City Council - workshop

So we'll move forward. Any questions about the update agenda? All right. So just some housekeeping for the formal agenda tonight. I have John down for the land acknowledgement. Item 7A is Women's Equality Day. 7B is National Suicide Prevention Week. Chris had asked for that one, but he won't be here. So someone else want to read that one?

I'll do this.

All right. And then we have a quasi-judicial public hearing. There are a few motions associated with that. It is for 140th Avenue in Washington, the Creekside Gardens. So 10A1, A2, A3, and A4. Sign up for a couple of those.

You want to start with all of them? No. Vote one and three.

One and three, that leaves two and four.

Sure, I'll do two. Second and four.

Yeah, teamwork, there we go.

All right, and then we have 14A, which is amending the ordinance. It is a second reading. So Roberta, I have you for that one. Then we have 14B, which is also a second reading. So I have Devin for that. 14C, also Devin. And then 14D is the resolution supporting the ballot question. Who would like to read that one? All right, Dave, I got you. And then we have 14E is John. All right. Anything from you, Tammy?

One very brief thing. You'll recall that 27J reached out about doing sort of a joint information sharing, learning together. We do have them scheduled. We have them scheduled on the agenda for September 1st. We have gotten clarification from them just today that they will just be joining you for the meal before the meetings. They won't be staying into the meeting itself. We will attach their goals to the, we'll post your dinner in a slightly different way They are hoping to have some active conversation with the council, including giving each of you sharing a little bit about your roles, hearing from the school board members, and then you all sharing, and then spending some time just talking about where our work collides, they say in a good way, pressure points and missed opportunities. So it will be just an open kind of forum dinner, relationship building, but they do have some general objectives that we'll share for the conversations during dinner, but we'll pull them off of the formal agenda for September 1st.

Great. Tammy? For me tonight, thank you.

Come on, you have to have something.

It's your last meeting.

I tried to get a resolution. Tammy didn't want to do a resolution, so during your comments this evening, feel free

Oh, I've got a comment.

All right, let's jump right in. We have the community survey recommendation.

So Rob Kolstad is representing a larger group. This is an item that's in the strategic plan. So he's going to provide just a status update, get some feedback from the council so that their strategic plan operating team can continue to work in a way that's in alignment with the council's goals.

