City Council - workshop

Thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you for watching. you . . . Thank you. . . you you If you want, yeah, it's a tear-jerker.

Okay, well, I don't want to watch it with you. All right, friends, we are clean.

Yep, we're good. Okay. Good evening and welcome to the August 3rd, 2026 Westminster City Council study session. Thank you for joining us this evening. Please remember our meetings are governed by the rules of decorum posted inside the 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. City Council reports. Councillor Zaddi.

Yes. So I want to do a little thing, a little new thing today. So government staff, we all know, doesn't typically get a lot of positive feedback. And that's only because we don't hear from all the people. There's thousands of residents who really appreciate all of the work that city government does. And I get a lot of feedback. I don't communicate it as much as I should. So I figured maybe I'll start using these moments and next when I'm back in a few weeks on the dais to just start sharing some of the specific stories. I have two for tonight. One of them, so Mayor Pro Tem and I were at the, so my next, the last stop was Stratford Lakes HOA. The first two, so I've been at Home Farms, I've been at Silo Townhomes, and we had a listening session at Stratford Lakes. It was really great. 25, 30 people showed up and asked a whole lot of questions. I've sent staff the full list of action items from that session. But one of the not shocking but heartwarming moments near the end was when we had so many residents say a lot of great positive things about their interactions with city government. And I wanted to just call that out. They said that they appreciate when they have questions or problems, they consistently receive helpful and timely answers from city staff. They are grateful for the successful resolution of complex infrastructure issues. specifically citing the effect of prairie dog fencing and the repair of the storm sewer subsidence area. They commented about the city's sense of responsibility and quick response time when issues come up with underground water pathways and remote meters. Overall, they expressed that while no system is perfect, their experience with city staff has been overwhelmingly positive and reliable. So I told them that I would share that and bring it forward. So I wanted to know, so if you worked on Stratford Lakes, if you were involved in any way, they really love what the city has been doing. They gave us a lot of concerns and issues, but they wanted to make sure that we understand overall, they loved the experience. So that's one piece. The second one was about a young paramedic we have called, named Tanner Garner. So last week, a Westminster resident, Stephanie Pierce, dislocated her shoulder Tanner and his crew took her to the hospital. Stephanie says that Tanner was so patient with her screaming baby, she had a baby in the back, and she really appreciated his patience and his sensitivity. He took care of her baby while she was being taken care of. She wanted to let Tanner know that she really appreciated him. She actually went out and got him a gift. So he's an expecting father himself. But Tanner is a brand new paramedic with us. He works at Station One. And Tanner, if you're listening, thank you. We appreciate you and what you did for Stephanie really resonated. And she's sharing this on Nextdoor and many other places. And I think she got you a gift. So if you got it by now, you know how much you're appreciated. So thank you, that's all.

Thank you so much. Councilor Haught. Yeah, I went and took the tour of the bark. It's coming along really well. I'm excited. I'm also really excited that they are going to have vegetarian barbecue on their menu. So I never get barbecue. I love barbecue, but I have not had it in years. So they're going to use jackfruit to make like their version, it tastes like pulled pork, but it's jackfruit. So super excited about that. So yeah, I'm glad to have a community space where people can come drink beer, drink coffee, have good food and even good vegetarian food. So yeah, that was really a really awesome tour and yeah, it's coming along really well. And yeah, it was great.

Thank you.

All right, Councilor Ireland. I went on that tour as well. I am concerned about the coffee being served at the same time as the other coffee shop. That's not what they were told was gonna happen there. And I don't think creative corner is happy about it. And I don't think that was the original plan that they were gonna become a coffee shop too. Anyway, I appreciate the tour, saw where it was at. So we could get a couple more parking places. but hopefully it's successful. I was attended the luncheon for the volunteers. I appreciate all the volunteers that showed up and we can't say enough about our volunteers in the city. This is a really great city that serves each other. And so I appreciate everyone that came out and Yukon the dog and his owner got the, volunteers of the year which is great. They go to the libraries and volunteer and the kids read to the dog and the kids love it and they learn to read better I'm sure because he's quite the amazing dog so it's a great idea and I'm sure the kids appreciate the dog and his owner. I also attended the festival afterward which looked like a good turnout and I did have some people upset that we didn't have a celebration of Colorado on the same day, because that was the Colorado State 150th year, so I did get some feedback on that. That's all I have so far. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Councillor Johnson.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Last week I got to join our city staff at the first Hello Neighbor event in downtown Westminster. And it was really wonderful because not only were the city staff really engaged in getting feedback from our community, but the community was really appreciative of the work that the staff was doing. It was a great event and I'm sure our city manager will have an update on more of those to come. But when they're in your neighborhood, please do attend and give us feedback because the feedback is really valuable and also it's really great to engage with our city staff because they really care about the needs of the community. And I also got to attend the volunteer appreciation luncheon and learned that Not only was our dog volunteer of the year, but apparently we have quite a large contingent of dogs that volunteer for the city, which is great to hear, but it was great to see so many people who give their time to the city and have us show our appreciation to them.

Thank you. Mayor for Tam Nirmala. I also attended the volunteer event and I remember it was kind of fun to see the dog get the award. It was so cute that the dog only had eyes for the kids. I don't know if you guys noticed that we were just like, we were trying to make friends with the dog and the dog was like, no. But it was great. And I actually had my kid do years and years ago the reading to the animals at the College Hill Library. So it was just kind of fun to see that. The conversations I had were just... really intriguing to hear about how people are actually volunteering for our community and it's in so many different ways and departments and you can be outside, you can be inside on Excel, you can be, there's just, you can really take your experience and leverage that into giving back to the community. It could be four hours, it could be 10 hours or more. So just want to encourage people to do that and to look and see how you can give back. And actually when we were at the why do I wanna keep calling it Stanley Lake, Stratford Lakes, event, there were folks that were asking how can they learn about the volunteer opportunities in the city and I know you probably included it in the download, but the ability to actually have it on our handouts and water bills, just more ways to see. And maybe there's some examples that we could throw out there and help people realize that there's lots of different ways. And thanks to Councilor Zadeh for engaging with all the HOAs and having each of us out there. I'd love to do some more with you. So, thanks.

By the way, can I add to that? Mayor Pro Tem was really, really good. It felt great because we've both been on councils in 2021. So a lot of these questions we got were like, when you come into a new class at the same time and four years later you get these questions and a lot of stuff that we've worked on these last four years came up. So we had the opportunity to tag team the extent of our tenure. So that was fun.

thank you well i'll pick up where you just left off on the volunteer event thank you for highlighting um a the fact that our volunteers of our city really do drive uh westminster but b i happen to talk about exactly that you know how do we really leverage because one of the number one questions i get anywhere i go is how do i help how do i sign up to volunteer how do i learn more which of course is on our website but that is something I'd love to talk about more in the future. Just how do we make sure that folks have easy access to that and they can get involved and that it's front and center to what we do. It was a lot of fun watching Yukon get the little gold crown on his head. He was so good about it. Clearly he's very used to costumes. And so big congratulations to Yukon and to Steven, his owner, because of course Steven does a lot of work with him. And like was just said, congratulations to all the volunteers that were there. You know, I talked to folks who have been serving for decades in the archives, in the greenhouses, in the libraries. It was just, so I'm really grateful to them. The Gala Getzka, Gala Getza, that's right, was happening, you know, right behind at the same time. And that was the first time ever Westminster has hosted that. And that was really exciting. And I just wanna give a shout out to Councilor Brajas, who is not here this evening, who did his speech in Spanish for the crowd, which is a big ask for anyone. And so, you know, big kudos to him for that. That's really awesome. It was also mentioned the affordability series which we tied into our new Hello Neighbor initiative on getting deeper outreach and engagement to our neighbors in the community and asking them how we can serve their best interests and make our utilities more affordable and get their feedback on all sorts of topics. We have lots more events coming so if you are haven't heard of this yet, please look on our website, find our calendar and get to the next one. I think there's one happening in the next week already, if I'm not incorrect on that. And then the Barkington project tour was really fun. That was really good to see, you know, what's happening down there. We also got to see how much work is happening between the rodeo and the Grange and kind of outside that area. There's just a lot of infrastructure that's being amended. And so thank you to city staff for working so hard and diligently and it looks like folks were responsive to how much effort has been spent down there. So that was That was really exciting to see that kind of engagement in that area. And I'm going to give a personal shout out to a friend of mine, Jay. So Jay is Jonathan Morrow. He just had a book launch yesterday, and he did his book launch in Westminster at a facility called Emotion, which we actually had a grand opening for a year or two ago, where you get your emotions out in that break room. And it was a really great book launch. And I'm just giving him a shout out because he's a good friend. And he wrote a book called The Conclusion of the American Experiment. So that's interesting. Just putting that out there. I think that is everything I have. City Manager, do you have a report for us?

Mayor, I do have a brief report this evening. So if I could have the next slide, Abby. All right, this was mentioned. I wanted to highlight that this was on the weekend, the state of Colorado's first ever Gala Gates event hosted right here in Westminster. And that was partnership with Comunidad Oaxaca, Colorado. And we had over 4,500 attendees at City Park at this event. The Gala Gates is one of Mexico's most celebrated cultural traditions and the most important annual celebration of the state of Oaxaca. And so that's actually a picture from the event. There was a lot of color and a lot of energy. And Mayor, as you mentioned, our very own Councillor Barajas gave a speech in Spanish, which was really impressive. Next slide, please. All right, next up, I want to highlight that National Night Out is tomorrow night, Tuesday, August 4th. So this is a national celebration around the country. And in Westminster, it is going to be happening in 19 local neighborhoods this year. The event promotes positive relationships between police officers and the community they serve. And I want to highlight this number. 30 officers, a big chunk of our police department, are going to be out in our neighborhoods with our community tomorrow night from 5 to 7 p.m. at all local locations. If you do not have a national night out planned in your neighborhood, we want to welcome you to the downtown Westminster area. celebration in Plaza Square Park. So that will run from 5 to 7 PM. And that's right in the heart of downtown Westminster. The goal of National Night Out is to heighten crime prevention awareness and make neighborhoods safer. And I do want to highlight that the downtown event is hosted with our partners at the Westminster Chamber of Commerce. Next slide, please. All right, this is a big launch. I want to confirm that Our Westminster has launched. That's outreach updates and results. This is Westminster's very own and brand new community engagement platform. So we launched this engagement platform for residents to stay engaged and informed on city initiatives and projects. Residents can share feedback directly with city leaders 24-7 using the interactive tools on Our Westminster. It's an ADA accessible and it's available in 16 languages. Missed your language, please let us know. We will make it 17. Join the conversation and register for an account at our.westminsterco.ca. So this is a soft launch. It's not now that I've announced it tonight. And it starts with our drought awareness and drought management. So when people go on to, please do, I encourage you to get on there and try it out for us. And we'll learn and adjust it as we go. And starting with our drought awareness. Next slide, please. Alright, this is also a really big one for our community. So the city is asking residents to help select the public art that will be displayed in front of our new municipal courthouse. So residents can review final concepts of this public art and vote for their favorites. Voting opens today and will be open from today through August 11th. So that's on our city website. You can hit it at our.westminsterco.gov slash west municipal courthouse project and get on, view the proposals and pick the one that you think would be best suited to put in front of our new municipal courthouse. Next slide, please. All right, on tonight's agenda, tonight is a study session. We have three presentations this evening. The first one is recommendations for the 2027-2028 utility rates and rate structure. The second up tonight will be a review of our current noise regulations and City Council providing direction on amending our Westminster Municipal Code related to noise regulations. And then our third presentation this evening is an overview of proposed updates to our Westminster municipal code to modernize our tax administration. And then finally, we do have one executive session this evening, and that's to obtain direction regarding potential land acquisition for future fire stations and our fire administration building. Next slide, please. All right I have two slides on activities this week. So all week this was mentioned at our last meeting of City Council, August 1st through 8th is Colorado Heat Pump Week. So there's more to be found on that but I wanted to put that up and raise the awareness of Colorado Heat Pump Week. from August 3rd to 16th. This is the second annual bite into downtown Westminster. This is where Westminster residents can get a passport and visit the restaurants in downtown Westminster. Those are shown there on that graphic and you can get more information directly from the Chamber of Commerce or from our website on the second annual bite into downtown Westminster, right in our own downtown Westminster. On Tuesday, August 4th, this was mentioned by Councillor Johnson and the Mayor tonight, our second Hello Neighbor Summer Affordability Series happens at College Hill Library tomorrow, actually August 4th from 2 to 5 p.m. So to continue the engagement with our community on affordability in Westminster, drop by anytime between 2 and 5 p.m. and we will have city staff there to receive your input, answer any questions you have, and enter into a dialogue and discussion with you around affordability in Westminster. Next up, confirming National Night Out is tomorrow night and different events starting at different times. The downtown one is 5 to 7. Many neighborhoods start as early as 4 and will run possibly right through to 9 p.m. On Wednesday this week, August 5th, is another one of our downtown Westminster summer concert series. That's in Central Plaza downtown at 5845 West 89th. And that summer concert will run from 5.30 to 7 p.m. And then finally on Wednesday night, there is also a special permit and license board meeting right here at City Hall that starts at 6 p.m. Next slide. On Saturday, August 8th, I want to announce another free tree limb recycling drop-off event for our community. That's at the Brough property at 1001 Alkire Street. That will be open free of charge for our residents to drop off tree limbs from 8 a.m. through till noon. Also a big one on Saturday, August 8th, is our Westminster Historical Society is celebrating Westminster's 115th birthday with a community picnic right at Bowles House. That's a picture of Bowles House right there. And that will run from 12.30 to 2.30 p.m. on Saturday. For those of you who have not visited Bowles House, that is on 72nd Avenue, so 3924 West 72nd Avenue. And our Historical Society would like everybody to know this is open to the public, so please come by and join in that historic picnic at our historic Bowles House. On Sunday, August 9th, is another one of our Downtown Westminster Summer Yoga Series, and that's at Arostat Park, and that will run from 9 till 10 a.m. Next slide, please. All right, for our next meeting of City Council, I have two slides. The first, this is for Monday, August 10th. It begins at 6.30 p.m. in our council chambers. There will be one presentation, and that's from our Adams 12 five-star schools. On consent agenda, there are eight items, which include two second readings, And then that night is a public hearing. This is a public hearing and consideration of an appeal of the denial of an official development plan for the Mountain Range High School Nutrition Center. So this one is a public hearing that's triggered by an appeal and so this was heard actually by not by City Council but by the Planning Commission and when the Planning Commission denies an ODP the applicant has the right to appeal that to City Council so this is what is happening next Monday night. under new businesses first reading of councilors bill 26, which is an ordinance amending various sections of the Westminster municipal code concerning police regulations and penalties aligning with the Colorado state statutes. Next slide, please. Also that meeting, we have one item of new business. That's first reading of Councilor's Bill 32, and that's approving an economic development agreement with Digantara U.S. concerning the location of its U.S. headquarters and operations to 7237 Church Ranch Boulevard. And then under old business, a second reading, that's Councilor's Bill 31, modifying the Westminster Municipal Code concerning the roadway improvement fee for non-residential users. Next slide. There are many ways to contact us, access Westminster, phone us directly, hit our website, westminsterco.gov, and then do check out our transparency portal and our new engagement portal, which is our.westminsterco.gov. So I really do encourage folks to check that out and give us feedback so that we can make it even better. That's all I have, Mayor.

