City Council - Regular Meeting

Oh, oh, hey. Oh, oh, oh. Hey. Hey. Hey. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Mayor Prom, are you can you hear me? That's good.

Yes, I can.

Okay, wonderful. Councelor Hut, can you hear me?

Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Good evening and welcome to the Westminster City Council study session for March 2nd, 2026. Thank you for joining us this evening. Please remember that our meetings are governed by the rules of decorum hosted inside chamber doors. We ask all attendees to remain a respectful environment. No disruptions, threats, or audible expressions of support or opposition are permitted. Signs and placards are prohibited and all attendees must remain seated in designated areas. Uh, city council reports. Councelor Zati. No, ma'am.

Okay. Uh, councelor hot, did you have a report? No, thank you. Councelor Barahas.

Yes. Uh, I'll be quick. Uh, we had the Chamber of the City, which was great. I just wanted to give a quick thank you to everyone uh who was in attendance that came up and kind of chatted with me afterwards. Um it was nice getting to hear uh from both residents and um those doing business here in the city. Uh we I was at the e the environmental advisory board uh this past week. We had a debrief on light pollution and they once they do a little bit more research they would like to advise council um so we can potentially either schedule a moment for that or I can kind of bring some of their memos to us. Um but they're excited to kind of dig into that. So just uh so everyone's aware I was I went to North Glenn High School this past week as well to uh and served as a panelist for um some program based learning or uh problem based learning and got a chance to meet uh other panelists and hear the students who were challenged to come up with a solution to rampant misinformation uh with AI and social media. We had the rental ad hoc meeting this past week as well. Um, and that was really nice. I wanted to mention two things from there. First, um, a very dear, uh, resident of Westminster, Carl, uh, Carl McGurl, uh, who is a Navy veteran, was a Navy veteran. He passed away. He was a loved member of that group and we offered a moment of silence for him and and I'm just really grateful for his advocacy for for housing equality and uh housing dignity and his you know constant courage to be able to come to those meetings and speak. So you know when uh the uh deputy city manager offered a moment of silence I think the whole room kind of felt the gravity of it. So uh anyway that was uh something really sad that we got updated on. Also, I just wanted to give a shout out to uh to the city uh I don't know direction that the meetings

are taking. They're going line by line through the municipal code taking all uh of the feedback from all the stakeholders there. And the fact that we're going uh in a detailed direction means that we are getting feedback on every piece and that that feedback is also directed. So, we're kind of moving through it uh in a structured way. So, I'm kind of glad uh for that. And I know that a lot of people there, they even they had an opportunity to speak on things that maybe weren't on the agenda as well, which was so there's still kind of that attention to representation. We had a north uh north area transit alliance meeting uh which was great. Uh the Adams County Commissioners were there and they uh expressed some concern that SOT might be not be supportive of the expansion that they're pushing for for 270. um more to come on that potentially, but they're kind of strategizing on ways to advocate for for that uh expansion. And then I wasn't there, but during because we were all at strategic planning this weekend. Uh but during the strategic planning, the lowcost vaccine clinic happened and uh my partner Katie got a chance to go out there, though she couldn't even get a chance to say thanks to the volunteers because they broke another record this year with 254 uh uh residents. I don't know if that's per animal or per resident, but um they they helped 254 times at least uh which broke the record from last year. Uh so it was a really busy event and everyone was pretty exhausted. So special thanks to the Westy Dog Park Guardians who kind of helped uh strategize around that and they reached out to me and wanted to uh extend their thanks to Chief Hobert and the Westy PD. And that's my update.

Thank you. So, I went to the Westminster Chamber State of the City and our beer did a good job and so did our city manager speaking there and telling about our city. Um, I went to lunch and learn master your finance. It was about small business taxes and some of the new laws. Just anyone that has a business, you can as of this year for 2026, you'll be able to write off $2,000 per contract worker instead of the 600 that were had previously. So, that was new. Um went to Precious Child open house. They they've come a long way since the garage they used to be in that my daughters used to help when they were in honor society. So, um that was great to see. They they're helping 2,000 families a week there. So, they're they're always in need of baby clothes, hygiene products, and always food. So, anyone out there listening, drop off any of those items to them. Um, I tried to go to the rent housing ad hoc meeting online and they never could get on. So, I don't know if it's my end or what the deal is, but I didn't get on. Um, I went to Nighting Purpose benefit Tim Tibo. He's very inspirational and motivational. I I probably need that to keep motivated. Um, and then also I had teacher appreciation night for the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints is the 26th year. high schoolers from five different high schools that picked a teacher that inspired them the most in their life and honored them. It was a very nice evening. We had several principles. We had the um the superintendent of Adams

12 gave the speech. So, it was a nice evening and that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you, Council Johnson. Uh yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. I um was busy with my other job this last week, but I did have the opportunity to join you at the uh Rotary Club meeting which was great to learn uh they had a presentation from one of the folks from Dr. cog to talk about aging in our community, which was really fascinating, and also got um an update on the harrowing stories about the contingent that was in Mexico a couple of weeks ago and got stuck there for a couple of days, but uh thankfully they were on their way home um in good spirits about that.

Thank you, Mayor Prom. Did you have an update? Uh just a thank you to staff for um and to the Westminster Chamber of Commerce and to all of the school districts who um attended and spoke at the um state of the city event last week. And if I believe that's um was that video uh is that recorded so that people can review it? No. It's a shame. Um I don't know why I was thinking it was but that I mean the conversation that was had around the state of the school districts and what they're facing and the challenges uh was pretty eye opening. So um yeah and our state budget isn't going to help. So anyway, it was a sobering conversation, but I do appreciate that everybody um participated and um it was an overall great um great program. And then we went um the strategic planning again. I just want to thank all staff who attended that was all of our directors and management and support staff. So um I think that went really well on Saturday. So yeah, that's that's about all I have for the past week. Thanks.

Thank you. Uh I will echo those uh sentiments. Big thank you to our chamber and to staff and to um the three school districts that joined us for the state of the city. I am really grateful that they were able to participate and give a full update. And um I'm sorry that more folks could not uh see the event uh because but we do have photos up and so um it was a great event. Hopefully we'll catch you at the next one. Uh big thank you to everyone here counselors and our staff for the strategic planning meeting. That was a successful day on Saturday. Very long and I know some of us are feeling that today but thank you for your time and putting that in effort into our upcoming year. And then I uh attended a precious child open house with counselor um Ireland and uh she did a great update already. But again, if you ever have food or clothes or anything like that to donate, our community does need your supplies more than ever. And they are, as was already stated, really uh successful. They've got uh they've hired a record number of staff over there. They've got a big facility. It's uh very impressive work that they're doing. And then I attended uh a significant meeting last week on anti-semitism and I attended that with Mayor Castriata. Uh our chief Hobbert was there as well. Uh district attorney Mason, Brian Mason was there as well as several of our uh school districts from the area and community members. And that was uh an initial meeting to kick off efforts uh on combating anti-semitism in our regions, our combined regions. Um and so I think that was very successful and there will be more to come uh in the upcoming months. And then uh I did not uh receive any notice on Butterfly Pavilion, but I'm not sure. Councelor Hut, did you attend the meeting with the Butterfly Pavilion? Do we have an update on that one?

um Lindsay Kimble um was there. They had it at 2 o'clock. Uh the meeting was at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and so I was not able to attend um because I had work. Okay. Okay. I will get an update from Director Kimble. So good to know. Um and otherwise get an update from them. And that's everything. Thank you so much. So uh with that, city manager, do you have a report? Thank you, mayor. I do have a phone thing. I I failed to say that I went to the Go Glow um ribbon cutting

and I didn't know what Go Glow was, but it's a spray-on tan that you don't turn orange and it doesn't dry out your skin and it's very moisturizing. Anyway, they have so much business. I was so impressed that they're going to open another location in our and they wanted to open in Broomfield and I'm trying to convince them the new downtown. That's why I want the 4hour parking because they're concerned about the parking. We will get them parking if maybe if we can get them downtown, right? I could use this tan. So, shout out to them because they're doing really well. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, city manager.

Thank you, mayor. I do have a brief report this evening. If I could have the next slide, please. Um, you spoke about this tonight. I wanted to highlight for our community that on Saturday, February 28th, so this past Saturday, city council led a strategic plan workshop to refine and strengthen the city's strategic plan. Um that was uh an effort supported by the city's leadership team. So all of our directors were at the table uh to support and uh city council then set the vis the city's vision, mission and strategic priorities for Westminster. That updated strategic plan is being worked on now and will be uh brought back to city council um to get that in place. Uh and for those uh who uh are interested and missed it, the live stream is available on the city's Facebook and on our YouTube channel if you want to catch that uh that event. That's a picture from Saturday of all of us uh just after we wrapped it up. Next slide, please. I also want to announce this for the community. It's our annual parks, recreation, and libraries job fair, and that's happening this Saturday at the City Park Recreation Center um on Sheridan Boulevard. So, that will start at 9:00 a.m. and run right through till 100 p.m. And um that's where our parks, recreation, libraries, uh professionals will be interviewing for hundreds of seasonal positions in aquatics, libraries, golf, park maintenance, and recreation. Applicants can learn more about those opportunities and save time by presubmitting an early application at westminster co.gov/job. Next slide, please. I have two slides covering tonight's agenda. Uh in your packet uh for public consumption is um an information only memo uh regarding the mile high flood district and changes to the little dry creek and Shaw Heights tributary flood plane and that flood district is embarking on a uh community and stakeholder engagement um outreach. And so that information is contained in there and then next steps. Um next up we

have uh five presentations listed. There are actually only four presentations tonight and then the fifth is a discussion. The first presentation is on uh the city's unified development code. That's an update. The second um is uh 2026 department budget roadmap presentations. That's our finance department as well as our information technology department. Our both directors are here tonight to present on their departments. And then we have uh the third item proposed amendments to the Westminster municipal code. uh that's covering multiple areas and our city attorney's office will walk us through those. And then next up after that is uh also with our city attorney's office proposed amendments to the Westminster municipal code related to the Colorado Supreme Court case people vamp and then finally uh for discussion and direction confirmation uh from council a proposed creation of uh the city's new water affordability task force initiative. Next slide please. Also tonight are two executive sessions. The first of which uh is being held for the purpose of receiving legal advice regarding collective bargaining matters and the second executive session is regarding a possible property acquisition. Next slide please. This week uh Wednesday March 4th uh this is canled. There is no special permit and license board meeting uh this Wednesday. And then as I've mentioned on Saturday, uh please do have uh your friends and family um consider a career uh starting a career at the city in one of our seasonal positions with our with our awesome parks, recreation, and libraries department. And that's at drop-in job fair at City Park Rec Center starting at 9:00 a.m. running through 1 p.m. Next slide, please. For our next meeting uh of city council, that's uh next Monday, March 9th. Uh I'll have three information only items. Uh the first will be on uh waste diversion initiatives in the city. The second will be uh on open space ecosystem management and pollinator

practices and then finally on uh water supply and drought. That's an update for uh city council and the community. And then there are 10 consent agenda items with two second readings included. Next slide please. Also that night uh will be a meeting of the Westminster Economic Development Authority. Uh there is a new business item uh which is the authorization to execute an agreement to furnish activation services in downtown Westminster with the Westminster Chamber of Commerce. And I believe there was some discussion of this on Saturday about activating further activating the downtown. Um and this is a uh followup to that and then a postmeating uh study session that night. We'll have two presentations. Uh first of which is a department budget roadmap presentation with two departments. Again, our police chief will come in and present on the police department and our human resources director on HR. And then finally, uh we have a preparatory session uh on the 2026 National League of Cities or NLC Congressional Cities Conference Briefing uh that the majority of city council will be attending uh a little bit later this month um in Washington DC. And then finally, an executive session ma matter, which is discussion of a personnel matter and currently scheduled to be a quarterly check-in for me, your city manager. Next slide, please. Uh, finally, as always, contact us uh primarily through uh the Access Westminster tool, which can be a mobile device or direct uh westminster co.govaccess westminster. Phone 303658-2400, our website, westminsterco.gov, gov. And then of course I'm still uh prompting people to have a look at our transparency portal uh which you can get through the main uh page of our city website. That's all I have. Mayor,

thank you so much. Are there any questions to the city manager manager report and then I'll point out that this also includes the mile high flood district update that was included. Are there any questions or comments? Council Brahos. Uh for residents interested in attending the job fair, should they be prepared with anything? Should they come with anything to the job fair? That's a great question. Do you know whether they need to come with applications ready material or like resumes or something like that? I don't know. I apologize. We'll get that back for you. Don't know, but I would encourage people to check out that link that I provided earlier. Um, I can say that one more time. I haven't looked at the link yet. I'll try to get some information for you by the end of this meeting as well.

Yeah, we'll get Thank you for the question, counselor. Um, let me just get that website. I'll read that out one more time. Uh yeah, westministerco.gov/job. And so that's where uh the the details will be. We do encourage I know that we do encourage people to pre-apply. That's the probably the best move if there people are are interested. Um get that in early and then show up on Saturday and check out the different positions that are uh available to apply for and then we'll get back to you specifically with whether folks should bring something with them when they come. Awesome. Thank you,

Councelor Johnson. Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. One of the questions I had about the Mile High Flood Plane District expansion is, is that also including expanding the taxing authority because the boundaries are expanding? It's actually not an expansion of the district. It's actually I'll have Andrew come explain, but it's actually just re updating the flood plane maps. So, I apologize. You want Andrew want to join us? entered the I believe I heard the question is something regarding a new new or expanded taxing.

Yeah, the question is if they're expanding the boundaries of the flood planes, is that also expand the taxing authority boundaries that they utilize to do that? I don't think so. No, no, it's not changing the the district boundaries itself. It's simply updating the maps that are currently within the district. Got it. Thank you. And then I also had a comment on the flood plane just uh before folks take off um which is that it looks like formerly we said 17 um either businesses or homes or whatnot units were affected in Westminster and now that's been updated to 245. Is that right? That number includes properties.

So which would residential as well as any commercial. Okay. And then um just to this seems like the beginning of that conversation. So how have they been informed at this time? How has those updated properties? What outreach have we completed? Uh the city has not conducted any outreach at this point, but there there will be uh notices going out about the uh the open house that the that the district will be having. And uh I can there it may be in the report on the dates of those. I think they've been scheduled now.

April 22nd is the one for Arvvada. And then um April 29th is for at the MAC for Westminster and Adams uninccorporated Adams County. Thank you for reiterating those dates. So I'll say that one more time for folks listening. So, you can join us April 29th at the MAC for an update from the Mile High Flood District if you uh believe or if you have been impacted by the changes to the flood district. They should be receiving notification via mail um about specifically about these events so that they can come and learn more. Thank you.