Thank you. Good evening. And given that I assume there's interest in not per se my item, but the item after this, I'm going to move through my presentation with pace, but please feel free to stop me if you have questions. We are, as Tansy said, here to present some research and ultimately kind of get your direction on next steps for the survey. From an agenda, we want to start with just a little bit of grounding for those of you that maybe haven't seen or have only seen one or two surveys. A little bit of the background of what we've done provide a high level. I'll probably go through this pretty quick, but some of the research that our team did and some of the findings that we were able to work through and then ultimately get to some kind of light recommendations of key considerations for next steps. So again, from background information, Citi has historically conducted a statistically significant community survey by professional survey firms. So that's just kind of standard of what we've done, which is fairly common in local governments. Our timing has varied. Recently, we've done those on a kind of a biannual basis. There was a time where we were almost doing them every year. We took a break, I think, during COVID and didn't do one for three years. So timing has generally been to that every year to every other year framework. Last time we did one was 2005. Past surveys include questions about service satisfaction. So, you know, really kind of a barometer of the services that we're providing. We would use it to get insight on program or facility usage, communications, and also do some, you know, those are kind of looking backwards or how things are going right now. We would also use the survey for more proactive type of questions saying, hey, what type of resources or amenities would you like to see in the community? We'd also always include demographics to make sure that we can achieve that statistical significance. The other thing I wanted to highlight is we have tried to create some level of consistency with some questions so you can do some longitudinal analysis and say, hey, where were we two years ago, four years ago, and track your progress. And then at times we've done targeted surveys, either kind of at the community level or specific to master plans or those kinds of things. So, like I said, every other year, but we have deviated from that in the past for specific topic matters. Then this last one I want to point out. I think we recognize that there are opportunities to better leverage the survey results. I actually think that's part of the reason why this was identified as an action in your strategic plan is a recognition of, hey, this could be a really valuable tool and we maybe aren't using it to the best of our ability. So I think you'll see that theme throughout my comments today. So, as Tansy shared, this is an action strategic plan. The wording is listed up there. I would like to recognize the other team members who are with me. And we talked about who should present this. And I said, hey, it'd be great if everybody did this. And then I step out of the room and they're like, hey, Rob, we decided you're going to present it. So, but they were gracious enough to come. Kai with the police department, Erica Sena and CMO, Erica Bernard-Hollandshad, who's in communications, couldn't be here tonight. Todd Rulo in infrastructure couldn't be here tonight, and Jenny Dowdell from recreation. So really appreciated their dedication and thought and consideration as we worked through this. So one of the things we started with as a group was we used our first couple of meetings to really talk about, hey, what are we really like? Let's not jump to solutions. Let's figure out what we're trying to accomplish. And so that's kind of the goals that are listed here. I won't read them to you, but I will note that like the last four, again, to harken back to that theme of leveraging the results, the last four of our goals are really not about designing the survey or implementing the survey. It's really what you do with the results afterwards. And so those were those, at least for our team, really resonated the importance of taking the crafting the survey the right way. So it's useful and then using it in a way that's beneficial to the organization, the community. Just a quick update on our action plan. Last week when you went through the strategic plan, you may remember that this action, due to my poor leadership, was in the yellow category. We were about a month behind. We had hoped to have this discussion with you all kind of Q2 of this year, and so we're, I guess at this point now, almost two months behind. I do apologize for that, but we started off with discussion research, defining those key considerations, and then wanted to get a touch point with you to get some feedback because one of the next things we want to do is we need to go to RFP. Our previous survey firm, ETC, who presented the last survey, we'd been with for five years. They were on a five-year contract, so we're due to go for another RFP, and we want to make sure that the scope of that RFP reflects this work and your direction. before we move forward. So again, looking for your direction tonight so that we can, as a next step, issue that RFP and then implement based on your direction. Let's see. So these are the areas of research and consideration. So as a group, we kind of spent those first couple of meetings saying, hey, what are the key considerations that we think we should be working through or talking about or researching in what comes to surveys? And so timing was a core one. The audience who we're trying to reach. The structure of how the survey is aligned or structured the questions. And then the questions, the specific things you're trying to ask. And then this last one, which again, to go back to that common theme of how you use the survey, utilization and communication, both internally in the organization, as well as externally within the community. And again, trying to get to this core question of how to best use the survey to assist decision making and leveraging that results. So actually, there was a lot of overlap around the timing and the audience research and consideration. I'm not going to read this all to you. Most of this stuff is summarized in your staff report. I will say one of the highlights in this area was exploring opportunity for different formats of a survey. in a way to try to reduce barriers and increase participation, meeting people where they are, while at the same time maintaining the statistical significance of the survey. And so for us, it's like, how do we cast a very, very broad net and make sure that we're doing so in a way that maintains that statistical significance, that demographic representation that's so important so that You as leaders, when you look at the survey, us as staff, when we're reviewing it, know this is truly a representative sample of the community. It doesn't reflect some bias of some group that just happened to fill out the survey. This truly reflects the interests of our community. In the structure and the questions, again, from a highlighting standpoint, which I think we generally did this, but I think there's more opportunity to really think about not the organization and the structure and the services that we provide, you know, how we organize them, but more how the community experiences them and really think about kind of that human-centered design or how do, you know, how We want to make sure that the survey is organized in a way that for the average citizen, it makes sense and it's easy to understand and it imparts upon them an understanding of what's being asked. So again, we can get better participation and better results. And then around utilization and communication, again, we broke this up into internal and external factors. So for internal, we really wanted to focus on building systems that quickly and meaningfully integrate results into organizational understanding and decision making. I'll be really honest, the survey is something I've managed for a while, I inherited it from Joyce, and we have not done a great job at this. We did the survey, we focused on getting questions, and then we did the survey, and we got it, and we looked at it, we presented it, and then we were kind of on to the next thing. And I think that's a missed opportunity I'll talk externally here in a minute, but internally to talk to the organization about our successes and areas that we think we can improve upon. Maybe there's insights within the organization about why this particular service area fared well or didn't fare well in the survey. And so I'm not going to read through. You can see some of the ideas that we've had. But we really think there's benefit in leaning in after the survey results internally to use it as a tool for the time that it's relevant. And then externally, I really appreciate our SPOT team and their approach in thinking about how do you leverage the survey results to tell a story and to build trust. You know, tell a story maybe of something that's already happening, but nobody really knows about it. And the survey adds, you know, some level of validity or a data point to that particular survey. service provision or uh one of the team members had this idea of the you said that we did a campaign using the survey um as an opportunity to say hey this was something that we got feedback from you all and here's an example of how that is manifesting in our services and in the way that we um the way that we're working with the community. So I just think these ideas were really, really exciting and I think are what got the staff team excited about, hey, this isn't just a thing that we do every other year and we present and we move on. It's a real tool that we can use to help improve how we do what we do. So sorry, I breezed through that really quick. Happy to go back to any of that stuff later on in the presentation. So these are our kind of recommended key considerations for the survey RFP and how we want to implement it. So I'll start with those first two, the timing and audience. You know, we do think it's generally a best practice to do one every other year. And then one of the considerations we had is writing an RFP that allows for easily implementable with the contractor targeted surveys. So, you know, hypothetically, we do a major survey every other year. but they know that there's an easy way to trigger a particular targeted survey on a particular issue in the community with a fairly short notice. We thought you might want to consider transitioning from kind of the we historically kind of done around the end of the year and then as a lead into the retreat. Spring seemed to be a fairly common time to do surveys. Things are a bloom. You're not dealing with family or holidays. It seemed to be positive from a participation standpoint, also just from a community. People are out and about in the community. You know, you would you would lose potentially you lose that as an alignment, you know, lead into the retreat. But, you know, that lost opportunity could become something else like after you could have a discussion at the retreat that helps inform some of the questions that go into the survey. So, you know, maybe an opportunity lost as a lead into the retreat, but an opportunity gained coming out of the retreat. And then we do think it's important to continue to focus on a statistically significant representative sampled survey, and at the same time trying to find ways to increase outreach to underrepresented and difficult to reach community members. From a structure and questioning standpoint, I won't dwell on this too much. We think, again, leveraging around the services and the community orientation, not the organizational department makes sense. We thought there's an opportunity to capture your mission values. We've already committed to integrating aspects of the strategic plan measures into the survey. and then explore some level of customization based on interest in capturing incomplete results. So this idea was like, if I've got a lot of interest in a particular area, like let me dive into that area and maybe I don't have to fill out the rest of the survey because I don't really care and being able to capture those results. So that's something that we would need to explore with the survey firm, again, to maintain that statistical significance. But that was a consideration we wanted to include with this next solicitation. And then finally, utilization and communication. I think I probably talked about this enough. We want to take this seriously after the next survey, both with council and with the organization and the community, find ways to leverage and make those results more relevant to the community. So I have, this is my last slide. We just had some facilitated discussion questions for you all. Ultimately, and I'm happy to go back to the, you know, the recommended considerations. Ultimately, we're just looking for your direction. As I said, the next step would be an RFP. By virtue of me doing this presentation, I think I've committed the rest of the SPOT team to continue on the work. So, and they've expressed an interest. They've really enjoyed it. So we want to EVOLVE THESE EFFORTS WITH THE NEXT ITERATION OR UPDATE OF THE STRATEGIC PLAN AND THEN IMPLEMENT IT BASED ON YOUR DIRECTION. SO HAPPY TO TAKE ANY QUESTIONS, BUT REALLY JUST LOOKING FOR YOUR DIRECTION AT THIS POINT.

