City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. you ... ...

Good evening and welcome to the Westminster City Council meeting of June 8th, 2026. Please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you for joining us this evening. Please remember that our meetings are governed by the rules of decorum posted inside chamber doors. We ask all attendees to maintain 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. If you wish to speak during public comment, please sign up in the lobby. Sign up closes at 6.45 p.m. Roll call, please.

Councillor Barajas. Present. Mayor Carmelia. Present. Councillor Azadi. Here. Councillor Haught. Present. Councillor Ireland. Councillor Johnson. Here. And Mayor Pro Tem Nurmela.

Here. Thank you. Do I have a motion to allow remote participation for Councillor Ireland? Councillor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to allow Councillor Ireland to participate virtually in this evening's meeting.

Mayor Pro Tem? I second. This has been moved and seconded. Are all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, well then we are ready to get going. For the consideration of meeting minutes, do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Mayor Pro Tem?

I motion to approve the minutes of the May 18th, 2026 City Council meeting as presented. Thank you.

Councillor Haag? Second. Thank you. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. That moves us on to our presentations. We have three presentations this evening. First, our Mayor Pro Tem will be presenting the 25-Year Service Award.

Do you have anybody here with you?

I do. I have people in remotely from Michigan, my partner, and a lot of my work crew.

Do you want any of them to come stand up here with you?

I would. I would like my partner first and maybe the work crew after.

You want to introduce your partner?

This is Eric Moody. Hi. Most of my family has met him back home, so they're waving right now.

Thank you. All right. Oh, it's over here. Now, this is a fun one, because you get some money with this one. Do you not?

Is it just a pin, or is it money?

Wait a minute.

Money now. Oh.

The check will be issued July 9. Here's the proof you'll have a check. I will read about Tracy. Tracy Cutshaw started life at the city sometime right after the turn of the century. My kids say that I was born in the 1900s, which is... Yeah, how they see it. So way back in 2000, when she became a volunteer in probation, she was hired in 2001 as a full-time probation officer. Despite declaring in high school that there was no way she would sit in an office all day, 25 years later, she is glad that decisions made back in the late 1900s didn't always come true. She is often surprised and inwardly smiles when her clients thank her for helping them through the probation process. Tracy understands being on probation is not on anyone's bucket list, but if you find yourself there, she will do her best to get you through. She is proud that her education, life experience, and intuition have given her an edge in understanding a wide variety of people. Tracy has supervised tens of thousands of people at this stage of her career and knows sometimes she is walking with them on a rocky path or sometimes just planting a seed for their future self. At the courthouse, Tracy is known for leaving inspiring sayings on her voicemail, encouraging her coworkers to take walking breaks, and as the official spider relocator. Very important, very important. Well, you have a badge for that! Wow! To balance out the seriousness of being a probation officer, Tracy loves to travel, enjoys reading, writing, camping, and belly dancing. She attributes her happiness to her longtime partner Eric, her Colorado family, and her OG Michigan family. Congratulations, Tracy. Let's see if you can hide that hand back behind.

Ready? One, two, three. One, two.

Congratulations, Tracy.

Can I take a picture with my work crew as well?

Yes, absolutely. Work crew, come on up. Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

You guys didn't get out of it.

Ready, one, two, three. One, two, three.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

All right. We now have a proclamation designating June as Pride Month. Councillor Haught, please present the proclamation.

And if you are on the Inclusivity Board or you identify as part as the LGBTQ community, please come on up. Yay. All right, would you like to introduce yourself?

I'm Rich Chamberlain. I'm a member of the Inclusivity Board.

My name's Alejandra. I'm just a member of the community. My pronouns are she, her, or they, them.

My name's Aspen Rawson. I'm on the Inclusivity Board, and I'm also a member of the queer community. I use they, them pronouns.

Victoria Short, Senior Management Analyst with the City of Westminster. I'm also the lead facilitator for the Eagle Plus Affinity Group.

Alex Reeves, Operations Manager for Parks Recreation Libraries. I'm also on the Eagle Plus Affinity Group. And I'm Chris Chauvin, Senior Transportation Planner, Heathium.

So we just had our Pride Fest celebration on the 6th and so today my heart is really full. I am really grateful that we live in an inclusive city. I'm really grateful that we have our flag flying and I am very grateful that the majority of our city council members are allies. Whereas the City of Westminster has committed to make our community more welcoming and inclusive for all, including the LGBTQIA plus community, and whereas the United States Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex couples can marry nationwide, establishing a new civil right in our country, and whereas a former President Barack Obama designated the first national monument to LGBTQ plus rights in June 2016, honoring the LGBTQIA plus community's long-term presence and struggle for equality across our nation. And whereas all members of the Westminster community, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, non-binary, and two-spirit have the right to feel safe, not be discriminated against and to live without the threat of harassment. And whereas supporting the Westminster's LGBTQIA plus community also aligns with the city's objective to create a more inclusive and equitable community that promotes unity and honors diversity and whereas the city has added protections for LGBTQIA plus individuals with an inclusive non-discrimination policy stating that no person shall on the grounds of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or age be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination in any operation of the city. The city of Westminster extends this coverage to ensure that no person is unlawfully discriminated against on the grounds of immigration status, gender identity, or expression, or sexual orientation, and whereas the LGBTQ plus community has made great strides However, work remains in order to achieve full equality, inclusion, and acceptance. Now, therefore, I, Claire Carmelia, Mayor of the City of Westminster, on behalf of the entire City Council and staff, dear, hereby proclaim the month of June as Pride Month and call upon the people of Westminster to recognize and celebrate Pride Month. Happy Pride.

Thank you all and our last proclamation is for Juneteenth. Councillor Barajas, will you please present our last proclamation?

Excuse me, thank you. So I grew up in Texas and so Juneteenth has a pretty special and important impact, not only on me personally in my history, but just for my family and community that I grew up in. As such, I'd like to invite Councilor Azadi as well to come co-present this proclamation with me. And while he makes his way up here, if anyone from the Inclusivity Board or any other body wants to come up for the Juneteenth celebration, please come on up as well.

Thank you, Counselor. Raise your hand in the audience if you know how long it took Colorado to recognize Juneteenth as a legal state holiday. Do you think it was 50 years? Raise your hand. 70.

You have to know when was 1865.

1865. That's the answer. But yeah, so it took us 157 years to recognize in 2022. It's important that we remember our history and that we recognize things. But I want to make sure you guys introduce yourselves first, and I'll read this proclamation.

Alex is, again, Parks, Recreation, Libraries Operations Manager, and also part of the Bridge Affinity Group, which is Black, Resilience, Inclusive, Development, Growth, Empowerment Affinity Group.

My name is Aspen Rosson. I'm on the Inclusivity Board.

I'm still Rich Chamberlain, and I'm still a member of the Inclusivity Board.

Everyone knows who I am. Well, thank you, Councilor Barajas, for inviting me up to make this, and I will read this proclamation. Whereas Juneteenth marks our country's second Independence Day, and whereas Juneteenth, also known as Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, and Emancipation Day, commemorates June 19th, 1865. I got the year right. I actually didn't know it. Whereas the day's name is a combination of June and 19th in honor of the date of the announcement, And whereas Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced the end of the Civil War, and whereas it was declared that more than 250,000 enslaved black people were free, And whereas many slave owners in the state of Texas and other states had continued to hold enslaved people captive despite their emancipation, and whereas the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, and whereas the speech Frederick Douglass delivered at the first annual national Juneteenth rally in Washington still resonates with many seeking equity and justice for all, and whereas the city of Westminster stands with all who stand for justice and humanity and celebrates our independence, And whereas the City of Westminster condemns all acts of othering in the shape of overt acts or microaggressions, now therefore I, Claire Carmelia, Mayor of the City of Westminster, on behalf of the entire City Council and staff do hereby proclaim June 19th, 2026 as Juneteenth in the City of Westminster and call upon the people of Westminster to join together in honoring the resilience and contributions of African Americans in our community and across the country.

Ready, one, two, three. One, two, three.

Thank you so much. This moves us to public comment. Public comment is an opportunity for the public to address City Council on any issues or items pertaining to city business. During public comment, each speaker will have up to three minutes for their comments. Staff will follow up with questions and outstanding issues. City Clerk, will you please report the number of email and voicemail received and the number of individuals signed up to speak this evening and then call the first speaker to the podium.

Yeah, we received two emails. We did not receive any voicemails, and we have nine people signed up to speak. And the first speaker is Alejandra and Cullen Anguelo-Sheland. Sorry.

Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, council members, and staff. My name is Cullen Angulo-Sheland. I live at 7767 Stewart Street on a 1.23-acre lot in southern Westminster, and I'm here with my wife, and we would like to comment on the backyard chicken ordinances and conversations with Councilors Azadi and Barajas about food security in Westminster. Thank you to Councillor Azadi for encouraging us to submit our proposal and thank you to Councillor Barajas for helping us build community by connecting us with historic Westminster residents interested in our locally grown food.

Council, mayors, city managers, thank you for your time today. My name is Alejandra Angulo-Sheland and I'm excited to speak with you today. We're proposing two changes to the chicken ordinances in an effort to meet local egg demand and decentralized food production. The first request is that the number of allowed backyard chickens scale with the property size at quarter acre increments. Currently, residents are allowed to keep only six hens on lots up to two acres, which leaves larger lots like ours underutilized. We request that six chickens be allowed per quarter acre up to a maximum of 30 chickens for lots in excess of one acre. We analyzed the city's geospatial parcel and zoning data and found that less than 5% of Westminster residential lots would be eligible for more than 12 backyard chickens.

The second request regards the fencing requirement. The permit currently requires six foot privacy fence around the entire rear of the property. On our lot, that's over 750 linear feet of fence, a significant and unnecessary expense. We are asking that that fencing requirement apply to the coop area only, which keeps the animals contained, protected, and screened from neighbors.

This proposal aligns seamlessly with the Westminster sustainability plan, the 2040 comprehensive plan and the corresponding implementation action plan. All of these plans highlight the need to continuously improve our community's health, wellness and community services through things like local food production, improving access to healthy food, supporting urban agriculture and removing regulatory barriers. We believe that amending the backyard chicken ordinance would advance all of these initiatives.

This proposal also supports our local economy and improves community food resilience. Pasture-raised eggs at local grocery stores cost between $10 and $15 a dozen. Residents with the land and ability to produce eggs locally can make them available at a fraction of the cost. We actively do this now by distributing two dozen eggs per week to community members in historic Westminster for $6 per dozen. At full capacity under this proposal, we could provide as many as 15 dozen eggs per week during warm months. One of our highest priorities is to build community through gardening, nature stewardship, and local food. There's a large interest in the city as well. Just this weekend, we attended a potluck that Councilor Barajas hosted in his neighborhood's community garden. Multiple attendees asked to be on our egg customer list.

As you consider these changes, we are very happy to discuss implementation details, answer any questions, and discuss ideas for increasing food security through local food cultivation and gardening. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

The next speaker is Barb Struck.

good evening welcome i'm quite nervous so I'm here to support Cullen and Alejandra to increase the number of chickens they are able to have in their backyard. I purchased fresh eggs as often as possible. They are highly sought after in the community because of the natural quality with no antibiotics or pesticides. I believe the following will support my request for their additional chickens. They own sufficient land to accommodate an increase in the chicken population. They provide fresh eggs which are healthier and free of harmful substances. Chickens consume household kitchen food scraps that are not added to our landfill. Chickens produce high quality fertilizer that enriches the soil by providing nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium essential for plant growth. They are natural pest managers that forage for bugs, worms, and other pests that would otherwise harm the land. Chickens are not loud, and they become more quiet at night, unlike there are some neighborhood dogs. Colin and Alejandra are supporting the community and creating community links. They have had chickens for a few years and have not received one official complaint nor complaints from their neighbors. In conclusion, Cullen and Alejandra are good stewards of the land and true environmentalists in the community. They are creating safe food and a clean environment for the people who live in the community. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

The next speaker is Rose Namagiannis.