And there's information on the website as well. So, do any of the projects down there such as the uplands, it made it worse because that's a lot of houses and flood insurance is expensive? I know because I tried to buy a house in Connecticut once and they're all on flood planes almost. If you're on a flood plane, you try not to be. Anyway,

with regard to the Uplands, the Uplands did build a very large detention structure on on their property and it accounts for the added runoff from their site, but then added included some additional capacity to help help mitigate that what were existing problems along along Shaw Drive. So, Upland's did not make it worse. In fact, their detention pond was intended to make it better in localized area. Um, in terms of the impacts in flood insurance, right, it it will be some time yet before this makes its way into the FEMA maps and when those maps become effective or or applicable. At which time then if if you have a mortgage on your home, uh, that it's possible if you're if you if you're still in one of these flood zones that you might have might be impacted by that requirement.

But it's um, not good either. The reason for the updates right now are just that the the the the hydraulic modeling that's occurred has indicated that there are some properties that are in the flood plane where they were have not been thought to be. So it's incumbent on the district to to notify those properties ahead of time. But what about during the 500year flood that we had? Did they get flooded? Those houses get flooded. the ones that we're now saying that are in a flood zone because I think they would have got flooded during that event if that were going to get flooded.

I I don't have the history on that one and neither does the staff in outside and it that one depending on where the where the rain occurred and which drainage basin they were in they may or may not have been impacted by that. Yeah. And for folks curious, uh, you can look at the packet from tonight. There is a map loaded online. So, thank you. Any other questions? Okay,

mayor. I haven't answered for councelor Bara's question. Uh, anyone interested can just show up. Uh, applications are there on the spot to fill out. Um, no resumes needed, so no don't have to bring any material. They'll actually conduct an interview on the spot and then, uh, based on that, we'll, uh, provide further directions. Thank you for the clarification. Perfect. That brings us to this evening's presentations. City manager, would you like to introduce the first presentation? Yes, I have uh Mr. John McConnell, our planning manager, and Andrew Spurgeon. Um, and they are going to lead us out in uh presentation 3A on the unified development code by way of an update.

Thank you, Mayor Mayor Pro Tim, city councilors John McConnell, planning manager, and Andrew Spurgeon, principal planner. Uh we're pleased to present to you tonight an update on the unified development code, the progress that staff has made uh towards its completion and also uh in addition to the update uh we're going to provide you with a little bit of background information especially for uh the newer council members uh who haven't been a part of the previous updates. So with that said, I'll turn the presentation over to Andrew and we look forward to your feedback and questions after the presentation's over. Thank you. Thank you, John. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Uh I'm Andrew Spurgeon. Uh again, happy to be here tonight. Um mayor and council, uh this will be an update on our unified development code or UDC um is the abbreviation for that. Uh with your feedback tonight, then we'll continue to work with the planning commission to refine that uh and then bring the final uh code uh back for adoption. Uh probably this summer is what we're looking at. um the UDC unified development code. It's it's a very technical document, so planners can we can geek out to it all day long. It's it's something that's a little bit hard, I think, for for the public uh to read generally, but it's basically the technical manual or the technical provisions that help us implement our comprehensive plan as well as the sustainability plan, transportation mobility plan. uh things that were um identified in the housing needs assessment and strategies from the redevelopment and adaptive reuse toolkit. Um to put it simply, the the unified development code is the rule book for how land uh gets entitled for development. Uh the scope of the UDC is uh citywide. It's it's not focused on any one place. It's it's citywide. Um having said that, we do have uh what

what are called specific plans for downtown Westminster and Westminster Station. uh and those are sort of independent documents uh with their own zoning and design standards uh for those areas and those will continue to uh live on uh parallel with the UDC. Um the UDC is also not intended to be applied retroactively. Um it's intended to be used uh prospectively with future uh development in Westminster and redevelopment. Um and finally, I'd just note that um it will be uh incorporated as a part of Westminster Missile Code. Um but there's a lot of other uh code sections that are not part of this work. Uh things that we sometimes uh deal with with business licensing and that kind of thing. But um alcohol sales, animal management, short-term rentals, uh restrictions on uh marijuana, those kind of things are those are in other parts of uh city code. Uh this slide uh shows you, you know, speaking of the how does this relate to other codes. Uh this slide shows um how initial land planning and project design um would be uh guided by the UDC uh and its technical regulations and then once a project uh is designed and construction advances then uh typically it would be fall under the city's engineering specs and then the uh various building codes and then depending on the use potentially other uh municipal code sections. Um I looking at our existing zoning uh council's probably heard staff talk about planned unit development PUD zoning a lot. Um the reason we talk about that a lot is that that is our zoning for more than twothirds of the city. Uh it's our predominant uh development pattern um whether it's residential uh commercial um industrial or anything else. Most of our city is developed uh with uh plium development zoning. Um, in concept, PUD zoning is write your own zoning. Um, the allowed

uses, the placement of the buildings, the amenities, um, those are those go per plan. Um, and and are unique to the site. Uh, and that's one reason Westminster's zoning system is really unique compared to other cities. Uh, because there's been this careful sightby-sight planning um, with every case. Um staff's recommended approach with the UDC would be to leave in place our existing planned unit developments um leave in place their allowed uses and um densities uh dimensional standards those kind of things and to again use the UDC prospectively for future um development. Um, if you look at our planned unit development zoning, the PED zoning, the specific plan zoning, SPD zoning that we have in place for downtown and Westminster Station, um, plus our 01 open and agricultural zoning, that's 88% of the city's land area. Uh, so really only 12% of our city's land area has more conventional zoning um that you might see in other communities. Um, and that's predominantly located in our um, historic Westminster um, area. Um this slide just reemphasizes the comprehensive plan which is um sort of overarching um over um our regulations. The comprehensive plan um which is uh adopted uh through our code as a mandatory document. In some communities a comprehensive plan is is more of a guide. It's advisory. Uh in Westminster it's mandatory. Um and that's actually helpful for the unified development code effort because the plan is already set in place. um the location of land uses, the types of land uses, the amounts of land uses, the the format of those developments. Um so again, the UDC just builds on that with more technical uh provisions. Uh and importantly, the comprehensive plan can only be changed uh through council action. Um, looking at our land in in

Westminster and where the unified development code would ostensibly apply, um, about 4.1% of our land area is uh, vacant. But, uh, once you net out where we already have development applications under review or in some cases already approved, it's it's really only about 2.3% of our remaining area. It's about 493 acres. Um, and that encompasses roughly about 190 191 uh individual uh parcels or or lots uh in different locations in Westminster. Um, we did do a scan of of of some of our peer communities knowing that we're not the only ones uh doing a land development code project. Uh, so we did look at at what's been going on in Englewood, Fort Collins, Lakewood, Littleton, and Thornton. And uh in a few cases we even called the staff to see uh trying to understand what's what what worked well for them and maybe what were some lessons learned um through that. And so some of the common practices were um provisions for accessory dwelling units which which Westminster has already adopted and um actually we we did an amendment on first reading at the last council meeting. um moving um moving away from from as many public hearing requirements and moving to more administrative approvals was a common practice. And then um the communities are are generally looking at uh different types of parking reductions um over what their older codes uh may have required. Um one of the things that we think is different with our approach and we hope makes our code less controversial compared to some of the other communities. Those of you that have checked the media knows that in some of these communities there's been recall efforts. There's been petitions and um I think Lakewood actually had to undo their code and now they're going to readopt it. So, uh we're trying not to do that. Um I think some of the differences again looking at

applicability looking out prospectively with future development and not trying to go retroactively reszoning um anybody um that's already uh there. Um, second, just to say again, our our comprehensive plan remains controlling. Whatever this code ends up doing, the the comprehensive plan remains controlling uh for land uses and densities uh and that kind of thing. And then third, I would mention the recent state legislation. Um, some of the other communities, you notably, they tried to roll it all into their larger code project, which uh seems to have created some confusion among residents and some uh concerns in some areas. And so we would propose that we continue to bring those items to city council as separate conversations such as uh previously staff brought code amendments uh to relax the um occupancy standards. So that would remain um the accessory dwelling units is something else staff has worked separately on. And so we propose that we would continue to engage with council separately um on those items rather than than trying to tuck it into this larger omnibus um code effort. Um just looking at some of the key policy areas, we we tried to frame these around um you know sort of three broad topic areas and this is uh based on you know some of the input we've had from residents um input from our planning commission. We did talk to the uh inclusivity board uh last year uh and then we earlier had some input from the environmental advisory board. Um so um in the area of inclusivity, thinking about um updating to provide for a broader range of housing types um thinking specifically about the strategies identified in the housing needs assessment and opportunities to support starter homes um in Westminster. Um provisions for adaptive reuse, reducing some of the regulatory regulatory barriers um faced when repurposing older buildings for new

uses. And then something that we're still fleshing out with this this um UDC that we hope to to incorporate in the final draft would be um making differentiation between parts of our city that are more urban in character and areas that are more suburban in um character because we realize it's not a one-sizefits-all. We think there's there's some areas in Westminster that lend themselves to a more compact format and then there's areas that really lend themselves to a lower density uh more suburban format. Um so so having those different options is is really not um something we have a lot of discretion with in our current um standards. uh thinking about mobility, uh updating our parking requirements, uh including uh bicycle parking, um multimmodal uh transportation provisions, um transit stop enhancements, uh electric vehicle infrastructure, um and then related to sustainability, thinking about um serviceable waste collection facilities, uh healthy food access, uh low water uh landscaping with a native plant uh requirement to support pollinators, um protection of natural areas, sustainable building materials. Um councelor Brahass, I I heard in the comments you mentioned the environmental advisory board talking about lighting. We do have some updated lighting standards that support um you know the concern for light pollution in Westminster. Uh and we're happy to meet with that board um if if if that's something that would be sensible at this point. Um this slide I'm not going to go through all of these but this just shows uh as we're starting to write standards um you know how these standards are going to be updated from our current uh requirements and then this concept of differentiating um suburban and and urban contexts uh with different um context standards specific to each of those.

Um how does the unified development code impact me? We get asked this question a lot. Uh for most households and businesses, uh the UDC will will probably not change um their situation very much. Um with the plan unit developments, if if those remain in place, that's that's certainly most of our city and specifically most of our residential communities. Um when a property is proposed for major redevelopment with new buildings or new uses, um that that's when the UDC would come into play. Again, the comprehensive plan would remain uh in effect and controlling. Um but doing the unified development code gives us the opportunity to implement the comprehensive plan uh in areas that we've been held back from in our current standards such as um housing diversity um and the other concepts uh that I talked about um on the previous slide. I will now turn it over to uh John to talk about this one item and then we'll wrap up.

Yes, thank you Andrew. And so as we close our presentation, I wanted to bring up a discussion with the city council and ask for your input and direction. Uh it's regarding the land use of event facilities or event centers. Uh as as you might have noticed, and we've been monitoring this for several years now, event centers have evolved over the last several years. They've evolved from the more traditional event centers that we're used to, uh, like some of the more well-known ones here in in Westminster where they're small in scale and square footage. They typically cater to business events and in conventions and and other private events. What we're seeing, what we have seen over the past few years is a pretty significant change in the the way some of them operate. And uh in many times what we're seeing is less of a event center in the traditional sense and more of a live entertainment venue. And in unfortunately in Westminster's land use codes um they haven't kept up with that evolution. And so we don't have adequate regulations to distinguish between event centers of a live entertainment nature, concert hall nature versus the traditional smallcale event centers. Uh that said, we would like to uh take care to make sure that we uh recommend some appropriate new regulations for this new version of event center within the unified development code. We would like for the city council to consider uh a pause in issuing any new business licenses or land use approvals for these larger event centers. Uh the pause would be through a temporary moratorum and we

would recommend 6 months and that would allow us to get through the uh the the remaining steps of the unified development code incorporate new regulations including not only land use regulations but business licensing uh that has also not kept pace with the the evolution of of event centers. Uh so we we appreciate uh your feedback and direction on that. Again, staff's recommending this. If you choose to go in this direction, staff can prepare the ordinance and bring it back to you at a at a public hearing uh for your review and consideration. Thank you.

With that, I think that's the one more slide. My apologies. Thank you, John. Uh yeah, just to wrap up uh in terms of next steps, uh if if you're uh supporting uh what John just introduced, then then the moratorum would be the the first thing uh that staff brings back for council consideration. Uh with your input tonight, we would update the unified development code draft. Um we're doing some analysis of our staff resources and um how we would implement the the all the provisions of the unified development code. Uh we would then work with the city attorney uh to do a detailed legal review, make sure everything is is just right uh from a legal perspective. Then uh back to the planning commission uh for their recommendation and then uh bring it to city council for adoption again uh targeting this summer for that.

Thank you questions. Councelor Island,

how many of these vent centers do we have so far that we're talking about doing a moratorum on? I mean, how's it going to affect business? Like for instance, we had the the rock the rock business that they had all these rocks at the at the weston. How does it affect all these businesses? I believe that event was a special event and it was handled under a special event permit. But certainly we are aware that the Weston does host fairly large events. Uh the types of events that the Weston has traditionally uh hosted are not what we're uh talking about when we're talking about this what I'm calling an evolution of event centers. Uh what we're seeing in other places is a tendency for an event center to be a live entertainment venue, concerts, ticketed events, not uh business conventions and and other conferences that

So you're not talking about business conventions. It's still okay for them to have them. Yes. And when we when we refer to a moratorum, it's for future applications, not existing ones. So if the council did choose to u initiate the moratorum, it wouldn't affect any uh lawfully established and licensed business now.

Okay. And um and I would add too that it's staff's intent to focus the moratorum not broadly on all types of event centers but just those that are larger in scale uh and and really uh are fundamentally live entertainment venues. And I'm trying to understand how does this UDC affect the city council and our job?

Uh well, the UDC is largely going to be an administrative tool to implement this council's um comprehensive plan. So the council has a newly adopted comprehensive plan. It sets the expectations for land use in a lot of detail all across the city and the unified development code is the regulatory mechanism to make sure that vision is materialized on the ground. Um so I would say there's very little effect on the on the city council directly if I understand your corre question correctly.

Okay. cuz I cuz I you told that the other cities the citizens got upset so I don't want that coming and I don't want to become like we're the royal family and we just go to events and we don't make any decisions. Yes.

