City Council - Regular Meeting

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Hey, hey, hey. All right, folks. Thank you all so much for being here. We're going to go ahead and get started now with the second portion of this evening's events, which is the affordability town hall. If you could all just take a moment and take a seat around one of the tables that we have set up for you, that will help us get organized. And I'll pause while we do that for a second. Okay, thank you so much. We're going to kick it off. So, tonight in our budget town hall, we are talking about four major themes. We are talking about accountability, affordability, opportunity, and connectivity. These will inform our strategic plan and our city budget. We want to hear from you about how we can create a city that is affordable, connected, and offers its residents ample opportunities. We also want to understand what is holding ourselves accountable and what that looks like to our community. How do we continue to be a responsible steward of your tax dollars? This is a lot to tackle and so I don't want to slow us down. We're going to keep moving pretty quickly here and we will now hear from

staff uh first and then we will dive into our small group discussions. City Manager Andrews. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mayor. All right, let us work this. All right, so here is an agenda for the evening. Uh the mayor and I are just going to provide very few uh uh opening comments and then we're going to get right into it. So um I want to thank you all uh for being here and uh really showing up and representing the Westminster community tonight. Uh tonight we are looking uh forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. You have uh a a fantastic opportunity. You have members of uh Westminster City Council here at the tables with you. These are the same folks who have just worked on updating the city's strategic plan as the mayor described. The four themes tonight really feed and build into that strategic plan. And that's accountability, affordability, opportunity, and connectivity. And this work tonight is really important because it will drive into the budget process. uh city council is meeting on Saturday, May 9th to take all of the input that you provide tonight and start to work that into the very beginning of the city's budget for 2027. So, a really important night for us and again, I want to thank you all uh for being here. Okay. So, uh, next up will be city of Westminster department directors, and they're going to talk about some of the ways that the city currently supports the four themes for tonight's workshop. And from there, we hope to have conversations with you at each table, hearing about your ideas and expectations uh, on these themes uh, for Westminster's future. We will then ask each table to present four ideas for the city to consider as we begin that budget building process with city council uh in very early May. At the end of the night, I do encourage you to scan the QR code at your table and submit a community project request if you have one. This can be anything, right? Something that

costs money that you see a need for that isn't uh currently addressed. Sometimes we get requests for crosswalks. Sometimes we get requests for uh play equipment in a park. Those are the kinds of things that we will often see. Um and so but that's just those are just two examples. So if you have something in mind that is a need a pressing need for the city at the end of the evening, scan that QR code and get your request into us and city council will uh review that as part of the budget process. Um that form will be open through May 22nd. So you have uh almost a full month to uh go if you want to go back talk to family and neighbors and friends about what you might want to submit. Okay. Uh so I will then um turn it over to our next presenter who will begin this evening's presentations and once we've done those uh we'll get to work at our small tables.

So up uh next is our assistant city manager Chris Lindseay. Chris.

Thank you Jody. Good evening everyone. and I'm assistant city manager uh Chris Lindsay. Happy to be here. Uh Jody touched a bit on uh tonight's goals um and hit those community project request forms and the QR codes are at your table. Um one of my roles with the city uh is helping us uh allocate our resources through the annual budget process every year. And I want to give you a little bit of grounding on the city's uh budget uh and how we provide financial accountability through the work that we do. We're really proud of the fact that the city of Westminster is a fullervice city. Uh, and we provide a slew of services to our businesses and our residents across categories like public safety, infrastructure and utilities, quality of life, and economic and community services. Uh, many other cities uh in the area provide these services through special districts and other taxing entities. Um, and we provide these all in house. And I'm going to talk to you uh in a little bit about what that means for your tax rate. Again, just grounding a little bit uh of the city's budget. Um we have an almost $400 million annual budget and across all our funding streams. Um, we're primarily funded by things like sales and use tax, charges for services like your water and wastewater rates, uh, interfund transfers and intergovernmental revenue that comes from other uh other taxing entities. I mentioned that uh we provide services and we we are a fullervice city and we do that at a tax rate uh that is really aggressive and really competitive with uh those uh cities and counties around us. Um your sales tax is the tax that's applied when you buy goods and certain services um when you're out in the community. That tax rate is 4.25%. Um and you can see where we rank. And