Welcome. Hello. Um, yeah, so I'm here for the dog park, even though I do like what they said about the chickens. I think that was cool. Um, but uh, yeah, I'm here for the dog park. Um, I really care about the dog park and we have a, um, a situation right now where there's a burrowing owl and we care about the owl as well. And so there's been some concern about creating better barriers and more, I guess, awareness over the signs and excuse me, where we can walk or where we can't walk. I was just there this morning and one of the barriers is very confusing on whether or not we can walk on that trail or not. So I think there needs to be more, communication with the people that use the park that may not be aware because I feel like otherwise obviously originally when the park was being threatened to be closed down it was all about like environmental concerns and the habitat but currently the way things are going I'm just concerned with you know, it just being kind of set up to fail, like almost like, you know, if we don't respect the boundaries or something, all of a sudden now we're in the same situation as we were before. And I just wanna let everybody know that we, me as a dog lover and the lover of the dog park, We also love the owl as well. And also, I'd just like to note that, you know, I think the concern about the owl having its own kind of area and stuff like that, and the 600 acres that was relinquished or whatever from being used by dog users or dog park owners and stuff, or dog owners. you know, that was for the purpose of like giving the owl its space. Whereas now where it's at, I mean, it's choosing to be in the center of the dog park where we're all at. So maybe I would just like to suggest that maybe there's a, maybe like some sort of cohabitation and we can all kind of live together. Maybe the owl doesn't mind us as much, you know, as we previously thought. So like I said, it's choosing to live there. So I just want to make sure that we're, all on the same page that we do respect the OWL's boundaries and I think we should be more clear about where we can and can't go. And I think just better communication on that as well. I think the guardians, the dog park guardians, they're very cooperative with just kind of making that happen. So I think if we could have I think better communication between like open space, the people that are in charge of kind of making these things happen and then the people that use the park, I think that would be great. So yeah, thank you. Thank you.

The next speaker is Anakin Skywalker Kendrick.

Sir can you come right over here so our audience online can see you as well? Thank you so much. So I wanted to see about Nantrack and the city of Westminster have a station downtown Westminster over here at 88th and Sheridan and wanted to see if Westminster City Council can approve of this photo of the Cornwall Connector. I got a photo here. Wanted to see if there was any updates on the downtown Westminster Station area. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Tonya Yost.

Hello, good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, counselors, city manager, staff, thank you. I'm here tonight also to discuss the recent discovery of the burrowing owls in the Offleash Dog Park, seasonal closures in community education. It's very exciting that a pair of owls have made a nest in the 440-acre area. As Rose advised, there used to be a nest on the 600 side, and now they've chosen to move over. We were first made aware of the owls via an email from Parks Director Ulzelberger on May 27th. The same day, there was also a Facebook post on the Parks and Rec page, a Facebook page advising that the burrowing owls had nested, and it provided a closure map of that area. The guardians put together a Facebook post and an owl info sheet which has been passed out to you to share with park goers a copy and this is only on the Facebook page of the city as well. On 528 open space employees at the park advised that trail barriers and signage would be going up as soon as possible. On 529 rangers also advised that signs were coming hopefully next Tuesday from the open space department. Next, various wooden barriers were erected at different trail areas with little to no signage. Most just say trail closed. Nothing advises of an owl or any wildlife closure or a seasonal closure. We have tried to educate the public, but find ourselves now coming before you as a full 12 days has passed and we're still waiting on some sort of informational signage at the park. There's nothing posted providing any information about the need to protect the owls, which is a threatened species in Colorado. Not even a map of the closure area has been posted at the park, only on the City Facebook page or the Guardian pages. Members of the Guardians have been at the park every single day since May 30th, passing out flyers and educating people about the owls and the closure. We want buy-in and compliance with the park rules, and nearly everyone has been very excited about protecting the owls, and many have asked why there are no signs at the park. We've also been updating our followers on our Facebook pages. This Sunday 6-7 was really a hot mess. The lack of direction for park goers continued. I personally witnessed people trying to comply with the trail closures and finding themselves caught between two barriers. I know the trails and I was not even sure where I was supposed to walk. Park goers have expressed frustration with the barriers as they are oddly placed. One is even randomly in the middle of an open trail. Other barriers have been erected outside of the closure area and trails that should be blocked that lead into the closed area are open. No map, no detour information, no request for owl protection or information has been posted on either entrance or on any kiosk. I can say that the guardians, Jeff Beric, the resident bird expert for Westminster and the Stanley Lake Park Rangers have organically come together to try and educate the public and secure cooperation in the absence of open space, signage or education. The guardians estimate more than 30 volunteer hours so far and we wish to help with the stewardship of the land and the wildlife but find it difficult. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Cindy Stout. Welcome. Thank you.

Hello, I have a handout that was passed along too. Does everybody have it already? Okay, thanks. Hello, Mayor Trovedam. council, city manager and staff. So I'm here to provide some trail details, insight from our perspective as representatives on the planning advisory committee for the whose management plan. As we speak, that committee is actively working on a trail map. We've been told repeatedly that no trails or amenities or anything would change until the management plan is finalized. Although obviously the presence of the owls requires the temporary wildlife closure. If you'll look at that map that I handed out, there's a few of our markings on that that I'd like to explain. So the map shows the owl buffer, which is required to be about 660 feet in all directions around the nest. The red lines show where barriers have been placed. Some of them make sense, some of them don't, just like Tanya said. The small brown lines show appropriate trail closures. In yellow, we'd like to point, those are the several small social trails on the north side of that buffer area that haven't been blocked off. They lead right into the heart of the nesting area. And the big one I'd like to point out also is marked in blue. As you can see that north-south connector is a well-used route and naturally provides the easiest detour around the east side of the Albuquerque. This trail is a full 800 feet. from the far east edge of the buffer. In previous years, this connector had been labeled a social trail, but during the Planning Advisory Committee's initial mapping workshop a couple weeks ago, off-leash enthusiasts and environmental scientists alike agreed this connector was important to providing common sense trail loops. Council, this blue trail closure feels pretty punitive. Park goers are not happy about it. That's one of the only ways to get back down south if you get caught in these trail closures. This is not the way to gain public compliance. The question the guardians continue to ask as we've adopted the park is how we can collaboratively encourage public compliance with the appropriate trail closures. We know the park like the backs of our hands. We could help develop a map with detours that makes sense. To start, we respectfully ask that staff remove the barriers on either end of the Blue Trail. We're invested in the success of the park and the owls. We're hopeful the city will use all of its available resources to navigate this usage during the owls nesting season. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The next speaker is Beth McBride.

welcome thank you very much um i'm with the dog park guardians too but i'm stepping back to thank not only the council but the whole community because on the 16th of may we had a celebrate and educate and the idea came from all of you with your monthly community updates we realized that we might be able to help reach a number a totally different community and this is the brochure i handed out to you before and i just want you to just kind of go over it and anybody that didn't hear it we i was very grateful that um councilman azadi and barajas came and people actually said i'm not from westminster but i've got to talk to a city council person about drought or the emergency. So I'm very proud of these people. And so we were talking about emergencies with the fire department. We were talking about the heat damages that could hurt an animal. all of this paperwork that we handed out was from the library. And so people can go in there and get the materials. But once again, I want to thank you all, and I was going to be very short, but I want to thank three or four people that didn't get recognized on this. They're interns, they're seasonal workers. We don't get to know about them, but we do know that Two of the rangers that are full-time now were seasonal before. And so they were mentored by our people. And so I want to recognize the staff that work with us, the rangers. Greg Mosier, who's over in the fire department. And many of the, we have library volunteers. but they don't get recognition. So really quickly, we have an intern, a seasonal ranger, first of all, Holtry, intern Madison Deschamps with emergency management, she's majoring that in college. Audrey is a volunteer with the bookmobile And even our new open space naturalist, Katie Bradley came over and worked with us. And I tell you, if you've not watched the behavior of these people, all of our people that participated and you all, when you talk to people and you explain to them the value of our parks and our city and our employees, I was very proud. So I just wanted you all to know that there's so much to be proud of in the city. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. The next speaker is Peter Krause.

Hey, good evening, Mayor and staff and council members. My name is Peter Krause. I'm from Broomfield. I'm coming to voice my opposition to the Cocoa Rail project because it's a regional project. In 2004, when the Broomfield Events Center was proposed, I was firmly opposed to it. And when Fast Tracks was opposed, I was firmly opposed to that too. And I was roundly ignored on both of those. Now we're considering a move back to the future, except this time you have data on your side. The rail project in Colorado right now moves about 1 million riders a month. There's about 400 million vehicle trips a month. That means that rail in Colorado, with all the money that we spent on it, has reduced traffic and pollution by .0025. That's 25 points of 1%. The money spent has not measurably reduced congestion or pollution. It has squandered massive amounts of taxpayer dollars. And while rail is incredibly efficient for moving commodities like coal, oil, lumber, cars, and the things that are steel, the things our country relies on, it is terrible when it comes to moving people efficiently. It's not the answer in low-density Western communities. The cost per passenger mile, I want you to think about, listen to that, C.P. cost per passenger mile and ask that question of people. The CPPM is astronomical. It doesn't address the transportation to the stations or from the station. So if you don't have a car to get to the station, you can't get there. And when you get to the other end, the last mile is really not effectively addressed. Your job as counselors is to make sure we use our tax money to the greatest benefit of the most amount of people. So let's consider an alternative way to move people. And I'm really serious about this, actually. If we're going to spend $300 million, let's spend it on driverless cars. Driverless taxis like the one I rode in Las Vegas during the Pizza Expo that I pulled up on my app. It pulled up. I got in. I rode to my end point. I got back out again. And it was an incredible experience. Let's move to the future. It's efficient. It's flexible. It uses current infrastructure. It addresses all first and last mile issues. It effectively answers all the issues, especially for low-income and our impaired population as well. So people who are blind, people who can't get around, but they can have an electric taxi, just pull up, get in, go, get out. It's amazing, you guys. One last thing. For people who don't know American history, The Civil War was supposed to end in April. It didn't end in April. It didn't end until those troops pulled into Galveston, Texas. Juneteenth is an incredibly important holiday to this country, and it is to be applauded. Thank you.

Thank you. And the last speaker is Tom Lampo.

Welcome. Hey, thank you very much. It's good to be back in front of Westminster. Hope everybody's doing well. I'm Tom Lampo and here to lift up Westminster to the Lord in prayer. Please join me in prayer. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we come before you tonight in humility. There is no one greater than you. We want to invite you here to Westminster and for you to be with us and to guide us in our decisions. In Zephaniah 317, your word states, the Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt you over you with loud singing. Your word lets us know you are in our midst. Your presence is welcome here and wherever we are. Westminster is yours as all creation is. With sincere heart, we humbly give you thanks and praise for the moisture you continue to provide for us. Give Westminster and her neighbors moisture. Wet your earth, fill your streams, water our farms. We lift up your name above all others. There is none that approaches you. Your provisions have no end. Philippians 4, 19 states, and my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Jesus Christ. Moisture is essential for our lives. Please do not lift your hand of provision from us. Continue to bring moisture to your land. We are truly blessed. With our vote, we can shape and mold the society we live in. In your word in Daniel 2, 21, it states, he changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. So as we prepare to cast our ballots, we will take you at your word. Help us to walk in humility and apply your word to our lives. Help us to turn from our evil ways and rejoice in you. We submit and trust in you with an obedient heart. Bless us with your wisdom and knowledge. We are living in incredible times. You have placed us here for just these times. We are witnessing the work of your hand in Westminster and across our world. We are living in a time of transformation. Many are struggling, and there is still a period to go through. So we will claim your word in Psalm 62, 1 through 2, which states, For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not... be greatly shaken. When the pressure of daily life seems overwhelming, impress upon our hearts to seek out quiet time with you. Bring us peace in these silent times. Lead us to calm waters. You are our God and we are your people. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. Thank you guys. Have a nice one.