Cuz that's a lot that's the way the cities are going in our state and that's not okay with me. They're trying to take home rule away at the state level on almost everything. The size of lots, parking, who are we trying to attract? I want to know because families are getting out of dodge in the state with this stuff. So, we're going to be left with old people and single people. So, we need to start thinking how we're going to economically grow and stop doing this garbage. So I want to know if this affects if this is from the state any of this because we said we were not going to comply. Correct. Uh this is this is the implementation of our comprehensive plan and there the state is not involved in this at all. And I want to emphasize something that uh Andrew touched on. Uh when Andrew discussed uh his knowledge and research on what some of these other cities had experienced, these cities, many of them were completely replacing and overhauling their land use regulations. They were reszoning single family residential districts to allow for higher density. That is not what this unified development code is doing. As Andrew mentioned, the zoning that's in place today essentially stays the same. If you're in a single family neighborhood, you're not being reszoned. This will apply to frankly the very little land we have left to develop in any redevelopment scenarios. So, it's very intentional in that it's designed to be a tool to essentially retool our factory. We've gone from a green field city with lots of land to develop to an age city who is uh which is built out. And so we have to rethink our development codes to adjust to that

paradigm. So it's not at all like uh some of what other cities are doing. But um Andrew, did you have anything to add to that? Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Other questions? I have questions. Yes, Mayor Prom.

Great. Um, one I just want to say thank you for thinking incredibly holistically and thoughtfully about the approach here and I really appreciated the comparison of what's happening with the updates with the other cities. So, thanks for doing that. Um I am just I just have a a few questions around some of the things that you're going to be working on um regarding standards. And so I'll just ask I probably have like six things. They'll go quickly. um for adaptive reuse and infill standards. Um are you looking to just build out specific contextsensitive standards or um what's um I guess is that going to be in every I don't know I'm just kind of curious what your what your approach is. I won't name

a range but yeah

uh so uh generally uh the the proposed regulations um deal uh with with two main main aspects the uh the site development standards and then the the building standards for the building or buildings that would go on that site. Uh and so uh with the building standards uh we are proposing something specific to adaptive reuse um which we're we're we're defining because we have had applicants that sometimes have different ideas of what adaptive reuse means. Uh, in the proposed code, adaptive reuse refers to reusing an existing building for a new use uh, and possibly adding onto it or popping the top or something like that. Uh, and the the code is drafted to have more of a sliding scale of the applicability of our standards. So, um, when someone's doing that, they wouldn't be hit with a full litany of of the newest code requirements. there'd be uh more of this sliding scale depending on uh the size of the building and the amount of changes uh or expansion that were proposed. Um and then um considering the context of of what's around it and thinking about if if they would need to meet the parking requirements or if there's other um as an example the parking requirements and and or if there's if if based on the context perhaps uh parking is not as much as a need there. So really a lot of flexibility we don't have there. Uh and similarly uh the infill that you mentioned uh that would have a similar sort of sliding scale um provisions uh related to the applicability of of the citywide standards. Uh but similarly we're also writing a definition for infill that it refers to something that's in an area that's otherwise built out um so that that's that's not um abused by someone who's not in an infill

situation. Can we or do we have um provision for like the scale of those buildings in relation to neighboring existing buildings because I know I like I'm just remembering um one project that was brought forth in the concept plan process um where it was essentially some snoutous some you know um next to single family one story. So, I was just kind of curious to see if we're kind of addressing situations like that where it wasn't good for the project itself and also kind of potentially impactful to the neighbors.

Uh short answer, yes. Uh with with Enfield and I I remember that that case you're thinking of. I believe it was down on you. Uh yeah, we we we do have compatibility provisions and in fact uh we we've actually been suggested that when this code is done to apply for an APA award because that uh we've been told they think this is the most contextbased code that anyone has seen in Colorado. So uh we're super excited about that. Uh I'm getting ahead of myself though. Yeah, it's great. But that the uh

we can feel the excitement. the infill the infill nature uh is definitely a consideration and um looking at those transitions uh between land uses that's that's something we've sometimes had a hard time with now. Um so looking at uh stepbacks before there's additional heights uh uh landscape buffering on the edges when there's where it's two very different uses uh and those type of things.

Okay, great. Thank you. And there's nothing wrong about being excited. I have to do one for my day job. So, it's fun stuff. Um, let's see. Uh, curious about the missing middle slash kind of homeownership element that like how you're how the standards would be emphasizing home ownership. Sure. So, you had it in the concept thing. Yeah.

Sure. So uh the the consultant who's helped us along on this on this journey uh we learned was also the consultant on the uh starter homes uh toolkit that I I believe was circulated recently. So we felt really great that it's like oh where you have the same consultant. So uh generally we we we checked all the boxes when I looked at at that uh playbook. Um but again uh what's lacking now we have design standards for single family homes, single family attached, multifamily. Uh but we don't really have uh specific provisions for for smaller lot homes. Um we've struggled sometimes with our town home provisions and so um

UDC has written to have uh I I don't know how to say it any other way in that there'll be more options. It's it's going to be more of a choose your own adventure uh with the housing product instead of trying to fit in to one of our boxes uh that we have today. Um, and so, uh, you know, some of those options include a smaller lot product and spec something something that I thought was was very unique and it was recommended in the starter home playbook was was actually in a development maybe that's larger lot, but you have a portion of it that's smaller lots within it to have some uh different price points and different uh types of households that could be in in one community. So, um, I I feel good about where we're going with that. Are we going to do like bungalow courts and things like that?

Bungalow court is an option. We've actually wondered if that's the right term to use because that seems to not be something we hear from our uh partners in the development community. So, we've we've tried to stick to um a language like small lot. Um we do have a uh cottage housing option in the draft which is uh somewhat along those lines. uh and that that has more of a shared uh green space uh with reductions in yards uh and that kind of thing. Great. That's really exciting. Um I'm sorry. Uh I was also curious about food access, how we're tackling that with um the code.

Sure. Uh well, we've certainly um heard there's a concern for access to food, grocery stores uh and we're talking about grocery stores mainly. Uh so uh looking at some of the recommendations in the sustainability plan and the the comprehensive plan implementation plan uh actually is is to uh create zoning provisions that would limit the types of businesses that um have crowded out grocery stores uh in um places across the Front Range. So, uh, introducing, um, special use permit requirements for, uh, dollar stores, uh, and those those type of uses that have, uh, opened in in centers and kept grocery stores out.

Oh, that's really cool. Um, I guess my last question is about just the EV infrastructure. Um I know that some of the requirements that we have right now with the energy code and with the state's um model electric code um that the EV requirements are pretty high particularly for commercial developments um or for new commercial developments. Just curious if we've evaluated that at all um or have some type of flexibility with or waiver that we can apply to those

as it relates to uh the state requirements. I might have to spend a little time looking at that. But what I can tell you what we've incorporated into the draft is uh more of a uh carrot based approach to providing okay

electric vehicle infrastructure. Um, for example, uh, where we're introducing maximum parking requirements, we're saying that the electric vehicles uh, would not be subject to that requirement. So, they wouldn't be penalized u for doing that. And also looking at um things in our code um you know recognizing that the the technology is evolving and so looking at um you know getting uh such as gas stations to ensure they provide electric vehicle charging as as vehicle technology changes over time so gas stations don't become obsolete.

Man, you guys have thought of everything. This is totally going to be worthy of an award um when you're done. I'm really excited. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Councelor. Hot, did you have any questions? Um, I don't have any questions. Just I'm super impressed and um I'm excited and thank you for all the work that you've done and I'm definitely supportive. All right, Councelor Brahas,

do we need to give feedback in this session right now around the moratorum and that or what? Okay. Uh so I am yeah I guess in favor what would so if we in initiate a temporary moratorum what would be the sunset of that or what would be the the mechanism for revisiting that with it being temporary in nature. We're recommending 6 months, which is a window of time that should get us uh beyond the conclusion of our unified development code presentation to you and allow you to consider that for adoption. Um and so we believe that 6 months would be enough. Uh again, it's to allow staff to give some thoughtful consideration to how we would recommend that you regulate different types of event centers of different scales and natures.

And to clarify, sorry if I can speak up. Um to clarify, this is like a temporary moratorium on the building of new event centers. Is that correct? It would be a temporary moratorum on the um the permitting of any land use approvals, building permits, tenant finishes for existing buildings. Uh all for new applications. Any event center that's lawfully in place right now uh with this license permitted and and all that would not be affected by this. It's just for future licenses. Okay. I can support this. Okay. Other questions?

Okay. Well, then uh I've got a few of my own, which is um can we define what our event centers currently are? Uh because my understanding is they might have been based mostly around churches. So, have we looked at redefining what our event centers are and maybe separating them?

Yes. Uh that will be part of the process. And in fact, we'll actually have to create a definition in tandem with the moratorum so that it's very clear uh to the city council and the citizens as to what the pause what types of businesses the pause would be applicable to. Right now, our city code, and I'll I'll just pull it up and and read to you briefly. Um event centers are lumped into one type of land use that includes assembly halls, event centers, churches, uh includes private functions such as weddings, receptions, conferences and meetings. So we would like to pull those apart. uh we uh obviously an event center even the the more common types of event centers function very differently from rigid rel religious institutions for example. So with the unified development code, we're going to take a more finite approach to land use designations, pulling those apart. Uh but since we don't define event center in particular in our code for the moratorum, we have to start by recommending a definition that's applicable to the moratorum and then we'll refine that further with the permanent rec uh regulations that we recommend to you.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then while um I'll say I agree with pausing for six months while we get this further defined um I respect some of the concerns I've heard from neighbors of event centers uh when and this is why we're approaching this right and uh you know we are working to build these key attractions within our city. So uh to me this seems like another great opportune time to look at a noise ordinance. I've mentioned this a few times and I think that perhaps even if that only came in at a certain hour, if that was 9, 9:30 or 10, you know, we can have those discussions. Um, I think that there's other ways to control events other than, you know, the zoning of it. And so I'd like us to take a look at that. Um, and maybe perhaps again time. I don't know what our time restrictions are, if any, but maybe taking a look at that throughout our city, you know, what uh hours do we allow events to go to. So, absolutely. And just some items for food for thought. As far as uh the UDC, I'm very excited that you're looking at multimodal transit. I'm very excited that you're looking at um the mixed use of um zoning and retail. I'm very excited you've included sustainability in your, you know, thoughtful uh creation of this, especially with so little land left to plan with. And so I'm really enthusiastic about it. So, thank you. I appreciate all that time and work you did.

Councelor Zotti, quick question. Does this include the uh standards around sprinkler systems? Ui development code does not. That would fall under building codes. What when is that coming to us? Isn't there an update regarding the requirement? I'm not aware of that. Andrew, do you have any information on that? I think we we heard that on the 23rd. Director Kimble,

Lindsay Kimell, community services director. Um, so, uh, we adopted the, uh, 2021 building codes approximately, uh, two years ago, year ago. And um generally we adopt a new set of codes every six years. Um so that building code update um you may be referring to the property maintenance code update which we expect um to bring back in late summer. Does that one have a sprinkler requirement for single family and attached? No. There just the building code. Just the building code. So, if we wanted to update that, we we need to request it. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. All right. It sounds like that's something we can get back to. Um I heard a couple yeses, but I didn't get everyone. So, is there anyone that's a nay on pausing uh for the event centers for six months folks online? Okay. I don't hear any nays. So, I think that you have the support you need. Thank you so much. Thank you.

That moves us to our next presentation which is uh department priorities around finance. City manager. Mayor, thank you. Uh this is our uh series uh where each department director presents a very concise overview of their department. Uh tonight we have two. The first of which is our finance department and um our chief financial officer Ezekiel Vasquez is here to present uh for you um his department.

Good evening Mayor Mayor Prom, members of council. I'm Ezekiel Vasquez, chief financial officer, and I'm very happy to be here with you tonight. I'm going to give you a brief overview of our finance department, our 2026 priorities and how they support your strategic plan. So, diving in here, um this shows where the finance department fits in within the broad organization. We are under uh deputy city manager Door's uh scope of authority and we are made up of four divisions. Total full-time equivalencies in the finance department are 30 and a half. And we're organized in in those four divisions that I mentioned. The accounting division is the largest of the four. We have uh 15 people in the accounting division. And accounting uh is responsible for monthly financial reports for annual comprehensive financial reporting, managing um all of our banking services. the approximately $1 million that come in and out uh daily through our seven different bank accounts. Accounting also uh issues paychecks for our um over 1100 employees every two weeks. Second division uh by size, second largest division is the sales tax division and that division is responsible for essentially protecting our tax base and uh making sure that our over 13,000 licensed businesses are educated and aware of our tax policies. And uh the sales tax division also uh brings in processes and reports all of the sales and use tax payments. The administration division is uh it's smallest of the four divisions and within that group we manage our investment portfolio. We have a a pretty

healthy investment portfolio about $360 million. We also manage our debt portfolio. um and we administer our purchasing card program for the city. The procurement division is uh responsible for managing all of our contracts, purchases of goods and services as well as facilitating uh solicitations, requests for proposals and all competitive procurements. So I wanted to keep this uh very simple and as you can see in the graphic there our theme for 2026 in the finance department is simplicity and efficiency. So with that in mind our top three initiatives that have the widest impact on the organization are one to complete our enterprise resource planning needs analysis. We have a 25-year-old enterprise resource planning system and we are in the middle of uh hiring a consultant to come in and help us with that analysis. And the deliverable for that initiative is to produce a comprehensive rest request for proposal that will uh we be rolled out um so that we can uh then go to work on choosing the right system for us. Our second initiative is to complete uh the 3H 20225 um implementation uh for a a standalone fund for those those taxes that come in and the deliverable there will be to provide an efficient easily accessible method uh to account for and report the paramedic and pavement funds. So we have done um the initial work. We've stood up the fund. We have the accounts. We're receiving the money currently. Uh but separate funds uh do require a lot of work.

