nested within those goals are 19 separate action items. So this first goal is to prioritize and cultivate a culture of exemplary customer service, collaboration, belonging, and recognition. And the first action being highlighted as part of this goal, I am actually the spot leader of, so I'm quite familiar with this one. And ultimately it's to, what this team is looking at is to develop a customer service strategy to implement exemplary customer service. That might include different trainings, tools, established protocols. And then one thing that it doesn't mention in the action, but that I think is really important is also establishing a general philosophy around what does customer service mean to the city, both internally and externally. So on that note, where is this team at? So currently we are working to better understand the city's current customer service landscape and philosophy. We're doing that through a number of ways. Actually, I jumped to that third bullet. We have distributed an internal survey that went to all employees, a separate survey that went to senior leadership. And then we'll actually be sending a survey to you all tomorrow morning, just to better understand sort of the philosophy of customer service that you all are looking for, what's a senior leadership think the philosophy currently is. And then we asked a number of questions, more of like a gap analysis to all employees. So we're sort of getting a good survey of the landscape here. We are also currently researching best practices of both governmental and corporate leaders of what is good customer service. You'll notice that the status is considered yellow. We are running about a month behind. I wouldn't say there's any particular area. We are just about a month behind schedule, but making good progress.

Go ahead, Justin.

It's a similar question that I've asked earlier about the measures of Since customer service is such an easily measurable kind of thing, what do we currently have in place in terms of how we measure where we currently are, and how does that part of this happen?

Yeah, so it's interesting. This was actually one of the questions that we asked in our all employee survey was specifically, you know, what are the different metrics in terms of like, how are each individual group measuring success as it relates to customer service? And then also, you know, do we have a feedback loop if we get a customer complaint? Like, what are we doing to make sure we're closing the loop? And I think of this as part of like the gap analysis, because depending on the group, we are seeing a whole variety of things. We're seeing like, oh, we actually we are actually not getting feedback on that. or we might be taking in robust feedback. And so that's something that this team is going to be looking at standardizing. How do we get this information for all areas of the city? I will say more broadly, if we sort of zoom out on the city, one of the items we're looking at as an outcome measure is going to be in the next community survey. And that is related to how, the question is, how satisfied are you with the customer service you receive when interacting with city staff? So that's a broad question and it's not necessarily specific to a department, but it is something we want to track moving forward. The next goal is really all about having and creating and retaining an effective and professional workforce. So this action is being led by Amy Hagradana, our fearless model. And overall, the action is to develop an implementation plan to bolster interest in careers in local government and create a pipeline of potential candidates. This was something that got brought up when we were doing our initial focus area group of like, hey, how many of us actually knew there were like good, interesting careers in local government when we were kids? And the answer was, most of us didn't. And so we wanted to make sure that we got out into the community and let people know about these opportunities. And so what this group is currently working on is they have identified local groups and programs to partner with to basically highlight the different opportunities we do have. If those are jobs, internships, you know, you name it. So one example that actually just came out this week, and it came from this bottle or spot team, this bottle sent it, was the Adams County Education Consortium is holding an eighth grade career expo. And so an invitation went out to all supervisors in the city. Basically, hey, you know, if you're interested and if you think eighth graders might be interested, like you are invited to this. It's a two day event. But that's the sort of sourcing they're currently working on as they establish this program long term. The next goal is to bolster data-driven decision-making and technology integration, ultimately to leverage technology to improve organizational effectiveness. The action I'm highlighting here is led by Michael Green. And it's ultimately to explore feasibility to leverage AI and other smart city strategies into city operations. So it's not necessarily about implementing specific softwares into the city. It's sort of looking at feasibility, like what could we be doing? So there are a lot of updates on this group. First, they distributed a survey to all employees just to better understand employee knowledge, usage awareness of artificial intelligence, and some of the benefits and risks associated with those. From that information, and also with additional research, They're developing a policy and training on how to safely and effectively utilize AI. This won't immediately go out to employees. It'll first be reviewed by the CIO and then by senior leadership before going into effect. The main focus of this group has been on AI rather than other smart city technologies. However, the team has recently begun taking an inventory of current smart city technologies that we already have in place just to make sure we understand the landscape of what we're already working with. And ultimately the plan is to consider both AI and other smart city strategies that we could implement in the future. Evan.

Are we currently using any kind of AI platforms like Cloud, ChatGPT, Croc, any of those things within the city right now?

Michael, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, currently nothing is blocked or not allowed within the city.

So they're clawed, chat, they're all open to employees to utilize.

Do you have any kind of safeguards in place right now to prevent somebody from going on their own personal chat GPT and dropping PII information into it?

Not yet. That's kind of where we're going with the policy and that will come with the CIO and all that going forward.

That's something we hope to address.

Okay.

The next goal is to align financial planning with long-term asset, resource, and service needs in a sustainable way. This one's basically all about financial sustainability. And the action we're focusing on is led by Doug Buchanan. It's to develop a program to periodically review current, new, or expanded revenue streams. So I would say, yes, the action is to develop a program, but this team is not just developing a program. The spot is also doing the initial review and recommendation. So it's not just to set up the program. It's to sort of dive in on those different revenue streams. So right now the team is working to review current fees and charges, sort of create an inventory of what are we currently working with? How does that compare to other jurisdictions? We want to make sure we have that comprehensive inventory before we move forward with that full evaluation. And what will that evaluation look like? We are hoping to do a comprehensive review and proposal of basically back to city council, either in late 2027 or early 2028, that talks about all of this. It kind of talks about like, what is our philosophy on fees and charges? You know, what are other entities around us doing? How often, you know, what is the schedule that council might be seeing these moving forward, et cetera. And so that will likely be coming back to council late 27, early 28. The last goal for organizational excellence is all about optimizing communication and engagement. And this is, for the organization, the community, and regional partners. The action we're focusing on is led by Rob Kolstad, and it is about revisiting the citywide stakeholder survey. Ultimately, the team is reviewing what line of questioning, the timing of the survey, and how that survey is utilized after it's conducted. So this team has prepared a recommendation to share with you all. It says in Q3, it's actually coming back to you all next week with the plan to incorporate the recommendation into the RFP scope as part of the citywide survey this year. So the SPA is on track to implement this, but we're lagging behind the initial action plan. With that, happy to answer any questions specific to organizational excellence.

Any other questions? Joe?

A quick question on the revenue stream topic. Is there a separate spot that's attacking the revenue diversification around sales tax? I think we had mentioned that at a previous session. previous meeting that came up, or is that included in this revenue discussion? I imagine it's not because it's kind of under OE, not under economic development.

I think he's speaking to the one that speaks to the financial implications of future development. I don't know which section that's in.

It's not under this category. This is purely internal to fees and structure and things like that.

I do think, though, there is a desire as part of this team to talk about diversification. Now, it's not about how do we implement changes to the comprehensive plan to get more commercial in. That's not part of this team. But certainly looking at diversification of revenue streams is. And we can follow up to see if there is a and more direct.

It reminded me of the, I guess our last meeting, we've been talking about development piece and the windowing and the model, but looking at, somebody mentioned there was a spot team that was looking at how to diversify revenue to supplement that. And so that triggered that thought, but I didn't know if it was the same thing or if there was a different spot team looking at that.

You can follow up.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, no more questions for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll just walk through the next steps. As you've seen throughout the year, items have been brought forward before you all that align with the strategic plan. We'll continue to obviously do this, and we will make sure to highlight how items that will be before you do align with the strategic plan will be delivered about that in both presentations and supporting materials. Also just wanted to mention, as you've heard throughout this presentation, there are lots of items that are coming up in the near future that will be before you all, which could potentially need some constant direction, some approval and informational updates. So you'll continue to see items that come out throughout this year. Staff will also provide an end of year presentation, end of year update. And then finally, just wanted to highlight that the strategic plan will also be discussed at the annual council retreat for potential updates where that'll be an opportunity to look at the plan for potential revisions. And so with that, we'll just open it up if there's any additional questions.

Any other questions? Really appreciate the update. It's very helpful.

Thank you again for all of our spot leaders being here and for their work. I do want to acknowledge, we recognize lots of spot leaders that didn't get to highlight the great work of their team. So if we had covered 65 actions, we'd have been here well into the night. So for those that didn't get a chance to brag about your good work, thank you to those teams as well.

Tansy, who are those that didn't get recognized?

Well, so you had people sitting at the table, the folks sitting at the table, their actions did get highlighted. The folks that stood to be recognized, their work was represented and summaries in the report, but we didn't get to highlight every single team's status.

Thank you. All right, next up we have some requests for nonprofits.

Evan's going to keep them and I'm here.

All right.

All right, glad to be back up here again. Tonight, we will review three nonprofit sponsorship requests. We'll go through the background, the request itself, and then ask for answers. So just as a quick reminder, Council Policy 5.1 does require that requests for sponsorships for fundraising events do receive Council approval. So as I mentioned, there are three requests before you this evening. Requests are from the Romedo Foundation, Almost Home, and the Rocky Mountain Partnership. So starting with the first request, is from the Romedo Foundation. They are a nonprofit organization that provides support for all those living with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, or DMD, including respite time for the parents. They directly provide funding for research for developing treatments and cures, and also conduct charitable events to raise public awareness. They serve... about eight to 10 families in Thornton over the past year. Their farm to table experience event is on September 11th. Their request is for $2,500 for the advocate sponsorship. The sponsorship does include four VIP experience admissions and four general admission tickets. The second request is from Almost Home. Almost Home is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping individuals and families experiencing housing instability achieve self-sustainment through resource navigation, assistance, and guidance. In 2025, Almost Home served over 3,500 people, including 307 Florida residents. So far this year, just a benefit, which was $1,100. Their request this time around is for their Concert for a Cause. It's an evening event also on September 11th of 2026 that they're asking for $1,000 in sponsorship, which includes two tickets to the event plus recognition. And the third request before you this evening is from the Rocky Mountain Partnership. This is a place young people in Colorado's north metro region achieved critical cradle to corner milestones by 2030. Their request is for their annual state of the partnership luncheon event held on November 5th. The bronze sponsorship is $2,500 and includes a half table with four seats and recognitions. The next slide is just a bit of a summary for the budget. Year to date, $27,430 has been spent. If these requests move forward, the total expenditure will be $33,430 and the remaining balance will be 1570. Here is just a table of what has been funded so far this year. Is it continued? And then, so just we'll ask council for discussion and bring forward whether or not you want staff to bring forward a resolution with these sponsorship requests.

Are there any objections to the three requests? We get supporting all three.

I've got a question. Typically, how often would we get more sponsorship requests for the remainder of the year at this point? I mean, this one shows up until the end of September and having only $1,500 left for the rest of the year is concerning with Christmas stuff that would come up or Thanksgiving sponsorships or anything like that.

Yeah, so I do know that CMO staff at the beginning of the year do reach out to schools and different departments to let them know about the program. We could certainly take a look back and see where we are year to date and just kind of do a comparison. I'd be happy to follow that. I saw a request. There shouldn't be any more.

They're running out of time. At least one more.

It's already on the calendar. So no objection. We can move forward with these things.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, extended producer responsibility, which is great, because I just got some questions.