Thank you. Thank you, speakers. City Manager Andrews, do you have a report this evening?

I do, Mayor. Thank you for giving me time to have a brief report this evening. I would like to thank our speakers tonight for taking the time to come in and speak to City Council and staff. We do listen and with respect to the dog park, feedback around the trails. We do have Alex Reeves here tonight, and I know that he was taking notes and recording that, and he will follow up with the representatives from the guardians who spoke. So we will make sure that we provide follow-up on the feedback around the burrowing owl closures at the Westminster Hills open space dog park. Next slide, please. all right city update i want to confirm that the city of westminster is still in the drought watch phase so that is a phase that has been invoked and that's not changing so while our stanley lake is and you users and visitors to our standing lake will know that our lake is nearly still full at 96 percent And despite the recent rain, I do want to confirm that our Clear Creek flow, which is our primary flow into the lake, is at 25% of the water that we normally get through that creek. So we are still very closely monitoring our water flows into Stanley Lake. The recent precipitation, although appreciated, is very little and very late in the season so we still really want to encourage our community as in keeping with Drought Watch to please do voluntarily continue to reduce your consumption of treated water in your homes It's usually not the inside or interior consumption, it's the outdoor irrigation. So please do all you can to cut that back. We are not actually at our reduction goals to meet our Drought Watch requirements. And so this is really almost an advisory or warning that our community really needs to help us with this one so we don't need to go into stage one, which invokes mandatory restrictions. So if our community could really voluntarily increase that consumption to get to 10% that would be that would get us there. So we are now re-upping our efforts around this and we'll be delivering educational content through social media. digital newsletters, digital ads and your utility bills. So please do watch your utility bills will come with a reminder that we're in Drought Watch and what that means. So postcards also were mailed to all customers and that was that began that effort last week. So we're pushing hard on this so that we don't have to move into stage one. Next slide please. By way of update, and this was referenced tonight, there is another community update coming and that's next Tuesday. And this one I think will garner a lot of interest from our community and that is paving the way forward, improving Westminster's roads for our community. So please join Mayor Clare Carmelia, city council members and myself for a conversation about investing in Westminster's roads to make them smoother, safer and better for all. These opportunities are monthly with our community updates and are an opportunity for residents to receive information about where we're at, ask questions, share feedback, have a discussion with your elected officials and our subject matter experts and help shape Westminster's future. So next one is next Tuesday, June 16th, 5.30 to 6.30 and I want to note that this one is at the Swim and Fitness Centre in Westminster and that's located at 3290 West 76th Avenue and we'll have light refreshments and snacks. This is an effort to move our community updates through our neighborhoods in Westminster and make them more convenient and not just have them here at City Hall. So please note if you're interested in this one it's going to be a good one and it's next Tuesday night at Swim and Fit starting at 5 30. Next slide please. On tonight's agenda, we've done our Employee Service Award recognition and that was really cool to see the court team come and such a positive group of people working in a pretty tough area but a very good team spirit and support for their colleague getting 25-year recognition. And our two proclamations, both very significant and I thank the speaker for commenting also. For us, we had Pride Month and Juneteenth, so we were right in the beginning of Pride Month. That runs the full month of June, and there's more to come related to Pride Month. I'll have an announcement next week with another event that we're able to announce. On Consent Agenda, there are four items. One of those has been removed, so that will be dealt with separately tonight. And under New Business, we have First Reading. of Councillor's Bill 19 to provide a regulatory framework for event centres and live entertainment venues and repeal Ordinance 4339. So Ordinance 3339, City Council put in effect for a six-month period. We're at just over the two-month mark in that ordinance and we have moved quickly to get you back with a draft. new regulatory framework for event centers and live entertainment. Know that staff worked very quickly on this and we will be very open and wanting City Council feedback on tonight and there's time if Council wishes to provide more direction and clarifications around the draft tonight. We're certainly able to take that tonight and bring that back for for a future evening. So just want to set that up for success that that's a first best effort, and if Council has feedback, we'd love to hear it, and we'll get that incorporated. Next slide, please. Also up tonight under new business for our Westminster Economic Development Authority is Resolution 250, and that's authorizing the partial release of two deeds of trust between Eaton Street Affordable Housing and WIDA. That's in our downtown. And then finally in post-meeting study session is an executive session to obtain direction related to a future downtown Westminster rail station. And we also had a speaker speak on that tonight. So thank you for speaking, sir. Next slide, please. Up this week, Tuesday, tomorrow night, June 9th, is our Water Task Force meeting. That's right here at City Hall, 5 to 7 p.m. We also have Planning Commission that night. You can do a double header, 7 to 9 p.m. On Wednesday, June 10th, two things. Downtown Westminster Summer Concert Series is happening. That starts at 5.30 p.m. at 5845 West 89th. So that's at the heart of downtown Westminster. And then also that evening is the Inclusivity Board it's a city hall or hybrid meeting and that can run that runs from 6 to 7 30 p.m so folks could still do both of those that night if they desire. On Saturday, June 13th, I want to announce that the city is having another free tree limb recycling drop-off for our community at the Brough property at 10001 Alkire Street. That's open from 8 a.m. in the morning to 12 p.m. So if you've had limbs come down on your property with the recent storms, please do drop them by. We mulch them all up and give them back to you as mulch at our free mulch pickup site on Westminster Boulevard. Also on Saturday, downtown Westminster, the Cinema on the Square with the Goonies movie, that's also at our downtown plaza and that will be running at 7 p.m. and will go to roughly 10.30 p.m. So if you want to catch a free movie outdoors, please drop in on our downtown Westminster Central Plaza and enjoy a free outdoor movie. On Sunday, June 14th, Aerostat Park Summer Yoga Series is having another event, and that's again at 5750 West Central Avenue. I think most people will now know where Aerostat Park is. That's the big brand new park in downtown Westminster, and that yoga will run from 9 to 10 a.m. on Sunday. Next slide, please. At our next meeting of City Council, it's a study session meeting. It starts at 6.30 in the Council boardroom. We'll have three presentations. One will be on the City budget and implementing City Council's direction. So that's the next step in the budget process. Next up will be discussion regarding filling City Council vacancies. And then another presentation and discussion regarding addition of award system ballot questions. So all three of these are Council-driven initiatives that we're bringing back in study session and Council will be, I think that will be a full night for us. And then finally an executive session that night discussing a proposed economic development agreement involving a potential new grocery store in Westminster and that also is one of Council's primary objectives to bring more grocery stores to Westminster. Next slide, please. uh finally as always contact us contact us please through access westminster which is westminsterco.gov access westminster or get the app that is very useful and handy or call us at 303-658-2400 our website's great westminsterco.gov and when you're on that website please do check out our transparency portal westminsterco.gov 903 transparency you can get the link right off the front page And we're continually putting out more information on that and one of the initiatives that the team is working on is getting more detail and transparency around our contracting process and what are our contracts and awards and how deep people can drill into the city's contracts. So more to come on that. That's all I have, Mayor.

Thank you so much. Questions on the City Manager's report? Councillor Rosati?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, City Manager. I have a couple questions. One related to the owls. Is Director Ottenberger here tonight?

or who who is here to represent uh council yeah we do not have uh director also burger he's um out of the office today uh but uh our uh operations manager in park director and libraries is here alex reeves do you have some questions sir yeah just just one uh related to the 660 foot enclosure

That's what we're going for, right? That's the idea. Does the enclosure mean fencing? Because wouldn't that be the only way to keep people out versus whatever the plan is?

Thank you for the question. Alex Reeds, PR operations manager. Yes, with the 660 acres, it's just a barrier around the whole 660 acres. A fence barrier or signage or just signs? Barrier with his barriers and signage as well.

Okay. So a physical barrier and then signs on top of that.

Yes.

And that's up, but that's coming, that's going to be placed or?

We send the signs to get for production. So we have some signs that's put up at the front of the Westminster Hill open space, but we do have some more signage as well.

okay so the issues that we heard from the speakers of the confusion that's happening right now is folks don't know where they are and where not to go you're saying the physical barrier should be enough the vis a visual barrier to stop the confusion yes and i'll check with staff as well too with the um physical barriers thank you um and city manager for the drought watch do we have a and state, so we've been waiting and making sure that folks are trying to comply with the 10%. Do we have an endpoint where, from a timing standpoint, where we'll say, okay, pass this date, if we don't hit the 10%, we go to level one?

Thank you, Councillor. That's a great question. So the the water modeling that we do and is real time so it's it's second to second and we're monitoring very carefully precipitation and we we also look at the projections for precipitation not just here which are actually less important what's happening here outside like it did today doesn't really help us much it does help relieve pressure on irrigation for homeowners but in residence but it doesn't really help us with our watershed in the mountains so we track as long as that we're still in active precipitation season which we are so the modeling is active in real time we have monitoring stations all through clear creek berth and pass all through our mountain watersheds. So we're carefully monitoring. Nature tells us when we're finished with that part of this process and the meaningful precipitation has ceased. And when that happens is when we are able to lock in what the rest of the year looks like. So that's not here yet, but that will come with the end of meaningful mountain precipitation.

Okay, I think that's good for public to know that we're monitoring this live. And for July 4th, we've had a couple of folks... Over the years many folks over the years that complain about the fire risk, so we have a lot of illegal fireworks and as the drought watch in the job situation right now is pretty bad. it's not much we can do about it, but do we have an update from his chief here. where we can or the fire chief maybe in terms of what's the plan because this is the way worse drought than it has been in the past right so if there are people that are using fireworks do we have some kind of creative way of minimizing the fire risk, I guess is the question.

Thank you for the questions, Councillor Hazzati. I'm Eric Burke, Fire Chief for the Westminster Fire Department. The primary enforcement tool with fireworks is a law enforcement tool. However, the fire department does work in conjunction with law enforcement prevention and risk reduction. We are planning to issue some joint communications on fireworks safety, also providing education to the community regarding the risks of fireworks. As of now, the firework event is still planning to go forward. We're monitoring weather conditions. We'll have resources in there to respond to the city event if needed. But again, we will enhance our resources with risk in around July 4th, given the risk associated with the fireworks.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, City Manager, for the presentation. In a presentation to the Environmental Advisory Board, some of our water department mentioned that we get a lot of great success on individual follow-ups like via mailers and other stuff from those who are potentially either breaking regulations or have a leak or something. You know, I know you mentioned kind of general mailers around information for the drought Do you know if there's any plan to kind of give specific feedback like per resident like as if we were in? kind of a stage one situation where we would give that feedback saying hey, you're you're You know violating the regulations and this is the consequence, you know, obviously there's no consequence now since this is voluntary but I do wonder if at least what staffs uh from that department's feedback would be around whether we could start giving that particular feedback so that way it could potentially increase buy-in so not so much a question i mean feel free to comment but just it was a thought that i had yeah

Councillor, thank you very much for that. Because we're not in the stage one, which is the mandatory restrictions, we're not specifically notifying people, in other words, tracking where they are watering when they shouldn't be or overwatering or such. However, with this recent or new and upcoming round of mailers, we are able to focus those mailers to areas where we do see higher consumption beyond where it should be. So I hope that it's actually a hybrid, I think, of what you're suggesting, but it will accomplish the same end. So we will be sending mailers out to those spots where we see higher than normal consumption to let them know that this, again, this is a time to be conserving water so we don't have to move to mandatory restrictions. We have all the tools in place if we do go to mandatory to go to individual homes with the We know exactly how much they're consuming, so that informs an accurate bill that can also let us let them know that they're going beyond what they should be. At this point, again, it's entirely voluntary, so we're going to use education to help people get us there. Great. Thank you.