There's unique um requirements in in this fund because we will have to um keep those those monies separate and uh we have a separate set of books uh separate set of accounts and we really are keeping a close eye tracking all of the money uh coming in uh from that ballot initiative. And the third uh initiative here that we have, our third priority is to increase paperless sales and use tax filings, payments, and communications. So, this will be a big benefit to our business community, those over 13,000 businesses. Um they'll be able to go online. Uh they can look at the status of their account. They could read um all of the uh the uh communications that we have with them. Um and we really want to promote that method of uh communication and facilitate that that uh tax filing and payment through our online system. And the goal there, the deliverable is to have 95% of those items coming through our online system. So in this slide uh we just kind of like to go over some some of our um benefits and some of our risks that we have that we're we'll be facing. And uh you know the the big thing that I like to point out here is that we do have a very high performing finance department. Uh we've achieved the national certificate of excellence in financial reporting for 42 consecutive years. So this is an award that is issued by the um government finance officers association of the United States and Canada. That is a very large organization consisting of over 30,000 members and slightly over 300 members achieve this this uh certificate

of excellence on an annual basis. And we've achieved this for 42 years straight. Um and we're looking forward to making that 43 here soon. Um and uh this is our act our annual comprehensive financial report and this is what we put all of that hard work into um producing this report and then submitting it uh for the uh the certificate of excellence. Um now one of the risks that I that I'm uh very aware of and I like to point out is that within our finance department um over the course of the last two years we've had about a 40% change over in positions. So that includes folks that are brand new to the organization and folks that are new to the position that they're currently in. Um 40% of those uh folks um again have have changed over. Uh that includes two division managers. Um we have a new accounting manager. Our previous accounting manager retired after 20 years in that role. Uh we have a new uh sales tax manager. Um he was promoted to that position about four months ago. Um and I am also still in my first year. I'm here uh in my 10th month. Um so we do have a lot of change in the department. Um and uh we we have a very high performing again very dedicated team. Um but we are also uh facing a a pretty steep learning curve and I I one of my things is I really encourage um training keeping up to date on skills having a healthy training budget for our finance department and especially with the second item that I have there as a potential risk is technology. um technologies is changing so quickly. Um

especially with AI um I think of it as uh when we went from 10 key adding machines to Excel spreadsheets and I think we're in the middle of that change right now. Um I I'm focusing really hard on on staying on top of that and also helping my team uh stay on top of that. So the way that we are supporting the strategic plan are these two major priorities. Um stewardship and fiscal responsibility is the big one, the most obvious one there. And the second one is um supporting economic vitality and that is through our work with uh taxpayers and the business community. That is all I have for you all.

All right. Council questions. council question. I know that um technology is increasing. That's why I'm thinking do we are we going to be able to keep all these people because our city is actually decreasing the population. So I have a problem with government keeping getting bigger because that's what it costs so much because you know 65% of our budget is employees and now you're asking for another person because we got this tax increase. I would think some of this AI would eliminate some positions.

Council Ireland. Uh great question and my feedback on that is that uh the new tax has created quite a bit of work. Um as I mentioned we had to create a new fund, a new set of books um tracking different transactions. We're hiring um over 40 new uh firefighter personnel um not fire but fire staff and uh that is a big impact on our payroll function. Um so we do need that position um in order to facilitate that. But but you are correct in in terms of um AI really amplifying our ability to get more done with less. Uh we have been shrinking as a department in finance. Um we've paired down several positions. We've repurposed at least three positions that I can remember right now. And I I'm completely um in line with your thinking that if we are utilizing AI, we'll be able to do more with less um because we we won't be able to hire more people and there are going to be more demands in terms of reporting transparency and uh it it harnessing this tool will help us.

So you're asking for one more employee than we had last year. Um, councelor Island, that is correct. We do have another employee, but that employee has already been budgeted for. Um, that was part of the tax that was approved. Um, so that position has already been accounted for. Do you know how much this person's going to be making? I don't know off of the top. I will know. Thank you. We'll get that to you. Yes.

Thank you, Councelor Rosi. Thank you for your presentation. Um, I actually don't agree with the with the strategy of, you know, not saying you, but from what I just heard, uh, AI is not the the goal of AI is not to eliminate the staff. It's to reorient and re help staff work on more strategic items, right? So, it takes away those tedious items. So if any staff members are listening, that is not our goal to get rid of you with technology. That is definitely not the goal. But but I what I wanted to say is on the RFP for the ERP, will the 2027 budget include a cost estimate of what you'll be requesting for ERP that we'll see in August?

Councelor Zadi, yes, we will have that in the budget. Uh you see that? Yes. Councelor Brahas,

would you mind going back to the the risk factors or the the that one right there? Thanks. Um, actually, I think I meant the one before it. Yeah, the so I think something that would be helpful um you know in terms of a comprehensive ask for this new position for the 3 the if there's just some sort of institutionalized lessons learned something that like with this new position as it kind of takes on this new fund is there particularly in terms of the transparency and like uh tracking how the fund is used what money is coming in how it's going um if this if there's a lot of best practices that are specific to Westminster that we can then translate to other departments and I'm not saying like let's add more people for these things but maybe something that is just sharable uh you know across departments I think that's something that could also justify kind of that uh added role I know that you know we do a great job with our transparency portal but if this is maybe a a moment for collaboration and and kind of sharing of best practices I think that would be a great opportunity. Um, I'm also uh really grateful for kind of that riskmanagement aspect. I know that the accounting department is is the the big chunk of what you all do and I think that as a city uh it behooves us to ensure that we uh have real solid personnel people behind that kind of risk management and things so that way things don't fall through the cracks in what we're learning 20 years later that we've been wasting money that no one has ever caught. I think that's um you really uh it it speaks to the fiduciary responsibility that we have as a city uh and as council to ensure that that work happens. So thank you councelor all good. Okay councelor hot did you have anything?

Um no just thank you so much for your presentation. All right thank you mayor prom. I'm good. Thank you. Fantastic. Well, thank you uh for a beautiful presentation and uh for all the reading that we got. It was fantastic though. Appreciate it. Okay, that brings us to our next presentation uh for proposed amendments to the mun municipal code. Oh, mayor, we have one more information technology. I missed this. I apologize. Yeah. 3C going back. Welcome, director. Go. Uh we have a presentation now for information technology.

Good evening, mayor, mayor, counselors, those that are watching on the stream. Uh I'm David Guo, chief information officer here uh with the city of Westminster. Uh this the topic for the presentation this evening is on our information technology department's 2026 priorities. Uh something I'm very excited about. Uh looking at the orchart uh the information technology department is positioned uh within deput chief uh deputy city manager Larry Door scope and our department as a whole just for background information we are the technology consultant and implement to software and hardware that enable our workforce to be efficient and effective. I like to call us the technology bringers. We bring the technology and the champions for making work better through tech. So back in 2024, we updated our brand, our model to # techy yes and our slogan is do the right things and do things right. So the information technology department we support every single 1100 city employees by providing the best-in-class computing equipment and software including car police officers our firefighters utility plant operators park and rec staff and everyone in between. So the department is comprised of three major divisions. IT operations enterprise solutions network and security. So, at the time of this presentation, we're authorized at 42 full-time employees with the operating dollar operating budget of 14.6 million and a capital project of 26 $2.6 million. So within the IT operations is comprised mostly of data center operations infrastructure help desk uh within the enterprise solutions

division mostly it's comprised of uh applications uh commercial offtheshelf applications or um SAS applications uh network and security as the name denotes mainly manage the network and the cyber security component uh of our craft. So in the 2026 priorities uh mainly broke down by three major themes that we want to focus on this year as connectivity, cloud computing and critical infrastructure. So in the inventory of programs and projects we're undertaking this year, our goal really is to consistently and predictably delivering dependable technology and good customer experience. So everything that you're looking at on that list from rebuilding our VPN or private private virtual private network to having better Wi-Fi at the fire stations to migrating migrating applications to the cloud to upgrading the 911 dispatch system. You know we aim to create a good balance among technology security and user experience. There are many factors influencing our progress. Uh most notably is the overwhelming support and trust that the city leadership has given us year after year. IT staff feel the empowerment when we propose new technology portfolios and the support when we pivot vacancies as they come up to meet the needs of our city today. So together as the IT organization we have received the digital city awards 22 years in a row. Of course, among other things, you know, on the macroeconomy, uh tariff uh and technology demands and costs continue to be a factor in our business as well as the artificial

intelligence uprising that uh our chief financial officer mentioned earlier. So as a result, the information technology department is in alignment with council's strategic priorities by being hyperfocused on resilient technology tools, critical infrastructure security, dependable connectivity, and meaningful community engagement. With that, that's her smiley faces. I'm here to answer any questions that you have. I have the same question to you as I had for last presentation. The one extra person is for the fire and how much are they making and have is is AI going to get rid of some positions?

Councelor Ireland, I was hoping you would ask that question. Uh that's a good question. I don't think you were helping but

that's a great question because artificial intelligence is just on the upcoming uh of development in our globe. Um so personally I think that just like emails right when we first got email everyone thought that oh my gosh it's going to make my life so much easier it's going to work for me but now we just all ended up working more Right. So I don't think we fully understand the impact of AI on our daily lives just yet because if you think about where we are right now with AI is very infant uh in the progress is mostly just generative in text. Uh think about in your personal life which aspect of your life has AI been able to help you eliminate. I think most often than none, you know, when you ask AI the question, you have to double check the response. So that creates more work for you. So I also think that at local government, our craft is about people. It's about services. So it's very different than say if a development shop writing software. Just last week, uh the uh credit card processing company Square, they eliminated 4,000 employees, but that if you look at a component of the jobs, those mostly are programmers and coders. AI is very good at generating code um but it's not good at providing water or auditing taxes or paving the roads, right? So, I think we don't really understand that just yet, but time will tell.

Well, great answer. Thank you. Welcome, Councelor Brahas. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, and thank you for the presentation. I'm curious kind of in this conversation around AI, the safeguards that are in place for municipal use of AI with uh sensitive or private um resident data. Mhm.

So, uh I think that there's just maybe some desire for the city to attend to that privacy concern. you know, if there's sensitive resident data that's kind of classified, I don't know what the right terminology would be there, but you know, kind of private for the city to know um what sort of safeguards are in place when for city staff, you know, maybe coalating all that using an AI tool to ensure that that data stays within the city and not kind of for use with the AI providers kind of data banks, you know, doesn't just get farmed out for I think that's like a major concern people might have with AI. And then also just just a kind of different question, but um if there are I I mentioned in the strategic plan because you mentioned it in my onboarding, but uh continued work around safeguards for ransomware attacks and other potential threats to our information technology systems, particularly for city operations, but you know, I'd say kind of citywide. Yeah. Uh important comment uh councelor Graas. I'll answer your question in two parts. First is how do we safeguard the public data uh in our under our stewardship. Uh so as a city we recently established and uh AI steering committee that's in composed of uh stakeholders from the attorney's office and all the other departments. So together the steering committee uh formulated a new AI policy that is now circulating around the city leadership uh to get approved and uh enacted. Uh so through that effort we have formally adopted copilot as our official AI tool and the beauty of adopting copilot through Microsoft is that uh our

Microsoft tenant which just another word for our Microsoft licensing uh is strictly within the GCC tenant. GCC stands for government uh community cloud which is completely airgapped from commercial cloud. So under GCC uh is a higher tier of expectation and standards and security measures that Microsoft had to uh stand by. So we pay the our government licensing through that. So that in itself safeguards the data that we input in through it. Uh we also have um performed two AI trainings across the city. one for AI champions which uh we had about uh I want to say 20 plus um super users who want to be AI champions within each department and we utilize a train the trainer model so that we train them and they go back to their departments and help uh train their fellow colleagues and then we also conducted a citywide AI sort of uh champion class uh just uh I think it a couple weeks ago at the rec center. Uh so that's going to be ongoing monthly because we want to spread the word and enable and empower our users to do that. And then the second part of your question was cyber security, right? Uh cyber security is much more advanced when it comes to AI adoption. A lot of our endpoint detection, the appliances that we use in our firewalls, uh the different appliances that we have in the DMZ on on our servers have long been utilizing uh self sort of uh resilient methodologies uh and detection and mitigation. So that we have been using that for several years now. And if

that fails, we have a 24/7 sock uh security operating center that monitors our environment and mitigate any potential breaches uh or anomalies. And sorry, one more follow-up question. Just when was the I guess do we have a continual audit on the physical infrastructure of that sock the security the thing that you mentioned the 24? Yeah, so that is a third party uh service that we procure. Uh I think so we also Yeah. So I don't want to share who it is

uh but it's a third party service that we that we do um have. And then as far as uh I think you're talking about auditing uh we are doing a penetration testing on our environment this year that's on the list that I had here. So our CISO chief information security officer is uh heading that up because we want to check our own blind spots make sure we know that what the things that we don't know. Awesome. I appreciate you sharing that with us and the residents listening. Thank you. Of course, folks online. Uh, councelor hot, any questions? No. Thank you. So, uh, thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you, Mayor Prom.

Uh, no, because you guys all had such great questions. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the elegant answer that you had. Oh, and you're welcome. Uh, I'll just say, yeah, think I'm I have a few questions. Are we on E3 or E5? Just out of curious. We're on E3. Okay. With other skills attached to it. Okay. Um, I just wanted to say that is an impressive and also ambitious list of things we're doing. We're doing everything from cyber security to pentesting to standing up new networks. And so I'm excited. But also I is is I I would assume this is a couple year out plan, right? No, this is this year. This is this year.

Yes. We're trying to put 44 people 42 people to work. My goodness. I'm I This is Well, um I wish you all the luck. And then it sounds like we're also standing up a new ERP. Well, this year we're just doing the RFP for that. It sounds like for the finance department. Yes, mayor. So this year we're looking for the consultant to help us study the business process, the scope uh and the requirements. Right. So I hope that all hands are free when that begins next year. Okay. I'm just All right. Well, thank you so much and I'm impressed as always with you and your team. So thank you very much. Appreciate everything you're doing.

Okay. Thank you. That moves us to our uh next discussion which is item 3D. Proposed amendments to the Westminster Municipal Code related to campaign finance complaints, street solicitation, sound truck regulations, and massage establishment regulations. Quite a miscellaneous list. It's all melting pot of welcome.