OKAY. LOVE ALL THE RECOMMENDATIONS. YOU SAID THAT WE DID IT. THAT'S KIND OF A FUN THING. THAT'S GREAT, FOLLOWING THAT PROGRESS. I THINK THE PUBLIC-FACING DASHBOARD IS A GREAT IDEA, AND I THINK THERE'S A LOT OF WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THIS YESTERDAY. across the city, we could do more of that. So having it even integrated into our survey, I mean, love to see that. As far as the underrepresented and difficult to reach, what do you mean by that?

You know, I think while we get a representative sample, I do think our survey generally skews a little bit. It's harder to reach younger, you know, I think young families, younger folks in the community. So want to try to, you know, again, just make it, we talked about this in preparing for this presentation, like the statistically significant sample is important to us. And we want to try to explore with our contractor creative and new ways that people are making this type of a survey instrument readily accessible to everybody in their community.

So another example might be is making sure hunters are as representative as homeowners. So the survey consultant helps with that. But if they end up with not enough surveys in certain demographics, they'll wait the results to reflect And so ultimately you want to avoid that and get as much sampling as you can across all of the demographics.

I like the working families, you know, single parents, people that are just busy with life and they don't have the time or the energy figuring out ways to get a hold of them and get their input because they're the ones that probably need, we need to hear from the most. So appreciate you taking that Edward.

Jessen. Yeah, could you remind me what languages the surveys goes out in?

They do it, I think we, I'll have to confirm this, but I believe we did it in English and Spanish with the ability to, based on the current contractor, to do many different languages, but that one was more of a, the other languages were more of an opt-in, hey, I need this, I need this accommodation in this language, but I will confirm that for you.

Yeah, just to have a better understanding of the options for language would be helpful. And then feedback, I really love the idea of the dashboards that you mentioned. Is that going to be something that an outside consultant would provide, or is that something our internal staff would work on?

Yeah, that's something we need to explore. I was imagining it to be external. We are exploring software and dashboard for the strategic plan, which I think a part of our – we haven't gone to – it's included in your 2027 budget recommendation that you haven't seen yet. But one of the things that we want to – when we go to RFP, assuming that's funded, when we go to RFP, we want to see what options they have for building out public-facing dashboards and using that as a tool to manage the plan and creating public-facing dashboards. So this is a roundabout way of saying that may be a tool that we can use for the survey. The other option is when we go to RFP, When we go for proposals for surveying firms, some of these firms may have evolved their own dashboard as well as an add-on. And so that's something we would explore. I guess to answer your question, which was, are we doing that internally or externally? I think we were managing to try to find an external partner to help us do that.

Okay. And then I also really like the close the loop idea of kind of like CRM contact events. And do we have the tools, like, are we able to do that? Or is that also an external?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So how would we.

close the loop, I guess, like, you know, in terms of following up with the people who took the survey and letting them know, like you mentioned in the presentation.

Yeah, I don't, I guess that wasn't really what we were, we were more thinking more broadly about like, hey, the survey result identified, the survey identified hypothetically, you know, real dissatisfaction with the level of potholes. Like we've made a concerted effort to push out this type of a program and more broadly communicate that.

uh externally in the community thank you are there any other questions is there any objection to the proposed plan thank you thank you very much we're excited all right next is to talk about a proposed moratorium on data centers yeah so this is a follow-up from your july 21st discussion so the council

essentially gave direction to draft a moratorium that would include data centers. There was a lot of broad discussion in that conversation, so tonight's meeting is hopefully to get specific direction around those parameters so that can be built, written, added to a moratorium to be adopted against media. So this will be a bit of a tag team between city planning and city attorney's office. And I believe, Mike, are you picking up?

Jessica.

Jessica. Jessica Whitney.

All right. Well, good evening, Council Mayor. Let's see. As Tansy mentioned, we last discussed this on July 21st, and we are now coming back to get those more narrow specifics regarding the moratorium. So there are really kind of four issues that we're looking to get direction on tonight. And these are things that will sort of form our moratorium and provide our reasons for the moratorium. So I'm just gonna go through all of these and just ask questions and hopefully get some answers and then we can build all these into the moratorium language. So the first question is, and these are essentially what is council looking for? So does council want to, are we looking to see what the state does? Do we want to wait to the end of legislative session? Is that one of the things that council is going to take into account when coming up with ultimate regulations for the data set up? And feel free to speak up anytime that I kind of have one of these.

I'll go first.

Go ahead, John.

Thank you, Jessica, and Mike. Thank you for your presentation. Yeah, and I'm on record saying I am for the moratorium. And part of my reasoning is we do have midterm elections. I'm going to say this in my council comments this evening as well. No, we're 70 days out from the midterms. Um, you know, we're going to have a new governor, new attorney general, we're going to have a new state ledge. So, you know, we need to give time for the election to go through. They get sworn in plus, you know, the chance to legislate. Um, I plan on testifying down at the Capitol, uh, at the next session to, um, So the state, we can get something passed. So that's part of the reason. The one year will give us time for the state, and then we can adapt our ordinances and resolutions as needed in line with the state to ensure that we have some protections for our neighbors.

Justin? Yeah, just to add to that, I do think that factoring in the upcoming state legislative session would be a good idea. And I know each week that we get closer, I hear more and more about proposed legislation, and it's most likely going to impact the way that we can legislate well. And so I think that it can be concurrent where we do other things, like stakeholder research and stuff. We don't have to wait for the legislative session to be done to begin the process. But at the very least, I think we need to factor in, you know, one, what comes out of the new legislative session next year.