Yeah, I think that education is really helpful.

Councillor Ireland, did you have anything?

thank you um i just want to thank everyone that spoke um thanks for the information on this the dog park and the owl situation sounds a little chaotic um also thank you mr kraus for your education on on transportation i do think we've wasted a lot of money on transportation um that hasn't been effective but We also as a city have wasted a lot of money on taxes that we have not received anything in return. Sorry, I'm sick, but I appreciate everyone who came out and the chickens. I support self-sustainability. So I know that we've had terrible increases in inflation from not only things that are going on at the federal level, but also city level. So I appreciate people who are trying to be self-sufficient in these difficult times. So I support your cause there and just thank you everyone who always comes out to educate us about things going on that we may not be aware of. Thank you.

Thank you. And then I too had a couple questions on your report related to drought. Have we, and it sounds like we might have just answered my question in relation to Councilor Barajas, but have we done any outreach to businesses and HOAs in particular, seeing as residents have done, and I just want to add advertise this, residents have done a remarkable job at decreasing their water consumption over the last 20 years in Westminster. And we really are doing our part. So thank you for that. And we now really need to hone in on looking at our largest consumers. And so I'm just wondering what our communications, if any, are, or if that begins at stage one.

Mayor, thank you for that question. So our outreach goes to all water utility payers, rate payers, and so they do include our non-residential customers as well. And so in addition to that, we do have a very dedicated and passionate staff team who does do direct work with our HOAs around their water consumption, particularly the irrigation in HOAs. And we have a number of projects underway to help them reduce their water use and then help them identify any other opportunities that they can have to produce their consumption. So it's a two-prong answer. Yes, that all customers get our outreach efforts around what stage and what to do and what not to do. And then in addition, we're focusing with our HOAs to help them through this.

Thank you so much. And then I just want to echo, I really appreciate Councilor Azzotti bringing up fireworks early. I think that we should probably double down on communications regarding that this year and get those out early and fast. And then I just want to go back to your this week slide that you brought up. You, over the last... Six months to a year have done a really great job of reforming this report of yours It's very comprehensive and I love it and we're giving folks the info that I think that they need is there any way that you could have that sent to us as well each week's because many of us on council have our own social media reporting and we're trying to drive up engagement to these events and and this really lowers the effort at making sure that we can help get that information out. It's not a guarantee that we will, but I think that it could really help us tell folks what's going on all in one place. It's very helpful. Thank you.

Mayor, thank you for the question. Very short answer on that one. Yes.

Thank you so much. That moves us to council comments, which we did spill over into a little bit. Who do we have? Councillor Azadi.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank everyone who came out to speak tonight. As you heard from the Dock Park folks, you'll get a follow up from staff and we'll make sure that the enclosure is clear and not confusing for residents. I wanted to just talk through real quick. So I've been on a, I started a tour on HOA. So 65% of Westminster is HOA. 65% of all of Westminster. And we rarely have the opportunity to collaborate, to coordinate, to just communicate in a two-way fashion with the HOAs. And a lot of our residents live in these HOAs. So what I wanted to do was try to reach out to as many as possible. this year and next year and the first one was on may 28th with home farm hoa counselor jack johnson was my special guest he did a fantastic job walking through the budget process they had a really robust set of questions for us and i think the concerns that we heard we wouldn't have gotten otherwise you know so the benefits of meeting people where they are is you get to hear context to the email right so we may got we may get an email that says hey hey this road is really dangerous but it's different when you speak to someone directly, personally, and you hear why, and you hear all the various variables that go into what makes something dangerous. And it really gave us a sense of urgency on speeding. So they talked about many issues. I wanted to just talk through real quick some of them. And first, I want to give a special thanks to Joe Henderson, who's the president of the HOA there, and all of the HOA board members that came. we talked, so Councilor Johnson and I talked about lots of different issues, and then we had a Q&A section, and this Q&A section, they talked through speeding, right, so on the 128th, avenue there's a huge safety problem i've sent staff the a large list of those issues prioritize as to what's the most important from what we heard um that will get follow-up soon from staff but there's speeding issues there are issues with traffic lights there are issues with water rates with infrastructure um landscaping that's unmanaged dangerous sidewalk gaps you know so It was really fascinating, and I think it's a great example. And I'm hoping for the next one. So the next town hall is in a couple of weeks, and Councilor Barajas is my special guest. And what I'm planning on doing is asking every single member of city council to come with me on a rotating basis, because I think it's important to hear from just more than just me. And I think these HOAs love it when more than one of us come to these things. And I would welcome anyone here to come to any of these. But the next one is coming up, and I wanted to just give special thanks. And if you are an HOA or if you live in an HOA, please reach out to me. I would love to get you booked. And I'd love to just hear what's going on. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone? Councilor Brajas.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. It's been a while. I missed the last study session because I was out of town. So instead of just having a really long update and a timer on myself, I just parted down to the important ones that lead into policy discussions. But for everyone who I engaged with over the last couple of weeks at events, uh just thank you i do want to thank everyone who came out to speak um particularly the the members of uh the dog park guardians i um you know i'm grateful for the invitation that counselor izadi and i got to uh share in the event that you all put on i've said it before and i'll say it again you all are an incredible example of what community organizing looks like in the city and and model it greatly for uh for all of our residents so i'm very glad for your communications your presence uh and your your commitment to the city um you all have been incredibly patient throughout a variety of processes and it feels really Hard for me to ask for your patience in this moment again as well because it seems like that's all you're giving us but You do have so much of it and I'm at least I'm grateful for the patience that you've given us You know, I will I take that feedback to heart, you know, I certainly wouldn't want any sort of punitive measures You know on the backs of these endangered species. I do I My best guess is that this initial closure was to try to prevent people from going down a one-way path from those who might not have known the trails as well as you all do. But your feedback is super helpful saying, hey, this isn't actually helpful in that process. It's actually creating more one-way path directional issues. So thank you for your time and commitment and even courage to come up and speak at the public comment. I still get nervous and I appreciate everyone who speaks as well. um you know at the at the event that counselor zadi and i were at we got a chance to see a lot of people from our emergency from animal control to emergency response and we also saw park rangers and shortly after i had a chance to do a ride along with some of our park rangers um through a lot of our open spaces and this was uh oriented more towards engaging with those who are unhoused and i was very grateful for the expertise i you know i encourage everyone on council to to do the same or if there's opportunity for residents to to do it as well i had a chance to learn so much about the existing efforts that we do and i am just floored by how hard our park rangers work to really navigate the continuum of compassion along with also juggling open space like they are just incredible people who do such amazing work in every uh you know place we went to They were chatting with people by names, doing inside jokes. I definitely felt like the odd man out, as I was, and I was just so grateful for their expertise. One thing, I won't ask this as a policy just yet on the moment on our agenda, but one thing that came up time and time again during this ride-along was safe storage, and I'm wondering if we can do a one-on-one at some point, kind of a request for information on what safe storage could look like in the city of Westminster, before we kind of start asking for policy implementation I want to make sure we land it right and so if the city could you know staff could just offer some information sessions where we can come in and just learn about other initiatives other cities initiatives around safe storage it just seems like it frees up people to want to have cleaner spaces which is a lot of what of the feedback that we get and also to be able to be free to move away from kind of their temporary shelters so that they can find the supports and sustainable solutions. So a one-on-one on that would be great. I had the honor to be here at City Hall volunteering for Colorado State University's Master Gardeners program. The city's partnering with, so this CSU extension, the Colorado State University has an extension program that offers information for anyone in any county throughout the state for help on their garden, their yard. And I am being certified. I'm an apprentice right now, but a Master Gardener apprentice. And I volunteered for this event, and it was just right outside. I had coincided wonderfully with my role on city council. And so I was able to kind of wear both name tags here. And so I was a little late to the Pride event, but I was kind of double dipping on events. And... We didn't have a ton of people show up. I think there was a little bit, you know, some of the Master Gardeners who were there are residents of the city and they didn't know about the program except for the fact that they were volunteering. So kind of bookmark that. I had a chance to go after that to the Pride event and I was just so humbled and honored to be part of a body that is supporting, you know, a community who voiced very with deep regrets how they they hadn't necessarily felt a support from uh you know the the city or or from the the representatives in the city and you know i spent a lot of time just kind of listening to stories and being present seeing a lot of tears and that was um kind of moving or very moving And some of the feedback we got from that as well, particularly from residents of downtown, were that they kind of had to search for information on the event. So I want to name that like 99% of my feedback is incredible, really grateful for our event staff who really put that together. It was remarkable. and just offering a moment and kind of circling back on that communication of events, the feedback that we kind of continually get on communications. I know the mayor has been kind of diligently working hard on communications, and I just kind of want to echo her sentiment. with a secondary request for a one-on-one around our current, you know, I don't have a policy or directional objective right now because I don't know a lot about what we do in terms of communication. So if it were possible to do another one-on-one, a kind of information-only session where we can get some information on the current framework of communications for different events and then that way we as a body can kind of offer some of our direction on that at a later time around policy um i there was something else i wanted to follow up on that um oh but i think something that i could ask us as well as a as a body of city council is you know for us to think on maybe some of the high priority events that we really want to elevate and have as a priority for ourselves and our own kind of direction for our policy as a city i think sometimes the feedback that we give staff is like oh this was a great program why didn't we do it and staff had no idea that we were like all on board with this being the most important event of the year so um Maybe at some point, maybe the next strategic planning meeting or something that we have, we can kind of have a moment aside where we can highlight those. Finally, I just want to mention I went to the concert series. There's every Wednesday night, there's a concert in downtown Westminster, and it's very low key. It's like sometimes it's just a singer, you know, one person with a guitar and a mic or... When I went last week, it was the School of Rock, which is a school in Broomfield. There were students, they were 12 to 18-year-old students who all each could have their own professional touring band. It was phenomenal. I'm not exaggerating and just trying to kiss up to them. I had no idea they were school students and they did great. when I was there I had a chance to talk to members of the of the Chamber of Commerce and they mentioned the concert that I was unable to go to before the grand opening the day before the grand opening of aerostat Park and They mentioned that they had such a good turnout Vatos tacos had its second most productive day since it's opened because of that concert and so just really grateful for continued collaboration throughout the city I think we're in a time, you know as uh council ireland uh mentioned it's really expensive across you know and everyone's struggling and you know businesses across the board are struggling and i'm just really grateful that we as a community are coming together to really uh bolster each other up and engage um so yeah that's my update thank you so much uh counselor ireland did you have anything else to add

I did a couple things. I wanted to give a shout out to the four-hour free parking in the new downtown. I saw the signage. I'm excited about it. I also told Adrian from Ace Hardware. They gave me a four hours of free any man service. So Adrian at Ace Hardware, I told him I'd give him a shout out. He did such a good job. And just to let people know that they have that service for anyone that needs a handyman. Also, that is all I have, I guess. I am too sick to talk too much. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Well, that brings it to myself, and I want to take a moment to recognize, well, thank you all the speakers, of course. I appreciate how active and engaged our community is, and I want to recognize Representative Lori Goldstein in our audience. Thank you for coming this evening, and thank you for remaining engaged. You can take all the information from the city back to our constituents, so it's much appreciated that you come and spend your time with us. To address some of the items that we heard this evening, I do remember the folks who came by to discuss chickens. We spoke about that early in 2025 and I haven't forgotten and I'm glad that it's come back around so that we can finally discuss it and see where that goes. So I'm really excited to talk about that. As far as the folks from the dog park and discussing the trails, I know that this has been an ongoing discussion, seeing what direction we head in. And with that, to Councillor Brawhouse's point, our communications is also an ongoing discussion that we're really trying to open up and reimagine in some ways. And so I'm wondering if there's ways for us to work perhaps hand in hand with some of our more engaged stakeholders like the dog park guardians and Just like I'm asking for our update to come to Council that we can help expand and spread the message, perhaps our notices regarding this space, this open space, maybe they can also go to the Dog Park Guardian so that they can actively advertise and share the message and perhaps we can work in a closer partnership with them. and they can be our ambassadors since they're doing such a great job with that already. That's just some thoughts I have right now for communications. And it does take us time sometimes to get our signs up. I'd love to kind of talk a little bit more about that eventually, what do the signs look like and how are we updating them and are they easy to update or does it require a lot of manpower, et cetera. But in the meantime, we've got a whole crew here ready and willing to help us out. So that's, I'm really grateful to you for that. And thank you for your ongoing work. To the dog park guardians, you continue to be excellent stewards of that land. Then to the gentleman who talked about the train station that we're trying to take a look at. Oh, I love that you have a sticker. I need to get a Cocoa sticker. I got you.