It is. Thank you, mayor. And uh my pleasure to introduce Matthew Munch. Um Matt is an assistant city attorney working in my office. And um also with us tonight is Jenna Roth who's our police legal adviser who supports the police and fire departments uh and with regard to public safety matters on a daily basis. Um Mr. Munch works very closely with the clerk's office on election and open records issues in addition to um working on tax issues with our finance department. So, um, tonight these three ordinances have been in the works for some time, and we would like to present our drafts to city council and get feedback and some direction as to whether or not uh to bring them forward for first reading on a future agenda. Um, some of the matters are a bit time consuming. Um, and with regard to um, particularly the Fair Campaign Practices Act update and I'll let Mr. Munch explain uh, the proposal. So Matt,

thank you very much. Uh, thank you for having me. I I suppose we'll start with the the campaign finance update. Yes, we do have quite the mly crew of of updates here. The this sort of came to a four because something new happened in this last election cycle. We had more campaign finance at the municipal level used to be a fairly quiet affair. At least it was uh so far in my practice. We had more campaign finance complaints filed with the city clerk's office in this last campaign cycle than we have in the entire eight years I've been working for the city combined. Um that pointed out a couple of things. We what something we noticed was that what the city did in its code up until now is adopted the Fair Campaign Practices Act, all relevant portions of it. But that wasn't quite specific enough and there was an understandable amount of confusion among both candidates and candidate committees and people who were filing complaints as to what the specific procedures were to be in terms of how those campaign finance complaints were going to be reviewed. What is the deadline for filing this form? Who is it who's going to be sitting to to hear this and review this? What are the possible penalties at the end? Now, all of this is of course set out in detail in the Fair Campaign Practices Act, but the Fair Campaign Practices Act uses different terminology and different titles and the the confusion was really quite understandable. On top of that, there was uh confusion and disagreement between the city once we ended up with a couple of complaints where there was a conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest with the city clerk's office to review that complaint. there was confusion with the state as to whether or not and under what circumstances we could refer that up to the state for them to take over that review as a conflict of interest. So what we're trying to do with this is

essentially make explicit the procedures that we have been using for years which is in adopting the Fair Campaign Practices Act and its procedures for who does what review under what circumstances and exactly what happens exactly what complaints can be referred to the Secretary of State, what authorizations do they have. We are making explicit what was um rather vague before. Now what we have tried what we are recommending with this draft is um something that I would argue is a a efficient solution to the problem which is we essentially tie our procedure to the fair campaign practices act and say that unless the city council passes an ordinance saying otherwise. Of course the city council can modify those procedures in the Fair Campaign Practices Act any way they see fit. But we will simply mirror whatever the state does. This gives us a couple of benefits. First, we know that we are going to be insulated from any conflict with the state if we do that. The Secretary of State's office is not going to have any problem with any of the procedures we use in municipal campaign finance complaints if we use their procedures essentially. The second is that it's going to automatically update. We will be using the best practices that the state can come up with as they happen. We will not need to modify anything unless the city council has a problem with a change to the fair campaign practices act in which case city council can simply make the change to what you would rather see happen. That's why I have recommended uh doing it the way that we have in this draft which is essentially tying our procedures and saying we are using those procedures. This person shall stand in place of you know we're just exchanging titles and then making a few modifications uh just to make it plausible for the way that our city is arranged. I think that provides clarity. Uh there shouldn't be any more confusion confusion, excuse me, among complainants or candidates as to

what to expect when a fair campaign practices act complaint is processed. Um whereas, as I said, there was a certain amount of understandable confusion um before because the exact procedures were a little bit vague. In terms of the timeliness of this, we are recommending uh rather quick action on this for one specific reason. Because we had so many Fair Campaign Practice Act uh complaints in this last cycle, we have no reason to believe that we will have fewer in the next cycle. Uh it's not hard for one of those complaints to present a conflict or the appearance of a conflict for the city clerk's office who is reviewing that complaint. We want to make sure that we can re refer any complaint that represents a conflict of interest for the clerk up to the secretary of state uh if for no other reason than just to make sure that we we avoid the appearance of any impropriy or any bias. But the secretary of state needs that to happen uh 180 days before the next election which is why which of course is going to be coming up quicker than we think. Uh for that reason uh we are recommending uh fairly swift action on this ordinance or at the very least uh on that portion of the ordinance that talks about um referral of conflicting complaints. And with that I'm very happy to take any questions on this um on this recommendation. Ma'am,

thank you. How are we dealing with the complaints from the last election?

The complaints from last election were handled using the same procedure. We used the procedures set forth in the fair campaign practices act as best as they could be mo as the best as they could be grafted onto the city staff and that is also what we've done with the very few fair campaign practices act that or complaints that we had received in previous years. The issue is uh there were people uh complainants and candidates I believe and complainants and candidates who didn't necessarily like those procedures and may had differing opinions even amongst themselves as to what procedures should be used instead. Some of those uh ideas simply couldn't be done would have would have violated the law. But there were all sorts of different opinions as to what the specific procedures were going to be. This will not represent a change from what we were doing. We've always been utilizing the procedures of the Fair Campaign Practices Act. We're trying to be more explicit about it so that everybody knows, it's clearer to everybody going in when they file a complaint how it's going to be handled.

So all is are all our campaign finance the same as the state? In terms of the Fair Campaign Practices Act, uh it's not that all of the the the finances are the same, but the Fair Campaign Practices Act has specific procedure or specific campaign finance requirements for municipal elections and municipal candidates. And what we are talking about now those are incorporated those there's no problem there. I don't believe there was any confusion there as to what candidates did or did not need to do. That was I think fairly explicitly adopted. It's the procedures for reviewing the complaints that we uh believe we need to be more specific about and where there definitely was confusion in the last election and we're trying to hope to avoid that same confusion in the next in the future elections.

So, is the state fine with taking this on? the state is uh fine with taking this on and we know in terms of the conflicting of us being able to refer uh conflict of interest. They are because we can only do this pursuant to a state statute that was passed uh what last two years

two years ago in which they specifically provide that municipalities can refer municipal campaign finance complaints to the secretary of state so long as certain criteria are met in the authorizing ordinance. And that's why you can see that when I the the part of this ordinance that talks about referring complaints to the Secretary of State is rather wordy. That's because we have gone through because like I said, we had some confusion with the Secretary of State this year about whether we could or could not do this. We are leaving no room for doubt. We have copied and pasted word for word the exact requirements that they say they need in order to refer conflicting campaign finance complaints up to them. So yes, the state is uh willing to take this on because they passed a statute to that effect. I just want to know how if they've listened like when people send them do they does the state listen or do they hear anything or is it just go never nothing happens

that I I I can't say that I know for certain ma'am but I do know that they have written in law procedures for what they are supposed to do once they receive these complaints. It's a fairly new law and in the research I've done, I have not found that many other cities that took advantage of this opportunity to have that safeguard for conflict of interest. Uh I know that Thornton has, but very few other if any cities comparable to the city to in sort of size and demographics to Westminster have taken uh advantage of that. Nonetheless, I very much recommend that we should. It's just such a help to the sec to the um city clerk's office to just avoid any sort of appearance or accusation of impropriy. Um our city clerk's office has enough problems. Um so if there's any sort of of issue or accusation, we want to get it to someone where both the complainant, the candidate, and the city clerk will all be comfortable having a neutral arbiter. Okay.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Other questions? Okay, folks online. Uh no uh thank you for the presentation and I am in support of the recommendation. Thank you. Same here. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone uh have anything to say that's not in support? Okay. Thank you so much for your presentation. Yes, ma'am.

The second of our three ordinances that Mr. Munch is prepared to speak on this evening. Um, I'll give a brief overview and and maybe there won't be too many questions. We'll see. Um, but there is, uh, a proposal before you, the second ordinance, um, which would repeal the city's solicitation ordinance and also modify the existent sound truck operations ordinance. Um, first, the solicitation ordinance has not been enforced in many years. Um, we have trained our officers to that effect. Um, and we would recommend the repeal of the solicitation ordinance. It shouldn't still Well, it's still on the books. Um, the recommendation is to take it off of the books. Um, because I I think it's fair to say it does not survive um most recent uh court decisions in this area. Um, and we would recommend it be deleted. Um the sound truck ordinance immediately follows the solicitation ordinance and the sound ordinance um addresses the regulation of amplified sound coming off of vehicles and um I don't know that we've had a lot of sound trucks in our city in recent years. Uh but we would recommend updating the ordinance. um right now it's out of date and it does include I believe some contentbased restrictions which we would recommend be removed uh pursuant to the first amendment. We don't want to regulate anything that is contentbased but uh I think that we would recommend keeping the soundtrack ordinance on the books uh to mitigate any potential you know I think impacts that sound trucks or amplified sound coming off of vehicles might have in our community. So to the extent you have questions on that update, um I'm happy to assist as Mr. Mch.

Councelor, the soundtrack ordinance, what is it exactly? What is the is it banning all amplified sound trucks? What is the actual I am not I'm not surprised this is not something everybody is familiar with. It's it's a bit of when you read the ordinance, it's a bit of an old timey um thing that I don't think we see very often. I think the idea is essentially a a truck driving around with a loudspeaker either advertising something or uh um campaigning for a candidate. Think of um Oh, brother, where art thou? There's a there's a soundtrack in that. And if you read some of the stuff in the ordinance, you can tell that this this

sell my soundtracks. I don't know. I shouldn't have any campaign. You just have to make sure you only operate between the hours of tenants. It's you can see if you read the the ordinance as it was um that it might well have been written in um those those days. We're talking about lewd and vulgar and profane or indecent speech. I thought there was a reference to um it just it's just old and impractical and it's just content or is it saying you can't have the sound it's amplified sound? It's very specifically not content based. People still can have sound trucks. It does. We do uh regulate the hours they can operate, the speed at which they can operate. Uh let's see what else.

Volume. Does it have like a volume decel level?

Uh we we sort of in an indirect way. Uh if you look at subsection the proposed subsection 3 says challenge sound shall not be amplified within 100 yards of a hospital or within 500 ft of feet of a school. So it's um we try to get that um that sound regulation by distance rather than decibb. We don't I believe we don't do our uh noise ordinances by decibel level in this city and I would recommend against it because it's fairly it's a tough way to enforce sound. So instead we limit it to sort of reasonable daylight hours when most people aren't sleeping keeping away from schools um that sort of thing. I would just add to that not to interrupt but um with regard to the volume section five does provide that the volume of sound shall be controlled so that it will not be audible more than 100 yards from the sound truck. So if a truck

distance if a truck has what? So that if there's a truck that doesn't have the amplified equipment on it but has just really loud volume from its or from its native speakers because so one of the issues that we have is there are a lot of cars that drive around late night blasting all sorts of sound and it keeps people it wakes people up. So is this related to any sound from any vehicle or specifically trucks and specifically with the equipment?

So the definition um which is that horse reference I was uh thinking of which we left in um shall mean any vehicle including any horsedrawn vehicle having mounted thereon or attached there to any sound amplifying equipment. Now that is a little bit vague. Who knows? We might we decide we we might still have someone try to take a horse buggy around. Um, so we leave that in there. Whether it would apply to any specific vehicle would would have to be an enforcement question. Generally speaking, that the sound trucks that we I don't I don't think this has ever actually come across my desk since I've been here. We did have one person uh inquire about it probably six years ago. Um, I think of an ice cream truck,

something like that might qualify. Uh, I don't know if a vehicle that just had very loud music would necessarily meet this definition, but there are other ways probably in model traffic that would be a better way to handle that rather than trying to apply the sound truck ordinance to them. The sound is is really intended to deal with something rather intentional. Someone is trying to do that used to be fairly common. I get the impression back in the 1930s. You know, it's we're modifying it here, of course, because the these two things that seem entirely unrelated are contained in the same chapter, and it seemed like it could if we were going to be modifying one, it seemed a convenient time to update the other. Oh, thank you.

Yes, sir. Council Graas. Uh, yeah. Thank you, Madame Mayor. So this is a question on one of the I don't know how to read legal or how to note legal documents but you know subsection 8 I think or 89 it's it shall be unlawful for any soundtrack to make a U-turn in any block. I'm curious why that wasn't struck. Uh I didn't see any particular need to strike it. It was it was there I I tried to get um without specific guidance to the contrary I tried to get rid of things in this ordinance that just didn't make a lot of sense in the modern world. Okay. Um, does that makes I I guess my question better would be just why does that make sense? Yeah, I I don't know. Um I I simply didn't have any reason to get rid of it.

Okay. Um certainly if city council I can't think of any um I I I suppose I could come up with a hypothetical that someone operating a truck maybe is paying less attention because of the jingling music than another person. Um or perhaps you don't want perhaps you want to make it harder for the soundtrack to just loop around a a street. I don't know if any of these are good reasons and certainly if city council wants to strike that provision we could. I simply didn't delete it because I had no reason to. Okay. I mean I was more just curious because everything seemed so like you went through such a great job in such fine detail. I was curious if there was a glaring reason why. Uh other than that thank you. Thanks sir. Council you talk about the solicitation. Is that like people coming to your door?

Ah so no solicitation

in this case. No ma'am. uh in this case this is that was specifically dealing with solicitation on or near streets and highways. Now one of the reasons there's essentially two reasons uh why that we needed to modify this. The first is as we said um this is largely uninforceable given the current state of the law and hasn't been enforced for quite some time. But also, you may recall, we've essentially dealt with the underlying problem, which is we separately have a median safety ordinance, which focuses instead on instead of focusing on the problem with the solicitation is that it does involve speech of some sort. It's regulating the conduct of someone talking to someone else. The median safety ordinance is talking about people standing in places, doing things where they're not supposed to stand, and running the risk of getting hit by a car or a motorcycle, putting themselves and other people at risk. We with the median safety ordinance, we did quite a bit of research to make sure that everything was backed up with data and it is solid to withstand constitutional scrutiny and keep people safe and keep people off of medians and roadsides where they are not safe. So in addition to being uninforceable and uninforced, the solicitation ordinance is redundant because we have something better to deal with the underlying problem which is we don't want people getting hit with cars on the medians. So the the the um section that we are recommending deleting is talking about solicitation at or near highways, not solicitation doortodoor. Okay, other questions.

Uh, I guess my I just have Go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just going to say I I appreciate the learning opportunity because I had to look up what the heck a soundtrack was, but otherwise I do not have changes. Yeah, thank you. I I do have a question which is why not strike the soundtrack ordinance entirely.

Uh once again because well I suppose because I can imagine it coming up um the same way that like I said we we didn't really have campaign finance complaints until this year. I can easily imagine somebody or group of somebody's deciding they want to operate these in the city of Westminster. And if we don't have anything in place because we know that they have done so in the past because this ordinance exists and we wouldn't want to leave a gap for someone to drive a very loud truck through at 2 in the morning uh right across the street from where everybody's sleeping. That's would be my argument for keeping it is we haven't seen one of these or at least it hasn't come across my desk uh in a very long time. But someone could try to could decide to do it tomorrow. And we want to both leave an avenue for them to do that lawfully, but also make it so they don't do it disruptive to others.

Thank you. Okay. Thanks all. Okay. The final of the three ordinances that Mr. Munch is prepared to describe for you is an update to the code with regard to the regulation of massage parlors. And this would be to bring our local code in line with state law. Last year, the state law changed with regard to um background checks, and we would recommend that our code be updated to include the same background check provisions that are in the state law. So, if that's um acceptable to city council, um please let us know.