Thank you so much. Council, any questions or comments?

I have one more of a comment. So speaking of affordability and the annual luncheon. So last, so I went to the luncheon and I spoke with the victim services team and I said that I would bring it up. So I actually forgot this in my council comments, but so they have 17 volunteers, our victim services team, as we all know, they, they help victims of domestic abuse, um, with lots of cases and these volunteers have to go through background checks and so forth. But once they become a volunteer, they get access just like a staff member basically. And while I was talking to them, actually one of the volunteers got a dispatch call and left because she's on call for that weekend. So it's that serious, right? But I was talking with them with Chansey and the commander there and they were saying how they have resource needs. So one of the really important benefits of our victim services team is they provide resources to these victims, helpful, essential needs that keeps them safe, keeps them supported through that process of, you know, and, that is a likely budget request. So I asked them to submit a budget request because it seems like we could do something about it as a council. They're under resourced on what they can be given. You know that they have a finite amount of resources that they can give out. They haven't asked for a budget increase on this for a long time. I asked them to give more information to see you know if something if that's something in our budget process these next few months if we can enhance that because it actually helps a really niche, but significant amount of residents in terms of who is going through these very sensitive issues. And that's something that we can do. So I just wanted to bring up for, for awareness that that should be coming. And I'd like to start highlighting more to the community about what they do. Cause I don't know if the city knows how much the victim services team actually does for victims. So.

Thank you for asking the right questions and for funneling them towards the right process to get the help they need.

Councilor Haag. Yes, I just wanted to point out that council request for future agenda titles was skipped. I don't have anything, but I wanted to make sure that I pointed that out in case one of our colleagues has something. Thank you.

You are correct. I apologize. We'll go back to that right before we hit the presentations and make sure that nobody else has an item that they'd like to add to the agenda. I think that the two were bundled together and I missed that. I apologize. Any other thoughts or questions on the city manager's report? Councilor Ireland.

I just want to know on the R Westminster, how long does it take to get feedback if you put something on there? How long should they expect someone to tell them? something on there.

Thank you for that. Let me get back to you and I'll provide a little bit more detail about how our Westminster works from a user perspective. So what happens when you put something in, what are the expectations? So thank you for that. We'll get more, I'll get more back to you.

I was trying to find, I had an invitation from the dog guardians. They have a clinic on Saturday for shots for your animals. And I wanna say, I don't remember where it's at, but reach out to me, email me and I will find it and send it off to you if you wanna know where it is. And it's supposed to be discounted. So it's a good opportunity if your animal needs shots.

That's really helpful to know, thank you. Any other thoughts? Okay, I'll plug mine, which is National Night Out, as was just mentioned is tomorrow. If you've never been, please join, find, do we have the list of addresses on our website? to events we do not open in public.

We're actually asked not to do that. That's why I mentioned if you're not aware, it's not happening in your local neighbourhood, but do come to the downtown event.

Okay. Well, in that case, definitely come out to the downtown event because if you've never been, you know, this is an opportunity to get to know the officers in your neighborhood. And a lot of our officers tend to stay to the same neighborhoods. They know the residents there. They do a great job of getting to know what the majority of the needs are in that neighborhood. And if you don't know them, this is an opportunity to reach out and connect with them. And of all times in our community, you know, administrative history, it's the right time to know what our officers look like, who they are, what uniforms they wear. This is a chance to engage with them because they're out here protecting our community and if you need help, you know, it's good to know who it is that you're calling for help and you recognize them when they show up. So I just want to put that plug, come out. All right, I will scoot back to future agenda items. Does anyone have a City Council agenda item they'd like to add to a future agenda? Okay, and then that will bring us to this evening's presentation. City Manager?

Thank you. Our first item tonight under Presentations is 4A, Recommendations for the 2027-2028 Utility Rates and Rate Structure. And our Assistant City Manager, Chris Lindsay, will open up the presentation tonight, followed by our Acting Director of Public Works and Utilities, Andrea Song.

Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, Assistant City Manager Chris Lindsay, joined this evening by Interim Public Works and Utilities Director Andrea Song. The utility rate setting process is quite a team effort and we're joined this year, added onto our team by the good folks of the Water Task Force. Andrea's team includes utilities operations, utilities engineering, and utility billing. My team includes the policy and budget division and our utility finance team. If you would please hold your questions to the end of the presentation, we might hit them as we go along. And then we're more than open to questions. Tonight we're going to talk about the Water Task Force and moving that into a more permanent structure, water rates and structures that are recommended for 27 and 28, sewer rates and stormwater management fee for 27 and 2028. And we're going to start this evening with Andrea.

Yeah, so thank you, good evening, and Councillor Mayer-Protem. and counselors appreciate being here. The transition of the Water Task Force to Utility Advisory Board, that's a recommendation. we had coming out of this very successful task force. This water task force is water affordability to everyone resident and so really focused on the water rates aspect of it. And so the recommendation would be to establish an ongoing advisory board to consider utility functions and provide recommendations to city council. It was very diverse perspectives and varied people on the board that added value to the entire process. So possible topics, the cost of service study final report will be finished around October of this year, 2026. And there's recommendations in there on our sewer system. So this advisory board could review that. And also if we made, we're gonna be presenting an option 1A that was a little bit different than what the task force provided. you know, how that's written. The multifamily rate, there's opportunity as part of our water bill assistance program if we expand that to the multifamily, so it can make it more affordable there. Our sewer system is also very complex. This water task force got to take a tour of Big Dry Creek, but wastewater treatment facility, but we didn't go into the level of detail that we did for our water system. and then also our stormwater system, which also has its own fee. We could also study the needs there and the system in more detail. There is water budget-based billing that came up. It's a different type of rate structure and this came up with a task force and has been talked about before. Our sister cities like Boulder, Thornton, and Town of Castle Rock use that. Instead of a tiered system that we have now, it would be going into individual lots, individual budget-based for particular customers and house sizes. To get into the pros and cons of that is something certainly this Utility Advisory Board can look at. as well as long-term resiliency. So that's the climate impacts of, you know, the severe drought and snowpack, if that was to continue. We have a water supply plan that addresses some of that, but it could potentially look at a different, like Denver Water has a drought tier rate fee structure added on. Just look at different ways to mitigate the impacts of that climate change or extreme flooding or whatnot with financial planning.

Okay, we're gonna start this evening with water rates.

So certainly... Yeah, so I guess, yeah, just the purpose. Obviously, we have a pretty complex system that this Water Task Force went through. We have like 550 miles of distribution main, 27 miles of reclaimed pipe. We have 12 pump stations, 11 storage tanks. We have two drinking water facilities, the third one being built. There's a lot that goes into providing fresh drinking water, safe drinking water for our communities. So it's just keeping up with repair of the system through operations and maintenance. I mean that can be chemicals delivered to the treatment plant, replacing water mains. We have an in-house construction crew, even the meters. backflow preventers, there's a lot that goes into maintaining our system. And then as well as debt service on current bonds and of course our engineering when we have to do a full replacement or if it's a new facility, And that's where the capital improvement plan comes in. And this five-year plan is really worked through with operations staff and engineering. And we have an asset management program that keeps track of age of all of this. And that is what feeds into water rates and justifies the need for the costs that are developed. So this water task force, you know, Kevin Kinnear presented on July 6th and it was back February 9th at city council task city staff to look at what would it take to get a task force so we can get an outside perspective with varying backgrounds and March, we brought it forward and March 2nd, city council approved us proceeding with this nine member task force and then plus two city council liaisons, which Consular Ireland and Consular Saudi was very thankful for your time. It started, by the time we got the members on, it was seven residents and two multifamily housing representatives, one from Foothills Regional Housing Authority at Section 8 Housing, as well as a property owner and a multifamily, as well as seven long-term residents, including a fire chief, a licensed engineer, a former water attorney. So it really had very diverse, very different backgrounds that could look at all of this information and weigh in. So we, there was hours, hundreds of hours of information and we, over eight weeks, it started April 29th and We had seven meetings all the way up to June 23rd, and we even had a site visit where we toured our Big Dry Creek wastewater treatment facility. So they did consume a lot of information on how our water rates are formed. We've reviewed our water and wastewater systems that really only focus on the water rate portion, the legal financial framework, as well as we looked at rate comparisons to other cities. our customer consumption data and we covered our affordability and customer assistance programs and our overall rate design. And so the task force shared those recommendations with city council on July 6 by presentation and we also had a report.