I'm going to tell you this mail from this gentleman over here.

Thank you. Thank you. With that, you know, I can't make promises that we can't keep, right? But we are pushing hard for that station. I myself, I'll speak for myself. We did have a town hall here recently, I think three, four weeks ago now, Front Range Passenger Rail came, which spoke to the public, and they did publicly agree to the fact that the state and the train are now working to make that a reality, to have that train at 88th, just like you suggested. So just know that that is the current plan. However, just know too that that plan comes with a lot of dependencies, right? And so there are dependencies that have to happen. Probably a ballot measure is what we're hearing. And there's a lot of pieces that have to lay the right way, you know, for this to happen. And then to the gentleman who spoke about the driverless cars, I really appreciate topics like that coming down. That's exactly what I want to hear and truly think about strategically, you know, what does make the most sense for our community. So I really appreciate and value that kind of feedback. so that we can take that into account when we have these discussions about what is the best plan for our transportation. And then just to the city as a whole and to our staff, thank you for an incredible Pride event this last weekend. It was our first ever Pride event and it was an enormous success. I heard from so many people there that this was just a bigger turnout than they had ever expected, even with what I agree with is somewhat short notice. I think we could really work on that piece, but we're working on it. But even with that, there was an incredible turnout. And I heard, you know, Broomfield, just a major, major thank you to Broomfield and their partnership and that Mayor Castriota there, as well as the enormous turnout from Broomfield Council. They all overwhelmed. I mean, a lot of their council was there for that event. And so we saw enormous support from them. And they've been doing this for years, I think almost a decade, if not more. And from their point of view, they said this was the most successful event that they've seen. So that tells you a lot right there that we somehow had a higher turnout than they've ever seen. So just enormous thank you to Broomfield and to us, our staff, our city, thank you for your enormous support. We wanna make sure this is truly, it's the beginning of an era where we're telling our residents that our community is seen and that you are safe here and that you are welcome here. And then with that, I want to lead to, it was mentioned briefly from Councilor Brawhaus about Fatos Tacos and the high turnout from an event there. I have heard similar information from Tap and Burger that since the opening of the Aerostat Park, they have had overwhelming, you know, number of people attending their restaurant. And that's exactly the goal. So I'm really excited. We're only a couple weeks in, but this is an era where we're trying to drive engagement. We're trying to get folks outside, meet your neighbor, come say hi. It's good for all of our morale. It's good for your mental health. And of course, it's driving that economic investment in our city. And it's one big circle. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who's gotten outside and joined for some of our different events that we've already held there. And it's really exciting because it's working. So we're hearing that directly from our businesses. So big hooray there. With that, we are gonna move on to the next section, which is requests for potential agenda items on future agendas. So does anyone have an item to bring up? Councilor Zotti.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to bring up the proposal I sent to City Council a few days ago regarding chickens. But I would actually love to kick it off to my counselor to the right counselor barajas he is a food justice champion for many years and partnering with him on this is critical because he has a lot of insights and stakeholders and ideas on what this could look like not just for this ordinance that we'll talk about in a second so i'll propose the actual motion at the end but he'll introduce it

thank you counselors go ahead thank you madam mayor thank you counselor zadi for the opportunity to join you on this i think this is a something that's uh critically important right now we have uh you know almost every single lot in the city is less than two acres and so every um person is limited to six uh chickens and i see the benefit that an ordinance like this would do, and I will be incredibly excited to engage in the discussion on this topic around our municipal code that limits the number of chickens that residents can have.

And you all heard from Tom Lampo, who prays for us every meeting. And whether you're religious or not, you have to appreciate that someone cares enough to actually want to wish you well, right? And one of the things that he talked about is that many people are suffering. many westminster residents right now are suffering that is why you see me so laser focused on affordability whether it's child care or housing or utilities groceries is one of those elements that we need to focus on and when you think about a municipality like westminster um it's rare right to have a municipality that wants to focus on these items and we are doing that, it's a new era. And what I wanna say is that this chicken ordinance, which I'll explain in a second, is just a small step, but it's a big important step because it not only will do a lot of benefits for us, it'll help to better align the allowable chicken counts with the amount of available land, it'll support our local economy, it'll lower egg prices because it's going to open up access to ed to egg production for residents which as you heard from the speakers earlier they're selling for much less and at a much higher quality right so it's going to have a lot of impact on affordability but it's just one example of what a municipality can do for its residents and that's really what this new era is trying to accomplish. What we're trying to say is, can you imagine what we can possibly do for you? There is not enough money to do everything, but there is money to do something. And we're working on what that is. And we're prioritizing a lot of things. Sorry mayor to talk about the actual ordinance what I'm proposing here comes directly from Colin and Alejandra, it's basically six chickens per acre up to 30 chickens for lots of the two acres or more I've sent a chart as to how that scales up but by scaling up the production to be based off the land the size of the available land and I think that just makes it a lot more efficient process and it will impact affordability. So my motion is to bring back a draft ordinance to amend the current ordinance. I put the number in the email. So a draft ordinance for June 22nd, and we can talk more about it during that vote when staff pulls together the memo, but that's the idea.

Thank you so much, Councillor. Let's go ahead and do a quick poll as to whether we are willing to put this on our next meeting for, I think it was June 22nd. Thank you. I'll go down the line here. Councillor Haught. Yes.

I would defer to staff as to when we could get it on.

So city manager sent us an email saying that he has checked in and he can put it on the 22nd.

Okay. Share a draft, but I'd prefer more of a discussion first, but yeah.

I will say yes as well, with the hopes that when we look at that draft ordinance, we'll also have a full discussion, but yes.

Yes. Yes, and just a note on the timing. I'm normally not one to put timing on it, but given the intricacies of animal husbandry and the need to plan out for growing seasons, there is a bit of a... of a need to adjust this so people can make plans for kind of their year-over-year outlook. Yes.

That's good to know. And Councillor Ireland?

Yes.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. I do have a comment about just getting ordinances together without having, you know, an opportunity for residents to provide feedback. This is something that would be useful to have our community be able to weigh in on and so I just want to flag that throwing something in there that doesn't have community input as well as being able to look at what makes sense, how does it relate to public health, how does it relate to our other land use standards and does that give staff enough time to bring something that is

appropriate and works for most of our neighborhoods and our residents so i yeah just want to flag that for future and to to that point i'll just add that um i hear you on the staff piece that the potential unseen impacts right they may need more time to get that together however this does have significant community input it's not just those two that have this issue there's a lot a lot of people that have reached out to me for years on this that i i just haven't been able to think up like okay well what could this be like what exactly tangibly but to your point yes there's there's always going to be risk to everything that we do um but it is in our power to do things and move the needle forward. And I think sometimes it takes urgency and not waiting for more studies to be done. So that's all I'll say about that.

Thank you both. Okay. Can I say one thing? Yes. Counselor Ireland.

Most HOAs do not allow chickens. So at least the ones I live in or the one I live in and the ones around it. So I don't think it affects as many people as we think. So just to say that.

Thank you, Councilor. All right. That brings us to our consent agenda. Item 9C has been removed from the consent agenda. Do I have a motion for the rest of the items? Councilor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve consent agenda items 9A, 9B, and 9D.

Thank you. Councilor Haught. Second. Thank you. Is there any further discussion?

Mayor Pro Tem. I just wanted to highlight item B in that we are supporting the Front Range Passenger Rail project including the joint service plan, station location and connections to regional transit and it's not often that you know as a body we get to look at these bigger picture issues and impacts to our community and long-term impacts that really go beyond even for us when you know the immediate right we're just talking about an immediate change and an impact but this is the other side of governing and looking at the long term how does that impact our economic resilience over 10 years, 20 years, 30, 40, 50. These are long-term decisions. I think it's so important to be making those considerations. And as residents, too, we'll have that opportunity. So just wanted to highlight that that's what we are doing here as part of this consent agenda.

Thank you and I too want to echo this took a lot of strong support from Mayor Pro Tem and from Sal Pace from the Front Range Passenger Rail. Thank you for all the work from Chris Chauvin from our team and for the state for working with us on this. This was no easy task So I'm really excited about it and then I also want to recognize that this also includes our motion to support our firefighters collective bargaining agreement and it sounds like those negotiations went well and so just a really big thank you and congratulations to both teams on either side for making those negotiations happen and of course for the ongoing support throughout this year to get us to this point to get that ordinance passed and now to pass this agreement. So I'm really excited to support our firefighters. And here we go. Councilor Bras.

Yeah, you said it perfectly. Just want to double that echo on the fire union and our staff coming to an agreement and the collective bargaining agreement. And just thank you to both, you know, everyone who participated in that discussion and for particularly the expertise that kind of staff brought to that conversation with their communication and openness. So thank you.

Councillor Azadi.

I'll triple down on that and just say thank you for that collaboration between the union and the city and every single firefighter tonight who works for Westminster needs to be really proud of the organization that they work for.

Thank you. Roll call please. Councillor Barajas.

Yes.

Mayor Carmelia. Yes. Councillor Azadi. Yes. Councillor Haught. Yes. Councillor Ireland. Yes. Councilor Johnson? Yes. And Mayor Pro Tem Nurmela? Yes. The motion passes on a 7-0 vote. Thank you.

Do I have a motion for item 9C? Mayor Pro Tem Nurmela?

I move to authorize the reallocation of $689,247 in savings from the Northridge Storage Tank Replacement Project account to the Reclaimed Water Delivery Structure for Legacy Ridge Golf Course Project.

Thank you, Councilor Haag. Second. Any further discussion?

I wanted to say something about this. So was this a budgeted item all along for this year's budget? And also, is this money coming from the golf enterprise or the water fund or the general fund?

Councillor, thank you for the question. I'll ask our City Engineer, John Burke, to come up and he's prepared to help answer those questions.

Yes, thank you for the question, Councillor Ireland, Mayor, Mayor Protang, Councillors. So yes, this was a budgeted project. It's been in the works since I think 2021. And yes, it's all utility fund. There are no general fund dollars going into this project.

It's not the golf utility, it's the water utility.

That is correct.

Had the golf utility been used for this?

There was an opportunity to share some costs with the enterprise fund with the golf course but candidly speaking the large majority of the impact is for the water utility solely. Specifically speaking we're able to reuse about 11 acre feet which There's around $500,000 of value for the water that we're actually bringing back to this area. And it expands our reclaimed system in the Legacy Ridge subdivision as well. When full built out is about a $3.5 million benefit to the city from a water rights perspective.

Okay, I probably would have liked to seen the golf utility pay for some of it because we can't use the golf utility money for much for our city, so. kind of disappointing in that way, but because they are making money and the money should be used for these kind of things anyway.

Fair enough. Thank you.

Any further questions? Okay. I also want to follow up with Councilor Ireland's thoughts on that. To that point, I agree. Hopefully we can drive from the golf fund first. Is there a reason we don't do that?