So I have a question. If, you know, I think there's going to be some changes as far as bills. with the new legislation. But my question is really more about, like, would creating ordinances or regulations now be able to, like, and maybe this isn't the best place to ask this question, but would it be able to influence those types of bills or would we be wasting our time if we started to draft those things and then they all get kind of crumbled by some sort of larger bill that's passed that we would have to follow. Overall, I think we should take a pause and do the moratorium, but I'm just wondering as far as us doing a moratorium and having maybe 12 to 18 months, and I've talked to both of you at length about that whole thing and what that looks like, would it be beneficial for us to work on regulations in In the meantime, or should we, I feel like, should we wait or is that, does that make sense?

Yes, it does. And let me make sure I understand your question. So essentially what you're asking is if we make regulations now, and then in 12 months or whatever the end of the legislative session is, the state passes some sort of comprehensive legislation on data centers, would those overrule our Ordinances. Yeah. Okay. And I think the answer to that is I, it depends. I'm assuming the state would say that this isn't a matter of statewide concern. And if they do say that, then yes, there must be choose to challenge that finding, then that those state laws regarding data centers would override our ordinances.

Okay, and so my next have to be read with more concurrence.

Some of the ordinances may not be affected by that. And you can always amend ordinance to in response to that.

Okay. And my other, I guess like, this is more like a, like our ability to influence that. Do you think that Thornton's ability to influence statewide legislation would be, would it be beneficial for us to start getting ahead of ordinances and kind of creating a narrative with our city and, you know, that influences other cities to like... kind of step up and make some decisions because it just feels like we're doing this and we're going to be waiting and you know who knows what's going to happen and we only have a limited amount of time that we can be in this moratorium status before it starts to look like we're just pumping brakes all the time and not really making definitive decisions.

We could probably reach out to our, we don't have our state lobbyists here tonight in terms of what's the best legislative strategy. I think if we did have ordinances that were on the books, we could certainly educate legislators about what we had done. I think as Council Member Martinez kind of suggested, I do believe we would begin, I think we anticipate that we would begin research as the moratorium began. We can certainly, as a part of your legislative strategy, talk with the council about what we want to advocate for during the legislative session, partially based on that research. I don't know that it would necessarily require us to have drafted ordinances, but certainly we could do that. We could get feedback from the state, our state lobbyists, that they'd If they believe there'd be one course that would be more persuasive than another. Generally, in our lobbying efforts, generally are coming with a policy platform, not with draft, you know, necessarily drafted legislation. I don't know.

Yeah, I think having said that, if we start our research right now, we see something that is very serious, we'd be ready to lobby to have that included in legislation. So, I think that research now and the comparison of what ranks are out there is a very good thing to start early and be prepared to lobby and draft.

And so the question one says, does council want to wait for the end of the legislative session? Does that mean do we want to wait and do it and do the moratorium until the end of this legislative session? Or do we don't wait until the end of the legislative session to do the moratorium?

No, these are essentially what is the moratorium for? So these are reasons that we would include in any potential moratorium of why Thornton is choosing to put a moratorium in place. And that's a very good clarifying question. I appreciate that. So this is what we are saying is in our basis for the moratorium, one of the things that we are waiting for is to see essentially how the state legislative session shakes out. So that's one of our reasons.

Okay. Thank you.

Sure.

Question. on the moratorium, is there, if there's no, I guess, pending application for data centers, which I think is what you said, Mike, right? Correct. Can we still start working on legislation policy around data centers without having a moratorium?

Yes.

So in that case, if we started working on legislation and then an application came in, what would happen? While we're figuring that out.

that would kind of kick into that doctrine that we discussed on the 21st, which is the pending ordinance doctrine. which is where we would tell an applicant, hey, we are actively working on regulations for data centers. Council has directed staff to bring this forward. We're not going to review your application until we get these regulations in place so that we do have something to analyze it under so that our regulations are in place as we go through your application.

Okay. And then as far as... Home rule goes, how does that play in here? If we come up with a policy, the state enacts something and it overrides or affects us materially, what do we do then?

That's where that issue of whether or not the state determines that this is a matter of statewide concern. So if the legislature declares that it is a matter of statewide concern, which can be challenged, but if the state concludes that, then if they're in any situation where our regulations would conflict with what the state did, the state's regulations would override ours.

But they could adopt legislation and just continue to call it a matter of mixed state and local concern. And again, as long as we're not in conflict, we can have our own regs that may be more stringent.

So is it? So it is possible for us to get started with legislation, policy development on our end without having a moratorium. And so I'm curious if that's even an option for the council to if we're accomplishing the same thing and we're taking action now, instead of, you know, waiting for an election and waiting for a legislative session and kind of the optics of that, if we actually did the work now.

I think that's a better plan anyway. I think that's a better plan anyway, except the concern is that we have concerns over resources or land use. then the broader picture shouldn't be a moratorium over data centers as a whole. It should be a broader picture over what the resources are being allocated to in general. So we can adopt legislation and things around putting caps on water usage and putting John Potter, Land use requirements around certain things, similar to what we've already done for the drone delivery systems and ideas like that. It's going to be a lot better consensus and it actually would be a more long term solution to the problem than just saying, hey, I don't like this one type of business coming into the city.

John Potter, Yeah, I think that we need to you know, it goes beyond just looking at the legislative side of things. And I think it was in the present, maybe it's item four there, the public engagement. And so, you know, I think we need to give ourselves ample opportunity to do proper public engagement to help guide some of that legislative process as well. And so enacting a moratorium would allow us to do this public engagement side of things before jumping directly into one of the many different elements. I mean, there's lots of different ways that we want to look at the regulations when it comes to these data centers and picking just one element in terms of this alternative approach where we pick, look at the legislative side and not do a moratorium where we're negating the other elements, right? The public engagement side of things is not necessarily tied to the legislative. Like we can't, do public engagement and what that doctor and you're talking about doesn't apply to anything but the look at legislative policy right. Versus the act of doing public engagement to inform legislative policy.