then your property tax is what you get in the bill uh from the county uh county assessor and county treasurer annually. The city's property tax is 3.65 mills. And when you account for those other special districts, you can see that the city is significantly lower than many of those around us. Those revenues come in and provide those critical services I mentioned uh early on. Um, our bi biggest expense every year is people. Uh, the firefighters, the paramedics, the police officers, the staff that's here, uh, the folks that, uh, snowplow the roads when we actually get some snow um, are the biggest uh, portion of our budget. Um, and then a slew of other areas. The contractual arrangements we have with entities to provide services. Um, paying debt, uh, is really important. Um and then our capital plan uh there at the bottom. We balance all of these every year through the budget process um and seek to provide services and a means that remains competitive uh with those cities around us. This is our budget workflow. You can find more on our budget website because I know it's uh hard to read from where you are. Um, but I want to highlight we're smack uh in the middle of this timeline, but early on in our process, um, our staff is beginning to get ready to work on budget development for fiscal year 2027, which starts on January 1st for us. And our city council and our staff are here to hear from you this evening to drive into further budget work that we're going to do with city council on the budget the remainder of the year. that focuses in on the release of a proposed budget at the end of August, an extensive council and public review period in September, and then adoption of that budget in October of the year. We've talked a lot with the community recently uh about making sure we turn

over every stone in the work that we do. And we talked a lot about this uh 3H uh 3H uh measure that was on the ballot last year. We want to make sure we're meeting community needs um before internally before we ever ask for more staff or more budget. We do that through really prudent financial management. Uh we do that through responsible use of taxpayer dollars. Um we maintain strong reserves and credit health. Really important. Uh really important. Um and we work to align our spending with community priorities and voter direction. And this right here is a great instance of how we do that. All right, we're going to turn it over and talk about affordability next. And uh I'm going to ask our parks, recreation, and libraries director uh Eric Ottoberger to talk about affordability. Thank you all for being here this evening. We appreciate your time. And uh I'm gonna let Alex Reeves, our operations manager, talk. No. No. Okay. No. Anyway, um happy birthday, Westminster. The cake is amazing. Um I think we can all agree staff. Our job is to bring recommendations um receive policy direction and then imp that kind of rest thing as a city. So is this uh

check check. Okay. You have to be smarter than the microphone and I have some challenges sometimes so I apologize for that.

Okay. All right. So affordability, what what what does that what does that practically mean? Um and and what are we doing right now? Uh water water affordability, you know, that's that's that's a biggie. Um housing, you know, how do people stay in their houses? um how can people afford to get into housing? Um you know a lot of this affordability work we cannot do alone. We have many partners uh whether that's our respective housing authorities uh maker and uh foothills and others. Um child care uh we we have some good things as a city. Um, last year we started a partnership with the state of Colorado for the universal prek program um, for qualifying families that provides up to 15 hours of uh, free preschool. We do that here at the MAC, at Westview and City Park. Um, but but child care, food, food insecurity. I think at next month's uh, community update, you're going to hear from one of my colleagues, Kate Scarbeck, um, with with council and the mayor on uh, partnerships and things we have going on that front. So um housing, child care, food, water, all the things. Um some some things that are that are a little less um a little closer to home um within within our purview. Um things we do to encourage wellness here. So, we have several Medicare fitness programs that last year provided $500,000 worth of value to Westminster community members to take care of themselves, utilize our facilities, stay fit. Um, scholarships for for youth. Uh, we we recently just made a change from u the city has provided scholarships in the past. It

was but it was capped at $250 per family. that doesn't really go that far. So, through repurposing of existing resources, we've enhanced that now to $250 per individual per qualifying family. Um, last year we provided 50 full ride scholarships for our full summer summer camp. Um, the libraries are a tremendous resource, job training uh AC across the board. And and in the center you see one of our penultimate challenges uh the unhoused community and uh just the other week uh city council approved we're trying to get upstream a little bit um with homelessness prevention. I think with a lot of things prevention is a lot more cost effective um than than other strategies. Um, of course, you know, we're very much in the response uh business, but uh yeah, th those are those are some some things that are top of mind, but most importantly as staff, we're here to listen and support uh ideas, questions from you this evening. So, with that, I will turn it over to my colleague, uh, Director Lindseay Kimble with Community Services to talk about opportunity. Good evening. I'm Lindsay Kimell, the director of community services. Thank you all for being here and spending time with us tonight and celebrating our birthday. I am going to be speaking about um opportunity, the concept of opportunity. How do we as a city build that for our for our residents, for our businesses here? One of the first things people think about is jobs and business creation and entrepreneurship and we do a lot to support those things at the