Yeah, so your next few items are really precursors to the budget. So you'll see these repeated as we move into our first 15th and 29th. But trying to do things that you're going to see and get feedback ahead of time so that we can refine budget recommendations before I This group, excuse me, Steven, I am going to answer Council Member Morris' question too. I think it's hard for folks to recall 65 actions quickly. So there is an action that is assess and update the fiscal impact model to better reflect current tax policies and impacts of different land uses. There's an update on that effort on page six. With that, I'll give the floor to Todd.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council. My name is Todd Ruhle. I'm the Deputy Director for the Infrastructure Department. I'm here tonight to talk about the Extended Producer Responsibility Act that House Bill passed a few years ago and then how Thornton is going to implement that to our trash and recycling customers. Quick overview for the agenda today. The EPR overview, what that means for the state of Colorado and what the House Bill included in it. A very quick discussion on what Thornton Environmental Services does now for waste diversion. This is both included in EVR and another stuff we were doing outside of the Producers Act. And then a timeline and the customer credit on their accounts. So with that, the Extended Producer Responsibility Program is a statewide program passed by the House in 2022. And what this does is it shifts the responsibility for who is paying for the recycling of materials for shipping products. So you're thinking cans on your sodas, packaging that arrives in the mail. So this is taking this out of the hands of the citizens and customers and putting it on the hands of those producers. The big reason this was driven through the House was a lower than average statewide recycling A couple of big highlights that this program is hoping to do across the state would be increase recycling to over 700,000 homes. The attempt is to reach every single customer that has a trash can would also get recycling access. Various places across the state, the recycling centers have different acceptable materials that they're using, which causes confusion downstream when they're trying to sell these recycled products. This will streamline that process and hopefully drive prices down, increase recycling. And the last piece here is the state partnered with a company called Circular Action Alliance to be their benefit and to work with not only city municipalities, but also with private haulers on this house bill. A couple of these are quick what Colorado residents will see and what Thornton resident customers will see. The big one is expanding that recycling access that I talked about earlier. Not only will we see more containers at curves, but there will be more convenient locations for drop-off recycling bins around the state. We're going to lower or eliminate fees across the state. In Thornton's, it will be a reduction, basically making their recycling service free. And I'll walk through how they'll see that credit on their bill here in a couple of different slides. I mentioned the standard acceptable list for all these recycling materials. This is something City of Thornton has already followed. We work close in hand with our partners here and have had the exact same list that was set for us in this House bill. And the overall goal again is to increase the recycling diversion, taking things out of the landfill, and we're hoping to double that rate across the state over the next five years. So this is what Thornton does with their waste diversion. As I mentioned earlier, some of this is the recycling package that the EPR covers, and some of this is just some of our other exciting programs that we offer. The large one here is our curbside This is all Thornton customers for our trash recycling have a recycling can and a trash can at their household. We're diverting roughly 5,400 tons from the landfill with that program. This is a single stream recycling. And what we mean by that is the customers put all of their mixed use into the same bin. So glass, plastics, paper, cardboard are all going into one bin. The environmental services team then takes it to the MRF station, which is the recycling facility. They then have a process that separates it all there. So it's pulling out the plastics from the cardboard, from the glass, and then they compact it down and sell it off to the appropriate users that way. The other option, which is kind of the Older way when recycling first came about was the consumer put everything in individual bins and it became a cost productive thing for the haulers to pick up because we were having to send out multiple trucks for each one of the different items. So it'd be a glass truck, a plastic truck, a cardboard truck. The recycling industry came up with that. Single stream is a way to reduce costs. We also have an organics and yard waste at the infrastructure maintenance center at 124th and Washington Street. These are free drop bins open every day that the city is open. These are open. They're free for residents. We see a lot of people in and out with that. This is not a program that will be covered under that EPR because composting is not part of the packaging for delivery services. We have a vast specials program. I encourage you to go to our city website to look at this. It includes antifreeze, motor oil, mattress events, electronic waste events that are all partnered with us and through the county. Another one of those diversion tactics we have is our household hazardous wastes collection. And this is thinking like motor oils, paint, Any of those caustic chemicals like that leftover pharmaceuticals are all then partnered with the county. And then we partnered with a company called Veolia that is out in East Adams County for diverting those from the landfill. Again, that one's not an EPR eligible product because it doesn't have the shipping associated with it. And then the last piece to this is the look ahead and what does this Colorado EPR mean for us? This is how can we increase our diversion rate and help the state meet their overall goal.

Real quick before you move on. Yes.

Yeah, I just had a few residents ask about battery. And I know you gave us like some locations to take them to. But have we ever thought about having a battery drop off in the city, like kind of like the composting one?

Right now, all the other different areas that you can drop them off at, we haven't seen a need internally for it because Home Depot, Batteries Plus, Lowe's, all those different places around the city have them. So that's the easiest direction that we've been pointing people to. So then we don't have to intern with a partnership.

Do you have that on the website so people just know? Because that way they can just find you.

I believe it is, but I'll double check. And if it's not, it's an easy ad for us to do.

I haven't looked, but I just... I get that question a few times.

So Thornton's reimbursement and our 2026 timeline on this. So the EPR had three categories for a reimbursement. One was education and outreach. This is obviously reaching out to the community, encouraging recycling. waste diversion, what not to put in your trash can, what to put in your recycle bin. This will be done through digital media, flyers, newspaper articles. If you've driven around enough or on social media enough, you're starting to see a lot of this stuff pop up already. Our concentrated amount here will be focusing on Thornton customers and residents here. For the remaining of this year, roughly $170,000 will be coming to us from this account. The next one is the large one on this, but it's also where our largest group of recycling comes from. And that's that curbside recycle collection. This year we're scheduled to get close to $1.8 million out of this EPR back from the producers on this. And how we are handling this with CAA is this credit will be a pass through right to our customers. So we will no longer be charging customers for the recycling portion of their trash recycling bill. You will see a credit on the bill there. And the last piece is the drop off locations, this is those centers I talked about at the infrastructure maintenance Center and then down at the MSC off 88th and Colorado where you can take down your cardboard and paper products that would be associated with the. With the shipping on it, the one this is kind of an outlier I like to point out, for some reason, motor oil was considered in this. But it has to be in the original container that the used motor oil came in. So if you have your five gallon chug of motor oil and you're bringing your used stuff back in, that's eligible for a credit. I don't know why they specifically called that out, but it was just a unique one. So I thought I'd throw it in there. Kevin?

On that, where are the locations for the motor oil drop off at?

So the big one is at the Infrastructure Maintenance Center there at 124th and Washington. We have a door that's right in the middle of the building that has a sign that says motor oil antifreeze. And you can just set it right there. And we have staff that go out and collect it a couple of times a day. And we have a big bin in the back that we'll put it in and recycle it when it fills up.

That's great to know. Because I know a lot of people, like myself included, I would always take it down to the local auto store. But conveniently, they're always full.

Yeah, this one is for the one caveat on this is it's for residential uses. We've had people showing up with 55 gallon drums of used motor oil. We can't take that. We have no way of processing that much of it. So this is you and I in the garage changing oils on stuff like that. So I've got a good 10 gallons.

The question I got related to this in particular is that 1.78 million, I recognize it's prorated, but what percent of our expense does that cover? Is that supposed to be 100%?

So it covers a hundred percent of these three combined come cover a hundred percent of our recycling of those user producer packaging.

Okay. Just to clarify that happens to be a case right now might not always be the case. So the credit will change over time, given what allocation the city gets. So, um, we're not necessarily guaranteed the same amount over time.

Correct. There's a lot of things that kind of fluctuate with that, whether it be our customer base grows, shrinks, the recycling amount increases, all those numbers are in flux. But for this year, that's what they've targeted with us.

And I would just clarify that's for a year, a year's worth, that number hasn't been prorated. So in the current draft right now, estimate for what we could save assuming we can get this signed sealed and delivered as soon as possible is $742,000 for the collection uh the curbside collection and then $73,000 for the drop-off and then another amount um but those amounts are like an annual savings not that number hasn't been prorated yet okay right and that's because we don't know I think Todd told me it was like, if we can get it executed by the 17th of a month, then we can have that month. So we're still working on whether it's going to be October or when it will be.

Correct. Thank you for clarifying the prorated piece of that. And then the last piece, the state signed a five-year contract with Circular Action Alliance. So that's how long our contract will run with them. But the state is expecting to continue this program beyond that time frame. And then how is Thornton going to implement this? We've all seen our water and trash bill show up. The recycling service is currently included in that monthly trash service charge. It's roughly 19.25 for if you just have our base trash rate. There will be a line item on your bill. It's highlighted there in yellow that will say EPR Colorado credit on it. And we'll have the dollar amount for that credit. And that is the piece that recovers the recycling that we're passing through. The one thing to mention on this that city manager mentioned earlier, it's roughly $5 a month. That can change based on when we execute the contract, how much is remaining in the year, as well as we start to true up through the end of the year, we can't overspend what's reimbursed and we can't underspend what's reimbursed. So there could be slight fluctuations on that bill, but it will be roughly $5 a month for every trash customer in the city. HAB-Jacques Juilland- Another thing to point out on this, this is only for city of Thornton trash customers, this is not for if you were with a private holler. HAB-Jacques Juilland- Your discount will have to come through them so any citizens looking for this discount that happened to have a different holler than the city service they'll need to reach out to that particular holler in particular. And then the big question is, what are the next steps on this? We've been working since around Christmas time with getting the application in working with CAA, getting the application accepted. Right now, we're in between our application has been accepted, all three fronts. We're working with them on the service agreements, on all the fine details on that. So once we enter that service agreement, we will start to see the credit issued on customer bills, as well as have that money for the education and outreach to start. And like Erica said earlier, When we sign that contract, if we sign it before the 17th of the month, we get credit for the full month. So if this can be executed by September 17th, we would get the September credit in that prorated amount. CAA right now is saying it takes roughly 45 days once the contract is executed for the funds to come in, but they've been processing things a lot faster than that, they've said in our weekly conversations with them. There is one downside to all of this. There are a couple of lawsuits sitting out there against, that are kind of challenging some of the stuff that went into this EPR and CAA contract. So we're hoping for a fourth quarter launch where customers will see this credit on their account, but that's kind of an unknown outlier out there that could impact that timeframe. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any additional questions? Right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right. Should we take a quick break before we jump into the next topic?

Again.

All right.

Let's talk about water rates.