As I mentioned earlier, yes, there is the opportunity to do that. In this particular case, it's been designed and redesigned probably about three times now. There was a cost share component of that. And with this particular memo, we have the funds to then advance without that participation. Candidly speaking, we can reintroduce that as we move forward with this particular project in this area. That wasn't just something we advanced in this last contract amendment.

Okay. I would like to see that.

Fair enough.

We can get a contract amendment, you know, our way afterwards, after the vote, it sounds like, perhaps?

Yeah, the contract itself, we approved that as far as moving funds between accounts is what that actually would need to be.

I see. Okay. And thank you for the explanation. I don't think it's very clear to me, but I'm trying to understand. So thank you. I appreciate it. Any further questions on this? Councillor Arzotti.

I just want to echo similarly on the golf enterprise. I think we do actually make a lot of money in the golf enterprise, and we don't have much use for it. Not for this project. I understand why it's water for this one. But just in general, city managers, just to keep in mind, maybe that's a discussion we should have if there's any way we can actually use the money that we make from the golf enterprise for the rest of the city. That'd be great.

And I think we're having another budget discussion soon. So thank you. Thank you, John Burke. Appreciate you. All right.

Roll call, please. Mayor Carmelia. Yes. Councilor Azadi. Yes. Councilor Haught. Yes. Councilor Ireland.

Yes.

Councilor Johnson. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Nurmela. Yes. And Councilor Barajas. Yes. The motion passes on a 7-0 vote.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Nirmala. I move to authorize the City Manager to execute a contract amendment with Stantec Consulting Services Inc. for final engineering design modification services and engineering services during construction for the reclaimed water delivery structure for Legacy Ridge Golf Course project in the amount of $97,029. increasing the total contract amount from $505,353 to $602,382 for a total authorized expenditure with this contract not to exceed $602,382. Thank you. Councilor Haught? Second. Any further discussion? Roll call, please. Councilor Zaddi.

Yes.

Councillor Haag? Yes. Councillor Ireland? Yes. Councillor Johnson? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Nirmala? Yes. Councillor Brawhaus?

Yes.

And Mayor Carmelia? Yes. The motion passes on a 7-0 vote.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. I move to authorize the City Manager to execute a contract with Mid-City Corporation for construction of the Reclaimed Water Delivery Structure for Legacy Ridge Golf Course Project in the amount of $865,201 with a city-held contingency of $86,520 for a total authorized expenditure with this contract not to exceed $951,721. Councillor Haag? Second. Any further discussion?

Roll call, please. Councillor Haag? Yes. Councillor Ireland?

Yes.

Councillor Johnson?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Nurmela? Yes. Councillor Brawhaus? Yes. Mayor Carmelia? Yes. And Councillor Azadi?

Yes.

The motion passes on a 7-0 vote.

Thank you. There are no appointments or resignations this evening, and there are no public hearings this evening, which moves us to new business. We will now move on to the first reading of Councilor Bill number 19.

Do I have a motion?

Staff presentation, excellent. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and counselors. My name is David Gurman. I am the Development Services Coordinator for the City of Westminster. It's my pleasure to be presenting to you this evening. On April 13th of this year, the City of Westminster enacted Ordinance Number 4339, which placed a six-month moratorium on the review of or issuance of land use approvals, building permits, or business licenses for new event centers meeting certain locational criteria within the city. At issue was a recognition that the rules in place for the regulation of event centers within the city were inadequate to mitigate the impacts associated with event centers, especially in the face of the rapidly changing nature. Staff has worked diligently since the moratorium went into effect and is proud to present new regulations for your consideration this evening. As a part of bringing these regulations forward, a staff memo has been prepared and a new ordinance has been crafted. The first task the staff tackled was to create new definitions for event centers which had previously been combined with religious land uses and other forms of public assembly. The new regulations introduced definitions for both event centers and what we're calling live entertainment venues and separate religious assembly land uses into their own use category. As you can see in this graphic, these new definitions split the land use and define it based upon the level of intensity and impact. This allows the city to provide meaningful regulation for each level of land use in a fair and sustainable manner. The Lower Impact Event Center is the more traditional, familiar version of the land use. The photos on this slide and the next help to provide visual understanding of the level of intensity experienced with event centers, such as private parties, receptions, weddings, and celebrations of life. These types of gatherings rarely create adverse impacts upon city resources or upon neighboring land uses. They exist harmoniously within many settings and usually cater to smaller family focused private affairs. The higher impact live entertainment venues are newer additions to the landscape of the city. The photos on this slide and the next again help to provide visual context. With live entertainment venues, expect to see bigger, more intensive events that are open to the general public, like sporting events, concerts, musicians, and live performances. Events like these are likely to attract participation from patrons from both within and outside of the city and may generate large crowds. live entertainment venues have a far greater likelihood of negatively impacting city resources and neighboring land uses. For this reason, they are carefully regulated with the proposed new rules, which require separation and a higher level of scrutiny to minimize the risk of adverse impacts occurring. To bring forth thoughtful and carefully considered regulations, several sections of the Westminster Municipal Code are proposed to receive updates, and an entirely new section, 11-4-20, Event Centers and Live Entertainment Venues, has also been created for your consideration. Staff members from Community Services, Police, Fire, Finance, City Clerk's Office, Public Works and Utilities, City Manager's Office, and City Attorney's Office all contributed input to the new code sections. This table is part of the proposed new regulations. As you can see, with the changes before you for consideration, future live entertainment venues will be restricted to standalone locations and no longer allowed within shopping centers. It should be noted that as with all new zoning and land use regulation, the changes proposed are not retroactive and will only apply to future event centers and live entertainment venues. The goal of the new regulations is not to eliminate existing or prohibit future event centers or live entertainment venues, but instead to ensure their harmonious inclusion into the city, focusing on appropriate sizing, compatible siting, and mitigating, to the greatest extent possible, potentially adverse impacts. For this reason, staff recommends that City Council pass Counselor's Bill Number 19 on first reading. It should be noted that upon final approval at second reading, this new ordinance will also repeal the aforementioned moratorium enacted on April 13th. Thank you very much for your attention this evening. Planning Manager John McConnell is here with me this evening, and we would both be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you so much. Council questions?

May I have a motion, please? I move to pass first reading of Counselor Bill number 19, Amending Title 11 of the Westminster Municipal Code to provide a regulatory framework for event centers and live entertainment venues and to repeal ordinance number 4339.

Thank you. Second. Counselor Ha? Second. Thank you. And questions, comments, and discussion? Counselor Johnson?

Thank you, Mayor. I have a series of questions, starting with a better understanding of how other cities, you know, our neighbors deal with these live event venues in their regulatory scheme, especially for land use, but also their permitting scheme. I assume that this, you know, you all did really good due diligence work in putting this together for a proposal, but I'm curious, if you were able to look at places like Arvada or like Denver that have, you know, similarly situated or larger cities that also deal with larger event venues.

We did, and we actually had individuals come from other cities to chat with us about their experiences and about their regulations. It really is a wide spectrum of things that they've been facing and attempting to deal with.

thank you um could you provide maybe some examples especially of our neighbors you know one of the things i'm looking at is the competitive landscape of drawing business into the city and how our regulations you know impact folks especially as compared to our neighbors will drive businesses to one location or another so i'm particularly interested in some of our neighbors if you've had conversations with them

We'll have to apologize. We didn't bring the matrix that we put together when formulating the ordinance and that would have been helpful to answer your question. We looked at all adjacent communities, including Horvata, Thornton, Wheat Ridge, North Glen, Federal Heights, most either were absent in regulations surrounding event centers. Some were very specific and focused on event centers generically. and did not try to separate them into live entertainment venues like concert halls and traditional event centers like staff's recommending to you. Again, most were focused on just size of the centers and we did incorporate a lot of that into this recommendation. Based on the situations that our city has experienced and which may be unique to these other cities, we felt strongly it was, was critical to make a recommendation that did distinguish your traditional event centers that we don't have a problem with and that we have several of in Westminster's from concert halls and venues that host ticketed large scale events such as live music.

Thank you. The second question I have is related to the venues, dual-use venues. I mean, there were some examples that were provided where you could see that a venue could be an event center because the space is large enough, for example, hosting a big private wedding, but would also be an appropriate venue for maybe general public live entertainment. In those settings, how would someone deal with the regulation if they intended to use this? Because I understand in the counselor's bill that they're exclusive. You can't be one or the other when applying for a license. But when it comes to these dual-use venues, how do they navigate that landscape?

These two definitions, one for live entertainment venue and the other for event center, were intentionally designed to distinguish between the two. So if you're an event center by definition, you can't also be a live entertainment venue. So event centers in the traditional sense, something like the establishment, the former Noah's is a good example. And Mr. Gurman showed some images of those types of event centers. They typically host private events, wedding, bar mitzvahs, and other celebrations. They're not open to the general public. They're not ticketed. And so those event centers typically fall within that category and they don't normally deviate. What we were trying to distinguish here is those events centers from literal concert halls where it's open to the general public. You have to buy a ticket to get in. It's not exclusive by any means. So, yeah, this does not interchange those two things.

But one of the things I'm trying to kind of figure out is if I have a special permit for a live entertainment venue, but I also, you know, there's interest in hosting weddings at my venue because of the space and the size and the location. Because that's not an allowable use under your special permit for your live entertainment venue, Are you able or allowed to seek out, would you have to seek out in order to host those events in an event center special license? Because what you're saying is they're exclusive and they can't be the same. So if someone wanted to be both, could they hold both licenses or would they be prohibited from doing that?

We're still working with the city clerk's office on the licensing. We're just proposing the land use regulations around that. So I really can't speak to the future proposal for license amendments if there are any. And I do believe we're working on some. But no, it wouldn't depend on a license. This is strictly land use.

But because in order to get those licenses, it has to be under the allowable land use, the land use wouldn't permit one of these live entertainment venues from also hosting these private events anymore, is that correct? Not as currently written. So the next question I have is to get a better sense of the way this is going to impact the businesses that are in Westminster or potentially in Westminster. Do you have a number of how many under our existing code event centers exist in our city? i don't have that in front of me no um because i think it would be helpful in making this decision to understand you know does westminster have 10 events centers or do we have a hundred and um then under the new proposed land use um would there be can we project based on what we know about these uses how many would differentiate into an event center versus how much how many would have to go into a live entertainment venue I think that's really helpful to me at least in understanding the scope of the change we're about to make. But my last question is related to the retroactivity of these decisions that we make. So I know obviously putting the licensing component aside, there are certain venues that may or may not meet these current requirements. So after applying a new land use, how does that impact someone's existing business in Westminster? And then when we get to the licensing question, I think, you know, proactive, just so that you're aware, I think it's the same question as it relates to your licensing and property rights.

And I can revisit your first question now that I've heard a little more detail about it. Although I don't have the exact number, I'm only aware of one venue that we would consider a live entertainment venue and not an event center. So there are a lot of event centers, I don't have the exact number, but there is just one that I'm aware of that I would consider a live entertainment venue.

Thank you, and then so could you walk me through then how this new land use scheme in our code would impact existing land uses, you know, and going forward those businesses?

If the council chose to adopt this like any other land use regulation or zoning regulation, it doesn't apply retroactively. It only applies to businesses that seek licensing and seek operation after this goes into effect. Any business, any event center currently that's lawfully licensed and operating is essentially a, if they don't conform to these rules for any reason, they would be legal non-conforming. But as I said, I think I'm only aware of one that may not conform to this.

And to kind of follow up on that, which is my last question, it doesn't impact them as they currently operate, but if they were then to go for a license renewal, would they then have to meet the new requirements of the new land use in order to have their license be renewed?