city. We offer many trainings and um a good you know I love to have a two for one or a three for one. So you'll see in the middle there our child care business program. How to start a a business in child care. So that's teaching someone how to create an opportunity, how to have a homebased business or how to how to operate a childare center outside of the home. That's an example of that. It's also an example of the partnerships that we build at the city. They're incredibly important to us. We can't do this on our own. Um, and we have many partners out there who are so talented and already in different spaces such as small business development with the SBDC and so forth. So, we always try to look for those partnerships too and leverage their strength into our strength. Um, you'll also see there we've got some examples of sustainability. This is a picture from Earth Day which is coming up on Saturday. We hope you'll join us. We are celebrating in Westminster for the entire region for Earth Day and we have Mr. Bridger Tomlin who's our sustainability administrator here tonight. Um but that is a picture from Earth Day and trying to promote different um opportunities with different commuting solutions for people. Also we have a very strong program and we'll be presenting on Monday night about several topics of sustainability and how we are leveraging cooperative buying of solar panels um which can reduce the cost of installation for our residents by sometimes up to 40%. you know, so you get the tax credit and you get that discount of the collective buy and it results in significant savings. So, we've um been able to grow that program exponentially thanks to Bridger and his team. Um, also the construction there, what is that? That was just last week. We broke ground on Blossom Commons, which is an opportunity for um for dignity, for a safe, affordable place for our seniors to live. So, that's from

30 to 70% of AMI. that's deeply affordable and it'll be in our downtown. So, we're very excited about that partnership with um Vulkar Development and many many many partners across the state. Um we also have their Adalante our um Latina uh entrepreneurship convention. We just sponsored that um about two weeks ago, three weeks ago and it was a great success as it always is. We're proud to be a sponsor of that and that's supporting um Latina entrepreneurs. They also support all entrepreneurs throughout the community and we're very very pleased because through a partnership with them that we've grown, they are moving their headquarters to Westminster on lol and 88th. So we're super excited about them coming uh they have a tremendous success record helping people again opportunity. How do we create our own opportunity? Um creating our opportunity to start a business. We want to support those folks. Finally, the last picture there is Westy restaurant week which is going on right now. And um please go to experience westy.com. You can download our app. You can earn prizes and points and tons of really great deals. We have over 40 restaurants that were um worked with us on our first this is our inaugural restaurant week. So, we are super excited and it's um very accessible. The opening price point is $15 for just some really great discounts to get out there and try some new restaurants. Um, and I want to point out we've got also in our in the area where we are now, historic Westminster on 73rd, we have the Bantine. So, these are some renderings of what the inside and the outside beer garden will look like. So, we're super excited about that. And I I was in there last week. The roof has just been restored, so it does actually look like that now, which is amazing. It's beautiful. And uh went down and met with the operator, uh the Bantine, who is currently in Edgewater. So, um that's another opportunity for community

engagement, community gathering. This what their vision is is like at their Edgewater location. This will be a center for the community to there's there to sit to talk to make friendships to um you know keep old friendships new again. So um we we are um very happy to be supporting that at the city of Westminster. The middle graphic there is our housing lift program. This is about the opportunity again for people to have safe and dignified places to live, call home and thrive. Um this is by preserving our current affordable housing stock primarily working with our partners at Maker Housing and at um Foothills which is for covers Jefferson County are housing authorities. We have very strong partnerships with them and we help them make really important meaningful capital improvements to help people live their lives. Also there again the entrepreneurship you can see um that that's the the house over here. Um you can see that's what we call an ADU, an accessory dwelling unit. And um that's another opportunity for maybe someone's um son or daughter or friend or um you know their their mother-in-law, you hear mother-in-law cabins and mother-in-law cottages. we have um been able to institute code changes and updates so that we can accommodate these ADUs which provide another accessible affordable alter alternative so people can stay in Westminster and um and thrive. Oops, sorry about that. That was a little trick. Um and uh finally there you see Trader Joe's. So we work all the time on business recruitment and um retention trying to create jobs. Our city runs on sales tax. So, this retail recruitment is incredibly important to us and giving you new opportunities for shopping, new opportunities, um new selection, more competition, hopefully lowering prices. So, that's a picture from Trader Joe's

opening and uh we're always trying to diversify that again to provide job opportunities, but also to make sure that our income as a city stays stable and we're able to do all of these great programs that we've all been talking about now. So helping with access to education, access to training, access to business ownership and housing are um are very important and a big part of our work plan. So thank you for your attention. U we're here to answer any of your questions. And now I'm going to turn over to my colleague um Mr. Paul Caniple who is a director of public works.