It would apply the the entire time that staff is working on any type of ordinance and as part of working on that ordinance would involve public engagement accounts directed that so the entire time that staff is working through the details, what you want to regulate, what type of public, you know, all of that, that's when the pending ordinance doctrine would sort of apply. It's not a set timeframe. It's just from the time that council directs staff to actively start working on regulations. So long as, you know, we're actively working on that and it's not taking an unreasonable amount of time, that's when the pending ordinance doctrine would apply from then until you all pass an ordinance.

Right, but we would have to choose a specific element of legislation to look at to get that process started. Not right. We'd have to look at a specific land use code changes, for example.

No, it would just be investigate, you know, say, for example, you want it, you want staff to investigate what zoning district would this be appropriate in? Because that's going to be part of the logistics, the ordinance, what type of it's all all encompassing? Are we looking at, you know, the setbacks? Are we looking at the the buffering, are we looking at noise impacts, are we looking at all of that as part of the research of what would go into the ordinance. So as long as staff is working on that research for that ordinance, that doctrine applies. It's not tied to a specific aspect of the ordinance, it's tied more to the ordinance as a whole.

Okay. So what we have right now, though, is an opportunity to get started and meet much more immediately, because we're talking about a moratorium. Whereas if we, we would have to have some kind of vision for the ordinance in mind to get things forward. So I think we're already more advanced on this moratorium, versus going back a few steps to look at an ordinance when they effectively going to have the same same outcome. So I don't see any reason to delay that and change, change direction when I think the purpose of this discussion was to talk about, follow up on the direction we already gave.

And just so a moratorium, it would have a specific timeframe. So council directed on the 21st, 12 months. So we would have a set timeframe. It would have specific, it would only apply, it could, depending on construction, apply to only certain types of data centers. It allows you to put all of those specifics into a document, whereas the pending ordinance doctrine would apply sort of carte blanche to any sort of data center that were to try to come in. It wouldn't have a set time frame, and it's much more amorphous concept than a moratorium.

I have Drew and then Roberta.

Jessica, can you repeat that last part, the difference between a pending ordinance and a moratorium? Because I feel like that's, in my mind, that's swapped in how you describe that.

Yeah, I can try. So a moratorium would be an ordinance that you all pass that says for 12 months, we are not going to process any applications for a certain type of data center. And the reason why we are doing that is to wait for the end of the legislative session, see what the state does to engage the public to, you know, it kind of lists out all those reasons. And it's, it's a concrete ordinance. It's a, it's a thing that you can point to. Depending ordinance doctrine is just an amorphous legal idea that staff can't or staff will not look at this application and review it because council has already directed us to go out and draft an ordinance and come up with regulations. So we have staff can't review it because we don't have the regulations in place to review it against. So it is sort of just exists out there. It doesn't have a set timeframe. It doesn't apply to a specific type of data center. it will just exist until council passes an ordinance. And again, as long as that is a reasonable amount of time.

And if we decided instead to pass a resolution to direct staff to enact ordinance, would that now set a similar, you know, we can put a similar timeframe and it answers that question. And it's not as a, I guess what I'm getting at here is we have the opportunity as a city to set precedents and be leaders regionally on this topic. What I see us doing right now is kind of joining, I guess, lack of a better term, a bandwagon. And so I'd like to set the precedents. I'd like us to actually move forward and direct our staff to begin doing this work without a moratorium, which accomplishes the same mission. Is that accurate?

I think maybe more, maybe simply and tie back to the slide. I think what we're saying is that certainly the work we would be doing and some of the feedback on the research and next steps on developing regulations, which we hope to get that feedback tonight, is largely related to one and four. I think what the moratorium helps us do is really narrow in on the impact in terms of number two and three because we don't have, we don't define some of these terms and stuff in our code. And so it allows the laser focus what applications we maybe would continue to receive or continue to process, which versus those that would be impacted by the moratorium. So then I think the moratorium, am I saying that right, correctly? Like I think the advantage of a moratorium is really, certainly we want, additional feedback for items one and four, which will inform the process of developing regulations. And I think we would want that and either path. I think the moratorium would really help us narrow in on the scope in terms of questions two and three.

Got it. So did you watch what happened in Aurora recently?

I didn't watch, but I have read articles about this.

They didn't pass the moratorium, but instead they passed a resolution to get to work immediately. So that's where I'm coming from here.

I think they banned evaporative coolers, and they also set the areas where data centers could go by ordinance.

Right. So what I'm asking is, are we able to do something similar here?

So from a procedural standpoint, the direction given to staff for this evening was to look at language for a moratorium.

Right. Well, the reason I'm bringing that up is because I believe typically legally.

Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Moratoriums are used to stop something that comes in. But right now, there is nothing to end.

But what I'm saying procedurally in order to change that approach would take a majority to switch that approach. So I think some of the questions that are being asked tonight, we are not voting tonight on a moratorium. We still have time to have more discussion, which looking at the time, I think we're going to need more time to have more discussion. Hopefully next week we can add some time to the agenda for that. but to answer the questions one and four specifically tonight, if we can, and then start working through two and three for those that support the moratorium before we have a vote on it. Because you're absolutely right, it can change, but it requires a majority to change to move to a resolution versus a moratorium, but those questions still have to be answered, whether it's a resolution or a moratorium. Does that make sense? Okay. Tammy?

I just wanted to say, one does not preclude the other.

Right.

So right now, we're technically under case law that says if a data center comes in and counsel is considering an ordinance, we don't have to process that application. We can continue our work on new regulations. But at any time, council says, wait a minute, now we've heard what the legislation session is going to do. We'd like to put a moratorium in place and wait until the end of that before we finalize our regs or for whatever valid purpose, you could put a moratorium in place at any time if you figured, hey, we really want more time to study what comes out of the legislatures. But right now we are protected because council is having us consider regulations. And so we either need guidance on where you want us to go with regulations, or if you want all this done to consider the legislative session, public engagement, et cetera, you would probably need more time for that. And a moratorium may be appropriate. Yeah.