With your permission, I'd like to refer that question to the clerk's office. I'm not as familiar with the license process.

i'm sorry i don't have that answer right in front of me i can get back to you on that thank you thank you john and and that's all the questions i have mayor thank you excellent questions counselor johnson um yeah i also was wondering about that licensing process and the renewal I did have a couple of questions about some of the details and just the definitions. I saw that we had pulled out and kind of added the nightclub use in a way into the definition for the live venue. and so I just wanted to get some clarity around that. I know we have like karaoke bars or you know I'm just thinking of the new market hall that we'll have in the downtown that will have karaoke but I could imagine they'd want to have live music or any other restaurant that might have live music. Kind of how does that I don't know, fall into these definitions?

Excellent question. None of that falls into these definitions. So you have all across our city and other cities, restaurants and bars. We're all familiar with Applebee's, Ruby Tuesdays, you name it. Their primary function is a restaurant. They have a full menu, full restaurant. They serve lunch, dinner, and they also have bars. And sometimes they quit. In most cases, they quit serving dinner at a certain hour. Sometimes the bar stays open a little later so patrons can continue to patronize the business. Some of those do have live entertainment, but that doesn't make them a live entertainment venue by this definition. Live entertainment in that sense is an accessory use. So a couple of examples you have, you're all familiar with Hofbrau. Hofbrau is a restaurant bar. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, they have live music. that doesn't meet the definition that we're proposing for in a live entertainment venue, because that's not their primary use. The Stillery is very similar. The Stillery has music seven days a week, but the primary use is a restaurant and a bar. In other words, they wouldn't have that music unless they were serving food, and they only have the music during the time when their kitchen is open and they're serving food. Another example, because it's important to discuss primary and accessory uses with the city council and the public. So zoning regulation or land use regulation is fundamentally within the context of primary and secondary uses or accessory uses. Primary use is fundamentally what that property is used for. And an accessory use is a use that is also occupying that property but is only there in support of the primary use. So for example, car dealership. Car dealerships primary use is selling cars and there is an accessory use in most car dealerships and that's auto service and maintenance. So that service department doesn't exist without the auto dealership whose primary use is selling cars. If it were a standalone service department, we would define that as auto repair. Does that help?

I just wanted to make sure that was clarified. And then the other questions I have are a bit around the standalone versus the shopping center definitions or classifications of these events. Well, event center plus live venue. So we have... The live venues are... If they're standalone, there's special permit. If they're... I actually know I'm like spacing because I haven't had enough sleep in the past day. Let's see, sorry. We allow them in... Oh, they're all special permit. OK, I don't know why I was thinking. I was looking at the two different event center Are we therefore saying that the live venue can only be standalone?

That's staff's recommendation based on our research and experience. A live entertainment venue, again, a concert hall and the like. It's very difficult to accommodate within a shopping center of mixture of uses that shares parking and other amenities. The volume of attendees at a live entertainment venue typically would overwhelm any sort of shopping center. Shopping centers were designed with a minimum amount of parking spaces to accommodate the mixture of uses. as those uses have different operating hours and share the parking. And in most cases, to satisfy all of those uses throughout the day. When, again, it's been our experience and our research that shows concert halls and the like, they command a lot more parking than a shopping center can handle as designed. And there's really no way to add more parking to a shopping center. So our recommendation would be to just just strictly prohibit true live entertainment venues and shopping centers for that reason?

I guess the examples that are coming to my head of The venues are, I know Broomfield just demolished those not too far. The first bank center where they didn't have parking on-site, they had parking in a district and shared parking in a garage. I'm thinking of like downtown Golden has a venue, but that's all within shared parking, it's not on-site. Many venues in Denver don't have on-site parking. And so I'm trying to rectify where we might have a district a shared parking district you know like westminster station in the downtown for example um where you wouldn't be able to do on-site parking so how does that factor in to this excellent question so to clarify this proposed ordinance does not apply to the specific planned districts because they have their own regulating document

We believe that those areas are very different from other areas in town, which are more designed and built to the suburban context. And those are urban areas by intent. They have parking decks. They have a mixture of uses. It's generally intended to be a 24-hour population. So we are currently working on some minor improvements updates to the station area plan and will incorporate an appropriate recommendation for these uses within that context. But I think we're leaning towards your articulation about it being different.

Yeah, so just we probably want to look at the size of them and how that impacts because I'm just thinking of what I know of know if it's a standing only kind of population within the or whatever the person count within a 15,000 square foot facility I mean it could be you know like 2,000 people in there and for standing room and then So then we have three per thousand. So it's a lot of parking. We're looking at, you know, six, seven hundred parking spaces for a 15,000 square foot facility. In comparison, a grocery store might have five per thousand or three hundred spaces, like half that. So... I'm just trying to factor in how big of a facility we're allowing and just being cognizant of just how much parking that would really entail. And it's not overly clear because seats versus assembly, how are we factoring in that? How are we actually calculating the parking for these?

Okay, we're proposing a new parking standard.

Let me... Yeah, it's three per... Where the heck is it? One space per... Wait a minute. One space per 300 square feet of gross floor area. Is that right?

So the standalone event center would be one parking space per three patrons and staff members. And so how that's calculated is through the building permit process where the occupancy is established based on the design of the building. So once we get the building permit for review, we understand how much the venue, how many people the venue can hold and then we would base the parking determination based on that.

Which could be kind of high.

It can be very high, yes. And it underscores again our recommendation that specifically live entertainment venues would almost in all cases overwhelm a shopping center that was designed for a different mixture of uses. Live entertainment venues, from our research and experience, The nature of those have changed over the years. You mentioned the First Bank Center. You can think of a lot of other large concert arenas. What we're seeing across the metro, though, are smaller venues, more intimate venues that cater to not the same scale or the same type of acts that would fill a stadium. So these smaller concerts are looking for venues like this.

Okay, finally, my last question. Was the separation between the live venues, it's only 300 feet?

I'll ask Mr. Gurman to respond to that.

So there isn't an absolute separation, they're recommended, but the live entertainment venues would always have an SUP involved. So that would mean that you would look at the context specific factors that come into play. An area with abundant parking, and a lot of items, elements that could provide separation, sound deadening, space, distance, what have you, could be looked at much differently than if two such establishments wanted to go right next to each other.

And we don't have a limit on how many, it's only 300 feet.

Right, but again, as an SCP, it goes to Planning Commission and the Planning Commissioners are empowered by the ordinance to add additional conditions of approval as deemed necessary by their review.

And finally on the question that councillor Johnson had regarding the events the sort of exclusiveness of the definitions of the exclusiveness of the uses that we're now defining I'm just kind of I'm open to the idea of a live event venue since it's a more intensive use being um also able to have a less intensive use of the event center not the other way around but i'm just thinking of you know sometimes in industrial districts we have the allowance for a restaurant or something um so

So backwards compatibility with event centers. So in other words, maybe the council is interested in allowing live entertainment venues being the more intense use. also being able to allow traditional events center type activities as long as they're defined as a live entertainment venue and meeting those location criteria, but not reverse compatible where event centers can become concert halls.

Done. Thanks, guys. Mayor? Yes, may I address Councillor Johnson's question?

I have an answer here. So the business license, you were speaking about the business license, not the liquor license, correct? Those renewals are administrative. They would not go back through a land use look or anything like that unless the use changed or something... Yeah, unless occupancy or use changed, if the business was staying as is, it would just be approved. It would not go back through the process. So it would still, if it conforms today, it will still be conforming when this goes into effect.

Thank you. Councillor Brawhouse.

Thank you. I have a few questions, but I do want to note that I am intending to withdraw my motion so that staff can kind of delineate some of this feedback a little bit more before it's brought back to us again, but I do want to continue this discussion or keep my motion in place so we can continue the discussion and then i'll withdraw it at the very end and then someone else can either if they feel adamant about passing it now they can um make the motion on their own um so some questions that i have in terms of land use uh process uh other kind of designation I'm still in my preliminary classes for my land use degree that I need to sit in this chair. As this is, it's written, there won't need to be a comp plan amendment, or would there need to be a comp plan amendment then for someone who wants to, you know, if they buy like an old, like, you know, standalone Walmart or Costco or something, and then they want to turn that into a live event center, would they need a comp plan amendment? Because this is something, a brand new designation that we would need to be adding into it.

No, they would not. This would be allowed in commercial zones like other commercial land uses would be. So now if they were proposing this land use on something that has a comp plan designation of residential, Yes, they would have to seek that.

Great. Thank you for the clarification on that. In terms of the 300-foot setback, the language in it says, and I scrolled and lost the exact verbiage, but it said essentially something used or zoned as residential. What would classify something being used as residential but not zoned?

That's a very good question. Occasionally, now this is kind of rare in the city of Westminster, you might have a legal non-conforming residence that was built in the 1950s or 60s and over time the city rezoned that property for commercial use or vice versa.

And so it wouldn't necessarily be like, you know, if someone owns like a tire shop next to an event center or a live, you know, live event center that if they start spending a night there, then they can like pull this back or something.

No, we would look for an actual dwelling unit. Okay. You know, it could be a house or an apartment or whatever. So it may be, say, an apartment. It's occupied and used as a residence, but it might be zoned commercial.

Because the city took steps to rezone it at some point in the past and it's just continued Okay, and then so in that case in the event Let's just say someone buys that you know tire shop and wants to comes to us and asks for an amendment to make that into You know an apartment building and we approved that that means this event center would then be in violation or would they be like grandfathered into

Like the land use they would still be conforming because they didn't Initiate that use that or that change that affected that regulation.

Okay, that makes sense And then thank you and feel free to comment on this if you can this is probably more for our city clerk or potentially city attorney, but You know if we were to pass something like this and the land use were to change, I guess my question would be, you know, if there is a former license holder that would be in violation but is not, you know, because they had their license kind of before this land use designation was done, what kind of risk would, or is there kind of inherent increased risk from this sort of change where they could be potentially liable to, like, you know, not from the city but a kind of suit from, you know, other community members or anyone saying they're in violation of the land use you know like like is it defensible would they be able to like appeal their administrative approval like i just worry that like would this cause confusion in the process and the code and land use is like not on their side you know like i i i appreciate your response i guess i'm just kind of uh concerned at the potential um legal ramifications for license holders It's okay if you can't comment on it. Maybe that's just like a comment that I'm sharing with the body as well. Yeah.

Thank you, Councilor Barajas. As Mr. McConnell stated, though, this would not be retroactive. So the city can change its regulations on event centers for future event centers. The existing businesses that are already in the city would continue on as they have already been permitted. So if any of them went out of business, they would be obligated to follow the new rules when they reopen their business in the future. So that scenario is possible. So I guess I would say it's not retroactive. Existing businesses are able to continue so long as they remain in business.

Okay. And then with that, just a follow-up question on that. I think of like name changes or ownership changes, would those constitute like a break in existing business?

Mr. McConnell can address that, I believe. I can help out there. So the city code has a provision or a whole chapter on nonconforming land uses. So essentially if the council adopted this set of land use regulations or any other one that created a legal nonconforming use, as Mr. Frankel said, that may continue. according to our city code, they could cease using the property for up to a year without having to comply with the new regulations. So what that means is that you may have a scenario where a non-conforming use goes out of business for two months. three months, six months, a new owner buys it, reopens it, then we continue that legal non-conforming use. If that year lapses, they have to conform. Okay. Those are all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. This discussion is not complete. We've got a few more counselors to go, but we're going to call a 10-minute break and we'll come right back to discussion. Okay. Thank you so much.

Yeah, it wasn't me this time.

Thank you. you you Thank you. . . Oh.

All right.

Welcome back, folks. Thank you. And back to council discussion. I believe that next we had Councillor Azadi.

Yeah, so I just had a quick comment because I think there was so many excellent questions from my colleagues. I don't have any more questions, but I wanted to give you your flowers, Mr. McConnell, because sometimes council will say things and it's hard to translate into ways that staff can digest or work with, and what you were able to do was translate really well, and it was beautiful, so I wanted to say something. The backwards compatibility, the need to ask, you heard all the questions, you heard all the concerns, and you translated that into, oh, so it should be backwards from live to events and not the other way, and you got head nods. That was a really good job. I just wanted to give you your flowers for that, and Councilor Johnson, that was an excellent set of questions.