All right. Okay, good evening. I'm the Newhart Finance Director. We also have Emily Hunt online joining us. She's going to answer all the hard infrastructure questions we have. Tonight, we're going to talk about the recommendation for rate and fee increases that were put into place on January 1, 2027. This is a big presentation, so it's broken out into four sections. We're going to start with just kind of an overview of the utility funds. Then we'll dial in on rates specifically. Then we'll talk about fees. And then we'll end with communication resources and assistance. And we can pause in between each section for questions, or we can go back at the end. All right, so the city has four utility funds. They're water, trash, stormwater, and sewer. And each of our utility funds acts as an independent, like a not-for-profit business. So council is essentially the board of directors of these business. Within each fund, charges for services is your main revenue stream, and it's the largest, one of the only sources and the largest sources of revenue. So all of our rates and fees have to completely cover the cost to run each of these funds. And so when we talk about rates, rates are designed to cover administration, existing operations, and all of our maintenance. And then fees are one-time revenues intended to offset cost of growth or pay for an optional service within each of the utilities. So when we think about financial management of our utility funds, there's really three things we're trying to balance. We're trying to balance maintaining reliable service, ensuring that long-term financial sustainability and managing our rates and our debt responsibly. So first, when we talk about reliable service and infrastructure, it's our responsibility to maintain a level of service that our customers expect, safe, reliable service. That means making sure that we have the resources in place to operate and maintain our utility systems on an ongoing basis. It also means planning ahead for capital maintenance and asset replacement. So we don't want to wait until infrastructure fails before we address it and have the resources for it. Second is financial sustainability. So we want our utility funds to remain financially healthy, not just in the current year, but also in the future year. One of the key principles is that our ongoing revenue should be sufficient to support our ongoing operations, similar to the general fund. In other words, we're going to adopt a balanced budget each year where recurring revenues meet or exceed our recurring expenditures. We also want to make sure that we're meeting financial sustainability targets that councils established, so our reserve policy for each of these funds. And then finally, we want to have responsible rate and debt management. So we recognize that utility rates directly impact all of our customers, and so we want to be thoughtful on how and when we adjust rates. Our goal is to have stable, predictable, and conservative rate adjustments rather than relying on large, unexpected increases. And at the same time, we have a financial obligation to meet specific debt coverage requirements. So again, as we are making decisions about rates and capital investments and debt, we're trying to balance that affordability with our customers, the need to maintain reliable infrastructure, and protect the long-term financial health What does responsible rate management look like? This means taking that balanced approach, again, protecting affordability of our customers and also making sure that the utility remains financially sustainable. So we do this by designing fair and equitable rates. So our goal is to structure all of our rates so that each customer class pays an appropriate share of cost associated with providing that service to them. We do periodic reviews of cost across each of the customer classes to make sure that the rate structure remains fair, equitable, and consistent with our city policies. Second, rate adjustments should be thoughtful and deliberate. So we don't view increasing rates as the first response when we experience inflation or higher market cost. Before we would recommend a rate increase, we always look at the other options. So we'll look at operational efficiencies, cost controls, or whether there's opportunity to absorb or manage the cost in another way. And then finally, rate management needs to be proactive and sustainable. So again, we're not going to wait until there's a financial problem before we look at our rates. We're always looking well out into the future. We have regular reviews that we do internally and also by a third party. Third party is what helps validate that our rates are fair and equitable as well as legally defensible. So again, just to end this, responsible rate management is about balancing all of those things. So we're trying to balance our customer affordability and then financial sustainability for the utility. If you remember last year, we talked about the rate increases that were being proposed for 2027 and the out years. So this slide gives you a recap of that. Before I walk through the numbers. So big picture, water's 3.6%, sewers 5.6%, storm water's 6% and trash is zero. The original packet had sewer at 7.3%. And that's been updated since then. So the new sewer rate is 5.6%. So overall, what you'll see from where we landed last year is that we're on track generally with the increases we're projecting. For sewer, we're actually coming in a little bit below what we anticipated. And for trash, we determined that a rate increase wasn't needed. So before we get into the weeds, this is both the top table is rates and the bottom table is the fee category. So big picture overview, the recommended adjustments are all designed to support what we talked about earlier, long-term financial sustainability, continuing to invest in our infrastructure and an equitable recovery of the cost. So now let's talk about specifics. Um, rates for each utility. So this is that table again, and this is just rates. So starting with the water utility, um, to give you a little context on the size and the system, the city delivers about 8 billion gallons of water each year and 667 miles of infrastructure. For 2027, we're recommending a 3.6% rate increase. Inflation is the primary driver of that increase. This is, again, consistent to what we were anticipating, and it's intended to maintain the fund's long-term sustainability. So as a reminder, rates support the administration costs, the ongoing operation of the system, and they're providing funding for all of our ongoing capital maintenance. Our sewer utility is also a significant piece of our infrastructure. We have approximately 514 miles of sewer and more than 13,800 super manholes. The proposed increase for sewer is 5.6%. And the primary driver here is Metro water recovery. So an important distinction between our sewer system is that the city collects and conveys the wastewater. and Metro Water Recovery provides the treatment to that wastewater. That makes up the payment we make to Metro is about 77% of our annual operating budget or about 15.6 million, which is just basically a pass through to Metro. So the remaining revenue that we get in this fund help to support the administration operations and then maintenance of our own lines that we are responsible for and capital needs. And then, finally, the stormwater utility we maintain about 173 miles of stormwater infrastructure we're recommending a 6% rate increase for 2027, and this is driven by inflation to support our continued investment in stormwater infrastructure. The rates support the day to day operations and maintenance of the system. so things like maintaining drainage drainage ways culverts as well as all of our capital projects that are intended to reduce flooding in higher risk areas the city has an obligation under the ms4 permit which is a regulatory requirement under the federal clean water act to manage storm water and provide safety to the residents So those rate increases bring us to the overall impact of the recommended adjustment on a typical residential utility bill. So the city's utility bill includes water, sewer, and then trash for the customers that have that service and stormwater. And so the purpose of the slide is just to show what that looks like from the context of a customer standpoint. The table on the left shows a typical single family residential bill during the winter. And this uses our typical water consumption of 3,830 gallons. So that's what your, the most of our customers in a single family residence spend on indoor water. The table on the right shows the typical summer bill. That's when water consumption gets higher because of outdoor irrigation. So starting with the winter bill, the current total typical bill is $89.88. The proposed rate, that would increase it to $93.05. That's an increase of $3.16. The summer bill, the current typical bill is $147.39. Increasing it, the rates would increase it to $152.62, which is an increase of $5.23 per month. Again, the difference between the winter and the summer bill is primarily that water consumption associated with outdoor irrigation. So looking at the individual lines, the proposed water increase adds about $1.46 a month in the winter and $3.53 in the summer. Sewers adding $1.37, stormwater about 33 cents. And there's again, no proposed increase for trash. This slide you've seen before, this gives us some context on how Thornton's utility rates compare to our neighboring communities. The comparison here includes water, sewer, and stormwater. And this is using our other city's 2026 published rates. So the blue bar represents where Thornton currently falls and then where Thornton would fall using our proposed 2027 rate increase. To make the comparison as consistent as possible, we've rounded up using our single family residential customer to approximately 4,800 gallons a month. So it's a bit higher than our typical resident, but it makes it an easy apples to apples comparison. As a reminder, we don't know yet what the rate increases for the other communities are for 2027. So this doesn't show where Thornton will fall or will rank once everyone has updated the rates, but it helps us give us that benchmark of where we're at today. The previous slide, we just saw it doesn't include trash because as you know, trash service in Thornton is optional. And so we didn't want to plug that in. It wouldn't be a consistent comparison across cities. We're not recommending an increase to trash, but I do want to tell you a little bit more about the fund and build on Todd's presentation. The monthly solid waste charge supports more than just our trash collection. It's also supporting those recycle services we talked about. Tree branch, fall leaf collection, landfill days. So there's no rate or fee increase proposed for 2027. But we will see a bill impact once that Colorado extended producer responsibility program is an act. So that money again, this is the same slide, Todd showed you it'll get passed back through to customers, their monthly credit on their bill. Again, that amount is going to vary because it'll be based on the city's actual eligible recycling costs and the reimbursement that we've received. So we'll While we're not proposing an increase to trash rate, the customer will see a change in their bill related to trash. This is what that looks like. So overall in the winter months, it's a net decrease of about $1.84 if it is a $5 credit, and it'll help to offset the summer months, increase in the summer months. Again, this is an estimate and it'll get trued up as we get into the program. That's the final slide for rates. Before we move on to fees, is there questions or?

Questions yet? I'll hold on to that.

All right, so let's switch gears a little bit and talk about fees. So what is a connection fee? The purpose of a connection fee is different from a monthly utility rate. So a connection fee is intended to recover the cost of growth related infrastructure needed to connect new development to the city's utility system. The basic principle is growth pays for growth. When a new development comes in and connects to the city's water sewer system, it creates additional demand and it can require additional infrastructure capacity. Connection fees help ensure that all of the costs associated with that growth is paid for by the new development rather than being shifted to the existing customers through their rates. So again, I think the big thing to remember is new growth, the intent is for it to pay for its appropriate share of the infrastructure investment needed to serve it. So how do we establish these fees? The city uses an independent consultant to complete a financial plan and rate study. That analysis looks at the city's, all of the city's costs. It identifies all infrastructure related to future growth, and then it calculates what portion of those costs should be recovered through connection fees. So there's a couple important principles behind this process. So first, the fees need to be equitable. So growth should pay for growth, and the fees should be based on the expected usage and impact of that new development. Second, there's a legal requirement about what can be included in a connection fee. The fee can only recover those costs associated with growth, and it needs to be, again, proportional to the developer's impact on the system. There needs to be a clear connection between the fee being charged and the infrastructure that fee is going to support. Connection fees cannot be used to pay for any ongoing operating cost or maintenance or to replace infrastructure that isn't related to the new growth. So once the analysis is complete, city council ultimately approves any changes to the fees through city ordinance. So this is a fairly structured process that happens. The consultant establishes the methodology, the legal requirements establish the boundaries, and then council appropriately, ultimately approves the fees. So when we talk about connection fees, it's important to understand what's in that fee and what that's paying for. So there's several components to a connection fee. The first is the water meter. This covers the actual cost of the meter going into the grounds, meter itself. The water connection component helps recover the growth related to the water system, including infrastructure, such as like the water mains, storage, treatment, and pumping capacity. There's a water resource component. This reflects the city's investment in water rights, reservoirs, transmission infrastructure, and anything needed to provide a reliable water supply. The primary driver of the changes to these components is generally construction and inflation, as well as any change in water acquisition costs. There's also a temporary, what we call construction water fee, and we tie that directly That increase is directly tied to the increase in rates. That's water used during the construction of a development. And then on the sewer side, we have two primary components. First you have the Metro Water Recovery. This is essentially a pass-through. We collect it for Metro. We pass it through to them based on their fees. The second is the City Sewer Connection component. And this supports the growth-related cost of sewer mains and other infrastructure that we need to get that that to Metro. So connection fee isn't a single cost. It's made up of all of these components and each one of these components is tied to a specific infrastructure or service and each one of them has its own cost driver. So as we look at connection fees, it's important to recognize that it isn't simply a financial calculation There's a number of factors that influence how we approach growth and development. This slide helps visualize those factors. So council provides strategic direction and establishes community goals. So all those decisions are shaping how the city grows, where the city grows, what the density is, maybe what the water requirements are for landscaping. Do you have the economic environment that matters? So this is things like construction costs, interest rates, development activity, Overall affordability of houses. We have our rate consultants that are part of this. They help to provide that independent analysis to ensure that we're creating a fee that's fair, defensible, and consistent with city policies and legal requirements. We have our internal departments that have the balance, the infrastructure needed to support growth and the city's ability to provide services and manage financial risk. And then finally, the development community is an important partner to us. So development fees need to be predictable, they need to be transparent, and they need to be competitive so they can appropriately plan and make investment decisions. So all of these pieces have to work together. It's never our goal to simply maximize a fee or create a fee that's similar to a neighboring city. Really what we're trying to do is support responsible growth while making sure that our costs are covered. So this brings us to, we talked about goals, strategic goals earlier. How do we support the city's housing goals while still maintaining an equitable fee structure? So some of the recent steps that we've taken, we've improved predictability and make sure that our fees are better reflection of different types of development. So in 2025, we adjusted the timing of development fee payments. This helped developers just have greater financial certainty, particularly when a project crosses year over year. So they're able to make their financial plan, and it doesn't change on them. We also added two smaller lot fee categories in 2025. The intent here was to align the fee with the actual impact of those developments. The upcoming rate study that we'll do will continue to evaluate those smaller lot categories the building ships. We're also taking steps related to housing choice and affordable housing. So in June, Council passed an ordinance prioritizing the review process for affordable housing developments. And then this fall, we'll be updating the housing choice code requirements to support a broader range of housing options in the city. So as we move forward with the rate and fee study, we're gonna continue to look at connection between housing affordability, development predictability, equitable cost recovery, and the city's need to fund that infrastructure. So continuing on that same goal, We're also recommending a specific fee adjustment for 2027. So our recommendation is to reduce the multifamily master meter charge. So it aligns with the charge for multifamily developments with the individual meter. So the intent here is just to make sure that we're treating these similar types of development consistent and that the fee appropriately reflects their impact on the system. Looking ahead, we're also planning a third-party utility rate and fee study in 2027. You'll see that in the budget recommendation. That study gives us another opportunity to re-look at the fee structure. We can identify whether there's a need for even smaller, more and smaller lot categories. It also rechecks and helps us to continue to make sure our fees are fair and equitable. It'll also align any code updates, city development code updates that we have with our fee structure. And then finally on here, I think it was worth mentioning, there's a lot of various city teams that are working on affordable housing initiatives through the strategic plan. So our utility fee discussion is just one small part of a larger goal. So our proposed fee adjustments are listed here. As a reminder, the last time we had a fee adjustment was back in 2025. We didn't have a fee increase in 2026. So for 27, we'd be recommending a 3% increase to the water and sewer connection fees across all categories. That adjustment is based on the Denver Engineering News Record Construction Cost Index, so ENRCCI. For water construction fees, the proposed adjustment is 3.6%. That's tied to the water rate increase. The water meter fee is a little different. We were recommending a 15.4% increase. And again, that reflects the city's HAB-Masyn Moyer- updated actual meter cost to put the meter in the ground, so an example is a five eighths by three quarter meter has increased from $104 220. HAB-Masyn Moyer- And then, finally, the metro water recovery portion of the sewer connection to be therapy increases 3.6% so we again that's a pass through. Overall, all of these recommendations are primarily based on cost adjustments. We're not changing any underlying feed methodology. The second piece of this is what I mentioned earlier. So we're talking about the multifamily water consumption fee. So staff worked with our third party consultant after the last rate study was done. And we went back and reviewed multifamily fee structure and then how it aligns with our future development. The recommendation here is to make the fee more consistent between multifamily developments, regardless of how we ask them to configure the meter. So under this proposed structure, the water connection fee and the water resource fee would be on the same per unit basis. And again, whether the developer comes in and uses individual meters or a master meter. The multifamily development with individual meters, this will go up 3%, consistent with that CCI index. And then developments with a master meter, it actually will reduce that by about 45%, so that it aligns with that individual meter. That is a significant percentage reduction. The intent isn't to provide a different level of subsidy. Really, it's creating a per-unit buy-in, regardless of how that development's meters are configured. One of the reasons that this is possible and that we went back after the last rate study and were able to do this is we now require a separate outdoor irrigation meter if you're irrigating more than so much sod. Now when we compare multifamily, it's more of an apples to apples as opposed to one multifamily having huge, you know, park spaces and another one not. So that brings us to our survey. So we took all of the neighboring cities' water and sewer connection fees. Again, this is using 2026 published rates for single family units. So we're trying to do an apples to apples comparison here. There's all different kinds of fees out there for multifamily, single family. These totals also include our Metro water recovery fee as part of that. And so a lot of these cities also use Metro. So you can see there's a big range of connection fees everywhere from about $18,000 up to $107,000. We're going to talk a little bit more about why they're different. One thing that stands out on this graph specifically that you'll notice is that some of the cities on the top are those cities that are going through expansion and growth phases, whereas some of the ones at the bottom are more infill, right? So their infrastructure is already there and already exists. So our fee is approximately $57,000 now, and we would propose it going up to 59,400. Again, there's no intention here that we're going to match another community, right? Each community has different infrastructure costs. They have different water resources. They have different system investments. And so we're good. We're going to make sure that we're in that range. So really what this does is gives us that broader picture of what the market is charging. To add a little bit more context to the comparison we looked at, connection fees are very unique to each individual community. They're going to reflect the community's specific infrastructure needs. They're going to reflect their growth. what part of growth they're in, and any policy priorities. So if you think about different communities, they have different investments in water rights. They have different investments in reservoirs. Their treatment capacity might be different. And so all of those things are going to make a difference in how much they need to charge to finish their build out of the city. Some communities also have different requirements. This is recently they've been putting in different requirements on outdoor water usage, and that can impact their infrastructure needs going forward.