So our water rate recommendations tonight really start with a review of what the Water Task Force recommended, and then we're gonna provide a slight recommendation. They call theirs option one, and then we'll have an option 1A. So a big piece of the recommendation that was made was moving from three tiers to four tiers to better support essential indoor water use affordability. The water task force looked at the patterns of usage and heard from staff that 50% of single family residential monthly bills are at or below 4,000 gallons. confirming that essential indoor water use is highly concentrated in that narrow band of usage. The recommended change to the Tier 1 threshold improves affordability for those lowest-use customers, but it certainly increases the bill for moderate usage and increases as you move up. The Water Task Force also made recommendations around the multifamily customer class. So we're really excited because this is a big change for the utility and for our billing system. It's certainly a positive change for our customers that are in that multifamily customer class that prior to this point in time have been included in the irrigation class of customers. This is also the first time ever that we've recommended a decrease in multifamily rates and we're very excited about that. The Water Task Force recommended this separation from the irrigation class for fairness across the rate structure. Their tiers, the recommended tiers here are slightly different than single family due to those usage patterns that differ between multifamily and single family. Multifamily averages 3,000 gallons of usage per month per unit. The Water Task Force made a series of sidecar recommendations that I don't think we have anything to add to, but just wanted to bring these back up with you all. Certainly in the creation of the new customer class, multifamily with four tiers, studying the water budget-based rates that Andrea mentioned, optimizing our customer assistance programs to pick up what is not possible through the rates, consider establishing a long-term or permanent task force or commission, and then studying long-term water collection system resiliency against a change in climate in concert with the city's water supply plan. So staff and city council took those, heard those recommendations on July 6th and we're working to bring those back and put those into into action for City Council to take action on these water rates. Option 1A from the Water Task Force around the single family residential class is the same as what the Water Task Force recommended for 2027. And then we've added 2028 rate with a small increase. So essentially the same as the Water Task Force presented for 2027, and then that incremental increase for 2028. The multifamily customer class is where Stafford City Council's discussion regarding the multifamily rate. And so we've worked in the time since the presentation to present this option 1A. This takes the Water Task Force recommendations and gives City Council an option, that's the 1A column, of a decreased or slightly decreased rate from what the Water Task Force proposed. The Water Task Force heard conversations and had conversations about this rate and didn't recommend decreasing any lower than what they proposed. They didn't recommend that due to the impact on water revenues, which then directly impacts the water capital plan and the capital project stack over future years. Staff is proposing this option 1A, Certainly the move from what the Water Task Force recommended to 1A will decrease revenues and the water capital projects by an amount of approximately $1.5 million a year. While this is impactful to our utility system, staff's comfortable that this change is sustainable over the long run. And it certainly hits that fairness that was identified with the multifamily customer class. I wanna highlight again, those sidecar recommendations, no changes from those with what staff is recommending as we move forward. Our third section of the presentation this evening is around sewer rates. This is an area that the Water Task Force didn't spend time, and certainly we would recommend a utility advisory board that's made permanent, would spend some time on the city's sewer system. It supports safe, reliable, and regulatory compliant wastewater collection and treatment, which includes the replacement of sewer mains and our treatment infrastructure across the city. We've identified here that five-year defined plan for the sewer utility with a capital stack. Sewer is a little bit different in that it accounts for Metro water recovery costs. Just a reminder that much of the city that's south of 92nd, the sewer flows to Metro water recovery.

About 20%.

Thank you, 20% and is treated there. Andrea, did you want to add anything?

No, yeah, just 80% goes to our Big Dry Creek wastewater treatment facility, but we do have a master meter that meters the flows into Metro, and that's how we're charged that, and we budget for it accordingly. But Metro also has to raise their rate, so that's where those... Where we account for those. Where we account for those.

Do you want to highlight anything around the capital plan for the sewers?

Just, I mean, I think we had a big Dry Creek Wastewater Facility Master Plan and, you know, we identified 85% of the plants in great condition, but there are some infrastructure coming on the end of its useful life that would be helpful if the Utility Advisory Board went through in more detail. So that's about where those budget numbers come from. It's very similar to water and, like, Sewer is very highly regulated, just like water is, and we'll talk about stormwater too, but a lot of these are regulatory driven as well.

Staff is recommending that we maintain the sewer rate structure that we have with a modest rate increase proposed for both 2027 and 2028. As I mentioned, we look forward to reviewing the sewer operations, the capital plan, and the rate structure with a proposed sewer advisory board.

All right, and we're going to talk about stormwater management fees. Yep, so stormwater management fees, it's a separate fee. But, you know, stormwater is precipitation that hits the ground, snow, hail, rain. And, you know, again, there's a comprehensive stormwater program that the city runs. We have the Big Dry Creek Basin and then the Little Dry Creek. Big Dry Creek is anything north of 92nd and Little Dry Creek is anything south. And it really... Our stormwater program is also regulatory driven and it protects residents infrastructure and the environment, reducing flooding and making sure our waterways are clean. The one thing with stormwater is that, you know, when it hits the ground, some of it soaks into the ground, but there's impervious areas like parking lots and roads and roofs that it doesn't. And so oftentimes like it can wash, get grease or debris into the waterways. So that's an important part of this program is a regulatory compliance aspect of it. So we have that listed, you know, illicit discharges, making sure people aren't dumping paint or, Anything down our stormwater, but it's the operations and maintenance We're starting to TV in 2025 We've been a robust like our sewer TV and some of our stormwater and we're finding some real critical areas that need repair as well as a capital improvement plan that funds You know the buried infrastructure we use on-call contractors to to help with that, but we're also I know Mayor Cremalia, you're part of the Mile High Flood District, but that little Dry Creek floods hazard delineation area has identified over 200 properties in the flood plain. So like, you know, working and making sure that the city is, you know, Mile High Flood District has equal matching of funds that we're, you know, taking that opportunity on these projects and identifying and breaking that out. So that's really what the stormwater management program consists of. It's taking care of those channels and detention ponds. We have, I mean, 220 miles of channels, 475 detention ponds. It's pretty complex, 65 miles of creeks and rivers, just like our water system. But an important part of our infrastructure in the city. So the stormwater management fee recommendation, we have not increased stormwater fees for 10 years, since 2020. 2016 but we're recommending um a rate change of a dollar for the single family so that would bring it the existing is six dollars it would bring it to seven dollars for 2027. um right now the stormwater budget is 4.2 million so this would add 700 000 for a total of 4.9 million and help with funding some of those critical repairs that are identified There's also the way we handle commercial apartments and townhouses through other property monthly fee and this is based per parcel on the impervious area and that's the things that don't soak in the ground like the parking lots that they have and it's billed per thousand square feet of impervious area. So where we get that $1.93 is basically we did a survey of the impervious area of about 450 average single-family detached homes in the city and it was 3,100 square feet. So you just divide six divided by 3,100 and times it per thousand square feet gives you that $1.93. So if you were to increase the rate to seven, then you just take seven divided by 3,100. That's where you get the two point. And I'll just use an example, like our largest customer, their bill is $804, but they happen to be Cottonwood Apartments on 82nd and Sheridan. They have 415,000 approximately square feet. So if you divide that by 3,100, it's 134 times it. I'm just times it by six, but that gives you the 800. But they have 360 units on that property. So depending on how the landlord, the property manager does it, if you actually divide it by 360, that 800 becomes like 220 units. So, but it just really varies per parcel. And we're always looking, we use Dr. Cox for some of the GIS data and updating, you know, somebody could build a shed, which is also a roof or put something paved on there that's no longer impervious. But it really, it varies. Apartment complexes vary quite a bit too, how much landscaping do they have versus impervious area. So that's how that was.

That wraps up the recommendations staff has prepared for this evening. Certainly we're looking for guidance on those recommendations and then we'll work to build these into the 2027 proposed budget and bring back all the required ordinances or other items for adoption to implement these structures moving forward. With that, we'll take questions and feedback.

Thank you so much. Why don't we move into a general discussion for questions and feedback and then we'll go into each of these four items and then do one at a time and we can make sure we answer all questions before we go ahead and do a poll on each one.

Councilor Azadi. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much. It's a great presentation and I wanted to applaud when you went through those calculations. I was like in the plug moment but that was very complicated. So thank you for that. First, I want to backtrack and thank the task force if they're listening. But for the community to know this task force, it was really a fantastic experience. The original vision was to ensure that citizens' voices can help translate the why, right, in a way that their neighbors can understand, that their families can understand, that people can really understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes into understanding and knowing, but then also why rates are the way they are. Why do we have water rates? Why do we raise rates sometimes? Why do we lower rates sometimes? And that context was just really helpful to have that group of people because that was a really diverse set of individuals. I've never seen such a diverse group in terms of their backgrounds and where they live in the city and their levels of experience was all really helpful. So thank you to the team, thank you to your staff, the water staff, I got to know very well throughout those meetings. And I think I've told them before that they are definitely probably the best water staff in the state for sure. Their levels of experience is, unseen in terms of their resumes, but just talking to them, they know this inside and out. So that was grateful to have them with the community working together for hundreds of hours to understand and learn this. So to the first part about the Water Task Force Utility Board, I definitely when it comes to each of those. I will definitely be supportive of that. And the question I have for that one is, I'm hopeful. It's more feedback, but I'm hopeful that one is going to include electric and natural gas. I think we spend a couple million, right, as a city. We don't really talk much about it, but from a utility standpoint, it's something that I would like to see more visibility on and planning around and community engagement on how much we spend on energy. I think it's really important right now. And then sewer, you know, the Water Task Force didn't have the opportunity to talk about sewer, but that's definitely, and I hear that that's going to be the plan for this board. So that's really good to know because the sewer is a fixed cost on your bills, right? And they didn't have the chance to just dive into that and recommend anything on that. So that's really great to see there. And for the water rates itself, As we all know, we have an economy that hasn't really stabilized. We have a lot of families, thousands of families that are struggling. They're struggling to pay their bills. We have multiple crises. We've all laid out multiple times. We have a child care crisis, housing crisis, but there's an inflationary crisis where people are not able to just stabilize. And these next couple of years, I think, are particularly unique it may not continue past 28, but I think the rates that we set these next two years will be critical because of the moment we're in economically. And the first thing, so can you go back to the rate chart, the charts? So I'm prepared to accept, almost all of the Water Task Force recommendations with two big exceptions because of the economy that we're in. I think tier two, I would like that to be, to match tier one, right? Because so tier one encompasses 50% of essential indoor use, but I think tier, so zero to 8,000 would encompass 80%. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's 80 plus percent of the residents for essential indoor use. And I think matching those to be so 416 for each of those tiers, keeping everything else the same would make this a much more equitable and inclusive rate structure that so lowering those rates for those first two tiers basically would be key. That would be my first recommendation. And the second one would be for the multifamily to choose 1A, not the first one, because the 1A pricing, the 1A multifamily is much more equitable. We have a lot of lower and middle class residents, tenants of these properties that would be impacted by this. So choosing that second, that 1A option would be definitely the way to go especially right now these next two years it's a critical moment so that would be my two recommendations um and the last thing i wanted to say was regarding our rate setting strategy so we we set rates we sell water rates on a two-year basis but we plan capital on a 10-year basis and i think We need a more responsive rate setting strategy because sometimes planning that far ahead, which is good, so I'm not saying that we should change that piece, but the way we have it structured now is we plan 10 years out and we set rates two years out. That 10-year outlook sometimes impacts the rates that we set on a two-year basis, which makes us less responsive to the macroeconomy in those two years. So the now, right? So people are feeling the pinch right now For example, and if we're looking 10 years out, the economy could change very much in two years and three years and four years, but that may taint and not poison, but taint the way we view rates and what people can accept from the pocketbook standpoint. So I would like us to see how we can better align rate setting and capital planning because right now it's really mismatched. And I get the reason why it's like that because we want to make sure we have this long-term outlook to make sure the city is taken care of on a long-term basis. But the short term, so there has to be a way to make this more flexible on a short term, so more responsive. So that's my last comment there. Thanks.