Thank you, Lindsay. Okay, get let this Thank you. So connectivity um through mobility and communications.

Yes. Thank you. So some things that we're working on right now or that are that are underway uh via mobility has been in service here uh in Westminster since uh July of 25. So offering rides to uh residents who are age 60 or over or who may have a disability. Uh these rides are free. Uh we're doing about 160 a month right now. Hours are roughly Monday through Friday 8 to 3:30. Um that's a a a good service. Um connectivity also through uh through communications. uh Google Fiber, Metronet, Intrepid uh have installed about 1.9 million feet of fiber within our city to date. Uh it's been going on about a year. They're doing about a half a mile a day. U that 1.9 million feet is enough from Westminster to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that's just what's in the ground right now. So this will greatly improve uh the ability to use the internet and connect through through um through your computers. Uh another uh way here is um through the um the Federal Boulevard bus rapid transit system that the city is partnering with with C DOT on uh that will travel along Federal from uh from 120th down into Denver. uh service is expected to begin in uh 2030. Also here we have uh connectivity with improvements through our our traffic signal system. Uh the map there on the far left, you can maybe see some yellow dots, but that's about 30 intersections within the city. Out of the 117 that the city operates, uh th this improvement project will impact those 30 intersections. uh in doing a number of different things uh improving the the

pedestrian uh push buttons uh and and and signal indicators at these intersections, bringing them into ADA compliance, better mobility for people who may be visually or uh audio impaired. Um we'll also be installing uh and you can see in the lower right the back lit signal heads or back panel. They're not actually lit, but they'll provide better visibility of the traffic signals at these locations. Um, we're also putting in about 75 uh different what we call snow cones. So, if you see in the upper middle there, this is during a snow storm at an intersection that's probably facing north. Uh, and the heavy snow sticks to the signal lights and you can't always tell if they're red, green, or yellow. These devices are basically fit onto the signal head and shed the snow as it hits. So you can see what that does, the benefit that would provide when we get a heavy snow that's blowing in from the north and sticking to our signal heads. Um and then finally, we have connectivity through trails. Uh we've got 160 or 126 miles of trails in the city. Uh five miles of those are regional connector trails. our parks and recreation libraries department is uh a uh trails master plan right now that'll be completed in the first quarter of um of 2026. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Sarah. Thanks Paul. All right. Thank you to our department directors for giving us an overview. We're going to transition into a small group activity now. So, at your table groups, you should have a city council member and one to two staff members. I encourage you all to introduce yourselves and then there are

questions on the table that your city council member and your staff member will facilitate a discussion through. We're going to be taking notes on those big flip charts. At 7:30, we will regroup and we hope to hear four key things that you want to share with the large group that you would like the city to consider during its budget process. All right, thank you and enjoy your small group discussions.

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All right. Are we getting close to wpping up our discussions? We are going to start our table and we're going to work our around the room. The the goal is to share your top four things that you want staff to hear, that you want council to hear at other tables as they continue on into the budget building process for 2027. Thank you. Okay. So, around um accountability, we had a pretty great consensus, which is this is really an honor to hear uh that really the city's doing a great job on accountability and uh we heard a lot of really good feedback that said that we're doing the things we should be doing