There are a couple of other very minor changes such as the the cap on the maximum fines. That's also to bring us in line with state law. A couple few small things like that. There's one other change in here that we made uh which was to change the licensing procedure that as of right now the special permits and licensing board will review the license applications and make a recommendation to the city council for approval or denial. We changed that to try to make it to try to ease the process a little bit, try to make it a little bit easier on our more on our legitimate businesses that the special permits and licensing board will make the decision as to whether to issue the license or not. That decision is appealable to the city council. So they still have the right to have the decision made by their elected officials and also the city council itself can vote to review that decision of the city of the special permits and licensing board on its own. So, anything the city council would want to review, you still can. Uh, anybody who wants it to be reviewed by the city council can, but in most circumstances, it would be a way for um legitimate businesses to get their license quicker, easier, and cheaper. We also eliminated there used to be requirements for uh needs of the neighborhood and surveying and that sort of thing, the sort of thing that you see in liquor license application. Uh, I believe I'm correct in saying the city clerk found those ownorous and superfluous. The business applicates found that quite ownorous and expensive. And I don't believe the police department thought they were helpful either. So, it is a way to this ordinance all in all I would argue is a way to put an obstacle in the road of an illegitimate business that is engaged in things um that are exploitative and dangerous while simultaneously clearing the road for legitimate well-run businesses.

Thank you. Any questions? Councelor Johnson. Yeah, thank you and thank you for this. The question I had is around the callup and the appeal provisions because I correct me if I'm wrong, but then that would make it unique as compared to some of the other SPLB provision. Is that correct? Cuz I don't think you can. Can we review liquor licenses in that same manner?

Not liquor licenses, but I did pull this uh I did not make this um appeal provision up off the top of my head. This was taken from um the review process for some of our zoning applications. So, this is a procedure that is is used elsewhere. Um I rather just assume that the city council might want to have that discretion. Um I know that there are any number of other business license and liquor license things that the special permits license board just does. Um I'm not I apologize. I'm not clear off the top of my head whether there's an appeal process to the city council or not in those. But we we thought the city council might want to have that discretion. You might never use it.

Any other questions? Um I just have a Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Can I go? Um I just have a clarification. Um is so massage parlor is that like a does it include you know the retail stores like massage envy or this you know as an example is it inclusive of those or

uh so the definition of massage parlor says it shall mean any parlor providing massage but does not include training rooms of public and private schools accredited by the state board of education or approved by a division charged with responsibility for approving private occupational schools. Yes, it does appear that that would include those sorts of businesses. I would say that portion of the um the definition has not been modified except that at the end we we um removed something that talks about a facility operated for the purpose of training massuses.

So none of this should really status quo other than the background check requirements. Okay. And so it'll be that all of our existing retail outlets like that would need to be able to um l get licensed.

Well, this will not make these changes will not make any change as to who needs to get licensed and who doesn't. Everyone who would need to get licensed after this recommended change has to get a license right now. We're not making any changes as to who this applies to. Um, so there's no there won't be anybody who will be um surprised or imposed upon by this except for a business that might be operating when they shouldn't be or operating in a manner that they shouldn't be. This won't changeability. Okay. Thank you,

Council Brah. Uh I'm just curious kind of about process with the SPLB is will they get an update then like when when these sorts of things happen where we uh where we adjust code obviously once we vote on this but when we adjust the code does does do they get any sort of education as SPLB I guess maybe yes well I know that we have trainings for those uh board members all the time I we have staff liaison who I imagine would also are keep them informed on changes of this nature and also they they tend to be uh involved citizens who are paying attention. I wouldn't be surprised if they're all watching right now.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Great. So, do we have any Brexiters that have massage because they do in Broomfield and there's been occasions that they were not appropriate things they did. So, I'm wondering if they have to have background checks. everyone that works in our rec centers. Well, what I can say is, as I said before, th this isn't going to change who the massage every we need people needed licenses before this change as well. And we haven't made any changes as to who does and does not need to get a license. I'm just asking if they have to have a background check.

Oh, if if they if they have to have a massage, if they have to have a license from the city, then after this change, they will have to have a background check. Now again, that's per state law. We're bringing ourselves in line with state law on that. That's good. And we do expect that to be helpful at least in the the police department's ongoing efforts to stop some some really bad exploitative practices that um they've done some good work in intervening in lately. Great. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Uh, councelor hot, did you have anything?

No, thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate the guidance. We'll bring forward the three ordinances on an upcoming agenda for first reading then. Thank you. Um, do we want to call for a fivem minute break before our next one? Okay. Yes. I'm seeing lots of head nods. So, five minutes and uh we'll be back here at 8 8:40.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat.

I bet it does, especially dealing with us.

All right, we are now back and we will go over the proposed amendments to the Westminster Municipal Code related to municipal ordinance violations. Thank you, mayor. Um, tonight, uh, we have in in the agenda packet for council's, uh, review and feedback, um, a series of, I believe, nine ordinances, uh, that would update the municipal code so that it reflects, uh, compliance with the people versus camp decision from the Colorado Supreme Court, which was issued in December of 2025. Um the decision of the court was that municipal offenses that are identical to state offenses should follow the state penalty provisions and not exceed them. So, um, our presiding judge, who's also in attendance this evening, Judge Line, um, issued a standing order immediately after the court's decision, uh, providing that no sentence, um, for an identical offense would exceed the state uh, maximum. So, I think it's fair to say that's in effect immediately. What these ordinance updates would do would be put those changes into the code. And the first of the nine um is the one that addresses the penalty provisions. And what we would propose uh would be to add the provisions at the end of the first paragraph of that ordinance uh which call out that um identical offenses essentially are subject to the maximum sentence that don't does not exceed uh state statute. So it would set the the state penalty as the the range for consideration if a person were convicted of an identical

offense under the municipal code. Um um first uh I'll thank Mr. Hoff. Mark Hoff is here as is Brian Fusil. Um Mr. Fusile is our lead prosecutor and Mr. Hoff is an assistant city attorney who uh has been very helpful in helping draft code updates and work closely with Mr. Fusel who I appreciate uh took the lead on beginning these updates and the process of evaluating which sections should be uh the subject to updates and what is before you tonight is really just the beginning and the penalty provision I guess is the gate uh the threshold question for city council tonight. If council is amendable to an update to the penalty provision, then uh the next question would be how should updates to the individual charges in the municipal code be handled? And we have drafts of the first eight in the agenda packet for you this evening. And the the approach that we are proposing is to align the municipal charges with the state statute. And so to the extent that we have municipal offenses that are identical to state offenses, uh we would recommend that the code language reflect that. So, we would update the code and also call out the penalty in each one that would not exceed the state penalty to make it transparent and to provide notice to anyone who looks to the code to inform them as to what penalty would be associated with a specific charge. And as you look through the materials, you uh may have noticed that um among our changes,

we have in our code not always use the same titles as the state uses in its. So among the changes are to our assault charge, which the state calls menacing, and our battery charge, which the state labels as assault. Um, so to eliminate confusion, we are proposing that we align the titles of the offenses with the titles as they reflect as they appear in state law. And we've had an opportunity to to confer with uh councelor Johnson who had several questions. Um and to the extent that you've noticed the final of these eight well second to final is something of an oddity and it is the obstruction of telephone or telegraph service. Um, this is a charge that is from state law that is currently in our municipal code, which is often, I understand, um, brought up in a domestic violence context where, um, an abuser may attempt to limit their victim and their ability to call for help by taking away their phone. So we currently have on the code in our municipal code a charge at 6213 called obstruction of the seeking of emergency assistance. Um the proposal here would be just to rename that and align it with the state language. So it's not intended to expand the regulations that are in the municipal code. Um it is intended to align them with the state statutes as they reflect um these charges. Um the updates to the code are not intended to present any policy changes to the city. So these are all offenses that are currently on the books in the city and we have identified these specific

charges because the elements that they include are the same elements uh as appear in the state statutes. And so those that's sort of the threshold question here. which charges are we looking to update and we look at the elements and I think um the state statutes have a lot of extra language that are may not be applicable to a municipal context. So it's a bit of a time-consuming drafting exercise to modify our uh in our individual offenses to align with the state statutes. But what's before you tonight are the first eight of those. And um speaking to Mr. Hoff and I think Mr. Fusley may be able to confirm what we have um an anticipation of would be uh dozens more in the future. If this approach is the appropriate approach that council would support, um we would propose to bring you these in batches as they are ready. It's a very timeconsuming process. So, we would um ask for um some level of patience. As you can see, you know, tonight's uh 18 pages of ordinances, um they were timeconuming to craft and I I'm afraid, you know, as we go, it will take some more time to work our way through all of the criminal offenses and all of the offenses in our code that arguably have uh identical state counterparts that would need an update. Um, I think that the reason I described the threshold question of the penalty provision is that um, there was a question raised as to whether um, the first eight ordinances are yet ready for it being

placed onto an agenda or perhaps they should include um, some additional stakeholder input. And I would ask for some direction because I think that um our recommendation would be the penalty provision um could be enacted uh with an edit as uh discussed and proposed by councelor Johnson um with regard to the stricken language in paragraph D that he suggests be re uh instituted. I think you know Mr. Hoff and I have discussed that language which is currently in the code could certainly remain in the code um if that's council's preference but our request would be um for guidance as far as placing the penalty ordinance on an upcoming agenda and use utilizing the drafts that we have to seek additional stakeholder input. Um particularly I understand there's some uh desire for alternate defense council to have a re opportunity to review the code updates and to provide feedback on those um which is something you know we could support and um we just ask that um assuming we can incorporate or at least identify that feedback. Um, the question we'd have is would council be uh willing for staff when we have a batch of ordinances that have incorporated or considered at least stakeholder input whether we could agendaize those for first reading and we could have a more in-depth discussion at a first reading on a regular city council agenda because I think that would be the more expeditious way of updating what will be dozens of different sections of the municipal code. um and it will take some

time. So that those are my I guess two requests for council direction tonight and to the extent that you have uh more questions as to the substance of the drafts um both Mr. Fusel and Mr. Hoff are here and they I'm sure can help answer any questions that you might have about the drafts. Thank you. Thank you. Uh before we head into council questions and comments, I just want to offer is there anything you wanted to add um at this time just based on the substance and discussions you've had?

There's only one other um edit to or change to section 181, the penalty section. Um the municipal court does not have uh imposed jail on juveniles. uh but it was still in the code that it was possible. Uh but that's something that uh you know does not occur in any way and so we just simply are are asking to remove it from the code so it's clear that that's not a possibility. Thank you.

And if I could add I think um I really appreciate Mr. Fusle and Mr. off um incorporating input and uh seeking consult with not only our police department but our court to you know discuss the approach what approach made the most sense what approach would be able to be scaled to comprehensively update the code as is needed right now. So I appreciate, you know, their their working in that manner and I think that approach absolutely can be expanded to other stakeholders.

Thank you. I think before we go to council comments, I should offer councelor Johnson a chance to speak. Do you want to offer your reasoning, especially on the language um that you offered a different suggestion to?

Yeah, sure. I I appreciate that, Madam Mayor. Um, you know, I can save some of the other comments around the rest of the code provisions and adoption process maybe uh for the second part of the conversation, but I agree with the city attorney's office and appreciate all the work that was done on 181. And I think it is critical that we we adopt that and take our chief judge's uh directive and put it into our municipal code because I think you know there's an element of criminal law that we all talk about that is notice to people and notice to defendants and while the chief judge directive I think covers that for now I think it is really important that we're timely in at least that provision adopting it now. And um I support you know the the work that was done on the 181 change. I had uh really just a handful of maybe technical suggested changes uh that relate to wording um that I can just pass along verbally right now which is um there is a line in 181A um about halfway through the section. We don't have line numbers, but it says um any person convicted of a criminal violation of any section of this code shall and there's these shalls and the nots and it it's it I would actually prefer to reverse it because I think it's more readable to say may not be imprisoned for a period and then take away the double negatives, the the not in that sentence and then the not later as it relates to the jailing penalty and the um fine penalty. that's the way the state statute that kind of governs this also reads and it's also just more readable and as someone who occasionally drafts laws we try to make them more readable when we can but I think that's purely technical um the other provision as it relates to D is um I think in in terms of readability and understandability and I've talked to the city attorney's office as it relates to how A and how D interact with each other

and I think this needs some further conversation but as part in part of interaction. I think I would have a strong preference to move subsection D to subsection B so that it's parallel next to A in terms of um that provision that says any section of the code for which there's no uh counterpart state criminal statute shall be a civil or infraction um and make that subsection B and then reorder um B and C. Uh and then the the reason I think that that other operative section in D should remain is that u this is really maybe a policy decision that this council can revisit in terms of do we need to edit A or do we need to edit D. But it's I I think in terms of the camp decision. Um my reading of our criminal statute is that there are confinements in our statute as it relates to what is a criminal offense and then what do we sentence and then what is a civil offense and how do we sentence and I think by striking that line in subsection D we're making a policy decision or at least moving towards a policy decision that is unrelated to the camp decision. Um, but that that does have significant implications on how we regulate our the rest of our code, especially the municipal only offenses and I would love to have that conversation. I think it's really important, but I think that is a much broader conversation than the immediate changes we need to make to be in compliance with camp. And so I would recommend just leaving that first part of that sentence in DN and you know revisiting the broader policy discussion as necessary as a council going forward. I'm going to reply real quick. Uh, and what is the broader policy discussion exactly just for the benefit of all listening and this council and me?

Yeah, I appreciate that. U, the broader policy discussion is we have state level criminal offenses and we have the state correlaries to our municipal offenses and those involve jail time. So, if you commit a state criminal offense, you can be sentenced in state court and go to jail. You can be sentenced or or prison and and you can be sentenced in our municipal court and face prison time. But then we have sentences that are municipal only that relate to our regulatory powers as a municipality. Um, and not that the city attorney's office has ever done this, but like your grass is too tall, right? Like all of our code ordinances and violations, you know, our fire code ordinances and violations. There's no state equivalency to a violation of that. These are just special to our ordinances. And many municipalities that is a civil only fraction. And so you do you cannot face jail time for that um infraction. You can face fees and you can be held you know um um in violation by a court but you wouldn't face jails for fire code violation or whatever. Um I think our code has provisions that imply that but also to to our conversation maybe have provisions that don't. Um but in practice by striking D we move to the implication that we would allow jail time for municipal only offenses. Um and I think that is a significant policy discussion that we should have but that's irrespective of the camp decision which is only talking about what do we do with our state corollaries.

Thank you. That I'll when do you want to have that larger discussion?