Thank you so much. Councilor Ireland. So I have a lot to say. I was on the test first. I was hoping it would make it more affordable for families. The typical family in our city is like a family of four. This is actually making it more expensive. I've been doing the homework. The typical family of four does not fit in the first tier. Their indoor water usage in the winter is like six to seven thousand gallons. And the typical homeowner that owns a single family home in our city in the summer uses between 12,000 and 30,000 gallons. The average is 16,000 gallons. And they're not abusing water, by the way. That was one of the words used at our water task force, those abusing water. People with a yard who have kids, that's as good as daycare. When you have to put your kids outside in the backyard, you could see them from your house. I have five kids. I think I'm an expert on children and how to raise children. I don't want them sitting inside all day on a screen. Do we not care about families? Because this is gonna hurt families more than the single people in our city. We lumped all the single, metered apartments into the first tier with the single families in this task force. That's 11,000 to 13,000 homes. We got 28,000 single family homes. We lumped all the townhouses and duplexes into that. That was another 5,000. So these numbers are skewed. And two years ago, five of you, when we sat here, the staff told us we didn't need more than a 4.5% increase a year to pay for the water treatment plant. This is over a 5% increase with these sewer rates. It's 4.9, not including the sewer waste. I didn't even want the water treatment plant as it stands, as you know, but now we have to pay for it. And we were told 4.5% over 30 years, but now it's 4.9. except for the first tier, which is mostly apartments. And I'll tell you what, those people in apartments are raising their third tier, but their families, they're using six to 7,000 gallons in the winter. I've done my homework and it was interesting that all the single family home usage is the same usage as our new water treatment plant. 14.9 million gallons a day for single family homes that are conserving water. We're all conserving water and we're probably gonna have to conserve more water, but hopefully not. I'm praying for moisture. But this was a shit show. This was not even honest. Single family homes were, are having to pay for the apartments because we lumped them all together into one tier. Let's be honest about it. Because I am totally honest about it. And I've been fighting these water rates since 2018. So I think I know a lot about the water rates. And I wanna know how much this task force cost to have this consultant come in. I have not got that number. I was told it was $250,000. Is that true? What was the number? Because the people have the right to know what is going on. We didn't talk about families affordability. Well, I can't have my families move here. I have five kids. Do you think their families could afford to live in Westminster? None of them live here. If they weren't in here when I got here, try getting in now. You weren't thinking about families when you made these water rates. You were thinking about single apartment dwellers. And that's what I have to say. I will only accept what we had with 4.5% increase. That is what staff recommended at the task force, by the way. That was all I'll accept because that was what was promised two years ago. It was supposed to go up more than that. So thank you for letting me be on the task force so I really knew what was going on.

Thank you, counselor. Do we want to pause for a moment to see if we have any staff responses to some of those questions?

Well, I didn't know if you wanted to comment about the facilitation costs. They're just much lower than .

Yeah, the total. Good evening, Council. Brian Donahue, Policy and Budget Office. The total cost for the cost of service study was budgeted at $240,000. This water task force fell under that contract, so there wasn't additional funds added for this portion of the study, but I could figure out exactly what was spent to facilitate

water task force by raft tell us but families using if you use more than 9 000 gallons especially you're going to get shot and it's not like these people are abusing the system like i was told i have a neighbor that got a pool because he can't walk and his doctor recommended didn't have a pool it has four kids to support So is he a water abuser? I'm kinda tired of this water abuser stuff because I don't know too many people in this city that are abusing water. In fact, I walk neighborhoods, most lawns are dead. We're looking like a blighted city, by the way. And this is what we want? In the name of the apartments? We'll just let the single families go to you know where? That's where I'm at.

I wanna pause for a moment to see if we can answer and make sure that the statements are correct on, I think that Councilor Ireland mentioned tiers. Is that correct that they're lumped together between the single family houses and the multifamily? A multifamily on a single meter. On a single meter.

Multifamily on a single meter is handled under the four tiered structure for multifamily. some duplexes, triplexes that are under the single family. But I would say that's not what we were told at the task force. Yes, it was.

That's exactly what we were told at the task force.

It's different than the planning code, but how we actually define it for class in terms of utility billing is that single family does include duplexes and triplexes. What were the single meter multifamily then? A single meter multifamily is typically for most, I mean, I can't give a percentage, but a high amount is for four units or more. And they're master metered. They have a single meter.

But the new apartments are single metered. 11,000 to 13,000 of them. They're single metered. There's not four of them.

Yeah. And where are they? They should be in the multifamily. But they're not. So... It'd be a case-by-case basis. Well, how's the case-by-case? Somebody gets a break, somebody doesn't get a break. A small minority that are metered that way.

11,000 to 13,000 in our city are single metered.

And they're new. Yeah. For single apartment buildings?

They're lumped in with the single family. And so are the duplexes and the townhouses, which I can understand. But not the single family. I mean, the single... metered multifamily, which are all new. Old ones do not have it. I asked that question, maybe Obie wasn't there during it, but I asked that question and they were all looked in there. And that's why we get this low, like we're a water abuser if we use over 4,000 gallons in the winter. But what about a family of four?

The average winter consumption is 4,000 for a single family. And if you average out a single family water bill throughout the year, it is their average use is 8,000, although it could go higher in the summer because of irrigation.

Well, that's because they've all quit watering long ago. There's no lawns. You know, water has become a luxury item. Only for the rich can have a nice lawn. Everyone else, forget it. That's where we're at.

Councillor Neher, may I help clarify something?

I was going to say, could we clarify this point and then I think there's one more to clarify and we can move on to the next, yeah.

Yeah, so allow me to reframe for clarity. So Councillor Ireland is asking, are the individually metered multifamily units that are currently billed, are they being billed under the multifamily rate or are they being billed under the single family tier structure?

Currently, the majority of the multifamily that are two or three unit structures that only have one meter are single family. And I mean, there are a handful, I mean, that might be built differently, but primarily, I would even say 95% or greater of the city that has a master meter and four units or greater are built as a multifamily. So just if that makes sense, like single family detached and single family, I mean, with that are triplexes and duplexes may have a single meter, but they still, they fall under the single family structure. It's really almost more time. I mean, once you say that the majority of the time it's four units or greater is a multifamily. So you're talking about usually several apartments, several units.

Well, I want you to come back with a real answer because I don't think that's right. All these new apartments we built are in single meters. And I was told they were lumped in because I asked it.

And is there a way to just maybe we follow up on this one item?

Yeah, we can because they might have individual meters, but they only get one bill. So yeah, we'll follow up on it and get back to you.

And regardless, is there a way to answer the real question, which is, is there a way to manually, you know, I think the billing rate is the real question, right? If we have these cases, then can we figure out how to manually, you know, get them into the right frame? We'll get clarification if I understand what your question is.

The newer units that are individually metered, individual apartments, we will confirm where they're being built.

Agreed 4.5% with this new water treatment plan. two years ago, and now we're even, we're over 5% with sewer rates. I don't know what we said about sewer rates then, but I know that water was not supposed to be more than four and a half across the board in the tiers we had.

That's what was promised by five of you.

Thank you. Thank you, Director. And I think there was, No, that was the last one was the percentage. Okay, thank you so much. Councilor Johnson.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. First, I want to echo Councillor Azadi's point to the Water Task Force. You know, I think there are a lot of boards in the city and I appreciate, you know, back to the volunteer appreciation, all their service. And I know the Water Task Force was really intensive and they did really wonderful work. I support, you know, a lot of what Councillor Azadi said. I really appreciate the multifamily breakout and the lowering of the multifamily rates. To me, this is historic injustice where, you know, multifamily customers are paying significantly higher to subsidize single family users. And, you know, I am not a big fan of subsidies, but especially reverse subsidies and the way that worked was a reverse subsidy. the cost of service to multifamily is significantly lower often than single family. And so it's to me, it seemed completely backwards that these rate payers were paying significantly higher rates. So I think it's a huge celebration that for thousands of customers across the city, we're gonna be lowering and right-sizing their rates. My only comment would be, Well, I hope this isn't the end of the conversation. I think this is tremendous work that has been done to get us to this point. But ultimately, I think there's a lot more conversations to be had around the cost of delivering this service in 2028, 2029, as we continue to right-size this subsidy. And I'm really supportive of the single-family rate structures. I think it's, we shouldn't, you know, downplay the fact that we're going to be lowering water rates next year for the majority of water usage in this city. I mean, water users average, especially in the winter, 4,000 gallons can get up to 8,000 over the year. And so that means that for a lot of water payers, rate payers, we're going to be seeing lower water rates. And I think that's a really big win for us and for the city. I think we need to recognize that. So thank you for all your work. I support the recommendations and especially what Councillor Azadi said and that's all I have. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna go to Councillor Haught and then Mayor Pro Tem.

Councillor Haught. Yeah, I also wanted, well, first I wanna, these rates were proposed by the task force, right? Okay, so these rates were not proposed by staff. These rates were proposed by residents of the city. And so I really appreciate the work that they did. And I think it's very important that the rates are coming from our residents. It's not coming from staff. And that's the whole reason why we did this task force because we didn't want the rates coming from us and coming from staff. We wanted the rates to come from the residents themselves. So I just want to make perfectly clear for everyone who's listening, these proposed rates came from our residents who took the time to be on this task force and learn everything that they needed to learn so they could come up with this structure. And so I really appreciate the work that they did. I also wanna bring up what Councilor Azadi proposed for the four to 8,000 single family homes, also making that 416 as well. I agree with that. And so I just wanted to voice that as well. I think if we could lower rates for that many residents, I think that would be very, very beneficial, but that's all I had to say.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Nirmala. Thank you for the presentation. I've been playing catch up because I missed July 6th, but I was able to read through the report and hopefully get a good understanding of where we are. I did have a few questions and, you know, just one flag as just we talk about water users. If we can watch our language around, you know, we are talking about abusers versus just users because there's a lot of different reasons why people would be using a lot of water. And so just wanted to keep us, you know, framing this in a positive light, even if people are using a lot of water. Um, the question I have one is, um, gosh, let me get organized on my questions. Um, for commercial, for the commercial water use. And actually I think it was this, that was the sewer one, hold on. I'm gonna go to water first, sorry. Okay. Just to clarify, so what we're asking for the water tier is to create a new tier that's in between zero and 8,000 and that's a zero to 4,000 that's aligning with a good amount of our households use. And we're making that less than the existing rates, right? Can you remind us again how many people or how many households that kind of tier one? Does everybody capture those rates for tier one?

What we found, I mean, with the affordability aspect of this task force is that it was essential water use. So that was indoor water use for showers, for washing dishes. And that was for single family, you know, 4,000 was what that critical water use was. So that's where lowering that for those who have that essential water need. And so it was kind of a nod to conservation efforts, because if you're going higher than that to like say tier three, I mean, you're talking about irrigation. So trying to have more of a conservation mindset. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, and just to, sorry. So if somebody uses 8,000 or I don't know, let's call it 7,000 gallons of water, are they paying the, they're paying the tier two rate for all those gallons? They would be going in, no. First 4,000 is at 416. Okay. Second 4,000 at 416. Okay, so everybody captures that lower rate. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that was clear in my head and all of ours.

For clarity that those the tier structures are incremental incrementally billed once they're triggered. So you always pay the tier one rate for the zero to 4,000. And then if you go slightly over that, then you only pay the increase for that portion over that in the tier two rate for example. Got it.

Okay.

I just want to chime in to say that was not clear to me. And so maybe we'll wrap up when we're done with one more summary at that point for our audiences that thank you for reiterating.

Yeah. Cause I think it's important for people to realize like everybody captures some of this discounted rate, which I think is important. You know, this is, this is great that the water task force was able to identify this and that staff was be able to carve this out. When we look at, our data do we have an idea we're talking about like the average single family household like the household size is there do we have any data around like that household size and use relationship on not necessarily the size of the household not the size of the household but the use we do we do so our average household uses about 83 000 gallons per year Okay. And that's across all lot sizes?

That's the average user. And then we have a low water user and then what we consider a high water user. And that's single family? That's single family, yes.

Okay. And then... I mean, keeping in mind that our household size is probably going to reduce over the years, right? We've all talked about this with demographics changing. We anticipate we're going to have more single person households. So hopefully there will be some level of conservation as we actually reduce in population. That's kind of... weird thought but I do for the multifamily I was kind of hoping it would be lower. So I appreciate our 1A option that is actually lower than the you know the proposal from the task force. So basically like if you live in an apartment you're still paying can you flip back to the other One real quick. You're still paying like somewhere in the neighborhood of a tier three level of water cost if you're just doing the essentials in an apartment, right? Is that broken for the multifamily? Did we break it down between outdoor irrigation and indoor? Yes.

and what the average need was. And so like the multifamily, the average like indoor water use at essential is 3,000, which is why you see that versus 4,000 for the single family. But another thing is, I mean, this is all a balancing act in this whole rates and modeling and that like, We do want to do more with multifamily, but you have to collect the fees from single family. So it's just balancing everything and trying to get the funding for CIP, which is why a utility advisory board could look at this in more detail.