and how do we get that information out to residents? And so, you know, we have a portal. We had a really great program last year around 3H. How do we uh continue to work on getting that communication out to residents? And um it was really highly talked about as well that our property taxes are very low considering what our neighbors pay and that again we are a full-ervice city and so that speaks to how responsible we've been with our budget. So we're doing the hard things. Now how do we let residents know that that is the case? Uh, and so to that point, we ended up talking about um maybe reaching folks where they are at rec centers, maybe having screens with short snippets of information in the rec centers that folks could read, uh, just giving facts, right? And the folks that are already highly engaged, maybe going to a really popular yoga class, uh, can get that information in short order. And so, um, we'll continue working on what we're trying to do. This town hall, by the way, is the beginning of essentially that that really high engagement of what we're trying to uh do for folks. Uh then we talked about affordability. Of course, top of mind was housing. Uh it is pretty outside of the city's scope and control, but we spent a lot of time on HOA fees and um the fact that they can have a high impact on what is supposed to be affordable housing, especially for town halls, town homes, condos, anything with shared uh walls, right? And so those fees can really impact uh the ability of folks to uh live there and continue living there. Uh we also talked about high child care prices um and the lack of availability of child care for under one um and what can we do to increase it which is something the city is very much focused on right now. Um and then we also talked about uh just ability to get to stores and that brings us to

connectivity. Okay, so that brings us to opportunity, which is a good bridge for opportunity. So opportunity, we talked about the fact that South Westminster, a lot of folks here are struggling because they are in a food desert and it's not easy. They're once upon a time or two stores. We don't have that now. Um I also want you to know that city council is very painfully aware of this and we are trying our best to attract stores. It's um something we've been working on, but it doesn't help the fact that it is impacting you right now. Um, we also talked about could we improve some of the burden on individual people um by making sure that they had connection with their neighbors in mixed generations and maybe other folks could help care for their kids, right? Or maybe they could volunteer to help care for their neighbors in different ways. And so um with that that brought us over to connectivity which is we really want more mixed housing where we have a mix of wealth incomes and of generations living in one place and then also higher opportunity for engagement and activities that bring those people together. We talked a lot about uh different volunteer opportunities for those folks such as our shoveling program has been such a success. Where else can we use ideas like that? Um, how do we connect neighbors to their kids and seniors that might have free time on their hands to folks that need that help? Um, that is about everything and really the strongest message of all was continue our high engagement and our communication plan as a city. You know, um, we talked a lot about we just need to push the information we have. We've got so much great feedback on we're doing great things, great programs. We're being accountable. Um, but how do we get that out to folks? We have a lot of social media channels. We are trying to use those. And also that's not always easy for folks um for seniors maybe to use and so um or for you know anyone if you don't have that platform. A lot of

young folks have totally ditched social media. So good for them. Um but we need to continue working on how do we get folks to know. And one suggestion, a strong suggestion we had was to announce the time and place of the next town hall here, which I don't have that information, but if we start planning ahead as a city, then we can give that to you in the future. And so that'll be my commitment to make sure that we can do that.

Thank you. Table two. I didn't hear you guys. Cheer for yourself. Go table two. All right. I'm just going to focus on the four things that we highlighted as a table. Um, similar to table one, we were very, um, interested in celebrating what Westminster is already doing and getting that out there. And so, um, we talked about using social media to do that better. And one example was, um, Mayor Mandani out in New York City is using Instagram to do all kinds of, um, stories and snippets about what the city is getting done. And that's, you know, that's something that is key for us because we do have a lot. Um, and we also talked about just having more access to um and visibility of the programs we provide. So, let's see. Okay. The other thing we wanted to highlight was better connectivity to transit and that was in particular around Federal Boulevard and getting over to Westminster Station. There was some concern over the safety of the pedestrian connections, even at lights, because we have a lot of folks that are um speeding and running red lights. I'm sure you've all seen it in any path you take through the city. And so, you know, perhaps there's a pedestrian bridge or some way to get people more safely across our big arterials. Um, okay, this one. Yes. Um, also highlighted from the other group was a a need for more services and groceries. As we are continuing to redevelop and build new areas, how can we actually get the kinds of services

like grocery stores that we desperately need? And that also was something that we talked about would help people stay in place if they had more access to those services. And finally, we wanted to highlight that theft and crime is something that does impact the perception and the quality of life in Westminster in especially in the southern portion of the city. It not only impacts people living here, but it also has really impacted businesses. And so we don't want uh people feeling shy about investing in and locating their business in Westminster. And so that is hopefully something that we can continue to focus on. Anything else?