I don't think it's urgent. I I think in in our sentencing practices, having talked to people in our court system, it's not, you know, our mut only offenses aren't something that we're that we're putting people in jail for regularly. Um I I I think it's probably post all the work that the city attorney's office does on compliance with camp. We can come back around and see what is 181A and hopefully the new B. How do we interplay and how do we if we need to reconcile them um moving forward? But it's it's not like an urgent issue with the practices of the city attorney's office or the the court system. Other questions?

I'm trying to understand the juvenile part. Um so we're so we we don't jail juveniles.

So currently in our code, our code allows for the possibility uh upon revocation of probation to sentence a juvenile to two days of incarceration. Uh we've I I've been here come up on nine years. We've never done it. Not not once that I'm aware of. Uh there are also logistical uh issues. If we were to want to do that, where do we send this juvenile? Because it's not going to be uh my understanding it's not going to be the Adams County Jail or the Jefferson County Jail. They won't accept a juvenile with all these adults. So there's some some practical limitations as well. Um but essentially we have a provision in our code that says we can do it. U I I think those of us involved in these cases have all decided. We're not going to attempt to uh for logistical reasons and reasons beyond that. Uh so we're contemplating potentially removing it from the code.

What if they kill somebody? What do you do with them? They go to district court. So, for example, if they commit a felony offense, they don't come to our municipal court. And where do and where do they jail them? Do they have a juvenile? Uh, presumably, well, I mean, the the the answer to that question could be complicated, but there's the Department of Youth Corrections, DYC, and some other facilities as well. Okay, thank you for the answer. Okay, other questions before we move on to direction folks online. Councelor Hot, do you have other questions? Oh, I don't have any questions. Mayor Promla.

No, I don't either. Okay. Um, so we're looking direction uh for whether we can place this penalty ordinance on the agenda. And so I'm just going to pause there and then we'll go to the next one. Councelor Rosati. Okay. Councelor Hot. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. I just want to clarify the penalty ordinance adds with the suggested changes that were discussed here tonight.

I should have made that motion first. Um is anyone against the suggested changes that councelor Johnson made? Okay. Uh I am for them as well. So I think we have a majority yes on both. Uh so we're clear there. And then um as far as this is the path going forward for how we do this, uh I have a question on that which is I mean I would assume that your department would come up with another way if there was another way. Um but is there another way to do we have to specifically list is this the most practical way is to specifically list every single crime and its subsequent punishment. Is there not just a guideline with a maximum minimum penalties that we instead of doing this tedious work?

Well, I think aligning the language in our code with the state language is desired because it would eliminate any ambiguity. We what we don't want is a lot of uncertainty in court as to whether or not a specific charge is subject to the state range of penalties. The proposal that we are offering would call that out that and answer that question for every charge for which there is a state uh correlate. So and And if I might, Councelor Johnson referenced notice to citizens and defendants. We we did contemplate trying to accomplish the same thing in different formats, but the reason we're suggesting doing it this way is we think it's the easiest to understand. So, for example, if you're charged with a crime, you know, it says on your summons the name of that charge and our code section. If you go to that code section, you will see the potential penalty for that code right there. you don't have to go back to 181. You might not know about 181. You might not know where to look. Um, so we thought though it's more work, it is going to be more clear, more easily understandable and will do a better job of putting, you know, a non- lawyer on notice of uh and help them understand what the potential penalty for each charge might be.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. Mayor also offer that this the research required to compare the state offenses to the municipal offenses and all the elements that they contain is time consuming and I I think that um the complexity of that is another issue we would like to address in terms of the uncertainty that would uh introduce for anyone who's charged through our code. Is is that fair to say? Yes, there there are um so so essentially we're we're we're doing two updates because if we're going to do some updates, let's do them at the same time. So we're matching state uh law both in title and uh in substance of some charges without changing any of the business that we or the police department do. We're not adding new charges or removing them. We're just updating them so that we call it the same thing as in state law. So that's one. uh and the other is the update to come into compliance with the camp decision or to codify compliance with the camp decision. So uh there are uh a handful of charges and if you compare some of the language in these proposals, there are some very minimal differences that don't actually impact uh the substance of what we do. Uh and so we're just going to go ahead and make things as consistent as possible so that uh you know we're not calling something battery and the state's calling it thirdderee assault. We we're using the same terminology.

Thank you. Any other question? Oh, Councelor Johnson.

Yeah, thank you for that. And I want to say that I'm very very appreciative of the the uh process and the labor intensive process that is put together in order to find the state correlaries and I appreciate the approach put the cent the potential penalties directly in the statute. I think there's a lot of value in that. Um I did have you know to our attorney's um initial request for guidance on the process going forward. Um, I did have two requests and and one was alluded to and I appreciate it, but I want to make sure we get formal guidance here. um which is I think a a precursor step that may be helpful both from a workload perspective but also from a stakeholder perspective and a council perspective is I would love to see um the chart of the municipal offenses that are currently in our code broken down by you know M1, M2, um pettia theft, infraction and mun only and then give direction as a council on which ones to prioritize so that you're not giving us batches that maybe we're not prepared for or or that maybe we don't want to update for whatever reason. Um but that um you know the first step is let's just get a a chart of all the offenses that we would need to update and then hopefully get direction from council on um you know which ones to start with which ones are the most prevalent. Obviously, you have theft in there. That's that's a top one given the decision. Um, but but I think there are others. Um, and there may be also some like back to the original conversation about 181. some really important conversations about MUN only offenses that we want to have early in the process of maybe there is a state correlary and we don't want to make it immunity only or maybe if it is immunity only there are other implications that we need to consider as a council including that conversation around what

does that look like for potential penalties. Um, so I would appreciate as a first step just the delineated list to help us understand your direction and your workload and also get some guidance from council on that workload to make sure we're in lock step. Um, following that, I like the idea of breaking it up into some some batches that we can work together on. I really appreciate the idea of putting these out for some stakeholder comment and then making sure that that stakeholder comment is incorporated or if it wasn't incorporated passed on to council so that we understand the implications and the comments that were provided in these changes. Um, and I think that a lot of it is simply, you know, practitioner differences that could be solved rather quickly, including my comments, um, as a member of of the city and the public that I would love to provide. Um, and, you know, in terms of timing, you know, obviously timing is important, but not nearly as important as process and understanding the workload that goes on in the city attorney's office and how big of a workload this is. Um, I would say that of the list of priorities Uh the first two are much higher to me than than as my preference than the than making sure we get this all done at once.

Okay. Any thoughts? So yeah, if I could look to Mr. Fusley, Mr. Hoff, so the the police regulations of the city are all located in it title title six.

So title six could be a place to start. And the challenge though is that there are offenses that live elsewhere in the code that are not in title six. And there are a lot of municipal offenses like and we did the little looking earlier today, but I believe nuisance abatement um code enforcement, property standards, fire code, building code. Um there are the theoretical possibilities at least in those ordinances that council had adopted in the past of incarceration and that's not even all of them. I think we were looking and finding more and more. So to the extent that um you know council might want a chart where state corollaries of all of those are identified. I don't know if all of that research has been done yet because to the extent that you know we have building codes and fire codes that the state doesn't have. Um that's probably the easier example to answer that there are no state corollaries to building code and fire code violations. Um, but if there are, you know, I think it'll it'll take research on a lot of different provisions to identify whether or not there's a state coral area there. So maybe title six could be a starting point where you know the police power regulations in title six maybe that's a place to start. What is that make sense to you? I mean, I I would say, you know, I'm not currently practicing in the municipal court, so Brian can correct me, but I would say 99% of all the cases brought municipal court are in title six. And, you know,

it's very it's rare to see one that's not. So, if if we just limited ourselves to just title six to, you know, to really try to update those, I think that would probably solve almost every issue that we have. And then we can take the other ones at a at a slower pace because they're just very rare to to come across. Yeah. If we we want to prioritize what comes up the most frequently, type six would be without a doubt where to start. Other thoughts?

Sure. Yeah, I I appreciate that. Yeah, I think I think starting in six and just providing us with, you know, here's the here's the list of six. Here's the ones that we think are M1's M2s, petties. Here's the ones high priority to us because obviously there needs to be like the theft charge, which is very operable in municipal court. Um, and then do you know the one barrier and not that this has to be a study session because I agree I think we should just start moving forward with first readings after we get feedback. But the one addition would just be to get direction from council on where in that list we would like to prioritize as a council those updates before you do all this work to to provide additional um you know workload for your office. obviously taking your suggestions um and then just that extra step of making sure that it is out we don't need to like I said we don't need to wait forever but out with enough time that we get comment and that you know there's an attempt to reach out to our municipal defenders and and make sure that they're on the same page which I think they will be on a lot of this because to your point it is mostly um aligning with our state statutes um would would be most appreciated but I think focusing on six works because I maybe at that point we just revisit.

Okay. For all attorneys in the room, we're going to cut the time in half for your speaking. All right. Going forward in the meeting. Go ahead. Okay. Finish. Well, I I would just end with, you know, if after we work through six, maybe we just have the conversation about meeting only offenses and that might help guide the rest of statutory review. Right. Okay. Uh is this possible? Is it possible to prioritize these in a way for council? I I believe title six. I mean we are it's a finite pool of um charges that that is reasonable and feasible. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. And then as far as the outside counsel that was requested um is that going to be an active expense or is that

need the contact information? I'm happy to share drafts. Okay. Brilliant. Okay. Sounds like this is all doable. Do we hear any nays against this plan? Outside council making those additions. Um, I'll say personally I really agree with getting rid of the double negatives wherever possible. Making this as readable as possible for our constituents is probably a good thing unless I hear anyone. Okay. And uh and then bringing it to us directly as they batch them for first reading. Is there any ns against that? Okay. Folks online.

Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. I I would just say I think we want to make sure that we take that first step of going back um to prioritize things before we bring these and also get um the uh feedback on these before we bring them for first reading. But then moving forward I'm fine to just roll them into first reading. That makes sense. Uh any thoughts on that? I see a couple nods. Yes. Yes. Okay. Are we comfortable with that? bringing back feedback on these first initial these initial eight, right? Well, eight and 811, I think we're good to just or 181. I think we're just good to Okay.

But the the other eight uh ordinances that are uh following 181, we'll solicit input from stakeholders, gather that input. Um, and is council's preference then that it come back to a study session or should we schedule a first reading? Are we saying a study session? No, I'm I'm fine to schedule stakeholder input and then also council input and then first reading is good, but I don't think we need council input study session. I guess we're saying email, right? Yeah. Yeah. An email. Okay. Is that helpful? I think that's definitely helpful. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Councelor Johnson. Uh, any other questions or comments?

No. Fantastic. Direction we need. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for your time and patience. Appreciate this. Okay, brings us to uh proposed creation of a water affordability task force. City manager.

Uh, thank you. So, tonight we do not have a presentation. Uh we did I did send around u earlier and included in the packet is a uh proposed uh setup for the for the water affordability task force. So we really wanted to check in that we got it right um in particular um how the membership is determined and the timeline for that um and the timeline for the task force. I think those are the three major check-in points. Paul Kipo is here director public course utilities. Paul did you want to add anything at this point? We're really here to get uh direction and make sure that we are heading in the right direction. All right. Will you repeat those one more time?

I were looking at the the the makeup of the of the task force. So, did we get that right? Um the um the timing of the um application and selection process for the members of the task force and then the timeline for the whole task force. Thank you, Councelor Zati.

Um just following it up. Sorry. Yes. So when I saw it, it's exactly the vision. Um there was a question I had on timing. So I assume after tonight the process we can begin the application process. So it it's really a question for council on what your preference is on how to select the members because there's many ways we've done this in the past where we've appointed you know one person gets someone you gets to appoint each council gets to appoint one person we've had applications um and then we have a group where we've then pick the five residents and um the change was the so uh the existing proposal had seven residents. Correct. Um the change is can we get five residents, one business, and one property manager? I don't know if that's in your latest draft.

I can speak to so what's attached was the original that was forwarded to city council and to you as well. So that included the five the seven which were proposed to have four with some professional experience um in various areas and then three members with whatever would work. Um certainly obviously council wants to change the composition to ensure our business in a a professional um multif family management company that that's certainly that can be comp applied in this process and certainly able to make those modifications. So I guess the first question is are is council okay with changing that composition to be a little more diverse counselor are we are they all applying no matter what we're putting them in

well I think the second question then is how are we going to that'll be collect them but first the composition do we want to reduce seven residents to five so that we can add one business and add one property manager well I think it'd be easier if we just all chose so many because I I don't know how many will apply either. That's not the question. So the question is, do we want to diversify the composition? Oh, before we get to selection, that's the next thing. But for the composition, are are you okay with mixing it up? So we add one business, one or not.

Can Can I Can I just ask um Sorry, sometimes it's hard to um weigh in. Um, can I just ask what is the composition of our water accounts and can we use that same proportion in the representation on this task force? It's mostly residential. I get that. I guess there's probably I don't know if it's I think that would just be a good way to look at it. I don't know. We have I don't know 40,000 residential. I don't know how many

thousand. I think it's about 3 to 5,000 commercial accounts. So, it's about a tenth roughly. Okay. And then what was your other HOA? A property manager. Property manager. I at least think we should have at least Yeah. one property manager and one business on there in addition to residents. Okay. So, I hear a yes from you. And then councelor hot, did you want to weigh in? Um, I have nothing to add. Thank you. Okay. It's going to be a yes from me. I think uh a mix is very important. So, councelor Brahas.

Yeah. Uh to Mayor Prom's point, I think the mix does represent the kind of at least a bare minimum of representation. So, yes. Thank you, council. Well, do we have to have it if just seven? I mean, seems like it'd be wiser if each of us picked one and then we had I think we need an HOA person because a property manager is not the same as an HOA. The property manager manages the HOA, but there's a board that hires that property manager, and the board knows more about the water than the property manager. they're just sending out the bills or whatever.

So, I think the concept was to have a multif family representative, right? Because most of the residents um are not going to be owners of multif family buildings and that the mechanism of how water works with the multif family is much different than a single family. So, you need someone who um does that pass through, right? Because what happens is they usually just pass through the water bill and they're being charged different rates also for multi HOA too. There's some of them pay the water in their their dues. Some of them do not and some do. So it be good to have one of each like a HOA manager you mean or no an HOA president?