So can I just better understand? So there's probably two taps for a multifamily, typical multifamily, right? They have the irrigation tap and then they have a tap that's serving the building.

It really varies. I mean, you, I mean, if you have a large, complex apartment complex like 80 units or something you might have a master meter but you might have some irrigation that also goes into the complex but and then how the landlord divvies it up you know do they divide it per unit on what that master fee is so it really does vary and we don't have control over what the property manager does and how they build their customers there but yeah I mean irrigation you can see it in the summer and when you're looking at their water bills. It typically goes up.

And essentially the multifamily class with the tiers, tier one and tier two is essential water use, indoor use, and tiers three and four would capture the outdoor irrigation. So you can imagine the multifamily class is very complex. So we're trying to capture and be fair with the pricing throughout the tiers. So that's the recommendation. So not to have one single rate to capture all of the billing but to kind of distinguish between essential water use and outdoor water use. Okay. And all this to meet our revenue requirement, right?

Yeah. I knew it wasn't going to be easy.

So we're trying to capture this revenue requirement and this fairness and also this affordability question.

Right. Well, I appreciate we've made some strides on the multifamily then. So I'd be supportive of that. I'd probably prefer to... you know, I know we, Councilor Rosati threw out there, you know, kind of lowering tier two for the single families. I'd throw out if there's any room to be had, we'd lower it a little bit for the multifamily, but you know, that's just, I get that, you know, that can probably have a bit heavier impact.

So the reduction that we've recommended here is gonna be a loss of about 1.5 million year over year, and that's permanent.

Okay, so my other questions were on the sewer. Can we flip over to sewer rate? And the stormwater fee. I guess those were fees that, do we regularly just update these? at this percentage or what's the context?

Yes, it was 6% the previous two years and it's 6% here. Yeah, typically. So typically for sewer, yes.

For sewer. For sewer.

For stormwater though... Stormwater, we haven't had a rate increase in a while, but with increased construction costs and the needs of the system, that's why we're asking for it now, because we've identified some quick layers.

I think it does make sense for the stormwater. Obviously, if we haven't raised it to do something, but perhaps it gets phased in versus, you know, clicking with, you know, the dollar, full dollar. So that was just one thought. And then one question about how it's calculated. It's my last question, so thank you. If for the commercial users, if you could flip to the other one for the stormwater. So for, I'm supposing like, you know, commercial apartments, townhomes, the calculation for the thousand square feet, if I know you were talking about, yeah, people add sheds or what have you, but is there any calculation if they actually add, back more impervious? Yes.

I mean, if they add pervious, we are constantly updating it and looking at it and getting information on that parcel of land. So like Dr. Coggs and our GIS has a model that looks through these parcels. And if they change over time, you know, it's monthly, it's updated. So it could capture that area. Um, when they go through that modeling. So it's per individual parcel. So if you have a Walmart and it's on there and they took out some parking lot and you put some landscaping in, it could, with that modeling, change it over time and come into this calculation. It would be less impervious area than if you're adding ways for water to soak into the ground. So. Okay.

And we calculate that automatically like a apartment complex wouldn't have to do that?

Yeah, I mean, we look at it monthly. And then with Dr. Coggs too, they have their GIS also feeding into the areas. That's information that's provided. But we do update that the stormwater team, the GIS team updates that monthly, and they're looking through. We also find anomalies. And yeah, just on a routine basis going through that. But it's really every parcel is different. So That's how it's calculated, if that makes sense. All right, thank you.

Thank you. I see your hand will come right back around. I'm gonna make a couple quick comments as well, and then we'll go back around, and then we'll try to get to polling real quick. I just really thank you, Mayor Pro Tem, for that question on adding back to impervious land. That's really interesting. And I wonder, I was going to ask to begin with if there's a way we can kind of double down on that for our incoming development plans when we're looking at that as a side discussion for planning. That's something I've asked about repeatedly, you know, can we look at the pervious versus impervious services that are coming in? And we were already, I think, 33% over our plan that was made back in the 70s for how much ground that is impervious, right? And that's affecting our floods, districts, et cetera. And so it'd be interesting to see the planning commission just kind of take a look at how do we double down on either the discount to adding back or the cost to adding land that is covered. I really just wanna say again, thank you. I know a lot of counselors have said it, but thank you to the team that did this work. Thank you to staff who took so much time from their days to make this task successful. And really big thank you, Councilor Azadi for this suggestion. I think this was the right route for the city to take after so many years of discussion. And the goal really was for these, task force members to be our ambassadors, right? Because now they better understand the structure and they can carry that message into the neighborhoods and that's the goal. And so I'm really proud, honestly, of council, both liaisons, all the residents that were involved and our staff for making this happen. I know it was a large lift and I know that there was probably hesitation initially and we made it happen. So that's just huge kudos. Thank you. I am a little curious. And so maybe when we go back around, I can get a little bit more feedback from Councilor Azadi on your thought around the initial ask. about the tiers between the zero to 4,000 and the four to eight, because my understanding is that we asked for further breakout of these tiers and now we're combining them back together. And so I don't know that I fully understand that logic. So I'd like to hear more before I go one way or another. But I do know that what we're trying to do overall as a mission with this council is improve affordability for the largest majority of residents as possible. And so I hear that and I wanna help make that happen. I also don't know that we've run the numbers to know that that's affordable. So what I did hear is that this is gonna cost us 1.5 as it's currently suggested, but there's a few different suggestions up here. So is that with the 1A suggestion? That was a multifamily.

So just to clarify, the $1.5 million is the lost revenue moving from the multifamily four-tier rate structure that's noted as the Water Task Force proposed rates to the decreased rates that's option 1A here. That's a loss of revenue of $4.5 million annually.

annually in perpetuity.

Correct.

And, and we're saying that we can handle this or are we not? We can.

This we're comfortable with.

Yeah. Okay. Is there any further context? I don't know what else to ask from there.

So certainly this means less, fewer capital projects, fewer capital dollars in future years. I think where I begin to have more concern is when we talk about changing other tiers to a lower rate because then we're compounding the impact and we're talking about significantly less revenue then.

So yeah, that would be the single family, correct? Consular study that you brought up. If you go back to the other slide, the single family that you mentioned, that Tier 2, and bringing that down from the proposed rate from the task force of 450 down to 420, Brian, you would have to run the numbers to show because that would be an additional reduction in our capital improvement plan, which yeah, we'd have to see what that number is, but...

Okay. And then ultimately, if we get to the questions that you have for us, like this task force, if we make this an ongoing task force, really, they would be readdressing these numbers very soon, come next year, I would assume, right? Because that means that they would have new suggestions for us based on going in-depth over these numbers once again. Is that right? Yes, that would definitely...

be something that they do. So that would be the value and they could come back with a recommendation after investigating that further.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

All right. I'm gonna go quick one more questions and then we'll start polling. So Councillor Ireland, you've had your hand up.

Could you go back to the sewer rates, please? For single-family. Okay. So the water rates on the first tier people are going to save $1.92 a year.

Are we really serious about affordability?

They're gonna get it made up with the sewer charge and the next year they'll pay $9 and something cents more for 2028 for water on the first year. And also landlords do not always give the savings on water. Sometimes landlords pay the water. I've met that even HOAs pay the water. So to say that multifamily should have a lower rate, a landlord may just get the money. I don't think we think through this stuff. I don't mean to be rude. But I've been dealing with this and people upset for many years. We have a recall over this, just to let you know. There's some people that are not here anymore because of it. So $1.92, but they're really not saving that because it's made up on the sewer rates. So no one's saving, just so you know. Everyone out there, no one is going to have their water rates or their bill lower. that suffer maybe multifamily who may not even see the money because their landlord may take it. So I go back to what I said in the beginning. I will not approve more than a 4.5% increase across the board on the rates structure we had or we have right now. Because that was what was promised to the people. And I didn't even accept that because I didn't even want this so-called drinking water. That's a water treatment plant, by the way. two years ago, but you all accepted it, except for Jack. So I am going to stick to 4.5 because that was what was promised. And that is what staff in the task force said we could do still. And $1.96, I don't think it's gonna make a difference to a whole lot of people out there. $1.92, sorry, four cents.

And I'll pause again. Is that information all correct?

Are we able to? That's if you use 4,000 gallons. If you use 1,000, it's less than that.

I may be able to help with a broader perspective. So we have three utilities at the city, a water utility, a sewer utility, and a stormwater utility. So all three of those are enterprise utilities, and each one has to balance its budget within itself. The focus historically in Westminster has been on water rates. However, each year we still also have to have sewer rates and stormwater rates. And although we present them together, we try not to conflate the three enterprise funds. And so even though the water rates may rise or be reduced, the sewer enterprise still has to have a balanced budget and so does the stormwater. And one of the things that we would be looking at with the Utility Advisory Board would be rebranding our water bill because it does create what Councillor Ireland described, which is this conflation between, well, I may have a reduced water rate, but you're making up for it in sewer. but we're actually not making up for the water rate. We're actually making up for lost ground on the sewer system. So the money goes into sewer, not water. So I just want to clarify that, but it's partly the way we structure it. We really create this notion that it's a water bill.

So we'll work on that as potentially if council directs us to the... One year you'll save $1.92, but the next year you're going up to $9 more or something. I'm sorry.

Thank you, Councillor. So the second point that was raised is around relative increases. So typically, historically in Westminster, water rates have increased every year. This is the first year where we would actually offer a reduced water rate. and so although it may not be very much it does it also would might for for many people on the affordability um side of things they would be looking at what they didn't get increased like for example broomfield right double digit percent increases in their water rates they didn't see that and they saw a reduction so although it's not a savings it would be broomfields is still lower than ours even with their

rates hike.

A lot less than a year-over-year increase for that tier. I just wanted to clarify how the structure works and why there are three utilities and why there's a lot of merit in the Utility Advisory Board advising us on the other two systems as well at the same time and then work on public education around how there are three very different systems. Right.

I appreciate that. Just because for those listening, I want to make sure that we clarify everything that you just said. They're not thinking they're going to get a lower water bill, which they are not. Right. On any tier. Well, and to the whole process that we're doing, right? We're really committing to the transparency portion of this, which is, you know, the water bill as was just mentioned as a whole and versus we now can propose 16 cents a month.

Can we stop interrupting them? Mayor, point of order. We can't interrupt the entire time. Everyone gets their time to talk.

Thank you, Councillor. Thank you as well. No, but that's what I was trying to get to is that the whole point of the whole process that we're doing is to provide that clarity and transparency for the consumer, which we can eventually get to if we can get these things in action and get a task force on board that can actually make these things happen. With that, Councillor Izadi.

Yes. So to answer your first question on the tier two, the reason why that, so we did have a significant effort within the task force to talk about affordability and the lens that came back, that conversation came up was around size of family, right? So we don't have the data. on size of family for Westminster, but there was a whole presentation. One of the task force members works in this field. She brought in, she presented to the task force national data, state data on affordability for many different lenses with size of family in mind. And one of the insights that came up was Yes, zero to 4,000 does capture the 50% of the indoor essential use, but that four to 8,000 here accounts for a lot of these larger families, two, three, you know, how many number of kids that you have that may use more. But it also came up in the task force that a lot of larger families don't necessarily use a significant material amount more than smaller families, indoor use. Where we saw the biggest differences in water use was between tier one and two versus tier three and four. And that's where the, inference came up that the irrigation users, the heavy irrigation users, but by the way, the term abuser was used one time by a resident, not by staff, right? But these heavy irrigation users fall in tier three and four. 90 something percent of them are in those tiers. That's why I wanted to make sure that for tier two, we can capture a lot of those larger families that are using water the right way, which is for indoor essential use. And that, so bringing it down to the same, so 416 would bring that equity, if that makes sense. That's the first piece I wanted to talk about. So to backtrack to what some of councilor Island has been discussing here, one thing I want to just say is one of the benefits of having two liaisons to the task force is that we both had the opportunity within all these hours of the task force to bring up, you know, these outside perspectives to bring up, what we've seen over the years from residents, you know, community perspective within the task force. And I certainly did. Right. But if council island has all these criticisms, it didn't come up in the task force. And well, you weren't there.