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Scooter safety. I just want to reiterate that it doesn't have to be the counselors uh that are the ones speaking, but my table nominated uh me. So, uh more than happy to do it. My name is Adam Barahas. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you everyone uh who's here. We had uh Denise, David, and Brenda offer some amazing insight at our table and uh I'm glad to share some of it. Our four ideas are just the city sharing information, the city sharing information, the city sharing information, the city sharing information. every single topic we had uh was uh you know it was reiterated hey there's cities doing some amazing things but how how can we hear about it some more you know and it kind of came up when we talked about you know the dashboard and I mentioned every every Monday night you can hear uh city manager Andrews mention you know Westminster transparency but you know do people know how to access it do people even know that that's there uh and that's kind of uh you know the onus is on us to make sure that we we can share that we mentioned some some cool programming uh you know that's that's in in the works to be able to see some of the bigger projects and the way monies are spent on those projects as well. Uh so we're excited to you know dig into some of those in terms of affordability. Um you know there was this uh insight in you know a lot of households have multi multiple generations living in them and it's not just you know uh parents with young children. It's it's people of many different generations uh living in it particularly because uh whether it's senior care or uh inability to afford for for certain generations to afford a home. And you know that that kind of missing availability of housing whether things are too expensive or there's just not housing available at all. And that's something that this council constantly is wrestling with uh you know as we look in to what development looks like particularly infill development in this

city. Uh but again uh in terms you know uh Denise mentioned driving around the city looking for uh you know an affordable apartment for uh one of her friends and she said how can I even access that information? It was literally me getting in the car you know her getting in the car and driving around and calling that she saw listed on the side of the road. And so how can the city kind of share some information around where is there affordable senior living and um how can people access that uh you know opportunity trying to localize services uh was kind of a big theme that came up you know if we're looking for part-time jobs something that would be close uh and if it's not close how can we use transit to get there particularly for those who can't drive you know whether we're regional partners right people work in Fort Collins in Boulder and Denver and might not want to jump on the highway to get there. Uh but the Mustang doesn't have any stops in Westminster or or if it does, they're really hard to get to. So, how can the city engage uh with some of those connections to make sure that people have multiple options for transit? Uh and and then sharing that information as well, you know, like where are the city bus routes, how can people gather that information? And finally, connectivity. Uh I was not I I promise I didn't bias my table, but a lot of our connectivity was about neighborhoods and social connection as infrastructure. Uh you know, they were surprised to learn that that's kind of my my jam. But uh everyone, you know, does doesn't know their neighbor anymore. You know, they don't know their neighborhoods. And and you know, some insight that I gained kind of at my table is, you know, my neighborhood I'm I'm kind of, you know, lucky in that a lot of the people living there are new because a lot of the houses are new. Uh so people are looking to make new friends but in these existing neighborhoods where there's people who have lived there you know for a mix of 30 years to 5 years to 10 years there's not necessarily that similar draw but how can we as a city share the

information about who your neighbors are and opportunities to connect again. So I know I rambled even though I said it was all the same thing but information sharing that information and sharing that information.

Thank you counselor I'm Heidi Einholtz and not Obi Aati, but I'll be speaking on behalf of counselor. It was uh Dr. Seuss who said, "I speak for the trees where I have no tongue." But um this time it's me speaking for Obie who lost his voice. So, we had a wonderful pack table across two different languages tonight and lots of ideas were discussed and one of the most pressing issues that we spoke about today was uh rent control and landlord accountability. We had a few stories about what does one do when there's a pressing leak or a huge issue with the apartment that you're in and you don't know how you can get any recourse from your landlord. So, we spoke about ways to access that sort of help from the city. If it doesn't exist already, then it needs to be more um brought brought forward to more people's attention so it is accessible. Um and we talked about the potential of advocating to the state at the federal level just to uh hold landlords accountable as far as rent prices go because affordability was a main thread through many of our conversations. and um achieving that seems to be something that we would like the city to uh approach if that's possible and um escalate wherever possible. The next category was mobility. And this spanned a few things for non-drivers um and drivers alike particularly uh locally. So within our city and um between other cities, we spoke about uh the rail between Fort Collins, Denver, Boulder. We'd love a stop in Westminster if possible. We