So for the purposes of tonight's discussion, if we can focus on one and four for now, the direction has been given to move the moratorium language. I'm not hearing yet to change that. So I don't want to focus on that piece of it. Let's focus on the information that can help no matter which direction we end up going. I have Roberta, then John, then Justin, then Devin, then Cherish. Roberta.

I was just going to say what she said, because that's what I was asking. And I had an email sent to council about us being in pending ordinance doctrine right now. So just so folks know, whoever's listening on Zoom or here in the gallery here, if we got one today, we wouldn't have it.

we would tell them council's considering regulations and we can't process the application at this time. Now, can you get a legal challenge at any point against moratoriums or this pending ordinance doctrine? Yeah, you can. But I think we'd be on solid ground to tell them we're considering regulations right now. We're not processing applications under the pending legal ordinance doctrine until such time as we get our regs in place.

So given that, how careful do we have to be on timing with... you know, just some of the things that are going on as far as legislative session and then wanting to make sure we have enough time. If we, you know, that was kind of my complaint at the very beginning of this conversation is like, if we go with pending ordinance doctrine, does that buy us more time? It seems like it doesn't. It doesn't matter one way or the other. So that's kind of where I was just trying to figure things out for myself.

Yeah. So, I mean, if you're working on regulations, we're on solid legal ground, not process with a data center application when it comes in. But if you want to wait till the legislative session, you can put a moratorium in place, see what happens. We can still work on some other stuff simultaneously and then react accordingly. But if we're working on our regulations now without a moratorium, we are ready to put them in place. You can always react to the legislation and change your ordinances after the fact. Thanks. You're safe right now is what I'm saying. But if you want to put it in place for an extended period of time and just rely on it, that's possible.

Yeah, thank you for the clarification, Tammy, as well. You know, with respect to Drew, you do have a couple of good points there, but still, you know, and I know the bandwagon, I get what you're saying there, but, you know, at the end of the day, you know, why I want this moratorium, you know, when, you know, Tammy, you and Jessica have told us on a legal standpoint, we're in a stronger position with a moratorium in place, then, you know, that just solidifies my feeling about this, that we're going to be covered legally so we can do what we need to do. And more importantly, we'll go to number four now. So the extended time of public engagement. That's going to give time, like I said, for the election to take place, for us to contact our state legislators, state senators, state representatives, and us on council. We can have meetings with the community about data centers and what we should do and what we shouldn't do. And that's very important because my biggest concern which I've seen throughout the country, and I've been following this before I even decided to run for council, is some of these developers are pushing these municipalities to enact non-disclosure agreements, NDAs. And that's a no-go for me. I will tell you that right now. There is no way I will ever support us as a city going into an NDA with any developer.

I mean, this has to be a transparent... We're focusing on what we're talking about today. And we haven't gone beyond the first slide yet either, which goes into a lot more detail about these.

Okay, so I'm going to stop there. But still, we need more public engagement, you know, with whoever is in state ledge and with us on council. And that's what I want to see happen. Thank you.

Justin. Okay, real quick. So I think there's more on the slides following this or helping that. So I just want to just make this comment that I think that we look we'll be better off, the public will be better off if we define this problem better. And I think that's what the moratorium does. It puts boundaries on what we're actually considering. And it also, it guarantees that we have an component of public engagement in there, which I don't think is something that we should just wave off. And we don't always do higher levels of public engagement when it comes to ordinances, when it comes to land use changes, zoning changes. There's different degrees and I think given the interest from the community on this it would make a lot of sense to really codify that into our decision and so yeah I like the idea of the moratorium we have it explicitly right now is one of the reasons why we are taking this action is because we want to engage and define the extent of the engagement of the community so just wanted to make that comment and and I think we should. HAB-Masyn Moyer- launch it before we decide on the other items up there.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- And Devon and cherish and Andrew.

HAB-Danny Teodoru- The two questions, one of which is your number three states that it's applicable to new construction or prevent as far as expansion. HAB-Danny Teodoru- As far as like what we want to go with that if we have something that's already in place, which we do, we already have a couple of data centers are there that are built in. HAB-Jacques Juilland, sitting there, one of them right now is currently vacant and it's a pretty large ones 291,000 square foot. HAB-Jacques Juilland, If a tenant wanted to take on that. Is there anything going to stop us even with a moratorium in place from say no, you can't do that because the buildings already built the data centers already done. It's just more of hooking up equipment in that facility.

HAB-Juliette Boone, Yeah, I think that that could be built into the moratorium language itself. Yes.

I wouldn't want that because then that building owner is going to be distraught for half of a building that has absolutely nothing going on in that building.

And yes, I don't know if that building could also be used for something else or if it's solely...

The specific building I'm talking about is the Avaya building. Half the building doesn't have windows. It was built intentionally for a data center. So it would become basically a giant brick that's sitting there unless somebody wanted to come through and do construction on it and rebuild it.

I thought we had already come to consensus on this, but I feel that that's the best way to protect us at this moment would be to, you know, continue on that path. And I would like to see some really heavy public engagement because sometimes I feel like we escape the public and that we really don't listen to them.

And we actually, one of our last slides is all types of public engagement for council to review.

I WAS GOING TO TALK ABOUT PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AS WELL. LOVE THAT. LOVE TO SEE THAT. LOOK FORWARD TO HEAR MORE ABOUT IT. IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE IN PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT THAT WOULD HAPPEN?