These things, counselor, that will be the last interruption.

And I was there for every single meeting. including the tour where we talked about a lot of the questions that she now has. We answered a lot of these questions throughout all of these meetings. So my, not frustration, but my advice for anyone who's going to be on a task force, if you're on city council, make sure you use that time wisely because the residents who were on that task force took the time, they pre-studied the agenda items. We had a lot of documents also that came with being a task force member. They read at home, they studied it, they came in, they asked questions, they got their questions answered. They were good actors, meaning they came in wanting to do good. And they did, and they learned a lot. We all learned a lot, really intricate details of this complex operational system that we have. So it's almost insulting to sit there and pretend like there were so many questions open-ended that were not answered, because that's just not true. It was a really well-run task force. well run by staff, well run by the consultant that was there who was not paid $250,000 by the way. What we need to do better as a council is just to stay away from the propaganda language, from propagandizing really important elements such as the water system and what we pay rates and how it was paid because there is no conspiracy here. So for anyone listening, So I heard that she, so councilor Eileen does not accept what she's seeing. She wants to only accept the 4.5% increase that was promised a year ago or two years ago. I don't accept that because that assumes that every single tier needs to go up 4.5%. And I don't think we should have a water increase of 4.5% because what we're proposing here is a decrease. As you heard the city manager, we are proposing for the first time in the history of Westminster, repeat, the first time in the history of Westminster, we're proposing a decrease in water rates for essential water use. And what's happening? By the way, let's take a step back. What is happening? We are in a drought, a significant drought. Water is becoming the most precious and limited resource that we, it is the most precious resource that we have. So that means our heavy irrigation users who are in three and four, By the way, you heard earlier, everyone gets these savings, whether you're using all your water every single day, 24 seven to water your lawn or not, you're getting, you have to go through tier one to get to tier two, to get to tier three, to get to tier four. Everyone would get a benefit here. So we're saying, no, we don't want the old promise of 4.5% across everybody. We want you to have savings, even you who's using 24 seven water, whoever you are, right? But if you do use that much water where you get to tier three and four, you're using 40,000 gallons. There's probably a reason. Some people don't have a good reason, by the way, many residents. many in terms of not thousands, but there's, so I think it was 1%. 1% of all residents fall in tier four. 1% of every single resident will hit tier four, may hit tier four at one point, right? So all they're saying is if you hit three and four, you should pay your fair share. The majority of the citizens, 80% in tier one and two should not be subsidizing, you know, who are using it for indoor use, which is what people care about the most. Those people should not be subsidizing someone who's using endless water in a drought, knowing we have a limited finite resource of water. That's all we're saying here. And we're proposing a decrease for those residents, which makes up 80% of all our residents, that you guys shouldn't be paying for it and you should get a lower rate, especially now in these two years where the economy is the way it is. So I think this is a responsible plan. And that's what I wanted to add.

Thank you, Councilor. Okay, if we have last minute comments, we're gonna keep them to under three minutes here, and then we're gonna go around and start polling on the different items. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you.

That was really helpful, Councilor Zaddi. I just had a question, actually. It's more about, I know we wanna help families. I think both Councilor Zaddi and Councilor Ireland, we're both kind of trying to, increase the amount of people that would save money. I'm just curious, like, Tier three is huge. We used to have a cut off at like 20,000 gallons. And we changed that several years ago. I don't know if it's better to, you know, for me, I prefer that we just do tier one reduction. Everybody gets it, great. But if there's more of a consensus that people want to help tier one and two, should we be looking at tier three? I don't know if that was evaluated as part of the, water task force or not, but yeah, be curious to hear.

Mayor Larkin and Mayor, may I address, this has come up and also for Councillor Rosati's request, I believe the team would have to remodel if we were to alter the rate for tier two to match tier one, because it is a balance of revenues and expenses. on this equation, and when the task force looked at the model, and the team will correct me if I'm stating this incorrectly, they did look at that balance. So they balanced the way that Tier 1 and Tier 2 were rated against how Tier 3 and Tier 4 were related, noting that it was incremental, right? So it is a complex water model exercise to change a tier rate. And so unless the staff advises differently, if council is so directed in support of Councillor Azadi's recommendation, we would likely have to bring that back to you. And we may have to seek a revision to the other rates to balance the expenditures and revenues in the utility. That would also apply to a change in the structure of the, or the rate for tier three, which is why I answered then. Okay.

Anything else? Okay, thank you. Councillor Ireland.

I know you're upset with me, all of you, but we have a water treatment plant to pay for. And if we all quit using water, it's not getting paid for. Water pays for the plant. Plant was 263 million plus interest. So these so-called water abusers, if they don't use water, the plant will never get paid for by zero to 4,000 gallons a day. And so, We have to think of that every time we make people conserve, then the rates go up the next year. Because we didn't make enough money to pay them for the water treatment plant. And that is why I'm concerned about this drought. Because how are we going to pay for the plant if no one is watering? And that is my concern to all of you listening out here. And then we always stick it to the people that are watering, that are paying for the plant.

Councilor Hodge. I'll be very quick. So I have a 10,000 step challenge for myself every day. So I walk to Stanley Lake almost every single day. And I really appreciate city manager Andrews. He had an email to a resident explaining where we're at with our voluntary water restrictions. If we do not save water with our voluntary water restrictions, we will go to mandatory water restrictions. So we have to save water. So even the people spending or using over 40,000 gallons a month will be on mandatory water restrictions. If everybody doesn't bring down our water, what's more important than paying for our water treatment center is our residents having enough water to drink that is what's most important so I am not worried about people conserving water because if they don't conserve water they will be forced nobody's being forced right now it's all voluntary and if we don't save water it will be mandatory and it will be forced and nobody wants that

I think we're ready to move on to polling. Thank you staff for your patience as we get through this. We're gonna go to the first question, which I think was about the Water Task Force. Yes, it is. And so we're just gonna do a quick note. I do have several questions about what the makeup of this task force will look like. However, I am a proponent for the task force. And so I'm gonna save my questions for when that comes back around to us so that I can get a better idea of what all they'll be doing, how frequently, et cetera. So I'm just gonna go around real quick. Councilor Zaddi.

And I'll add that I also have questions on, I assume it's the same group. That would be the ideal because we spent a lot of time training up that group of people. We don't want to train up a whole new set of people. That takes another year just to get ready. But the second piece is the name. I hope we can adjust that to include affordability. to keep that element in there somehow. Because it shouldn't just be an advisory board. It should be some lens. I mean, what's the lens? And I think the lens should stick with affordability, but I'm a yes.

Thank you, Council.

A long, very long yes.

Thank you. And to your point just now, feel free, Council, to offer your comments and then your poll, since we're trying to get through these. Councilor Haught. Yes. Thank you.

No, they were all not from our city, for one thing. And I don't even know what it costs for the consultants still. And I don't think it's necessary because I think our staff did a fine job of telling us how much we needed to charge for water. They did a fine job of it. And I don't think we needed outside people to tell us. And the residents weren't all residents, by the way, of our city.

Thank you, Councillor.

Yes.

I'm a yes and I just had questions about the composition if we're going to expand it. So I love that we have people that can serve on it, but if we're expanding it to energy, I'd love to see some expertise brought in for that.

That's a very good point. And then my comments are just, you know, I'd love to know, is this going to be operating throughout the year, 12 months, or is it, you know, three months around the budget cycle? And then, you know, the cycle as well as to Councillor Zaddi's point, you know, the makeup, just some questions on that and how we look to make it up. But it sounds like that is through. And so to question two, water rates and structures for 2027 and 2028. And so I'm going to... Assume that we are voting as a council or polling on the first suggestion versus the 1A suggestion, or are we simply going ahead with 1A? Is that the question?

I think 1A, Mayor.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. Okay, Councillor Azadi. Can you go back to that on the slide?

The single family or multifamily portion?

So we're doing single first and then multi? Yes, sorry. So if it's single first... So my suggestion is that Tier 2 be 416. Do you want me to vote on this to say no first or do you want to just...

Yes, let's get through this. So I was hoping to go through all of them at once, but since we're breaking it out, we'll just have to break it out. So okay, single family.

So 1A, single family, no.

Kelter Hawk?

No.

Kelter Ireland? No.

Yes. Okay.

Yes. I'm also a yes. And of course, we do not have Councilor Brajas to help us out here. And so I'm not sure if we want to just bring this back around. Perhaps when we have further discussion, I realize that we're going to need further discussion regardless. So I'm going to move on to keep us rolling.

Can I just suggest that when you bring it back, you could take a look at the impact to what is proposed and then we can make a decision with that info?

We can do that. Thank you. Okay, and then the multifamily?

So 1A multifamily, yes.

Thank you. Councillor Hoppe? Yes.

Councillor Ireland? No. I don't think we can do that without adjusting what 1A said before for a single family. You have to adjust everything to adjust something else. Thank you. Councillor Johnson? Yes. Mayor Patem?

Yes. I'm also a yes, and so 1A, multifamily.

Can we vote on the single family suggestion?

Yes, let's go ahead. Single family suggestion to go to 416, which clearly, Councilor Azadi, I think you're a yes. Yes. Councilor Haught. Yes. And Councilor Island. No. Councilor Johnson.

It's really hard to vote without seeing how that also changes Tier 3 rates. I agree. Yeah. I think we're just polling to figure out if they're going to bring that, but yeah. Well, sure. I'm a yes for them to model it, but I wouldn't say I'm a yes to change it until I understand the impacts on Tier 3 rates.

Yeah.

Okay. No. Mayor Pro Tem. I'm a no on this, and I don't know if it even matters whether we can word it or we have to make other changes only because I'm just thinking about the dynamic, the broader dynamic of we are in a drought right now. And so just, I love that we are reducing water rates. Um, but I want to find a balance in B in doing that for essential use, um, versus, you know, additional use because I want us to still price water as it should be priced.

So that's. Thank you. I'm in a similar boat. I think it's incredible that we are really prioritizing essential use and we've somehow found a way to bring that down. That is what I want to be able to provide for residents, those who are truly, truly hurting the most. However, we have a budget to meet and I will not be the one to vote for something that could put us into any kind of trouble. When it comes to this, I wanna make sure that we're responsible with our finances as a municipality. We have... We have the budget revenue to meet every year, and we don't wanna find ourselves, I won't say names, but in the situation that some of our neighbors are in. So I'm a no. Okay. Bring me back to where we need to go. Thank you so much. Sewer rates. Did we get through all the water rates and structures? Thank you. Sewer rates. Do we wanna go back to that slide to help folks out? Okay, Councillor Azadi. Yes. Thank you so much. Councillor Haag. Yes. Thank you. Councillor Ireland.

This is a 6% increase just the first year. You ran all the numbers. This is what you need. Okay. Yes. Thank you, Councillor. Yes.

Yes. Okay. I think you have clear direction there. And then question four. Stormwater. Stormwater, thank you so much. I'm just a glance at this myself. Councilor Izadi.

Yes. And Councilor. This is a 16% increase. If we have no water storming, do we really need $7? That's my question. So far we haven't made much water for stormwater. So is that really needed? You just think because we haven't had it for so long we need it? Yes. And then it needs to go up that much another year?

I think something to just add that I should have mentioned, but the stormwater, like these buried run under the streets. And so as we repaving and that, we want to make sure that we're not having the stormwater deteriorate so much that it's impacting our streets. So it's kind of like thinking about it as one system. And even though we were in a drought year, I mean, there's flash floods. I mean, there's, There's always, there's gonna be snow soon, hopefully, but the drainage mitigations and the preventing floods, just something to think about with the streets and how that impacts the whole system to maintain it.

Well, I'd be fine if we could keep it seven for two years because that's a huge increase, 17% and another, at least 17, about around 17, 16% probably, anyway. That's a huge increase all of a sudden, even though we only say it's a dollar, we're only saving $1.92 on water that we're raising these. So I'd go for it as a dollar for both years, but not as it stands. Thank you for that commentary.