spoke about buses that traversed all of these cities. Commuting to Denver and Boulder are huge things that are important to our community. Having um better access to that, whether that means increased buses running the lines or reducing the prices of accessing that and also making buses and trains etc. uh more approachable to people who have special needs like folding up a walker, uh a wheelchair. Wheelchair accessibility exists, but um it can be awkward with a stroller, small children, a walker, anything that um would take time and is generally discouraged in a busy line where people are trying to get on and uh take up as less space as poss as little space as possible. Um, and on that same vein, uh, we spoke about bicycle lanes, uh, with gas prices being what they are, uh, and super, um, unstable, people are looking into alternatives like riding bikes to places that they can get to easily, uh, within a few miles. So, we would talk about the logistics of how to keep bike lanes clear and safe for people of all ages, including children. um and uh generally the cost of getting from place to place. Our next category was child care. And this sort of encompasses a lot because we're talking about child care for young children and babies as well as uh things for teenagers to do. We spoke a lot about issues with suicides in school and just general mental health issues um that can really damage a a connected community and what can we do to help that? Um we spoke about different options like afterchool activities,

sports, um other clubs that kids can join at the uh middle school and high school level as well as addressing the affordability and the availability of places for for in any anyone from an infant to a toddler that those preschool years as well. Um and then last but not least, we spoke about housing. Um, we need housing to be affordable, plentiful, and to have options. Um, housing is an issue that affects so many different avenues of our lives. But we also spoke about how it relates back to the child care because our housing issues also affect schools. When we have fewer families affording um, homes long-term in our communities, our public schools receive less funding. And then we have issues like reduced hours for interventionists in schools, social emotional learning coaches. Um class sizes expand and um the amount of classes decrease and um that it all sort of is a cycle in in the housing game. Um when houses are affordable, people stay in their communities. When families need to upgrade because they've got a new one on the way, they need to have that space. When people are ready to downsize and they don't want to leave their community and their family, they need options to go to as well. And everything needs to be within reach. Okay. And I think that's everything. Do you have anything else to add? Thank you.

We had some great ideas at our tables, so I appreciate those that came out. Um, so there's a few things that we came up with. Um, and I will turn the time over to Annie after I speak to a few of them. So, we always talking about how we can get older people to downsize. And one of the issues that I have seen is when when elderly are t have been lived in their house for 10 years and they turn 65, they get a tax break on the first 200,000. So if we could let that go with them to another house, I think that would help. So we'd have to talk to the state about that. So that's one of the issues I've been thinking about um to uh make that mobile so more people want to move. Um also I guess we have a little problem with our recycling. Um they're my table pointed out hallogen light bulbs are hard to recycle and other things and our recycling center does not recycle them. So, they're they're going other places trying to find places to recycle bulbs and what were some of the other things that we batteries. So, I think we need to look at at adding some of that things to our recycling um transit dependability. There's some at our table that used to use US 36 um bus stop to downtown, but it has not been that reliable since 2020. So, our reliability in our bus service is an issue that we need to talk to RTD about. Um I'll turn the time over to Annie for the other thing. She has some great ideas about child care. So,

thanks. Um we talked a a lot about child care at our table um connecting a number of the topics um uh that we were centered on today. Um and Councilwoman Ireland asked me to share an example that I know about from Durango, Colorado, where um a social impact investment fund um has helped uh build some affordable housing focused on families that want to open child care businesses. uh and there's a rent to own model so that those people um are able to get out from under the liability constraints of being renters but also be on a path to home ownership and be business owners. Um and that's one model. Um but uh we talked about child care um being important for a number of these other components of affordability uh and connectivity and opportunity in our city and thinking about how we need to um I I know that Westminster has recently included a child care uh in in the city plan as a component of infrastructure which is really critical. Um people need safe places for their kids to go to work in order to be workers in our city. Um and so there are lots of other ways that we can use um city tools to make that happen, including zoning and regulation changes. Um so that was one of the things that we talked about. Um another priority on on our top five list uh is uh shared and third spaces. We talked a lot about having places to go and meet neighbors um and be in community and um sort of this uh connection between both local businesses like a coffee shop and um Eric here mentioned that there's a a potential opportunity with Jefferson County Public um to link a library service opportunity with a coffee shop as an example shared space. Um and we we talked a lot about that as important for our community as