Now we've had two people press their button. Are you guys okay waiting until the end of the presentation? Okay.

So this slide brings together policy key considerations. So how do we balance infrastructure cost recovery with affordability for both our existing customers and our new development? So we have two funding mechanisms here that we're working through. We've got our existing customers and they're funding us through rates and that is for operations and maintenance as well as replacement of our existing infrastructure. And then new development is where we get the connection fees. And the intent there is to recover the cost associated with growth. So if you're looking at connection fees, we want to make sure that we're not shifting growth related costs over to our existing customer through their rates. So whatever you don't pull from connection fees to support your growth, it'll automatically end up on the rate payers. And the fee section, the next section is customer outreach resources and assistance. So these slides talk about how do we communicate with and support our customers. So we recognize that transparency and communication are important part of managing our utility rates. Customers need to understand not only what they're being charged, but what they're paying for and where to go if they need help. So we communicate through the thorntonwater.com. We have blogs, Water eNews, City Voice. We also provide information about the system through the annual water report. We have tools out there like the water bill calculator and the water smart customer portal. We want to make sure that customers have access to HAB-Masyn Moyer- Their assistance as well, so we have utility billing assistance there's water efficiency rebates and consultations, we have a water quality hotline my Thornton. And then the other side of customer support is helping the customers manage their own bill. There's a number of resources available through thorntonwater.com. This includes water saving tips, programs, information about current watering requirements. Customers can also sign up for the Water Smart customer portal where they can track their own water usage. They can set leak alerts, which will save them money. There's also, again, a number of rebates and services to help them. And so while we recognize that utility rates are an important part of the customer's monthly expense, we also want to make sure the customers have the tools and resources that can help them manage their bills efficiently. This is just a quick update on advanced meter infrastructure, or AMI, and how it benefits customers directly. So through the WaterSmart portal, customers see their water use in almost real time. They have information by the hour, day, week. And so they can see their normal use patterns. Again, they can receive alerts when they might have a potential leak. And then they're identifying those leaks quicker as opposed to 30 days later when they get their bill. It can also help them manage their usage pattern, especially with outdoor irrigation. In 2025, AMI, so AMI has been into effect about a year now. It's saved approximately 405 million gallons of water through early leak detection and repair. So it's definitely become not just a technology tool, but it's helped the city conserve water. It's helped reduce unnecessary costs for our customers and manage the water resources. And then finally, we have our water utility assistance program. This program helps provide utility assistance for customers that meet a specific criteria. The current assistance that we have right now is covering slightly more than a typical bill. And so even after the rate increase, that'll still be the case. So our goal is to try to cover that indoor water usage bill on a monthly basis. And then next steps as part of the October 27th, part of the budget adoption, we would ask if council directs us to, we'd ask, we'd bring forward the ordinances needed to implement the rate increases, rate and fee increases. Again, making them effective January 1st, 2027. So those would go through three different ordinances. One of the things to remember is we're in front of you now because we're getting ready to bring you a budget recommendation. And in order to do that budget recommendation, we need to understand if we're raising, we're expecting any rate increases so we can appropriately budget for revenues and therefore then have on the expenditure side too. That is all I have. You're still awake.

All right, I have two and then Devin needs.

It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. But thanks for sharing that. A couple of questions on the multifamily water meter.

Yes.

Is that, is multifamily in this case, anything that's not single family? So like duplex, triplex?

Duplex. We have a rate for duplex. And so it's anything above. We just changed our code. I believe it's anything above 4. 4 and above has become a small thing.

So basically, 4 units and above apartments would fall under this?

Yes. All of our funds, yeah. Got it.

So the change doesn't shift based on like the size of the project. So like 100 unit project versus a four unit or five unit project.

Correct. It just makes it. So you think about each unit has a buy-in. So it's a buy-in per unit. So it won't change no matter how big or small they are.

And then if we're talking more about infill development, the properties going from single family to duplex is the, or I guess I should say it's going from single family to a five unit apartment, you know, like a scrape and rebuild or something. Is there a change or a fee difference now that it's an infill and water disruptors there and you guys change maybe the size of the water supply?

Yeah, so we've always had a redevelopment fee. And so they'll get, so if it's a single family home and you come in with a duplex and you need a bigger meter, which I don't think you would, but you would only pay the difference in the meter size. And so you get your credit from your original meter. We see that a lot in commercial redevelopment, but not in residential.

Going from single family to multifamily, like a plumbing, that would be... You would pay the difference. Still the difference. So even though that the water thrusher exists on that site, is that something that can be looked at as a, or has it been even discussed, like looking at how do we make it cheaper for infill development?

I can definitely propose that in the scope of work when we do our rate study. Yeah.

I don't know if we need consensus on that to look into that. But it is an additional way we might be able to make some things more attractive from a dollar perspective with some of these smaller scale projects.

Are you asking them, like, say, taking a farmhouse between 10 acres and then eliminating the fee for the difference of those meters, taking those 10 acres and then building 200 units.

And it basically just about. Well, wherever there is a chance to save money because of water access, we should be redevelopment, not necessarily new development. Right. You know, it's like looking at I mean, because you've got a tank of 10 acre property and a lot of these properties are agriculture. They get there. They don't have the water infrastructure already. to support a 200 unit, but the water structure might exist for a single family to a five unit, right? It might be a very, a smaller lift to go to do that change of use and change of the site and things like that. You know, just because I don't know how the numbers work from your perspective, but it would be interesting to see if that is an opportunity to create savings and incentives for small and stale developers to be able to do some of these things in our city that meets some of the goals. There we go. That's a good term, like a right-sized adjusting of fees, which I think the team has talked about with some other elements of the development code, but maybe not the water element. I think that answered that question, but I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you.

Is there any objection to looking at that as an option?

Maybe you should. All right. In 2018, we had a freeze. 2019, we did a 3%. 2020, we did a 3%. 2021, we did a freeze. 22 was 4%. 23 was 4%. 20, I'm sorry, 23 was 4%, 24 was 7%, 25 was 11, this year was 11, proposing 3.6 for the next budget, and then according to this chart, also in 2029, but we'll come up with that study. For residents that's living in our city, if you've been here since 2018, Your $100 bill in 2018 is now $151. We had a 51% increase since 2018. That's a huge dilemma in my opinion on this. You know, looking at the same numbers, if we look at the operational cost in 2021, it was $38.3 million. Then now it's $48.3. So we got a $10 million increase over time, which is a 26%. But at the same time, we increased rates 43%. The numbers just kind of look kind of crazy for it from my aspect of it. The question I have is on slide nine, you mentioned that the increases due to maintaining sustainability and support ongoing system needs, but then on slide 10, it's for inflation. Are we seeing maintenance issues there or like what's the two kind of don't align with?

So I think there's two questions there. So our forward-looking, so this rate increase and our forward-looking rate increases are to support our ongoing infrastructure, so our continued capital maintenance, and we're seeing inflation and all of those costs go up. And so that's what that's tied to. The past increases that you've seen, Those two 11%, if we stripped out PFAS, then we would have been closer to that 3% mark. So PFAS is the reason we had the two back-to-back 11% rate increases. That money hasn't been spent yet. That's in anticipation for what's being spent right now. It's like $100 million project in order to get our system up to EPA standards. And we're taking out debt. So to meet those debt requirements. So that's what that big jump was in those two years. Kim, if I could add maybe,

Maybe even less for the council, but for public, that might be one of the things that's unique in the utility. When you talk about increases in operational costs and how those don't seem to align with our rate increases is in the utilities. driver of rate increases than operational costs. So when we have big, big capital investments, like a treatment plant upgrade or those kinds of things, they can skew the rates in those periods when we're making those big capital investments. So you're right, you'll see much more moderated increases in terms of operational costs, although those have reflected that we have new operational drivers coming on to manage some of those in new plans. So you will see some recommendations for new staffing and those kinds of things in the next budget. Reflecting now, we've got some new technologies or plant systems to manage. Hopefully that's helpful.

That makes sense as far as 11% for the PFAS, but even given those numbers, if the concern is more around an inflationary cost increase, one was tracked and considered a 0% because there's still infrastructure and stuff that's in that percentage as well.

We continuously are truing up actual costs versus estimated costs. So you think about when you do the budget, you're estimating like personnel, for example. And so if trash maybe didn't get a trash truck that we budgeted for and it came later, you've got a little bit of funds that you're keeping. Or if their vacancy rates and personnel were lower. And so as those actual costs come in and it trues up with what we projected, we can dial that in a little bit more. So what we don't want to do is do a rate increase if we don't need one. And so on the flip side of that, in our out years, we're projecting that there's a 3.6% inflation every single year. That may or may not happen. And so if that doesn't happen, we wouldn't then raise rates. And so we're always about a year behind when it comes to raising rates for inflation. And so that's, does that help?

A little bit. But then that leads into, if we don't want to raise the rates without actually having the infrastructure put in place and ready to go, to the point of the PFAS, we've raised it 22% over the last two years, but we still don't have the facilities in place. When's the actual projected outcome of when that's going to put in place?

The project will be completed operational in 2029. So they're kicking off construction now and awarded the construction contract, so they're actually

Seems a lot of interest being made over five years for an increase that was being done at the time. I'll change gears onto a different one then. The cost difference for fees. Currently we charge $57,016 for a residential house water connection fee. Looks like it was going up to like 59.4. With a 45% decrease per apartment unit, that would put an apartment unit at $26,104. I understand the idea of trying to incentivize development, but at the same time, I think this kind of Deter, defers or deters developers from doing single family homes at this point, because now it's going to cost me $5.9 million to build a hundred houses where it's going to cost me $2.6 million to build a hundred apartment units.

So the difference in the fee for multifamily versus single family is the amount that they are buying into the system for all of their future water. So a single family resident has a yard and that's why we started doing lot sizes. Multifamily users don't have yards. And so the water capacity that we need at peak capacity and in the summer is a lot more for a single family home. It's a lot more cost impact on the system than a multifamily.

What is our current idea estimate on the amount of cash flows that we've lost due to the drought conditions currently? Because residents are going to kind of see this as a, hey, we lost money because we told everybody not to water anything. And now we're having to pay more next year. There's kind of an outcome of it.

We are expecting to lose some money due to a reduction per the drought, and it's roughly $5 million. We'll see how that shakes out. We're still in irrigation season, and we're about 30 days behind on billing, so we're not sure what that looks like yet. But yeah, we are planning on losing some money.

To be clear, that didn't influence our rate recommendations for 2020.

But optics are going to say otherwise.

Drew and then John.

Another question, I guess on the water fund. Is there a way, I know we don't have this, you kind of spelled out like the implications, but it was, you know, they were specific, but not specific. Do you have like a breakdown where we can look at like really what it looks like dollar wise where I think, you know, this last year's budget was not including the bonds, was around $120 million, I think, for the water fund, somewhere in that range. I mean, are we looking at, you know, is it like, hey, we don't do this increase, you know, everybody's going to be $100 million and we need, you know, we have expenses in the amount of $150 million. You know, is it, do we have that kind of granularity yet?

We do. I'm trying to think of how that would, I think the easiest way to explain it is what you would do is you would push out some of the replacements. So every year we spend X amount on replacing lines. And so one of the ways that if you didn't increase rates, you would then push some of that preventative maintenance, that capital maintenance out. So that could be an option.

And I'm asking because I think It's really hard, to Devin's point, looking at the last couple of years of really massive increases. Insuring the dollar amount, it could be relatively small, but percentage-wise, it's pretty large. It's been pretty tough here for a lot of folks, and I'm sure into the next year as well. So I look at this, and I'm like, man, if there is a way to delay this without jeopardizing people's ability to actually get water over the next year, I would love to look at that because I think it'd be a big win for people to say, wow, my bill, it actually lasts because of the recycling credit, right? And no increase in fees. And so there's a little bit of a breather there for folks who have been slammed with all kinds of increases this year. So, but I also want to, you know, obviously I'm not in the weeds with the day-to-day operations and, you know, I get notified when water main breaks happen, right? which is awesome. And I understand the need to fix that, but if there's a way to avoid an increase this year, I would seriously want us to consider that.