Councilor Johnson? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, I'd phase it a little bit, but yes. Okay. which leaves us somewhat split on these comments, but I too would love to see it a little bit more phased. You know, maybe if it was, if we needed it to be 1.5 for 2027 and then we didn't touch it until 20, you know, until the next go round. I feel like that's almost kinder to residents instead of suddenly raising it year over year when it hasn't been touched in so many years. that's my recommendation, but overall, I mean, yes, if we don't come back with anything better, but I think this gives you a little bit of feedback for, you know, when we come back with those other recommendations, if we could do something here to help it, half of us would love to see that. Okay. Is there anything else we haven't covered?

Nope.

That's it.

So is it coming back for single family?

Well, there are enough items that have to come back to us regardless, I think. I think we've got two or three. Sorry, Tony.

And may or may I ask then for... clarification moving forward. We're striving to improve how we bring agenda items back for you in which format. And so it sounds like what I would recommend is we bring this back for one more study session with recommendations based on everything council asked for and commented on tonight. And you would consider that in one more study session and then give us direction to go into public meeting.

Thank you, city manager. I have a feeling that we're going to be in agreement. I just want to offer one other option for council if we're comfortable with that. Whereas I think we have enough feedback if staff provided us with an agenda memo and we were comfortable, if there was further feedback from council, that gives us the chance and then it could go to us at the dais. to help make things smoother. So if we're comfortable, which I see some head shaking, but they have the rate structure and the proposed numbers and different options to offer. So any thoughts on that, Councilor Zaddi?

So I think because of the sensitivity of this, it should come back one more time and to give Councilor Brown one opportunity as well. So usually I would be, let's expedite, let's get to it. But I think that this is one of those we should slow down and do one more.

Understood. Thank you. I agree. Of course. Okay, perfect. Well, then you have that correct. Thank you so much, team. Thank you. Sincerely appreciate you. Yes, let's take a five minute break and we will reconvene in just a few here.

you

Welcome back. That brings us to our next presentation, City Manager.

Mayor, thank you. I'll turn it over to Dave Frankel, who's gonna introduce the team, and then we're gonna jump right in.

Thank you, Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mayor and Councillors. Tonight's item, the discussion of a proposed noise ordinance, is followed up from June 22nd. On the June 22nd agenda, thanks to Mr. Munch's efforts, we had an item to consider which was modeled after the state's noise ordinance. And Mr. Munch adapted that model to the city by I think consulting with our planning department and finding local zoning designations in Westminster and substituting the state's designations out of there for the Westminster designation. So that was intended, I think, to be an option to consider. And I think that tonight we are interested in getting feedback, but also I think that the original model could be a useful tool in the city's belt, so to speak, in that we do have, as the agenda memo details, and I'm sure that the chief and Ms. Roth will address, we have eight other ordinances that the city uses to address noise related issues. I would suggest that this proposal could be a ninth tool for the city to consider And it is to my understanding would be the one tool that would be specific as to decibel levels. I don't know that our other eight code sections identify specific decibel levels, and there might be a place for something of this nature to consider. And I'll turn it now to Chief Hubbard and Jenna Roth.

Thank you. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Councilors, for those in the audience and those online, Norm Hobart, Police Chief, appreciate the time being here. Like City Attorney Frankel said, this is following up from June 22nd. We brought the noise ordinance forward. Didn't do so well, so we're back to receive input from Council, but also to talk about the other eight ordinances that are there and how we currently enforce those ordinances. So I don't know if... turn it over to Ms. Roth if you want to talk about the ordinances themselves, just the law piece of it, then I can talk about the enforcement.

Sure. So as Mr. Frankel said, we have eight ordinances currently on the books that do address noise in some fashion. I think, and Chief Hopper can probably talk more, but I think the main one that we would look at is the disturbing the peace. which is very short, it shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally, knowingly, or willfully disturb the peace and quiet of another by unreasonable noise. So it's a more subjective standard. just unreasonable noise versus what was proposed or what's being proposed potentially would be a decibel. I believe that is what would capture the majority of noise complaints that the city receives. Second to that would be animal noise. So there's a specific ordinance on the books that does regulate animal noise. And again, not a decibel limit to that. It's unreasonable. another ordinance with a reasonableness standard specific again to animals. We also have a vehicle noise ordinance that is actually through the model traffic code and that specifically addresses mufflers And Chief Hubbard and I were kind of talking in preparation for this as to what would be the biggest noise issue coming from cars, from vehicles. And we identified mufflers and street racing. So while street racing doesn't have a specific noise component, I don't think it is something that is considered when we do use these street racing ordinances that are in effect, including the abatement that was passed maybe a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago or so. So that would be the vehicle piece. And then there are other, several other ordinances that deal with businesses. So through the licensing process, including the ODPs and business licenses in the sense of liquor licenses and really any business license you have, it could be regulated if it if it's disturbing the peace. So we could take action against someone's business license or liquor license for noise issues. The rest of them have to do with zoning standards and oil and gas regulations. Those are outside the scope of the police department enforcement, but there are noise standards in those ordinances. From what I could see on the zoning and standards for official development plans, that did have a decibel limit in it. But again, I can't really talk to the enforcement of that. I don't think it's used often. We would go back to the disturbing the peace, the animal noise and the vehicle noise that would be used the most.

To Ms. Ross' point, the three ordinances that we do use commonly at the police department are the Model Traffic Code 225, which is for the mufflers disturbing the peace, which is 623, which we use primarily for most of the noise disturbances, or the Animal Noise 6, Municipal Code 677. The animal noise I would say is probably used most often from animal management. When they're not on the clock, patrol officers respond and do issue summonses or issue follow-up for animal management to follow up with the owner of the animal. But a majority of our calls are handled via disturbing the peace. One of the things in preparation for tonight, I did do a non-scientific unofficial study uh survey of some of the surrounding agencies uh surveyed 21 of our surrounding agencies um this isn't really going to help the cause 12 of them have standalone noise ordinances with decibels the other nine do not so it's kind of a mix between between adams county thornton north flint and brighton all have decibel levels set in their noise ordinances or have that as a piece. Commerce City, Federal Heights, Broomfield, Jefferson County, Arvada do not. Lafayette and Louisville do not. Denver and Aurora do. So it's really kind of a mix, not necessarily by size of the city, It's just kind of a mix all over the place. When we talk to two of the agencies that have these on the books, they have difficulty enforcing based off of the noise level ordinances. And a lot of that comes down to they're trying to capture the vehicles, but then you have, if outside wind is more than five miles an hour, kind of negates what they're doing with the decibel meter. And then you also have the you have the challenge of trying to measure something as the officer is driving around. You can't have that the decibel meter hanging outside the window because if you're going more than five miles an hour kind of is obsolete as it relates to that. One of the other challenges that we have in the enforcement piece of this is when you have like a speed gathering device like a lidar, which is similar to a radar device, it shoots out shoots out light to the target and then it bounces back that measuring device knows what it's putting out there what's the speed that it's going out and then collecting it back so it's a it's a measuring device that's that's certified through the department of agriculture department of agriculture but also um is is is a known commodity when it leaves and when it comes back. One of the issues with the decimometers and the noise, the concerns there is it's unknown how that's being gathered in that aspect of it. It's obviously gathering the noise and registers on that. But some of the issues that they have with that is the topography and some of the other surrounding pieces. Are you closer when you're measuring that? Are you closer to two buildings? where those noise sound waves come in and are they reverberating off of those. Some of those things you can't capture. I'm sure there's fancy equipment out there that can capture that type of stuff, but nothing that we as a police department will be able to use in enforcing some of these laws. So those are some of the challenges with the decibel meters. The one piece with the decibel meters, it's very objective. It's a very clear threshold and here's what it is and here's what it isn't. So those are some of the things that that we've done kind of in prepping for this Hoping to maybe find a little nugget in there that hey, you know, we should really consider this But there's doesn't seem to be a golden nugget out there. So I'm just looking for council direction thoughts relating to what we're currently doing or Taking direction on what we can do moving forward Thank you so much

With that, I'll let council lead the discussion on questions. Councillor Hoppe.

Yes, my question is if we currently have eight ordinances related to noise, what does this ninth ordinance do for us that the prior eight do not?

would say it gives us another tool in the toolbox um i don't know that it i don't know that it fixes everything um it's it's not the it's not the golden bullet if you will to to cure everything um but it gives as it relates to going out to a house uh to a business um that is having a noise complaint it does give an objective level um that we can measure and that we can show them hey you're you're 20 decibels over this you know that type of thing where it's more objective where the current noise ordinances are somewhat subjective if it's disturbing your peace. Yes.

Right, but I'm hearing that the decibels are hard to enforce. So I'm having a hard time seeing where this is beneficial.

I think that the decibel would be difficult in a situation with a car versus it using it in a land use type situation would be easier to measure. I think that was the, what you were talking about was trying to use that as a measurement for noise from a vehicle.

Okay. I just don't think a lot of people have like decibel meters hanging out at their house. And so it sounds like, and I, and before I was on council, I had to call you for a noise issue. My neighbor decided with all their windows open, they were going to do indoor construction and we lived in a cul-de-sac and that noise, but the nail guns or whatever just bounced off and I couldn't sleep. I didn't have air conditioning. I had to have my windows open. I'm guessing that's why their windows were open too. And you guys fixed it for me so I could go to sleep. And I didn't need to have a decimal meter and be like, they're over however many decibels. So I just, I guess my question is, is this something that you feel would honestly make a difference in how you deal with noise day to day in your position?

I don't know. I think with... there isn't going to be one law that we pass as we've all seen in the laws that are on the books. There's not going to be one law that we pass that is the miracle solution to any problem. I think with what we have in the, and I'm just going to call it the good neighbor solution in the sense of, take your point as an example, Councillor, if we come out there and we have a noise issue and it is that egregious, we're more than willing to put to issue a summons to have that go to court. Most often, more often than not, what ends up happening is when we get out there and we observe the noise violation, we go out there and talk to the neighbor. Hey, can you do this? Can you not do this? Here's the... Nine times out of ten, it's settled that way and nine times out of ten, they they haven't realized that they're causing a disturbance in that aspect. Now you get the one neighbor that doesn't want to turn it down, doesn't want, wants to continue the construction, wants to do those things. And if it disturbs your peace, that's something that we can absolutely, you know, escalate that to writing them a summons to have them appear in court. Those are far between just from our current deals. It does give us another tool in the toolbox, but I don't, again, I don't know that it's solutions. It doesn't solution everything.

Right. I'm not saying that it does solution everything. I'm just saying it sounds like we have solutions and I'm just wondering if this is beneficial or if what we have right now is enough.

It's, I guess the other thing I would say, I think we have a good mechanism in place is my answer. I think the one concern that is going to be there regardless of which ordinance we have is if your piece is disturbed, do you want to appear in court? And regardless, we're going to have that regardless of what type of what type of summons we're going to issue for that. The request is that you as a witness or a victim, depending on how you want to look at it, are going to need to come to court to testify that this disturbed your peace or that you, you know, you did hear this and you called us. We came out there and we verified it with a decibel meter or we came out there and verified and said, this is, this is unreasonable. And so that is always going to be a piece with our judicial system. And I don't, I'm probably getting out of my lane and talking more attorney speak here. But that's always one thing where it is a concern or a potential problem for that. But that's, in my opinion, that's most any ordinance that's out there where do you want to be a witness to this? And some people don't want to.

So if you have a decibel, sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure I understand. So are you saying that if you go out there and you have a decibel meter and you determine that it's above the amount that we set, then somebody doesn't have to necessarily come and be the witness?

I get some of this that I would turn over to the attorney. Some of this may depend on how it's written. Normally speaking in a, I'll just say a court process, if we get called out to the house and we know who the complainant is or who the witness is that also witnessed this, they're gonna be endorsed to appear in court as well. It doesn't mean that they have to be, but I guess I would turn it over to the attorneys.