Thank you. Before we circle back to Councillor Johnson, Councillor Ireland, did you have anything?

I just want to ask, what if we did make it retroactive, what would happen?

Very good question, Councillor Ireland. We did look into that and it's the state of Colorado actually prohibits land use regulations from being retroactive. Many years ago, there were some municipalities in the state that did enact ordinances with amortization periods where everybody had to come into compliance with the new code within a certain amount of time. That was challenged in court and the state has now prohibited that type of land use regulation. So very good question.

Thank you. Councillor Johnson.

uh thank you mayor seeing no other um questions from my colleagues i probably i moved to table item 12a to a future date so we can get some more of these things addressed with a little bit more specificity including some of those adjustable uses for live entertainment venues who could also use their spaces for event centers and just maybe some more specificity on some of these questions around licensing in a briefing. So I'm not going to set a date, obviously, give you all time to work in your way ahead of our imposed six-month schedule. And not a reflection, I think you've done wonderful work, but given all the comments, I think it's appropriate to table item 12A to a future date at the mayor and city manager's discretion.

Thank you, Councillor. And before we go ahead and take a poll on whether we'd like to change the motion to table this, I'm going to go ahead and ask a few more additional questions as well. Just honing in on the shopping center question, we had talked about live entertainment spaces being prohibited in shopping centers and able to exist in standalone spaces only. And, well, specifically, I want to ask a few identifying questions, such as currently we have, you know, you mentioned Hofbrau and Distillery, and it sounds like those are in shopping centers. And so I wanted to make sure that, you know, we do have spaces that act separately similar to event centers but you did identify that they are restaurants but they are working right now for our city and they are in the shopping center space and so i don't want to prohibit the future for spaces that are working. We have proof that some spaces are working somewhat. To be fair, they are somewhat different because they are identified as different. But I want to be sure, I guess, what is your feedback around why we're honing in on standalone only versus shopping centers?

Well, thank you for your question. First, I would reiterate that establishments like Hofbrau and like Distillery, they are fundamentally primarily a restaurant and a bar. They never host live entertainment events outside of their restaurant hours and outside of their kitchen hours. And so there are a lot of other similar establishments around town and other places too. So I want to make it clear this, what we're proposing does not involve establishments like those two which are in shopping centers. The reason why we're recommending that live entertainment venues not be allowed in shopping centers is we're largely a suburban community. Many of our shopping centers were built in the traditional way. The parking calculation was calculated on a very low rate based on your traditional retail office and the occasional grocery store and a shopping center. A live entertainment venue that could host thousands of people in that same amount of space that a grocery store could occupy drives a completely different and higher parking rate that would overwhelm any shopping center. So that's the reason why staff is particularly concerned with shopping centers on our recommendation. A standalone location is very different because when a use occupies a standalone location, even if it's an existing building or a new building, they're required to meet their parking requirement because that's the only use on the site. Unlike shopping centers, the parking requirement is established for the shopping center containing a mixture of uses. So any use that's allowed in the shopping center is allowed. We don't adjust the parking, require more parking every time a tenant space interchanges. So it's important to note that again, our recommendation to allow it by special use permit on a standalone location gives the city a lot more control to require the appropriate amount of parking.

Thank you. I have a couple thoughts regarding that and one is that I can see this perhaps being evaluated on a case-by-case basis because we do have buildings that are becoming available as our use of space changes rapidly since COVID. We are trying to drive economic development throughout the city. As we see spaces become available, I would hate to take away opportunity perhaps in a portion of the city where you know, let's say a large grocery store area or a home Depot area or not to name many, God forbid, but you know, became available and I could see this perhaps having a need to evaluate. And so I just, I'm not a fan of the word prohibit. And so, um, I'm willing to take council's feedback on this, um, discussion item, but I also do not see a lot of standalone areas available in our city. Now, to be fair, we're not planning on becoming a big live entertainment destination by any means, but to perhaps neutralize upcoming opportunities simply because of this regulation. I don't know if that's the wisest approach because we don't know what could be coming down the line. And I really want our city and our council to have that flexibility to decide, especially with community input, which I think is perhaps the gap. to be able to decide and have that flexibility to say, okay, this looks like the right case for this situation because of these circumstances. And so that's what's top of mind for me. I do appreciate all the input that went into it and I do understand the calculations going on behind the parking and the space and in general. Um, It does look like perhaps there's room in here to offer a special use permit being required, you know, for live entertainment venues regardless of where they're located. From my understanding, SUPs, they go back to the Planning Commission. Could you walk us through what that process is and then whether or not that comes back to Council?

yes we can um i'll ask mr german to come up he has processed uh many sups over the years

Thank you. So the SCP is heard by Planning Commission. If the Planning Commission were, excuse me, go ahead. If the Planning Commission were to deny, then it can be appealed. I believe it goes to District Court on appeal. And so there you go, that's the SCP. SCP is very important in that it runs with the, with the use. So it'd be specific to the applicant, specific to that business at that location. So for example, if it's Moe's event center, Moe can't sell it to Sally, three days later that Sally would need her own SUP.

I appreciate that and I think that's good to understand especially in light of what we're trying to do here. The fact that it's particular to each specific venue and owner I think is good to know because then it does offer that flexibility and that ability to evaluate again if anything changed. Is there a process that we could identify by where We had live entertainment in general, no matter where it was, what size it was, kicked up to council.

Yes, we could work with our city attorney's office to come up with a recommendation on that. I did want to clarify what Mr. Gurman said. Yeah, I'm sorry. I think you were probably referring to conditional uses or another provision, but there is a provision I'm looking at in the city code under the special use permit section. There is a provision for a council call-up. So this is, and it reads, upon the vote of at least four council members, any decision of the planning commission on a special use permit may be reviewed de novo by a council. So there is a mechanism after the planning commission hears and makes a decision, and it doesn't specify whether that decision was for or approval or denial, but the council can, by a vote, take that up.

Thank you. So it is possible. Personally, I would love to see that. I'm willing to hear other thoughts on that, especially seeing as live entertainment is so few and far between here. And it sounds like at the moment we've got perhaps one in the city. It sounds like these would be spaced far enough in between for review that I don't think that it would cloud our agenda too much is what I'm seeing.

I agree. And this will be a rare occasion that we see something that likely fits into this definition over time. Thank you. But it's not unreasonable to think it would happen. Right.

Thank you. Okay. With that, I think... Oh, do we have more comments? Okay. I'll just close my thoughts by saying thank you. I know this was a lot of work and you did it in a very short amount of time. And so I appreciate the urgency by which you all completed this work. So very much thank you. I know that you went through a lot to create this. And I also want to say, you know, we're doing this because... we care a lot about our city and we want to be strategic and we want to plan wisely and I just my own thoughts and the thoughts I think I can share with folks on council from their questions are really trying to think long term down the line we are by no means um about coursing you know we want to make sure we have the right plan for the city and that we hone in on our definitions and we make sure that we're doing wise choices. And, you know, we are making sure that we continue opportunity and investment for the city. And I really say that because third spaces are a concentrated area for us right now and getting that engagement from the residents is so important. And so really trying to be creative about the use of our spaces is important. Um, and things that come to mind are, you know, that new downtown where we've got the partnership with the chamber, you know, I wondered, okay, is that part of this? And then, you know, is Vato's tacos part of this? And is, is, you know, the red Lotus, I have all these questions, you know, and I think you answered a lot of those, but that's where my mind is as well as, um, breweries and distilleries, and often they have open mic night, and that's great. That's what we want to see, right? And by no means do we want to hush any of that up throughout the city, right? We want to bring the city to life in ways that make sense for the neighborhood. So thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, just as you're Potentially evaluating a few more of these things. I was just wondering if If we could look at a maximum size for the entertainment venue And to the mayor's you know, thinking around the prohibited and having some sort of flexibility around that. Maybe there's a size relationship with that as well. So I just wanted to throw that out there. And also, just for consideration, as you look at the permitted zones, whether you might have know industrial or you know like is there if you think about intense uses being paired with other intense uses but um just throwing that out there um and i guess just one thought with respect to the specific plans um i'm not remembering if they have in their use tables a lot um anything like this, but we'd be good to, like you said, look at them again.

We are going to propose an update on several minor items within the station area plan first. I will say that both plans, the regulating documents, list the current definition of event centers. which combine it with churches and, you know, pretty much anything. So we'd like to align that with whatever the council adopts here. Okay. So you might do that after? Okay.

All right. Thank you. And thanks, Mayor.

Thank you. Any further thoughts on discussion before we... Okay. In that case, Councillor Johnson did have a motion to table this item. Do I have a second for that? Mayor Pro Tem. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Councillor Brawhouse? Oh, okay. Fantastic. Can we have a vote, please?

Just a procedural discussion between the Clerk and myself, Madam Mayor. The sense that we have is that there are changes desired to this ordinance and if staff are going to return with a new ordinance for City Council's consideration, would it just be simpler to postpone this one indefinitely so that staff can rework it and incorporate the comments that they've heard tonight?

I appreciate that. Thank you. I think that we have a new motion. Councillor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I move to postpone the Councillor's Bill number 19, admitting Title 11 of the Westminster Municipal Code indefinitely.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. I second. Excellent. Roll call, please. Councillor Ireland.

Yes. Councilor Johnson?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Nirmala? Yes. Councilor Barajas?

Yes.

Mayor Carmelia? Yes. Councilor Azadi?

Yes.

Councilor Haught? Yes. The motion passes on the 7-0 vote.

Thank you so much and thank you team for your work. There is no old business this evening. And this concludes the business of our City Council meeting. Before we convene as the Westminster Economic Development Board, City Attorney, is there a reason for executive session that will take place after WIDA?

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, there is an executive session proposed for City Council tonight at the conclusion of the open portion of tonight's meeting. And it is an executive session to obtain direction regarding a possible lease related to a future downtown westminster rail station and to instruct negotiators as authorized by the westminster municipal code sections 113 c 2 and 7 as well as colorado revised statute 24 6 402 for a and e 1. thank you do i have a uh motion to enter into exec session after we conclude counselor johnson

I move to enter into executive session as described by the state attorney after we conclude.

Thank you. And Councillor Brawhouse?

Second.

Thank you. I'll go down the line here to vote in. Councillor Hoppe? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Councillor Ireland? Yes. Thank you so much. With that, the time is now... Gosh, where's my time? 915. Thank you so much. I was looking around. And our City Council open meeting is adjourned. We will now convene as the Westminster Economic Development Authority. The roll call will carry over from our regular council meeting tonight. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes?

Mayor Pro Tem Nirmala. I move to approve the minutes of April 13, 2026, WIDA meeting as presented. Thank you.

Councilor Johnson? Second. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Excellent. Okay, there are no public hearings this evening. We will now move to new business. And do I have a motion for resolution number 250? Councillor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to adopt resolution number 250, authorizing the partial release of two deeds of trust between Eaton Street Affordable Housing LLC and the Westminster Economic Development Authority.

Thank you. Councillor Brahas?

Second.

Thank you. Any further board discussion? Fantastic. All right. Secretary, may I please have a roll call vote? Yes. Board Member Barajas?

Yes.

Chair Carmelia? Yes. Board Member Azadi? Yes. Board Member Haag? Yes. Board Member Ireland? Yes. Board Member Johnson?

Yes.

And Vice Chair Nurmela? Yes. The motion passes on a 7-0 vote.

Thank you. The time is now 9.16, and the public portion of our meeting is adjourned. We will now go into the boardroom for our post-meeting exec session. Thank you for attending this evening's meeting.

Councillor Ireland, please switch to the executive session link that I sent you earlier.

All right. Thank you. Thank you.