So let me say to that, that there probably is not a way without us reducing capital investments. And we can share, the council last year did ask for options of what capital would need to be removed. in order to reduce rates. So we did bring options to the council last year in terms of what it would take in terms of reducing capital investment to reduce rates. We haven't done that specific analysis again this year. We could provide those examples last year of the kinds of projects that are electives that we could postpone and sort of what the risks were. I can't speak for other council members, but the ultimate decision last year that the long-term consequences to the system, I think the council didn't believe were appropriate in sort of the stewardship fiduciary role for the system. overall. That would have to be a unique analysis of the capital program again for this year in terms of what projects we could produce. We could certainly do that kind of analysis again and bring back alternatives.

I thought that was really helpful. We did ask them to do the study last year. It was 11% back-to-back years. I think it was like three, seven, and nine. So they gave us some options. But when we looked at what we had, I even did get the 9.

And remember, several cities deferred maintenance and there was significant fallback because of it. Westminster in particular deferred maintenance for years and their water rate increases were had to make up for it over time to the point where an entire new council was elected to deal with it. Because then you have both an increase in water and you're having failures on your water system.

Maybe like a 22% increase in two years.

I imagine that there is, based on that study, to your point, Mayor, there's probably a spectrum, right, of things and So I guess what I'm trying to learn is if we say, because, you know, you're also informing us of bad decisions or the potential for bad decisions, we don't want to do any rate increases for a year just to give our folks a greater, you know, and also, you know, it just helps.

The consequence of that is also the rate the next year is more than what you're expecting. It's not going to be a 4% increase. It's going to be more like 10.

To my point, is something going to shut down because we don't do this? What is that spectrum of damages that will occur? Because if we decide to go with an increase, we have to be able to defend that and explain that in real plain language with our residents. And so I think that'll just help inform my decision making to understand the implications of this, whether we don't do it or So, appreciate that.

I have John in the room. Okay.

Thank you, Kimberly. Great presentation. So, thank you for clarifying about the PFAS as well. Of course, I was between the two. So, you know, first with respect to Drew, you know, I think, you know, we've seen, you know, like the animal shelter. All of a sudden, they wait eight years. Now we have a fee increase. We have to pay $200,000 extra a year. Okay. They did a good job explaining why, but I'd rather, I mean, the last two years for the water have been higher, but this year they're not. I'd rather pay a small incremental fee every year. I can explain that to neighbors better than if we hold off on not raising them. I mean, grand, no, there's, you know, the economy, people are hurting. I get, I understand that fully, but they're going to be hurting more if we do jack it up, let's say three, four years. Right. And then I'm going to have neighbors yelling at me saying, John, why did you do this? Why did you, you know? So yeah, in reality, I didn't think we can do it how it's presented. That's why we need to do it. We need to stay on top of our maintenance because one of the things I heard on doors last year was we need to make sure we keep our current infrastructure in place and maintained. So I think neighbors would rather pay that little bit a year instead of getting a spike in four or five years. So that's all I have.

The only thing I was, I mean, I went through this whole discussion. I heard it before I was elected. It's unavoidable at this point. It's a bummer, but we have to pay for clean water. And I think that's really what our residents are concerned about more than anything is clean, safe water. And I think we've done a good job of building the infrastructure for that. I think it was last year or was it the year before there was a really weird message sent out that was like your city council decided to raise your, increase your rates. Can we just make sure that like communication is just a little bit better and not like, like we're just like, yeah, we feel like increasing rates or something. It just, the way it was worded, it really kind of like threw it back on us. Like we just wanted to just for the heck of it.

Yeah.

It was weird.

Yeah.

I mean, I think we all got that phone calls and people were like, what's this weird. And it was bizarre. So if we could just make sure that like, there's some comprehensive like communications around why water rates increase and make sure that it's just understood by the community that it's not like we're,

excited about it either because we have to pay for it as well and i i had lost my train thought my original question but i have it now so um what impact if any what residual impacts are there from the thornton water project with these feet with these decreases and then i'm done i don't know if i understand your question

The development of the pipeline, the capital investment of the pipeline.

Is there a residual impact from the increase due to that? Or is it already factored in? It's already taken?

Okay, so that's 2014. There was rate increases that helped to support bringing that water down. And so that's already factored in. It's already taken.

Okay, thank you.

And I think this is a little bit of an opportunity to address a little bit the feedback from Council Member Bird that maybe is harder for the public. And this kind of happens across utilities is, you know, ultimately we fund a project ahead of the project beginning before we bid it. So as we're funding the designing, engineering, the construction, and then when we sell debt for that, the purchasers of the debt want to see that that funding capacity is already in place. And so that is what will front load and increase ahead of the project beginning.

Yeah, that makes sense for the pipeline because

We sold bonds as well.

Well, we've just now said a few minutes ago that the 11% increase was for PFAS.

Right. It's to support paying back that debt that we're about to take out for PFAS.

But even in our slides, we specifically say that fees pay for changes and things that are there. And then we're saying that rates are all based off of operational costs and admin fees. If we're taking the rates and saying, okay, it's operational costs for the PFAS, but we're also trying to go out with bonds for that too, then it doesn't make sense. My biggest concern with all of this is that we come in here every single other Tuesday and we speak about affordability and how we're going to make things affordable for our people and our residents. We're going to increase the rates every single year. We're going to push that it's always an inflationary purpose. But at the same time, it's been 51% since 2018. That's a huge increase to people who are there. And at the same time, Our residents have seen giant mortgage increases because of bills the state's not passing through. I think the bigger thing is to see what, if anything, can we look at to say we don't need to do an increase on this. And if it's a capital investment issue, then sure, we can look at that and evaluate that through there. Looking at the budget from last year, We have capital projects that are massive compared to what's going on for this year. And it could be just more of an evaluation. Look at it and go, is this something that needs to be prioritized and hit through there? To counter the point you made earlier about the, it's not going to go up 4% this year and 4% next year. It'll be 8% if we skip it.

It's more than double if you skip a year. Yeah.

At the same time, everything that we keep putting back on our residence compound, that's the reason why we have now for these 3% every year are now 57% since I bought my house.

I disagree with you. Like I said, I think I asked her and she's going to send out the information from last year because this was something that we definitely went down the wormhole before you were elected in the event of trying to save taxpayer money because the back to back 22 was hard to be sitting on council and taking those phone calls. So We have thoroughly looked into this. I'm not saying that there's nothing we can do and a reassessment may provide a new viewpoint that is opportunistic, but it's not because we haven't looked into it and tried to soften these increases.

I think that the context of what we're trying to push off all of this, because if we're coming out and we're saying this is an inflationary increase, that doesn't show when we look at the other numbers. Because if trash goes up 0%, sewer goes up 5.6%, stormwater 6%, all the numbers are there as different. And granted, you're going to take the inflationary input into that. But that means that if we take that into account and we say that 3.6% is just the inflationary point, That means the metro water went up 2% and then we added the inflationary on top of it. But I have a really strong feeling that they probably went up more than 2% and we're just kind of more rounding out the numbers there.

They also explained that there was different factors. is picking up trash.

So to kind of circle us back to where we need to be. So the request is to bring these forward in January, I think. I haven't heard from Justin or Cherish. I think Chris feels generally supportive in the direction, not, not, I'm just trying to help with some, because we spent a lot of time on this last year, not like we did. Absolutely. That's what I'm trying to get to is like, if we're generally supportive in the direction, I think to help with some of the conversation that we would have to have with the community is that next analysis of if we didn't do this, this is the risk we would be taking on. Because I think that helps if we support this, this rate increase, it helps to have that as a talking point. So if council's okay with that, to bring that information forward to have a better informed vote on this, but then keep the track on for the January at this point.

Well, just to your point too, like around the communications too from the city, like the same thing.

Like I think that's- Because we need to get the communications out quickly to let people know we're coming.

Yeah, that. And I mean, just making sure that the communications are, because for me, the talking point I use is like, unfortunately in this world, a lot of corporations have you know, made it so that we need to put infrastructure in place to clean our water. And that's really what it comes down to is PFAS was a big, a big thing that, you know, a bunch of corporations contributed to. And unfortunately now taxpayers have to brunt the cost. It sucks, but it is what it is. And I think like when I was knocking doors in 23, and even when I hear this, I mean, it's not as much of an issue now because I think we've done such a good job of taking care of, The PFAS situation, I think we've led the way and like pretty much in the state of Colorado, I feel like with the way we've implemented things like we're lucky that our prices aren't, if you look at those graphs, we're lucky that our prices aren't even higher. We're some of the lower prices and we have some of the best infrastructure to take care of this problem, which I feel very fortunate for. And also including the fact that we're getting water, you know, with the water project too, like we're in a pretty good spot. So 3.6% in, you know, comparison to previous years isn't to me like just, you know, thinking about all the environmental impacts, the impacts to our families, To me, I know it sucks to pay more for water, but it kind of is what it is at this point because it's the way the world is right now, unfortunately. So that's kind of the way I think about it. And that's how I kind of bring it to folks I talk to because, I mean, we went to the EPA. We had that conversation. They're not going to help us with it, unfortunately. So-

Justice and chairs, are you okay with that approach to bring that information forward on what we would be taking on as a risk but continue the track? I'm not committing you to a vote. I'm committing you to a process.

Well, I think that, you know, with the 15.2% increase, it is a massive struggle onto our families. But I also understand that a lot of us talk about being fiscally responsible, but we didn't have an issue last week.

So we're not going to pull up previous decisions of council when we're having conversations about water.

So that's my opinion.

So you're okay with the process. Justin, you're okay with the process?

Yeah, I... I don't like raising rates. Nobody does. And actually, I was in the same spot as Devin and Drew and all the new council members. I guess my question is like time. We have to do this pretty quick. We don't really have time to wait for the analysis. But yeah, just having like maybe after the fact.

It gives us talking points.

All I can say is last year we asked for this and it was really grim. The alternative options are really bad, it was it was very clear like these are bad options. So I can't say that i've been saying this year, but last year was we asked for the options and we got them and there wasn't much everybody was like okay we'll take the rate increase, because these other options were like. degrade the quality of Thornton water for the next 20 years or something like that. It wasn't good.

So, so it feels like we have general support to move in this direction. At the same time, I would ask him if you could sit down with Devin at some point and talk through some of this, because some of his questions I think are valid of making sure that everything lights up and understanding how the water utility fund works, if that works for you, Devin. And Drew as well, if you're interested.

Yeah, I think right now, I mean, I'm, I don't think we have enough information on these issues that I know you guys discussed last year, but that was last year. And, you know, the city is evolving constantly and new things break or new things need to be fixed. I'm curious what the current situation is really from like a dollar perspective. And if we're, we're saying that we need to increase it, you know, 6% water, whatever it is across the board, you know, I just, I would like to know like how big of a deficit it is if we decide not to do that because not increasing rates is an option. It's about $3 million. Yeah. So like, you know, it would be good to see that breakdown before I can say I'm on the line with the rest of the council on this because I think right now there's some gaps and nobody has really given me, um, what it means to not increase rates in it.

Yeah, we can immediately share the information that was shared with the council last year that shows that and certainly prepare what are examples of capital projects that could be either deferred or eliminated that could reduce some of the rate impacts. And I do think the presentation from last year does show the broader rate model. So there are other complications that go in terms of debt coverage ratios and other kinds of things that impact our debt rating and other kinds of things. So there's multiple things in the rate model that have to be updated as we change assumptions about. So some of it is, again, what are we paying for now? And then what is the debt coverage over a long period of time to the people that we have borrowed from to demonstrate that we've got sufficient, basically, liquidity to be able to pay future obligations. So you'll see some of that, I think, in the presentation from last year. and we can try to update some of those similar considerations that could be adjusted.

Yeah, I think the updates would be really applicable for this year.

I'm going to clarify the buckets, right? So the water utility bucket is not the same as a capital project bucket and they can't be mixed together. So $3 million may mean something different in the traditional capital sense than it does in the water sense. So that's the kind of conversation that I'm hoping that y'all can have to get a little bit more into the weeds that you seem to need.

And it is a true statement that the utilities are not equal in terms of how capital intensive they are. There are differences across the utilities.

I get that. I was looking specifically at the customer water sales numbers is where I got $3 million from.

I think that's the plan going forward. All right. Thank you very much. Next is the Old Higher Fire Pension Board.

Kim is going to pull this here. And so as a brief introduction, so the Old Higher Fire Pension is a pension that is no longer used. And when the plan was designed, it didn't include a cost of living and it wasn't So that the contributions from the members at the time didn't support future cost of living increases, as we would see in modern plan designs. And so this board has typically asked the council to make contributions such that those members can receive a cost of living increase that their plan would not otherwise support. So this is an opportunity every two years, the floor does an actuarial study and make some requests to the council. And that's what is happening tonight. So Kim, I'll give it to you.