Go ahead.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the question of who the witness would be could be impacted by an ordinance like this because the resident whose piece is disturbed unreasonably is a witness. But an officer with a meter measures the noise level, that officer's the witness because that has a measurement that demonstrates evidence of a violation which could be presented to the courts. So you have a potential there of maybe sparing the neighbor or the homeowner from being the witness if the officer is the witness with the meter in hand.

Okay. Thank you. That's what I was wondering. Anything else?

Councillor Ireland? I just wanna give a frame of reference. 50 to 65 decibels, we're talking. Vacuum cleaners, 70 to 80. Lawn mower, 85 to 100. Of course, the trains and all that, we couldn't even. And concerts, 110 to 140. I don't wanna become the tattletale city where our neighbors are telling on each other. just because the decibel levels are so low that we're recommending here. You have to pass some common sense and hopefully neighbors when they're aware, like you tell them, do you know that this is affecting your neighbor or the neighbor tells them, can you not do this anymore? It's affecting us. Hopefully we can work this out as neighbors instead of calling the police for everything. So I'm for what we have.

Okay. Any other questions? Councillor Johnson.

Thank you, Mayor. And maybe this is for the City Attorney, but it's probably a little more statement than question. But the way I look at this to the Chief's point and to the City Attorney's point is, like, how are we classifying something as an offense, whether it's civil or criminal? Is it when it affects someone or is it when it occurs, right? In this theory of victimless crimes. So if you make a noise and it is above, you know, it's 70 decibels, you know, me with my loud leaf blower, which is very loud. But my neighbor doesn't care because I'm blowing his driveway off too. Under the current ordinance, because I'm not disturbing my neighbor, it's not an offense. Whereas if we set strict limits, it is. Now, obviously we have good police officers and they're not going to drive by and give me a ticket, but they could. if they were standing in my front yard and they read that, they could give me a ticket even if I'm not harming anyone because my neighbor likes that I'm blown off his lawn. And so the way I've kind of grappled with this is understanding I do want to address problems with noise in the city. I hear it. I'm a resident, whether it's fireworks or trains or airplanes or cars. But I don't want to create ordinances that create, in my mind, victimless crimes or victimless offenses, because these are civil offenses, and create a system where, without even harming someone, I'm now getting violations against the city.

Mayor Pro Tem. I go back and forth on this because I worked in a state that had more restrictive noise ordinances and then I came to Colorado and I was like, what's the deal? I've had a lot of years to get used to the regulatory climate here. One of the interesting stories that we had in issue with noise. I remember the Westin had an outdoor seating area that had music playing and the residences nearby were complaining about the, and they had kind of concerts in the evenings too. And there was a need to sort of address the residents concerns that it was just pretty loud. And so the, I know that we did go out, we had police officers go out, I believe, and do some measuring. And you're supposed to be within a certain amount of feet inside the property that's supposed to be affected. You make the measurement.

I don't know how exact it was.

But long story short, they did find that it was kind of loud. And so they did work with the West End of Kachina, maybe it was at the time, to reduce, to get the noise resolved. So to some degree, I like that there are some parameters in terms of noise and what's disturbing, you know, what's reasonable versus not. So... To some extent, I do like the numbers being there. I guess I'm not as concerned about somebody just walking up and saying, you're using your leaf blower, because we don't have the staffing to have the proactive level to deliver those kinds of tickets. I just feel like it's a good guidance. Also for construction noise, That can be impactful too, as Councilor Haught has attested to, and we don't have a ton of construction activity in the city, but again, having some guidelines is helpful. So I lean towards it. I understand the complexities and the difficulty of measure, you know, the measurement side of it. I just have seen some good outcomes come from it. So I'd be open to us getting some decibels down on paper.

Yes. Thank you. And Mayor Pro Tem, as I think about the specific how a noise limit, a specific noise limit might have been imposed on a commercial enterprise. Might it have been through the ODP? Because I know the criteria for ODP approval definitely consider impacts of the uses, but I don't see in the ODP ordinance a specific threshold for decibels. I wonder if that ODP might have, for the promenade, potentially adopted its own decibel limit?

Yeah it's too fuzzy for me to remember what exactly we used as a basis because I wasn't in the code enforcement business in those days. But I know that we just you know we did use I don't know if it was even in the PD but it was just like we had to go out and measure and you know just to better understand what the impact if there really was an impact. And so I don't think we usually have that kind of info.

It would be unusual.

Yeah.

I don't recall seeing it. I wonder if it might be, the other aspect of your concern, well, construction specifically is addressed in the state's approach. And that is to say, construction projects are subject to the maximum noise levels for industrial zones, which are slightly higher than residential, but it is specifically for the period during which construction is to be completed pursuant to construction permits. I wonder if the city in its permitting could impose like hours of construction during which it's allowed outside of which is forbidden might mitigate impacts on neighbors.

Yeah, I could be behind that too. I just like having a little more members to work with and you know, if it's better to have it in a permit, great.

Councilor Ha? Yeah, I just had a quick question regarding that. It was 1.30 in the morning. That's the only reason I called. I'm not going to put on clothes and go to neighbors I've never met before. It was 1.30 in the morning. I was in bed, couldn't sleep. And so I think a time where... our attorney was saying, construction between these hours would have mitigated that. I don't wanna call, but it was 1.30 in the morning and there was no sleep to be had and I'm sure I was not the only neighbor. So I think that a time where that would be allowed would fix that issue.

Councillor Zaddi.

I'll start by saying I'm pretty much right in the middle on this. So I'm more curious. So I think it was you, Mayor, that led this, right? So I'm curious to hear your thoughts more than my own on this. And however it votes, I'd like to vote last if it's possible because I don't really have a horse in this. However, I do have one question. And my one question is linked to when this first came to us, My question then remains my question now, which is the original ordinance was not going to address several things. And the only, so from a resident feedback standpoint, the complaints I've heard about, if I was to summarize it in four categories, the most have been airplanes, which we can't regulate, which is not included still, right? It's construction, which we're saying we can. when maybe with time or decibel. It's city, so city related projects, not just private construction. City noise, keeping residents protected from city noise and street racing. Are we saying that those are now included? with all of this, or are we saying that those are still the exceptions? Like it won't cover those anyway? I'm just curious if that has changed.

That hasn't changed. I don't think that the draft addresses aircraft. I think the city is preempted by FAA. The city doesn't have the... jurisdiction over the railroads, so that's not concluded either. But as far as city activities, that is still exempted out and the state's approach is to identify specific governmental functions like festivals, concerts, fireworks. I know that road work is noisy when we have to replace roads. So no, this current draft as the state's approach does not address all governmental operations. So that hasn't changed. And street racing is still out? Well, street racing is illegal, and we regulate the noise impacts associated through mufflers through our noise related to vehicles ordinance, correct, Chief?

Yes. So, Councillor Zayde, to your point, we would enforce the muffler. We would enforce the noise piece of street racing with a muffler ordinance in the state law that's currently on the books. To me, I'll say the bigger concern there, outside of the noise, is the actual street racing. And we would have street racing ordinances, both municipal and state, as well as, you know, as well as the, if we had an egregious violation, the asset forfeiture piece of that, to put that in the municipal court, something that the council passed a couple years ago. you know, that piece of that. So that is still a piece, that's a piece of that. I guess what I would say is the street racing to me is a, yes, there's noise generating, but the issue there is the actual speed and the danger to the public as opposed to when we're out there enforcing those, we would absolutely be enforcing the muffler piece of that as well. But that's, we would, I would assume that if there's street racing, we would, that would be the primary focus and then the noise would be a secondary focus on that.

So I guess my question to whomever the proponents are on council, I would just love to still hear what the benefits would be of voting yes. What we would actually, what use cases specifically does it be for?

Thank you. Any other questions before I question? Okay. And before I add some comments, I just want to ask, I think I've asked this a few different ways and it's still fuzzy. From a technical standpoint with the decibel readers, If they are in one location, like a city building or cop car, and cars speed by, because I've heard, oh, you can't use them if you're chasing a car, which makes sense, but a car speeds by, can that be read?

I don't know. I mean, as far as I'm assuming the way the machine works, I would say yes. I don't know when you get into courts what some of those mitigating factors may be, but I would assume the machine would read if a vehicle was driving by it in an excess of decibel meter or decibel level that it would read functionally on the machine. Yes.

Thank you. That's my understanding from reading from some other municipalities. When I initially got on council, I mean there's several things I wanted to tackle, but primary focus were helping the unhoused, protecting our neighbors and civilians, and tackling speeding and noise. And somehow this has been somewhat outside of our grasp for a lot of different reasons because it is a difficult one to which I understand for all the obstacles. And I still believe that it is worth pursuing for multiple reasons, which is that it gives us to, I think it was our city manager who said in our strategic meeting when he was talking about something around transportation and I think streets, but it gives staff a North Star. Now they have a lot of areas that they are pursuing and it is us saying, this is a priority for us to figure out how to tackle. And we want to have a concerted effort in this area. And so this is now it's a, yes, it's a tool, but it's also a North star to say, okay, but this is a priority for council to figure out how to achieve more peace and more safety in our neighborhoods. And, um, We also have some situations right now going on in our city that we have residents asking for help, right? They're asking us for solutions. And while we can't give them all the solutions as fast as we'd like to give them, we can give them help in making their case. And this is one more tool to help them make their case. I'd like to clarify this one more time because I asked in a one-on-one and then I asked on the dais and so I'm still a little fuzzy on this one, but my understanding too, I believe, is that if we pull somebody over for speeding, that this could be a secondary offense depending on whether the decibels can be read. And what that would do, and I'll let you answer whether or not that's true, but what that would do is I would like to make a statement that when you're speeding from North Glen through Westminster and on to Broomfield, this is not a place where you can do that anymore. you know, I think we should be able to make a stand and say that the safety in this city is extremely important to us and our residents. And we're not, we have stood for it for a very long time. And I don't think the conversation ends here. I think we all know that. I think we have a lot of more conversations we're going to be having on this topic. And so thank you for your patience as we work through them. But this is one more way for us to say it stops here because I was fined this much and The only thing that I've ever heard hurt folks who do things like that, and yes, I have conversations with people, is a financial penalty. So any feedback on those thoughts there, welcome.

Mayor, I'll just say functionally, and I'll let the attorneys talk about the legal side of it, but I'll just say functionally, if an officer pulls over,

There's a power outage all over the area. I've been wondering why we haven't been in because my house has been out for an hour. I imagine it was just because we had a generator. Welcome to the power outages. We've been going around the city for about an hour. Is this the first time in history?

Yeah, I don't think we've ever had power outage.

Are we still live?

I'm guessing not.

Well, okay. I would guess no. I think I'm the dexter. Well, let's let Abby, everybody, if we can just give Abby a moment to function to figure out where we're at. And then I'm sure we'll probably be out here in just a few minutes. But let's not cause chaos. Let's let her work.

Just slip into the control room. Yeah.

well yeah it tells her johnson while she's working on that the excel is advising one to three hours i believe a cottonwood fell into a power box but the oh that's amazing this isn't coming back anytime soon

Those trees, man.

I don't know. We're just checking to whether our emergency backup will fire us back up. It fired the police. The PD's on generator right now. Yeah, PD's on generator. But we're just checking to see. Ours is at break, by the way.

So I don't know if people can hear us. Webcast. Yeah.

All right, thank you, folks. Sorry about that brief break. That was unexpected. We had a power outage and we will now have a switch of the agenda due to the fact that we no longer have power. So we will be extending the conversation around the noise ordinance until our following study session in two weeks. We will be postponing our final presentation for the evening also to our study session in two weeks, which is on... updates to the Westminster Municipal Code to modernize tax administration. And this evening, due to the urgency of our executive session, we will go ahead and take a vote to enter into our exec session at this time. City Attorney.

Thank you, Mayor. The proposed executive session is to obtain direction from City Council regarding identifying possible locations for future fire stations and administration buildings, and to instruct negotiators as authorized by Westminster Municipal Code Sections 113, C2, and 7, and Colorado Revised Statute 246, 402, 4A, and E1.

Thank you so much. We will now do a quick vote to enter executive session. Councilor Azadi.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. And yes. Thank you all so much. We will now be switching off and turning over. Thank you.