President. And maybe you can have an HOA manager because some of them pay it all in their their dues but some do not. Some of them pay on their own like like my name, right? We don't pay it into the dues. We all have our own water bill, but I think condos and town houses are different. You know, Jack's a HOA president. Yeah. And we we pay it all through our dues. We don't pay individual water rate. We do. But we're town we're condos. Hondas and town houses are different than single family homes in HO. So if we have one HOA president, one multif family, one condo, one small business,

one townhouse, one business, one big business, one small business. I think we need Well, so what I don't want to do though is outweigh the residents, right, with those. That's why it's important that we pick at a resident and then we have these other people that have input to me. So I think if the current proportion right of a lot of the water bills is 70% resident it's 90 is it 90%. Yeah based on what then we shouldn't have that many different No we should just so I think it should be more residents but it' be nice to have residents from different parts of the city. I agree with that. Yeah.

Okay. Is anyone against adding uh one business owner and one property manager? Councelor, can I just clarify? Um, are you when you said adding, are you saying keep seven and add two more or are you saying five and two, which is the original? Yep. I am uh for that. And the other reasoning too with seven is you don't want it to be too big. When a group like that gets too big, it gets unwieldy and harder to manage. Seven's hard enough. Seven's pretty big, but as we as we know, it's weekly. Seven can be unwieldy. So I guess we wait and see what we get for applications, but we aim for that. We could advertise.

We aim for that, but it matters what we get. Uh any other thoughts on the composition, councelor hot or mayor prot?

Yeah. Yeah, I do. Um I'm just wondering with respect to the residents if we in the application that we create um we look at like what size lot they might have or kind of like in terms of what what housing stock are they representing or maybe demographic and and do we have um goals for um making sure that cert certain demographics are represented and or certain lot sizes um or geographies. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Um should we hand that out? We can. It doesn't have that in there. No, it doesn't have that in there. Those are good points. Sarah, let's get out those.

Yeah. So, what's what's this is what was attached to the packet um which is the a draft um application form. Again, we're trying to trying to get a timeline so we can keep it moving. That was one of the ideas. Uh so we utilize what the boards and commissions application utilizes and then took out the parts that were specifically asking about which board you want to be on and tried to focus it on um the task force here. So under the interest and experience that was the main area where kind of the questions really changed as far as um what why do you want to be on the board the task force? What do you want to do here? So obviously we can modify this however you'd like. Council,

do we need to like do we finish the poll so we can move into like this part? So I just like this is important. I just want to make sure that we're I don't need to call I don't hear any nays on the composition. So we're going to move forward with councelor Zati's suggestion there. Um and then now we need to move into how do we select the board? And again we're working with approximately seven people. So um suggestions

may I ask a clarification? I apologize. Yes. Um so on the seven members um original recommendation was to to I'm thinking of the advertising for trying to solicit um participation. Um had encouraged that there were four members of professional experience, three members with no experience. Do you want us just to strike that or just say encouraged in these experience? Because we recognize that there's going to be some residents who are going to have both. um or whether you want us to be silent on that part and I can be corrected if I'm wrong but what I hear is uh we encourage diverse experience including property owners HOA leaders business owners and a background in water and then from there we can see who interviews

okay and pick from that pool and council would get the decision thank you for the clarification yes mayor prom

can we have um whether somebody's a renter or an owner on there not to be it's just I I I feel like if we can get enough information if we don't have certain goals for um you know having specific representation perhaps like if we have enough information you know through that last question you mentioned like you know what do you bring to the table or what do you represent like but if you know the owner renter kind of thing might be of interest as well. Um, for us as we're kind of looking through the results

reason we couldn't ask that question. I think you could ask the question if you want to. Any other thoughts? So I completely agree with that and also to add a question on single family or single family attached you know what type of or apartment you know whatever it is what their housing type or if they're in HOA or not or HOA

Johnson I just think it would be beneficial to clarify um that applicants to this task force can also be concurrently serving on another city board or commission because I think we have a lot of engaged residents on PRL or EOB, right? Who like would we don't have to appoint them to this task force, but I think in order to broaden the applicant pool of engaged citizens, we should at least allow them the opportunity and you know because I know a lot of our other boards you can't we don't let people serve on both. So,

um but I think we could because this is so time limited um I I I would like to see them at least be able to apply and then we as council can make a decision on whether to appoint them, but a lot of engaged folks there that I don't want to leave out. Any thoughts on that? Well, I'd like to give other people opportunities if we can. Me, too, but we might not get a whole lot. We do. We should give some other people opportunities to speak out. Agreed. So, maybe we have a little asterisk. Are you on any other boards? Yeah. And then we just make a note of that and we you know first choice goes to folks not but open to that. Yeah. But we should also make it clear that they could also apply for this because typically you don't Yeah.

serve on both you know for the wards the wards commission the wards board that we did uh what was that called? The wards uh commission. The commission whatever the uh name was. We each had the opportunity to just pick one. So, if we wanted to really expedite this to get people in, we could just just a suggestion, not that I'm pushing for it, but there is the option of just saying we each person gets to pick one person and then we don't have to go through an application process. And that was easy. It skips it skips weeks of many weeks of this. But could we not just take applications and then each pick one after that?

We could do that. I mean, I just think there may be people that I don't know of that would be wonderfully qualified to serve and so taking applications and then letting us That's a good idea. Pick one. Okay. But that does ask the question of who gets to pick the business, who gets to pick the right because there's seven of us in seven spots, but one is set aside for business, one is set aside for property manager. That's why I was thinking of the nine. But is staff opposed to nine? Is nine too big? How many funds?

Uh well I what I was hearing pri in the prior discussion was you wanted to roughly match the uh balance between residential and non-residential rate payers and so director uh Kiple advised that it was about a 10 to 10:1 ratio. So so it' be like so be closer if we be like 10. So you could do yeah it could three outside. So, seven residents, one business, one multif family. Yeah.

I just I just think that if we're trying to be thoughtful about who's on this board and, you know, being fair to having all as many voices heard. Um, you know, it might make sense more for us to have kind of choose them together so that we can make sure that we have a representation um versus just individually bringing someone to the board. I know it's more work to do the applications, but we were going to do the applications and then you choose from the applications. They have to apply.

Yeah. I mean, we could come with ideas. I just I just thought we might want to um make sure that we feel like we have a representative group of folks. Um counselor

the collaboration advocate here. Uh I think I think there's a way uh mayor prom that we can kind of keep this process and still do that. I I like the idea of discussing and ensuring that there is a representation, but maybe we still, you know, what I would hate to do is potentially have someone in in mind that I think is perfect for this and might meet that representation, but then not get that person voted in because I can't convince the council of that. And so, I think there's a way for us to be strategic and I and I would presume um enough grace and collaboration on this council that I think we would say, you know, come with a couple of choices. Maybe my first pick is um someone who lives in a detached single family, but that spot's already been taken, but I have a backup potentially. And and I know that's I can't codify that in the process, but I I guess I would just like to say that I I would I want to attend to your concern, but I also think that that's it's we're able to do that with the process of potentially nominating um one person. And I do want to just while I have the floor uh say that I agree with Council Johnson's point on getting applications because I want to make sure that maybe I do know some people, but I also want to see who is also interested and I would hate to have to arm wrestle someone that I think would be good if there's someone here who would uh who's excited and also equally qualified. Thank you.

And and the other caveat too, right, is these these residents are not really representing their own interest only, right? We're bringing them on as representatives kind of like a council, right? We're not we're elected but we all live in different places but we're not ensuring that we're covering the entire city in terms of who gets elected. So I think similarly here we're expecting the residents to consider the entire city's needs and not just their own specific situation to the table if that makes sense.

Okay. So I hear a majority for application instead of a point. Do I hear any nays on that? No. Okay. So that's one piece of it. Um now we need to determine the how. And to councelor Braha's point, unless I hear otherwise, I don't know if I hear a real clear consensus on the seven versus the nine. So I think we have to identify that first. Are we comfortable with the nine with expanding it? Okay. I see a lot of thumbs up on that. So then we'll have uh task force of nine and then from there are we comfortable doing this as we do with our boards and commissions with um a short I don't know what it was two-minute video interview each counselor from there um maybe there can be a joint spreadsheet so we can see as other counselors have put down a name that that name is taken already if that's possible but then we from there just choose our own person based off of that. Um, obviously that leaves two and I'm wondering if the staff would be comfortable, do we feel comfortable with staff choosing two? Maybe the property and the um business owner

with first are you saying an interview process rather than uh just uh like the video interview? Oh, with application video interview then we do it online. And what was your second question? Uh that would leave council to choose one resident each and then staff could choose the two. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That that way staff also gets you probably, you know, you guys and and Lindsay Kimble probably be the best even she probably would pick the same one right away. Does that make sense? Just trying to find a logical. If we pick the same one, then we have to pick a different one. Yeah, that's the only thing. Yeah.

But hopefully we could see each other's to pick from. Yeah, that's yes. Hopefully. Yes. So, suggest your friends uh apply. So, how long should the application process be? Can do we think we can solicit applications in two weeks or so? We had two two alternative timelines.

Um, sure. Yeah, we we've got a couple of So, we would uh would post the applications uh by uh by the end of the day on Wednesday and then we could close that application process as early as March 19th, which would mean it would be open for 15 days. Uh and then so the one one track is option one is we we we post uh March 4th, we close on the 19th and then uh we turn around on the Friday the 20th and deliver it to council and then uh you all can conduct your interviews uh either you know the week of the 23rd would be one idea. Uh and however that falls during some spring break and some other off times. So you could then push it to the week of the 30th which would get you past that.

Uh but you know and alternately we could extend the length of the time to match up more to where the application process is out there. So the other alternative would be to post on the 4th and then uh and then uh close on the 22nd, I'm sorry, on the on the 26th instead of the 19th. gives a little bit more time for them to be out there and then we would turn around and give those to you u on the 27th and then uh you do your interviews the week of the 30th. Well, and clarifying that council wasn't talking about doing interviews. They were talking about this this process where the videos landed. You all go through it just as you described.

We we had it written as interviews in here, but it could be the time when you're reviewing. So really the difference between the two is the week of March 23rd for us to make our selections by which is third week of March pretty quick or um the first week of April. Yeah. So I think all of council's out that week. So I think the second option. Yeah. And it gives more time. Right. Any other thoughts on that? Anyone against that? Personally, I agree with you. Uh folks online, anything else to add on the top? Um, yeah,

I think my maybe my generation is showing, but I'd rather have like a paper to read or you know the videos. I don't know. I'll defer to staff if they want to actually create videos or interviews or not, but I'm fine with just reviewing an application. I'll let staff clarify, but it sounds like they're saying it's both. Yes. So, the where it was where it was going was we would have the application form with the modifications that council requested. uh on the paper form be the electronic and then um the applicant can also record a two-minute video you could watch. I think that's helpful. Is that you would see the applicant and and they would describe

something to you that would be helpful for you to make the decision. Right. Okay. Okay. All right. Are we thumbs up all around? Any other thoughts? So, will this be online for people to fill out on? Is that is those like an online form? Yes. Actually, we were talking about putting it through docyign. Is that correct? Yeah. And then how do they do the videos? I don't don't know the process. I don't know how it was done before.

Um so Abby Fitch, city clerk. Um the boards and commissions interviews are done by there's a set of questions that city council approved at some point. I don't remember when those were approved, but we have um our deputy city clerk actually get on a team's call with the applicant and ask those questions. We found that we had initially tried to do one-way interviews and people weren't responding well to that. So, we actually have our deputy city clerk interview so they can talk back and forth with someone. And I think that has made the applicants more comfortable. Um, if the city clerk is going to handle these interviews, we would need some direction or probably this is true even if it was somewhere else. we'd probably need some direction as to what kind of questions you would want to ask um that are not on the application or maybe you'd want the application uh I guess what I'm saying is staff would need some direction as to what you would want the video and interviews to look like and open discussion but I I would just offer maybe we have one or one or two questions which is what are your qualifications and interest for this role? I was thinking one, right? Because this is such a thorough application, we don't really need them to

Yeah. Diet tribe, right? Any other thoughts? Keep it simple and short. Yeah. Simple. Okay. Mayor Prom, any other council Okay. And maybe the question is like why do you want to why? Yeah. That's it. Okay. Thank you so much. Anything else? Yes. The name. Oh, yes. So, there was a a suggestion at the strategic planning retreat. I forget what you showed, Jody.

I could actually. Uh so uh one was um the wave group uh or task force water affordability and value for everyone. That's wave. Um our HR director uh this morning said maybe it's water uh water affordability to every resident which is I love the water task force. The water task force. Love it. And he just came up with that in like a microcond. Who? Baby Godfrey. Baby. Yeah. In a meeting this morning. Give him a raise. Okay. Wherever you are, baby. Does that sound good? The water task force. I've seen a lot. That's so good. All right. Done. Brilliant.

Thank you. Not WTF, just water. I know. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for that. That leads us to the end of the meeting. Fantastic. So, we are going to be going into executive session. So, uh, city attorney, do we have reason for executive session this evening?

Yes, mayor. There are two executive sessions proposed tonight. Um, but before voting, I would just ask that pursuit to the municipal code uh council um established that uh two the two members who are remote may participate in the executive session remotely. And I believe the the municipal code requires a twothirds uh approval to allow for remote participation in an exact session. So if you don't mind, I would just uh suggest that there be a a poll to that event,

a poll or a motion. Well, I think for a study session, exec session, a poll of everyone just to, you know, see that we're uh complying with the remote participation requirement sufficient. Council Rosati Obi is yes. Adam Brahos. Yes. Christine Ireland. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. And um to the extent that there are two remote members of council tonight um I I wouldn't ask for their participation in the poll for their own remote participation. So um thank you. The the first executive session that's proposed is for the purpose of receiving legal advice from city attorney regarding collective bargaining matters pursuant to Westminster Municipal Code 113C8 and Colorado Revised Statute 2464024B. Thank you. Please uh state your name and answer if you're willing to go into exec session. Obie Zadi, yes. Adam, yes. Christine Ireland, yes. Jack Johnson, yes. Claire Carmelia, yes. Councelor Hot.

Amber Hot, yes. And Mayor VM. Sarah Nala, yes. And mayor, before uh concluding the open portion of tonight's meeting, I would just ask that council uh consider the second exec session title, which we could roll into after the conclusion of the first. And the second exec session title is to discuss strategy and obtain direction from the city council regarding a potential property acquisition and to instruct negotiators thereon as authorized by Westminster Municipal Code section 1113 C2 and 7 and Colorado Revised Statute 246424A. and E1. Thank you. Obie Zadi, yes. Adam Brahos, yes. Christine Ireland, yes.

Jack Johnson, yes. Claire Croia, yes. Councelor Hop. Amber. Amber Hut. Yes. And Mayor Prom. Sarah Nurmala. Yes. Excellent. Fantastic. The time is now 9:44 and we will conclude uh the open meeting and move into exec session. Thank you. Um, Mayor Prom and