For those of you that don't, I think everybody knows John Bales is he's the chair of the old higher fire pension board. So the purpose of tonight's presentation is to bring forward the request that the Old Hire Fire Pension Board made. A little bit of background. The board was established in accordance with Colorado law. It's a defined benefit pension plan, and it covers full-time firefighters hired prior to April 8th, 1978. The plan's overseen by a pension board. It consists of the mayor, finance director, a citizen appointee from council, and then three members elected by the plan participants. The plan's managed by FPPA. There's 18 current members in the plan. 15 of them are retirees and three are beneficiaries. There's no actively contributing members to the plan. The plan requires what we call an ARC, an annual required contribution. It's $445,000 a year that the city pays in to support the long-term financial forecast of the plan. So as of January 1st, when they did the study, 2026, the plan was 58.3% funded. And so that ARC then continues to fund the plan to the life of the plan. In order to make any kind of amendment to the plan or a benefit increase in this case, there's steps that we have to take. The first step is that you have to have an actuarial study performed to determine what the cost of that proposed amendment is. A plan cannot be amended to provide a benefit that's not been studied by the actuarial. So if you came back and said, no, we want to do this instead, we wouldn't be able to do that. They have to study it and understand the cost, and then we have to pay that cost up front. The governing body, which is council, has to approve an amendment by resolution. There has to be a vote of all the plan members. An opinion by the city attorney is required. And then finally, the FPPA board is the final approval of any amendments. This table just shows all the plan amendments that have occurred over the last 10 years and our 2027 arc requirement. That first column is the year of the amendment. The next column shows the amount required from the city to fund the plan. The following column describes the benefit change that we made, and then the final two columns show the change, so the difference in the ARC, the additional funding, and then the one-time payment to fund the life of the plan that's left. The Old Hire Fire Board submitted three supplemental studies to FPPA for the actuarial study. Again, the study is done every other year, and they give you an option to include three studies. All three of these studies were evaluated. This table shows the results of that study. The one highlighted in yellow here is what the board is requesting. It's an increase of $250 per month per beneficiary. It would be effective January 1st, 2027, followed by an additional $250 per month per beneficiary effective 2028. Based on the actuarial results, it would require the city to make a one-time payment of 930,613 and we would increase the annual ARC $38,000 for that period. Staff is asking again before the 2027 budget comes before you if we should include and what we should include in the 2027 budget recommendation. Um, this will help us, um, determine what that one time impact is and the ongoing arc. So I'm going to pause there before we get to the second bullet. Um, we can have that conversation after this.

So there are questions from council. Are we okay? Okay.

Um, the arc, it says the current annual arc. contribution is $445,680. That's what we put into our long-term financial. Yes. And so these options here, like study the $38,586, is that adding that to our financial?

Yeah. Thank you.

That's a good point.

So yeah, the $445,000 in there is planned for additional.

$445,000 plus the $38,000.

So the $38,000 would be the additional, yeah.

Okay. And then the one-time payment is just on top of that.

Is there any objection to bringing this forward in the budget? I need to see heads nod. Are we okay with bringing this forward in the budget? Just staring at me doesn't work. Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am.

All right. Absolutely.

Thank you. The second bullet here is understanding the difficulty situation that we're in this year and recognizing that we think it's important that we get some feedback from council on the future discussion. So we'll have a we'll have another actuarial studied in 2028. And so what we're asking is that would counsel be interested in being part of that process and helping to or reviewing what those supplemental Cola studies are before FPPA brings them to the board. And if so, we can bring that back in another planning session and talk about what that might look like. There's all different options. There's no right or wrong way to do this, but. Right.

I'll maybe be a bit more direct here. What the fire board has requested or what they have studied don't necessarily have a relationship with what we're doing for cost of living for other employee groups. So last year, our average employee got a 2% increase in terms of cost of living. This plan's increase was 5%. Again, the proposals here The only proposals that were studied likely exceed the increases that are going to be proposed for active employees. So I think that was really the question of whether or not there should be some additional consultation so that there would be more potential choices for the council. Because if something isn't studied in the actuarial study, then it isn't a choice for the council.

I want to add a couple of things here real quick. One in, I don't know, that probably just was a misprint. We're at 12 actual retirees and four beneficiaries. Now we lost three people in the last two years from our thing. And, uh, One of the members we lost was Assistant Chief Jim Scott. He was the first, basically, battalion chief I had when I came on the department here in 1974. And that first year, there was a night, a day, we had a really bad day. We had a very serious structure fire in the basement of a church. We had numerous medical calls. Nothing unlike what they do today. Same thing. And one of the medical calls, and I haven't been riding a med unit that night, was a sudden infant death syndrome. So with the fire we had and that, you know, the time we got to think. So we came dragging back in from the hospital about 3 a.m. And Chief Scott was sitting at the kitchen table. I thought, this is odd. And he said, I need to talk to you guys. Come over here and sit down. And he pulled the engine crew and the med crew both over there And he said, this is a rough day. And he said, what I want you to remember, if nothing else, is you need to take care of each other. And he said that. And that's what this whole fire pension board does. We try to take care of our own. And like I said, we lost three. And the other thing is the cost for this one is less than what it was two years ago. And the reason being we lost three members. We did add one beneficiary, but that's calculated a much different way for the beneficiaries. So, you know, we're just out there trying to take care of our own. I appreciate, you know, the committee that does this or the board that does this and all of Kim's work and comments from the city manager. They're all taken to heart, but I appreciate your support. That's about all I have to say tonight. Thank you guys.

How long has this been in motion? I see like the 2016, is that the first year that it was pushed forward or some slight thought? I'm just curious on how long the plan has been in place.

The plan has been in place since, excuse me, I don't know that I'm talking about.

It was the plan, the old hire. It was the pension plan when anybody came on before 1978. Going clear back to when the department started and Chief Scott happened to be one of those that was one of the first paid folks.

Is your question within the practice of us contributing to achieve a COLA?

I was getting to that one. Has council been involved in the actual planning has always been coming from the board directly? Pretty much always come from the board.

And I think Mayor can speak to this. It's pretty much the same makeup that it has been for years. I can honestly remember the first time when I was still working, it was instead of retirees on the board, it was current employees on the board. And Mayor Carpenter was on the board at that time. It's been that way ever since I've been around since 1974.

And the mayor and the finance director sit on the voice.

Yes. And I would say we leave it as is. We get that. We get that financial input. Kim.

Yeah, I guess my question would be, what would be the point of us being involved at a deeper level? And what would that look like?

It's really just to align financial resources and an understanding of to give Council, if you noticed in those options, they're very similar. They came into a very similar. I think last time we brought this forward, Council asked, what about one, like, let's do, you know, a little bit less. And that's not an option. And so what we're bringing forward from the board is kind of an all or nothing plan where council never got a way in, right? Understanding the finances of the city, the board is separate. And so it just gives an opportunity for council to either set parameters or have a discussion with the board and talk about financial resources. And to Tansy's point, you know, or will we align with what's happening with the rest of the city? And so it's not necessarily changing a process as much as it is just collaborating a little bit before those studies go forward.

The other thing is the flat rate rather than the percentage has always helped the majority of the retirees because the range of the retirement benefit, I mean, you have people that are still A retiree that came on the department in the late 60s, and they're still out there. And I think, I don't remember when the last retired had been Jack, and I don't remember when he retired. But it was well after two, you know, probably, I don't think he's been retired 10 years yet. So it's a little more recent. So, you know, but that was the last of the old hire. There are no more old hires on the Thornton Fire Department.

Appreciate it. And I'm good with the structure staying the same.

Dave?

I mean, I'm glad to hear that. I don't want to change the structure. I prefer not to turn this into another quasi-contract negotiation between 12 people that have earned their retirement. So... HAB-Masyn Moyer- Just leave it as is.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Any objection to that approach. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Thank you very much.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Thank you all.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Next one is the homelessness sheltering options.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Follow up. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Previous presentation and the Council asked for. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Additional information cost and implementation considerations for two of them one partnering with aurora now Asian campus for sheltering and also some additional costs logistical considerations for safe. HAB-Masyn Moyer- That is going to kick this off so welcome to that again now in her role a full month.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Not quite yeah that's why yeah almost. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. Beth Torgerson, I'm the Community Programs Director. I will present a portion of this, and Myra's going to start off, but I'll let her introduce herself.

Hello, my name is Myra. I'm the Homeless R.H. Team Supervisor, as well as standing in as the Interim Community Connections Manager.

Jessica Whitney, Senior Assistant City Attorney. I have a very small role in this, talking about the zoning of the

So the purpose of today's meeting is to just provide some additional information based on the April planning session for indoor sheltering. Again, going back to our agenda, we're going to talk a little bit about the background. We're going to talk a little bit about the regional collaborative framework. And then, of course, review the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus and state parking. So again, in April, staff presented an overview of severe sheltering models, including safe parking, pallet shelters, and regional partnerships. Based on that meeting and council's feedback, safe parking and regional partnerships demonstrated the greatest potential to address the identified need. And so based off that direction, we're going to be talking about the Aurora Regional Navigation Center and safe parking. As a reminder, and I know that you all heard, this is part of the strategic focus area, safe, supportive, and livable communities. And again, I know that we gave a lot of shout outs to all the leaders, but I personally want to give a shout out to every single SPOT team member that is on my team because everyone has been super engaged and focused and active in this SPOT, especially with this presentation. To kick us off, we're going to talk a little bit about the regional approach, which is the Adams County Council of Governments. It's a regional effort that needs to discuss issues. Homelessness is one of those regional priorities for this group. On August 8th, staff convened to talk about what were the different priorities in terms of homelessness. On this slide, you will see the top five priorities that were mentioned, one of them being data sharing and regional approaches through IGAs and MOUs. The second was an IGA opportunity related to the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus. The third one was sharing a resource list, not only with clients, but of course with the community members and with staff to make sure that it's easy, direct, and accessible. The fourth priority was an incoming cleanup, and the fifth priority was talking about safe parking. In September, there is going to be a dinner to continue discussing the five different priority areas, and we will know more information afterwards. I will now pass it along to Beth.

So as we kind of started looking at the options and been directed by council to kind of look, Aurora Regional Navigation Campus was really the first area that we focused on and looking at that one-stop shop for shelter and services, serving over 600 individuals with emergency shelter, transitional housing, and comprehensive support services. I do want to thank the council members who attended the Aurora Navigation Center and did tours During that time, I think we were able to really see a lot of the services that are offered at the Navigation Center. This center did open in November, and it does provide that day center shelter as well as overnight sheltering and then some parking as well. So that kind of adds into a little bit of our parking discussion as we go through this. On the screen, you'll see a bunch of the different services that this campus provides. This really is a one-stop shop. And what I mean by that is when I did the tour of the Navigation Center, one of the things that I really noticed was kind of the different people engaging. There's over 200 clients that go to the Day Center on a daily basis. It's a really expansive, flexible space. And there really was a calming kind of piece to it. People are allowed to have their animals there, which is a huge component of any sheltering. It's not often that people are allowed to have their animals either in a day shelter or in an overnight setting. And additionally, they have a tiered system to really reward clients that are progressing through the program for other supportive services for those who really want to engage in that case management and look at that workforce development and that transitional housing, which is a huge component of of that wraparound service for our clients. We wanted to kind of share a little bit of the data. In the eight months, they've served almost 4,000 people, and their day center average is around 223, but they have served over 2,500 people in their day center usage. They've had over a thousand participants in their stride healthcare. What stride healthcare is, is really that comprehensive health from medical, dental, also looking at prescription and mental health care. And they really estimate a social return on investment of around $7.1 million. And that's really for those not going to the emergency room or seeking services elsewhere. They've had 70 clients that have engaged in work bridge enrollments, and that's supervised workforce development training and education, as well as job search. And over 100 individuals have secured jobs since being there. I think one big piece also to note is they've had 41 exits to permanent housing and over 100 to some sort of off-campus housing. So that could be supportive housing. That could be living with somebody else. But they're very proud in the eight months to really have that 100 people already be able to go to another form of housing. Staff is recommending a pilot to pilot with the Aurora Navigation Center. And it's really because of that comprehensive sheltering model, that coordinated service network. They have over 30 community partnerships within the Aurora Navigation Center that come in, including CORT, They have, you know, workforce development, like I said, that mental health, they do small groups, they provide case management and housing navigation, which is really big when we think of that continuum of care approach and that tiered service model that really helps people kind of get out into that housing navigation and really help them with those supportive services so they can transition to the community and housing. Should council kind of direct us to look at their regional navigation campus as a pilot? We are recommending a one-year pilot, and this is just a high-level scope of work based kind of on gaps that we have found working both with the regional work and also with Thornton residents and others. This would service approximately 40 unhoused clients a year, potentially more depending on the demand and depending as well on what that scope of work and what that partnership would look like. But we are looking at the potential of that transportation piece. One of the barriers that we have found for clients to get to Aurora is that transportation. This would provide some loops of transport to be able to get the clients down to Aurora for the navigation center. Additionally, we've had several partnerships and different jurisdictions that have talked about wanting to potentially join in on this scope of work, which could potentially increase the amount of loops that we would do, the potential of cost reduction with a multitude of different people joining in on this, because they also recognize that transportation has been a huge barrier. And then the housing and case management would be a huge part of this as we go forward, recognizing that Those wraparound services are very large and very big for our population. And this would allow our hot team and our outreach team to work with the clients while they're down in Aurora, whether they're down there for day use or if they stay for overnight sheltering. This would allow our case managers to work with staff down there and work with the clients so that we provide those wraparound services should they return to our community as well. And then we also recognize the importance of data sharing in quarterly reports, and I'll talk about that and what some of those measures would be should we do the pilot for the year and be approved and directed by council. So again, this is dependent on kind of what those loops look like, what those partnerships look like as we kind of continue to explore what that scope of work could look like. But this is also a potential cost analysis looking at the variety of housing, case management, program operation, and then transportation costs should we work with those 40 unhoused individuals. And again, I want to say that number could be much larger because people exit at different times, but this would be looking at the potential of at least getting 40 people through the program in some sort of tiered success through that programming. We are recommending a one-year pilot, not to exceed 100,000. This would allow us to kind of continue to explore that, look at those partnerships, and then the final scope of work in the IGA would come back to council for that review and further discussion as well. The potential funding sources for this is looking at opioid funding. This would not be sustainable after 2029, but we would be able to use this as a funding source for the next year for the pilot and then evaluate kind of ongoing what that might look like and what potential funding sources and opportunities we have.