well. Um the third thing on the list uh is around uh uh programs um I'm sorry I forgot what the category that it was in but assistance programs offered by the city. I'm sorry what is it? Affordability. Yeah. Um we talked a bit about um what's available through the city um and how it can be a little it can be confusing depending on who's offering th some of those services. Some of them are available through the city, others from nonprofits and other um levels of government. And um having navigation being really helpful. Um Eric mentioned that the city does have some navigation available. Um but maybe having other places where you can enter a system and get that navigation support so that you can access the things you're eligible for. Um I think I think uh Councilwoman Ireland talked about the rest, so I can pass it off. Yeah. All right, I got it. Make sure we have our interpreter. Um, so we had we had a wonderful table full of young kids and working professionals all who had to get back to work and to their kids. Um, but we had a great conversation. Uh, but I want since I'm the last one, I wanted to start if we could just give a round of applause to all the city employees who stayed late to support us here and to our interpreters who make this accessible. I mean, my day job is really about having accessible spaces and including people. And so, both language access and um, two kinds of ways is really important. So, a round of applause for our interpreters for being here late tonight. Thank you all. Um so we we covered of all the topic areas and we had ideas for each of them. Um on the city's um accountability I think to councelor Barahas's table's point um people you

know our table discussed having uh greater access to information for people who want to seek it out. So lowering the barriers for people who want to inform themsel including the city's website ensuring that wherever people navigate to get information we make it accessible to them because as much as we want to spread information um we also want to make sure that people who want to inform themselves have access. Um and we focused on the city's website and ensuring that that remains navigable for people who want to get information. Um, on the affordability uh area, we talked a lot about housing and all the different ways that we can keep housing affordable here in our city, including how we, you know, how we build and what goes into building a property and and how we tax and just ensuring that through every lens that we're looking at housing, we're we're trying to keep it affordable for people because we want people to stay here in the city of Westminster. Um for opportunities, we talked about small businesses and you know, one of the economic engines that was mentioned um by Lindsay is sales tax. And the businesses here in our city keep our city going as well as the residents who are paying that sales tax. And if we don't have businesses, doesn't mean that you don't get groceries. It means that you go to a different city and give them your sales tax. So, we want to make sure that we are creating opportunities for people to start businesses here in our city because that is really one of the core engines of of our all of our success and our well-being. Um, and some of the barriers including again access to starting a business, access to information for that. Um, and opportunities for small business owners or people who want to be small business owners to be able to work with the city and our chamber of commerce to start a business here in Westminster. Um and finally, our uh we talked a lot about connectivity and focused on what was touched on with transit um with a key focus on first and last mile transit for people um in our community who are working. Um I think via mobility has been a great start for

our city, especially when it comes to seniors and people with disabilities. But um there are plenty of working people who would otherwise take public transit but who can't because of that first uh first mile in our city or last mile in our city whether they're coming in or out of our city. So ensuring that we make those a priority for you know where RTD has gaps, what can city do to fill those gaps. Um and uh that's all we had and I think I'm turning it over to city staff to wrap us up and the mayor.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you friends so much for joining us this evening. Your input directly impacts our priorities and how we spend the city budget this year and next year. And please trust that we're going to continue having a lot of outreach and engagement. And this budget process happens throughout the year and doesn't wrap up until around October. So you have lots of time to get your ideas into us. Email us, give us a call. That's what we're here for. Or join at one of our uh coffee dates. Uh I have one monthly, by the way. Check the city calendar. And I want to hear from you and continue hearing from you. Um that said, what are things I need to remember to tell you? Okay, the next town hall, we do not have a specific date yet, but it will be in June or July, and it will be in partnership with Jefferson County uh commissioners. This is exciting. I share this because we are really trying to innovate and be creative with how we are doing our engagement and we are trying to bring in our partners so that you're hearing from multiple sources of government in one place. We are trying to make this easier. I also heard a lot tonight that we really want to work with our schools. We're trying to do that too. We're trying to bring in uh some town halls that work with our uh schoolboard members. And so more to come there. We're still trying to work out the kinks in that, but we're we're really trying to make sure that you guys know where to go for your information. Uh, and the information from tonight, there will be an executive summary uh, and essentially all of the followup to tonight's questions and thoughts will be available in two weeks on our city council outreach page. So, you can go there to find out uh, any thoughts. And again, if you miss something, just send us an email. Um, with that, please make sure that you take some cake home tonight because we have a big tower that needs to be eaten.

And happy birthday, Westy. Thank you all so much. Thank you for being part of this community. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Oh, heat. Hey. Hey. Heat. Heat.