WE HAVE A WHOLE SLIDE THAT GOES THROUGH THAT. SOME OPTIONS THAT COUNCIL CAN CONSIDER AS MORE ENHANCED ENGAGEMENT THAT THE 12 MONTHS WOULD potentially allow staff to go through hiring, even potentially a consultant to help us along with that as process.

What I'm saying is like, do we need, could we still do public engagement without a moratorium?

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. All right.

So to go back to this, we have a lot of slides to get through. We only have 20 minutes left before we have to get to the formal meeting. A lot of these things work, whether it's a moratorium or a resolution. And so if we can look at it from that angle, that what would we like to see in the outcomes of having these conversations, whether it's a moratorium or a resolution, that can be determined at a later point. Right now, the direction is moratorium. As we work through this, that could change. But the outcomes is what we're looking at now. Does that make sense?

It does, yeah. I appreciate the help and the questions.

So let's go to slide two. So the second issue that we are here to discuss is, you know, as we discussed on the 21st, there are a few different generally accepted kind of types of data centers ranging from the edge micro centers to which are fairly small and I believe would even the one that we have done.

Yeah, like a small, like a business, simple business.

All the way to the hyperscale, which are the ones that you see on the news. Those are the giant types of data centers. And they're generally categorized by the size of the building and the energy draw. And so we've got the edge of the micro centers that demand about, you know, half to one megawatt and are about the, the energy of 752,000 homes. And we go larger to enterprise, which are between one and 10 megawatts and will, which equates to 10,000 to 12,000 homes. We have the regional co-location, which we're getting larger now, which are 10 to 50 megawatts, which is the equivalent of 50,000 to 60,000 homes. Or then we have the hyperscale, which 75 to 700 plus megawatts, anywhere from 700,000 to 800,000 homes. And those are the large ones. And so taking this from the concept of trying to find guidance for the moratorium, which we understand that that might change, But what types of data centers would counsel be looking to, you know, to sort of stop the development of through the moratorium? Evan?

I mean, I think the obvious one is obviously hyperscale. That's the one that gets conflated the biggest and the one that everybody freaks out about. I... PB Harmon Zuckerman, I understand a lot of the pushbacks. These things are huge and massive and they are more easy in a lot of cases, but they also require acres and acres and acres of land to be able to build on PB Harmon Zuckerman, Which I don't think would come to Jordan anyway, but I think that's a good starting point. I think we should be careful with some of the other ones because even like the regional co location ones. PB Harmon Zuckerman, Except the one that we currently have available is considered would be considered in that same kind of classification, but based off the size so

I had a quick question. What is the size of the Google facility that's currently in operation? Where does that fall under?

I don't know. I know it's on the smaller side. I think we got an email about it not too long ago.

It's probably... Yeah.

Probably between those enterprise, regional, co-located. Certainly don't have a hyperscale in Thorne.

I would agree with Devin. I think starting off at high-end hyperscale for sure is where most of the current issues are related.

Yeah, I definitely agree on the hyperscale. You know, this was an interesting option here i i think that the regional one should also be considered i think those are some pretty large facilities but i do share the same concerns that uh councilman bird brought up about the existing facility and so i would definitely be open to examining the existing facility that's already built out any other ones that might be um affected by this the ones that already built out um But I don't know if we should completely bypass the regional co-located facilities, especially if they're new buildings that could be impacting new sets of neighbors, new parts of the city. Those are some, I think, people have definitely reached out to me with some concerns. So something to consider.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yeah, I agree with Councilman Martinez as well to add a regional co-location in addition to what Devin Drew said with the hyperscale. The hyperscale, they are very, you know, very intensive operation. And I'll stop there.

And just to, I did find, at least based on size, that Google One kind of falls between that enterprise and the regional co-location.

So I'm hearing kind of consensus for hyperscaler as a focus with some considerations related to regional collocation. I'm wondering if a square footage might be a better way of managing that, maybe 250,000 square feet or 200,000 square feet versus, the data center itself from a land use perspective. I would be interested, though, as we're looking at data centers in general, moratorium or not, that we have maybe some guidance, ordinance language around each of these different uses based on land use. I think that might give us a little bit more ability to understand where things can be located and how the use is, regardless of the size of them.

It also sounds like we might have consensus on exempting existing facilities. I think that's a good approach.

Even the one that's empty?

Yeah, even the one that's empty. Because it's an existing use. Right, it's an existing use and it's been there for a long time. So the impacts on the neighborhood are known. It's the unknown ones that are concerning, I think.

So a question regarding existing buildings. Are we talking about buildings that are designed to be data centers or existing? We have very significant warehouse facilities being constructed as we speak today. I mean, they're not designed necessarily to be data centers, but would those be included or excluded as well? That's a good question.

Maybe pros and cons for that would be helpful for future conversations and whether or not we can point out those two buildings that we know of as specific exemptions. We don't have to answer that necessarily tonight.

Roberta? And then also, can we do anything with water consumption and power usage? As far as because the size of these buildings are...

Yeah, that's going to be discussed sort of at the end of the presentation where we talk about potential regulations. Okay. So, yeah, Mike has a slide on that.

Drew? I mean, I think, going back to the size, I guess, ultimately, it still makes sense to have regulation around all data center uses. So, like, we do need to explore that because, there is there could be an edge where things are getting into like you know between enterprise and regional or these concerns um so i think it would to me it doesn't make sense to not have land use and regulations around smaller data centers that could that could exist but i mean i know the regulations will be different it might be less uh you know less intrusive or whatnot or less restrictive, but it still should be something that's a part of the discussion. Yes.

And the regulations that are created, because right now our code doesn't even truly define data center. It is a word that is used in the code. So we would, our first step would be defining data center and then build our regulations from there. And to your point, they likely would be regulated differently based on size.

And this is not to suggest that, that the scope of the regulatory development would be tied to only those things addressed by a moratorium.

No, it's two things. There's the moratorium and there's the regulation piece. So it sounds like consensus on at least moratorium conversation on hyperscale exempting options and then on regulations looking at the gambit of data center use.