So should council want us, you guys want to ask the question, or are you going to wait until the end?

I'm going to find out. The cost there, not to exceed the $100,000 for the one-year pilot, do we have an idea of what that would look like if it was an extended IGA agreement so that we don't end up running into situations where we do now where our IGA agreement comes up and it went quadruple what it was before?

Yeah, we would meet as part of, sorry about that. As part of our partnership and IGA development, we would have very specific measures in there of what that $100,000 would meet so that we do not exceed it in the pilot year. Should we want to move forward and look at that as an option? And as we kind of look at the data evaluation and council feels that they want to kind of continue that program, we'd probably have to have additional conversations I think a lot of that will depend on what jurisdictions, what municipalities would want to potentially partner with us for that transportation cost. That's a large cost to it for the loops and how many people that we can also house and be able to support through the program.

So is your question whether we could negotiate a multi-year IGA that we could act on year by year?

It was just more of a once the one year is up, are we going to get another one that comes forward and it's going to be $500,000 instead? And we're like, well, that was great for one year, but is it five times worth the money next year?

Yeah, I think that, you know, it really would be an evaluation. Again, looking at the data, we want to see kind of, really how it reflects and what the success of the program is for Thornton residents. I certainly think that we can kind of structure and look at that in our partnerships with both the municipalities that want to be involved, but also looking at that with Advanced Pathways who provides the service at Aurora Navigation and have some of those discussions during the development piece of this so that we're not you know, quadrupling or looking at that, you know, in year two and saying, okay, we need this amount of money. Cool.

Thank you. I have Justin, then Roberta, then Drew. Okay.

Quick. Opioid funding, that... Can you explain a little bit more what that means also? Can we potentially fund all of this from the opioid funding project? And then also... what alternatives, like, I don't know enough about opioid funding. So what are the, you know, what's the opportunity cost here?

Okay. So the city has received opioid funding for the past few years and built up a balance. We're currently using it for things like crisis programs and other things that apply, like supplies for the homeless outreach team. There's about

Sorry, Roberta has a hard stop at nine. Did you want to say something before you left?

Yeah, I have. I just wanted to say that I generally support this initiative and the safe parking one, but I have to go. So I have a family obligation tonight.

Thanks.

So we're using opioid funding for some service delivery currently right now in the fire department, as well as the homeless outreach team. We have a fund balance, I think of a little over $300,000 right now that doesn't have an allocation for it yet. There's about five specific funding things you can use opioid funding for. There are things like case management around addiction recovery and things like that. You can use it for supplies for things like Narcan and things, pretty much anything that's supporting sort of street homelessness in a way um where you're having uh groups or addiction you can um do things that are sort of Medicaid reimbursable with it. So there's five sort of key categories in the documents and the agreements that we have with the state where we've received some of those allotments for. So we have to make sure that the things that we would use this for are eligible. The Aurora Navigation Campus is already receiving opioid funding, both from the state as well as other jurisdictions. So that would fit nicely and meet the criteria.

Okay. Well, that's very good to know to see that we have a potential source of funding that, you know, is external to our general budget, our general fund. The question I have then is, you know, before I fully go forward with this, I love the idea, but I would certainly want to know ahead of time what the planned measures of success are. So, especially for just doing a one year, because I know the question will come up a year later, should we do this again? And if we can have a good idea of how we're going to determine the effective use of this funds, you know, was this good or not ahead of time? I think it'll put us in a better position to decide, you know, what to do in 2028 and onward.

Yeah, some of the data evaluation, we would want it to be very specific to Thornton referrals. So they are already tracking a lot of data. And we did include that data in the full data kind of in your packet is really looking at kind of the number of referrals. What is the usage, but also what is the success? Are they using the partnerships? within? Are they using the housing navigation and case management services? Because they do have to elect into those. Are they moving through the tiered services so that we're showing that people are engaged in not only case management, but the housing navigation as well? Because the ultimate goal is for them to secure permanent housing and to move on through the system. Are they job searching? As they move through the tiers, tier one is kind of the general population. Tier two is really when they're engaged in case management and they are also engaged in either job search or some other kind of piece. So those are metrics that we would certainly be asking for, not only in reports, but also, you know, engaged in the case management as well with our group to really have those like long-term outcomes and ultimately how many of them secure permanent housing during that time.

Great.

would be our long-term measure. But just to be real clear, the items listed here under evaluation are the things that we would anticipate putting into an IGA.

Drew and then Chris.

I had a chance to visit the center along with some other folks and I was actually pretty impressed by the program that they're implementing there. And so I'm glad to see that's a recommendation. Two questions on the $100,000 or the cost. Is it a variable cost? Like is it per person that it increases or is it like we're paying $67,500 to the program and then our The best effort is to get 40 people in there. But if we get one person and it still costs us $67,500.

It will not be. I mean, that will be something we'll kind of talk through as we develop the IGA, but it will not be a variable cost. We've already kind of had some of that preliminary discussion. With advanced pathways, it would be really more flat costs of transportation and case management services, not based on a person, but really based more on that year and that fatality.

That's helpful. And so my second question with that, because the facility is a voluntary enrollment process, we'll call it, or as part of this plan, are we considering options that allow us to make it mandatory that people go? Like they can't stay in an encampment, let's say, they've got to go to this shelter as the best option. Is that part of this discussion?

That isn't part of this discussion. It is in order for them to go to Aurora, they do have to voluntarily agree to go. It can't be something that is like a court order kind of piece.

Is that a policy or ordinance thing that the city can implement to help encourage them to attend the Aurora Navigation Campus?

I think we could definitely and have already started conversations with a fresh start court. It could be something incorporated there. We also talked about if someone was in our Thornton fresh start court, we could even have virtual court if they were staying at the navigation campus and keep up with them. So that might be an opportunity to sort of provide a mandate to someone. And I would probably defer to the attorneys, but I don't think we have anything in our current code or ordinances that would require anybody to go at this point.

There's nothing in our code.

Nothing. Just trying to figure out how we get maximum usage at a facility like this. Is it be a giant waste of effort from the teams if people just don't want to go. And I know there's some fear around the site and unknowns, but I'm just thinking, how do we encourage this?

I do think certainly as we vacated encampments, we would be referring people to... So we do routinely tell people that they must leave encampment sites. And so that is happening. And I do believe we would refer this resource in those circumstances.

And be able to provide transportation. And we could structure the IGA in any way, like quarterly payouts. And we're looking at outcome data before we pay the next quarter so we don't have an outlay up front without outcomes.

Yeah, and I think a lot of it is our encampments and population, our unhoused population. It's kind of that community. So I think offering them the potential of going down there, seeing the facility, going with others, taking their animals, which is a huge kind of piece, hopefully would encourage more people to engage. And I think it's a lot of our outreach workers really kind of dragging home what is offered there and like continuing to provide that service as well um and also continuing that relationship with aurora so we're not just taking the resident down to aurora and our outreach team never engages them it's that continual engagement so that we also have those measures to look at yeah i think just to add on to that i mean my philosophy is it takes a village right and so

what we want to do is make sure that they also get the experience that we all had when we did the tour. So those have been discussions that we have had within our slot team, within the homeless outreach team as well. we are discussing different measures. How can we encourage people to go? How can we, what strategies do we have to make in order to make this one accessible, make it appealing? And knowing that there's so many different services, I mean, over 30 different partnerships that Aurora Regional Navigation Campus has, those are all different appealing items that are to our clients.

And I heard they have bacon in tier three.

Yeah, they do. All right, I have Chris, then John, then Cherish.

Yeah, a large part of, I think Jessica just answered that. I was going to say milestones, but she said quarterly payments to kind of address some of the funding concerns. Additionally, I was going to say, if you have the information already, I know you're still working on the development of this, can you touch base a little bit on this, say, parking that is notated here at their facility. We talked about, I remember being there and we all talked about, you know, you guys have a ton of parking here. How do we convert that into safe parking? I think that's much more viable than what you're about to go into in the next section with us having our own. So perhaps, I don't know if there's a way to preserve, you know, end spaces or something like that. Or have you guys had any discussion around how that piece is part of that $100,000?

Yes, I have. So they do have a parking lot and a safe parking lot for people to store their vehicles. They are not allowed to stay and remain in their vehicles overnight. They would have them come in and sleep within the shelter. But they do have a safe kind of parking area for residents to have their vehicles secured and be able to participate in the programming.

Is that just a stipulation of this facility, Aurora, or I mean, again, there's, I understand if they have a vehicle, it's a good spot to park it, but there is a lot of parking that could be utilized for safe parking. So they've just not been explored yet, or maybe just a future endeavor that they're growing into.

That policy decision was made on best practices, looking at facilities around the country. When you have folks staying in their vehicle and they're not engaging with services inside, They're really not realizing the benefit of the facility if they're just coming in for safe food or showers. You have a safety concern, both them becoming a victim in the vehicle, you know, really not being able to regulate as easily what's happening in those parking lots. And so we in Aurora had operated two prior safe parking lots. and had quite a bit of issues with things like human trafficking, drugs, and victimization of some of the safe parking lots. Not at a big scale, but enough that it was a decision made that we really wanted people to come inside and continually engage and meet with a case manager. Also have a safe place that is climate controlled with running water and sanitation and things like that. And so it's encouraged for people to come inside. sometimes they may allow people to stay a couple nights to just sort of get comfortable with the facility and then they're going to ask them to come inside.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Great presentation, Beth and Myra and Jessica. Thank you. Thank you for arranging the tour of the navigational campus as well as really eye-opening to see it in action. Of course, the tier three is not ready yet. That's the actual hotel rooms, but they are working on those and And they even say, you know, it's like, yeah, we're flying the airplane while we're building it. So, but once again, Jessica, thank you for your work once again and helping make this happen. It's a very important thing for our region. So one question I have is the IGA would be with the city of Aurora, correct?

I think it would, it really would be with advanced pathways.

Okay. Okay.

However, we would look also at the other municipalities and bringing them along in that.

I think they're in collaboration with Adams and Arapahoe counties as well. So the other thing, I didn't quite do my homework on this. I know that my colleague in Aurora Ward 1, Janine Horton, introduced a resolution as far as the day-to-day, the SOP of the Navigational Center, specific to Advanced Pathways because they run that. Was that resolution passed by Aurora Council? Or do you mean I know? Okay. I'm assuming it was because I didn't hear any fallback. But obviously, you know, that's part of the building the airplanes. Like we need to make sure we update our guidelines, update our SOPs. So that way we're served. I mean, we collectively are serving our houseless clients and to give them the services that they need. So, okay. That's all I have. Thank you.

In order to decrease some of this transportation costs, have we looked at other cities in our region right here that want to collaborate with us and do some IGs so that could possibly take that funding down?

Yes. So when Jessica attended the ad cog meeting, that was kind of a discussion, is other municipalities, the city and county of Broomfield, North Glen and some others have expressed interest. We haven't had full discussions because we really wanted direction with council. before we would proceed in more of those discussions. But that certainly could affect the cost as well. And now I'm just going to move into kind of some safe parking discussion as Council in April gave us direction as well to look at safe parking as an option. As we kind of looked at this service, we did have some information requests regarding zoning regulations that really would impact safe parking in Thornton. And I'm going to turn it over to Jessica to talk a little bit about that.

Thank you. Yes, as discussed, safe parking in Thornton, the way our code is currently written, would not be a permitted use. So if council were to provide direction to look into this more, it would require a code amendment. And even as a temporary use, The code is written very specifically that a vehicle cannot be used as a dwelling unit, even on a temporary basis, except in very limited circumstances. Like if you're building your home, you can live in a trailer on the lot and things like that. Same with a temporary parking lot. That code provision is written very specifically for storage of vehicles. not people staying in the vehicles in a temporary parking lot. So based on the way the code is currently written, this would not be a permitted use. But again, with council direction, the code could be amended to allow this use if that were the way council wished to proceed.

Because of kind of the zoning constraints and the time and looking at that pilot of that one year, staff is really not recommending moving forward with safe parking at this time. There is that piece of limited kind of capacity that five to 10 vehicles. There are a lot of ongoing staffing and security and maintenance pieces as well that come with the site selection and also looking at the operational commitment of a safe parking. And then really long-term success and is really strengthened when it's paired with housing assistance when, and this model really isn't a component of that program at this time. If council would like us to continue to still move forward and looking at this, we are looking at two different models and a cost analysis. And this period would be for six months of that pilot year, really, because we would have that zoning constraint that we would have to work through the zoning process before we would be able to move forward with these two models. The two models proposed here are looking at one model that would be city staff-led. This would be really just your core basic operation, limited case management, those trash services, really that overnight parking, but it's really not that housing navigation service that also comes with the potential of a contracted model. In Model 2, the difference is we would be going out and looking at a vendor run, not city run, although we would collaborate and coordinate on some of the services. But this would allow for the case management and some housing navigation. Again, it doesn't provide that housing solution long term, but they would help support in some of the housing navigation. And the cost, looking at the city staff-led model, when we looked at the amounts, is around $26,000. And it's estimated around $98,000 if we were to look at a contracted vendor going out to RFP or some sort of agreement with a vendor for that service for those six months.

Justin, is your question on this one? Go ahead. Yeah, so regarding the second model, you know, I know that there is a vendor out there servicing an IGA between Commerce City and Brighton to do safe parking in Brighton. for less than $50,000. It's just slightly less than $50,000. And it does provide the case management, the housing. It's very similar to what you have listed up there. So I would just suggest reaching out to some of the vendors and getting some of those estimates based off of the most recent IGAs that are happening.

So we have spoken with Commerce City and looking at kind of their agreement and what that looks like. Their service for working with that vendor is solely for the case management services. They're still providing the additional costs for startup and looking at kind of the trash, the hand washing stations, the safety security. So although that $40,000 to $50,000 does encompass the housing navigation and case management costs, That's really around the amount that we're looking at as well for Model 2. When we break it out, it's pretty comparable looking at other regional models as well and what their case management and then startup costs for the service is.

Does that mean that Brighton is paying for one of the two cities or is paying for the rest of the? services. The trash.

Yes, and I know they're still working through some of those negotiations and kind of looking at what those costs are, but they have informed us that those costs are inclusive of the city providing that service, not the provider.

And my understanding is Brighton has not decided to move forward with that yet. They're still looking at it.

One day it almost comes

The mayor and a council member told me it was not. So I don't think they voted on it yet. Maybe that's the distinction. Yeah.

I guess they were sitting there two weeks out or something like that. So beyond that, I don't know. Yeah.

Should the council like us to still kind of look at safe parking as an option? These are the potential funding sources that we have identified. We would look at the homelessness resolution program state grant that is pending. We have applied for those funds. We won't find out until probably later this year or early of 27, if we will receive those. We'd also look at the CDBG. We could use up to 15% of our public service category to provide for the funding. And then our last kind of option would be to look at a reallocation of our existing funds to support these programs should the council direct us.

Justin?

Yeah, just a question on that slide. How much, so can you just explain the 15% of the public service category? I know that we set aside over a hundred and some thousand dollars from that CDBG annual plan. for future use, is that coming from that on set block of funds? Is that something different?

So in the community development block grant, only up to 15% could be used for public service categories. So it would be looking in 2027 for the use of those funds. So yes, it would potentially look at some of the reserve money. but it might not be inclusive of that depending on what funding we receive.

Additionally, just to add to that, the 15% for the public service under the CDBG is currently being used for HOT for salary and supplies. So if we were to use this as a potential funding source, we would have to take a look into where we would want to put that 15%, whether wanted to put that into safe parking or whether we wanted to put that towards salaries. Okay.

That's helpful. Thanks.

If directed, um, really the next steps kind of depend on the zoning process and how long that might take to complete. Um, we would work on that site acquisition in the context of that outreach. We have started some outreach, just initial outreach looking at potential sites or potential faith-based organizations or nonprofit private property that would be interested in serving. However, our program development, program implementation, and that program execution will really be delayed until we can rectify and move forward with the zoning limitations. So staff is recommending further exploring an IGA with Aurora regional navigation campus partnership not to exceed $100,000 as a pilot funding program with funding the program with opioid dollars. I don't know why I cannot say that tonight. The alternative would be to explore both the regional navigation campus and a safe parking initiative in 2027 as a pilot program. Alternative two would be to explore safe parking program in 2027 only. And then alternative three would be to not further explore sheltering options in Fortin.

Questions? All right. Questions or comments from the council? Josh?

My daughter, in her neighborhood, has one of the safe parkings from Adams County. And it's very quiet. It's very safe. There's not really at most two cars a night are there. And so honestly, I'm going to be for alternative one.

Dave?

Option three, I don't need to see safe parking important.

Not even the recommendation?

Well, I don't, I like the...

The first recommendation or alternative one, two, or three?

First recommendation. Okay. I don't want to see safe parking.

Eric?

Yeah, I appreciate the thorough analysis and I do appreciate the recommendation. I'm, I'm on board with your recommendation. And, you know, I think, um, I think Jessica brought up some great points, but the fact that Aurora, like the navigation campus doesn't even do the safe working, cause that's the way it's kind of ties in. Um, I'll follow their lead. Others?

I'll follow the recommendation. I'll second that.

Chris? Justin?

I was very interested in the safe parking, obviously. Had a lot of conversation around that. Jessica did bring up some good points. But I also feel like if we're going to offer the safe parking here, then there's potential for them to get into the regional campus and then still participate. So given we've done a lot of spending tonight, I think I'm going to go with the recommendation for now. that is a future opportunity.

Yeah, you know, I think there's more to be learned on the options regarding safe parking. I do like the recommendation, but I think alternative one keeps the door open for looking at, you know, some other pathways to do that. For example, the potential, I suppose, agreement between Commerce City and Brighton, you know, if there's partners out there that are have sites or locations and they're willing to do that side of it. And we have a grant, for example. And if the funding makes sense, then I think that's certainly worth exploring. I think, you know, the safe parking all hinges on our ability to obtain that state grant as well. And so my question is, do we have that grant has already been applied for. Right. we don't have to commit to a safe parking program to be eligible for that grant. Correct. And if we get that grant, we can spend some of that money on safe parking because it would be a potential eligible use on that.

I don't see alternative one as saying

Oh, we're going to do safe parking because I think a lot of things need to actually line up for it to even be possible. Um, but I do think there's more to explore because, um, you know, others, you know, there's other examples of creative solutions and partnerships in the similar vein of the, the original recommendation. So, yeah, I think alternative one is a, it's good to keep continuing, uh, every possible way we can help these people out.

And to reiterate, I do believe we intend to continue engaging in the county-wide conversations about regional collaboration and safe parking was one of the regional collaboration items that was discussed. I think both at the staff level and at the elective level, I expect that they're there to be future regional discussions. What the outcomes of those discussions is going to be hard to predict at this point, and certainly will continue to connect with the council as perhaps the funding landscape changes with future grants or other opportunities.

Yeah, I guess one question I have is if we do get this, almost this resolution program state grant, and we hear from staff about what we can, what all can be done with that, including seat parking, because, you know, I just don't see how seat parking even happens without that grant. And so if we do get the grant, maybe we can hear like, okay, we could do seat parking, we could do alternative B, C, you know, it just would be good to hear like what's available if we get that grant. If we don't get that grant, well, then no point in really having that conversation because that grant has been closed.

So I'm gonna wrap up the conversation. I know we have two that are presser buttons, but I think we have consensus and I agree with the recommendation from staff. I have serious concerns about safe parking, especially what's happened recently with Aurora. I don't think we're ready to have that conversation yet. So we have direction to move with the recommendation. Drew and John, did you have something to add?

Yeah, I just wanted to be clear for staff that the consensus is the recommendation and that by not doing alternative one, we're not asking you, to explore safe parking. So I hope you don't consider that an additional task based on extra input.

I think what the expectation is, is you're correct. That's not an additional task for this recommendation, but I think from the regional collaboration that has always been in the agreement is that we may not do safe parking ourselves, but as a collaboration, there may be opportunity to fund additional resources in Adams County with this grant funding or something similar to that.

I just don't want you guys to be thinking that you have extra things to work on.

and then you know like you know as long as like i'm for the recommendation obviously but still you know down the road maybe safe parking we reach with our collaborative with our regional partners with the county and then get input there maybe revisit safe parking down the road as an added option of course the navigational center does have that in place but still if we can do that here and make it feasible and working with the county then i would probably be open to that discussion so

All right. Thank you very much. All right. Other discussion items. Any board or committee reports?

Go ahead, Dom. Airport Coronation Committee, we met last week. Thank you, Jessica, for the update. I will send an email that Jessica sent with the notes to the council, but still a lot of things happening. First of all, the Airport Coronation Committee is looking at meeting from instead of quarterly to bi-monthly, especially with the development starting to happen more and more conversations need to be had. I'm supportive of bi-monthly. I think I could be more engaged on a personal level if I'm there at least every month instead of every quarter, because then it kind of, you know, we're concentrating on Thornton, obviously, and everything is, you know, I'm not focusing as much on DIA. Of course, we do have a 5% stake, which is why we're a member of it. So the DIA, they updated their 2018 strategic development plan for approximately 16,000 acres of non-aviation airport property. The update is intended to move from a broad, long-range vision to a more market-based and implementation-focused plan addressing infrastructure, mobility, utilities, and development timing. They're discovering current sites not have the infrastructure needed to support future expansion. Also, there's concern amongst us about regarding the lack of communication prior to this point, more or less with the city and county of Denver. Of course, that's always been a nonstop thing. So we asked them to come back with us with an update on that. So that's why we're going to start going meeting by month. We haven't made a firm decision yet on it, but we're going to probably meet in October instead of November. We don't have a date yet. Long story short, real quickly, DI had 85 million passengers in 2025, and we're expected to go to 100 million by 2032. So once again, I will send an email to the council about it for the sake of time so we can get home. So that's all I have.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- A slip any particles Chris just always seven bb brightener boulder initially there was conversation that that was going to. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Pre periods it's going to be charging so not free usual rates for you to they're upgrading gradually the bike racks so. on there so it's at the discretion of the driver after that so uh they're going to wrap the buses and hopefully get that coming here soon uh by end of year but not a whole lot more to talk about right now give you a date on e470 uh has second he has a question about the grand opening of was it

We haven't had that. Finally confirmed, but when that gets finally confirmed, we'll get it on. Oh, thank them.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- Before 70 began construction on the building. So the payment methods are going to have a trailer set up outside for anybody that's actually still physically go and pay me over here. HAB-Jacques Juilland- But until the construction stuff is completed will be down off of South Parker route for the kind of meetings things are going on there. We're not a pretty long meeting up the next one to kind of face on a lot of different areas, including some of the things that stuff is going on. HAB-Charlotte Pitts- And since

Well, there's a lot to report, but I'll just, the most important thing for this group to know is that Madcock has a new Adams County staff member in charge of it. Her name is Brayden Nicholson, and she's replacing Michelle Riccio. And so if just, don't be surprised to hear from Madcock. It's a new person out there. And yeah, she's just getting started, but I think she'll do great.

Any other Board of Commission updates? All right. Any council discussion items?

Suicide prevention for next month.

Any objection? Other discussion items? I do want to bring forward a resolution on the ballot question. We've done that with every other ballot question. We've had a resolution in support.

You don't have to vote for it. Just to clarify the ballot question.

The one that was approved last week. We have a second reading on it next week. And then a resolution I'd like to add to go with it.

Yeah, I want to do it.

The objection? You don't have to vote for it.

Yeah, that's good. All right.

If there's nothing else, then thank you all very much. Good evening.