And so now we can sort of move on to the extent and timing of public

So this chart we put together really kind of assumes a 12-month moratorium. Obviously, the timelines could be condensed or expanded if necessary as well. We kind of looked at it two sides. One side is using existing staff we have essentially in their capacities. The one where we really have to look at more structured outreach where it requires additional support, maybe through a consultant. So The items we already have in place, the first one on here is utilizing existing award meetings. We have four award meetings a year, plus we have the four additional community meetings that we offer where these could be discussed. As a case, the four board meetings is more presentation style, of course, and then the other meetings would be more the one-on-one nature that occurs in the other meetings. So that's an option. And that would happen, I'll be honest, regardless of where we go, because those are ongoing conversations we have with folks. Certainly, we could launch a web page online, engaging the public, providing frequently asked questions, surveyed folks as well. We could do a monitored virtual town hall. I know the council does a virtual town hall a year. This could be focused on data centers and uses like this, really have an open monitor so the questions and answers are occurred. It would offer that opportunity for folks citywide to participate. It wouldn't have to be in person, so you could get additional participation at that level as well. Where we get more intensive in the outreach is the format of multi-stational informational open houses where folks go from table to table or speaker to speaker to get information in a more smaller setting. That does provide very good feedback. At those stations, they can provide attendees additional feedback, what they heard from other folks that came up to those stations as well. Then you start getting a facilitated small group where we basically look for folks in the community, also stakeholders, maybe the data center industry as well, and start having those discussions. It's more a very facilitated workshop to really come to some level of compromises where you can develop legislative out of that. And the biggest one would be in what I was doing research is a council directed stakeholder advisory committee, which is probably the most intensive one you could do where council would have a committee that would focus strictly on this particular use in over the whatever month timeline that council wants to do on these type of things. So those are some options. There's a lot of other options as well. when I did the research on this, it's very intense what's out there on different types of, you know, everything from very little to having things go on for years on these type of discussions. So any questions about this or thoughts? Probably move on to the next slide.

Any idea what the cost would be with third-party consultant based on your research?

Kind of depends on how much how much we need their support. If it's one meeting for a couple of meetings, it's not that costly without giving a dollar amount versus having somebody that's along us for a 12 month period, which typically when we have folks with us for that time, you're looking at, you know, $1,500 range to do something like that because of amount of time that they're putting on their, on their, on the shelf to do to support us. If we need, depends on, again, it depends on how much work they're doing on their side too, if they're helping us draft code and other things along the way as well. So.

Yeah, torn on this one, pretty significant cost. And then we pay a lot of consultants for different things. So I'd be curious what the breakdown is based on like one meeting versus, you know, 12 months and if that's a more doable option.

And we can look into that and provide that back to council on what that would look like on a different structure from these to the most, obviously.

I know budget restrictions are a hot topic. Saving money is important. So yeah, I just want to make sure that that's a important part of option two, I guess we'll call it.

Cherish. So would be absolutely if we did an advisory committee.

I think that's our recommendation given other workload and other we have a number of land use regulatory processes that are already being managed by the planning team. So I think that's why they recommended some of these things that are a bigger time commitment, supplementing existing staff given existing workload.

So, you know, I thought the engagement that we had during the Thornton Shopping Center with, I think it was KSU TAB program, I thought that went really well. It was well-received. And I know that that's not something that they do again in this kind of instance, but that's the kind of level I think that would be helpful to know as far as what was effective. I don't know what an equivalent market rate price would be for that level of help, but just to know that would be helpful, like what a good baseline quality of engagement services. We've already been through it. And I can say that at least from all the people in our neighborhood, they enjoyed that. They had good, positive experiences. So I think about it more in terms of what was successful already and what could work in a similar fashion. But I do think that we do need to be cognizant of the price. If we do end up spending any at all extra, we've got to make sure that it's used on effective techniques and So, you know, I don't, I'm not ruling anything off the table, except for just letting you know that I think that if we set the same kind of expectations for what we've already been through at the Thornton Shopping Center, that I think would be adequate or more than adequate for, you know, given the seriousness of this issue.

Roberta? Is there any way we can start? I mean, I know utilizing ward meetings is going to happen by default, but could we start maybe some of these lower level public engagement interventions sooner rather than later? That way we can start to get a temperature check of the community's feelings on a broader scale.

So you got a question?

Like launch a dedicated online public engagement portal with FAQ and surveys? Like, I mean, not like yesterday, like tomorrow or anything, but like just more sooner rather than later, just so we can get like a broader kind of like idea of where the community is on the issue beyond just like the anecdotal things that we hear here and there. That would be helpful for guiding where we move next. If that is to spend, you know, a considerable amount more money on a third party consultant, or if it's to move forward with more, you know, with different types of ordinances. Just a thought I have.

We can certainly look into that, what that timeline would look. It's based on council's direction, what the council desires. We'll certainly do whatever that is.

Evan? I would definitely more toward using the internal resources. I don't think that we necessarily need to bring in outside consultants and pay more money into this. We can do these kind of things. And the idea is that we want to get the feedback from the community, then using our internal resources gives us that best approach. I will also mention that I do kind of find it ironic that we would launch an online public engagement portal and not monitor town hall and data centers to talk about data centers.

So in the interest of time, we only have five minutes left. We need time to have restroom break before we go into, I think, can we pause here? The feedback that I'm hearing for consensus is that there's interest in more options related to community feedback. Some of the questions that still need to be answered and the cost associated with a third party. If it was done internally from what I'm hearing, what resources would that require that you would not be able to do other activities with given the workload that's going on? And so is that something we want to prioritize over other things? And then a timeline associated with potential online activities portal and then we'll have to come back and talk about the rest of it another night does that work for everybody all right we will take a five minute break and see you in chambers