 All the May 5th, 2020 Longmont City Council regular session to order. Can we please start with a roll call? Mayor Brian Bagley. Here. Council Member Christensen. Here. Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. Here. Council Member Martin. Here. Council Member Peck. Here. Council Member Rodriguez. Here. And Council Member Waters. Here. Mayor Yvacorm. All right, let's go ahead and start with the pledge. Ready? Let's go ahead. Everybody unmute for this one, because I realized that everybody has to unmute because I'm not saying the pledge by myself anymore. All right, here we go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands, the nation, the nation, the God, the physical, the liberty and justice for all. I'm not sure that was better. Better than me flubbing the pledge by myself. Let's put, I can tell you that much. All right. The chair would like to remind the public that anyone wishing to speak during first call public invited to be heard, which is item seven. We'll need to watch the live stream of the meeting. Instructions for how to call in to provide comment will be given during the meeting and displayed on the screen at the appropriate times during the meeting. Comments are limited to three minutes per person and each speaker will be asked to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments. Immuted mayor. For some reason, my space bar wasn't working. Did you guys hear the notice to the public public or was I just reading on my own? Anyway, let me try that again. Anyone wishing to speak during first call public invited to be heard will need to watch the live stream of the meeting. Instructions for how to call in to provide comment will be given during the meeting and displayed on the screen at the appropriate times during the meeting. Comments are limited to three minutes per person and each speaker will be asked to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments. There's no approval of minutes. However, there are two agenda revisions. I believe councilmember peck. Thank you, mayor badly. So yes, I have two, two agenda revisions that I would like to make our future for future genders. I'm going to make a statement and then emotions. So the very first item. That I want to discuss is the email that was sent to the council from about referring it and initiative to the 2020 ballot. And this email was about local control of the airport. I'm generally not in favor of referring anything to the ballot because I think collecting signatures is a huge part of our democratic process. However, we're in a very strange irregular circumstances with a Corona virus. And it's not possible for authors of petitions to gather signatures. So without any bias to any particular petition. I move that while we are in a stay at home and a social distancing order. This council refer to the ballot. Brought before us with any costs associated with the referral made by the authors of the initiative. Once again, because it is about our democratic process. I think that the people should have the right to vote on an initiative since signatures can't be gathered at this time. So. Did my motion make sense? Your motion made sense to me. Okay. I would second that. All right. It's been moved and seconded. The. All right. Any comments? It's been moved and seconded. Councilor mayor pro tem Rodriguez. Thank you, mayor Bagley. I think this could unfortunately open up a precedent where some silly initiatives could be unfortunately added to the ballot. If we're just approving all of it come before us. And so I don't think I can support the motion as made. Anybody else. Councilor Martin. Thank you, mayor Bagley. I concur with the mayor pro tem. Especially with the mayor pro tem. Especially since there is no opportunity for a real economic analysis. If something is just referred directly to the ballot. This one in particular would be tremendously destructive at a time when our economy is probably going to be fragile. So. Certainly not automatically. And I wouldn't vote for this one in any case. So. So this is not about for me any. And that's why I said without bias. Because. It is about our democratic process for me. It doesn't mean that we have to vote for it. It doesn't mean that it's going to pass. It doesn't mean anything other than. How do we protect our democratic process? When at this point, there is no way to get signatures on a ballot. And do we forego that because we have. A health pandemic. So that is my, that is the point of the. Initiative. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that we have to vote for it. It doesn't mean that it's going to pass. It doesn't matter. If they had gathered, regardless of who it is, if they had gathered signatures, would this council had looked at it as an economic matter or an economic. Consequences of the passing, regardless of what it was, if people had gathered signatures, would council have looked at it anyway, if it was allowed to go to the ballot. Because they had gathered enough signatures. And that is, that is my point. We don't usually do that when, when enough signatures are gathered and it goes to a ballot, we don't look at it from a council perspective. Unless we have a personal opinion on it. From my understanding. Dr. Waters. I see a polly. Okay. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. You know, we've all received the, the correspondence. And to the degree that I understand what's proposed, I would, I would have actively opposed. I think that I certainly would be willing to be educated. On the substance of the ballot issue. My concern, I think it is the same as what we heard from the mayor pro tem. Without being able to anticipate what kind of, what kind of gate that opens up. And what that might result in on the ballot. I would say without, and I appreciate the concerns of the residents. It seems an odd time to me given what, given what we've heard about the difficulty of gathering signatures. Of all the years to bring forward something. To propose something, especially this to go on the ballot during this period of time defies logic for me. Now I understand I don't live on the west side of town. And someone would say, if you live with the noise, you might feel differently and I might, but, but it's hard for me to accept that under these conditions, it's judged to be the right time to bring forth the initiative to begin with. And then to ask for a waiver on the expectation or requirement that people get. Collect signatures. And I understand the difficulty of that, but just given a blank slate for everything to go to the ballot. Does not make sense to me. I'm going to vote no on the motion for those reasons. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Suzy. Actually customer Christensen. Could we find out from the city clerk? When the last. Day for acquiring signatures are is because that makes a difference to me. If I would always, if people want to submit something on a petition, I would always rather have them do that. Rather than us submitting a petition. I don't know what the deadline is. I don't know what the deadline is. If the city opens up and we are. Able to gather signatures until say July. I don't know what the deadline is. Could we find that out? Cause that makes a big difference to me. Mayor, would you like me to answer briefly? Yeah. If you have the answer. So they must collect. Signatures for 21 days. I don't have the exact deadlines in front of me. But they need to be. High going heavy by early June. So seemingly we would. You know, then now is the time may June is the time because they're, then we start hitting into deadlines. I'll get you the exact dates. But they have to collect signatures for 21 days. So. Okay. You know, I know that they, these. The group that is working on this has been talking about this for 10 years. And so this isn't really a new time. It's just. This is a uniquely bad time to be. Well, doing a lot of things. So, uh, I don't know that they're going to be able to get. That anybody's going to be able to get signatures. By the end of June. If that's the, the date. So, yeah, I don't know. This is very difficult. I, I see, I appreciate what mayor pro tem. Rodriguez is talking about. I don't want people to start just. Passing, you know, putting up anything and we're committed to, to putting it on the ballot, but. Um, this is a group that's been working on this for a number of years. So I, I don't know. I don't know why this could not be brought forward next year or the following year. When I certainly hope we're in a better position. Um, This one has tremendous financial repercussions for the city. And, uh, it just seems like the wrong time to consider it. So, um, once again, this, for me was, it was about how do we continue our democratic process during this pandemic. And this is one of the ways to do it. So thank everybody for the comments. I would like to call the question. Let's go. Uh, Questions been called. Do you want to. Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, uh, Do you want to, um, Do you want to, um, Do you want to, Do you want to, Do you want to, Do you have a second? I mean, there's no second, but I'll just take one. I just, I'm, I'm not going to vote for it just because, uh, Council has the power to put anything on the ballot we want. And so I think that should remain with us. Um, the other question is, you know, uh, Does that include recall as well? Does it include, um, You know, citizen has to come up with something. It could be a lot. So I'm going to vote against it. Let's go ahead and take a vote. All in favor of the motion, which is to basically waive the petition requirement for ballot measures for 2020 during the pandemic. So indefinitely say aye. Aye. All right. All those opposed say nay. Nay. Nay. All right. So the motion fails five or the motion fails two to five. Thank you. All right. No, thank you, John. You have one more, don't you? I do. I do. And this is going to be a little bit longer intro before I make the motion. And so the statement is that there's been a lot of conversation about Dr. Detlef Helmick's termination by ICU. And I really want to thank Sandy Cedar for the explanation to the Times call about Longmont's relationship with Dr. Helmick and his business. It was great to put our city in the right light. So but I am very disappointed in the firing of John Spina by the Times call and the retraction of his published piece about Dr. Helmick. And to my knowledge, your reporter does not get articles published until they get an OK from the newspaper's editorial staff. And since the article was published, I assume the editors agreed with the content. The air quality readings that Dr. Helmick's monitoring station is giving us exactly what we wanted and why we are working with him. Our air quality has been compromised. And it's my understanding, according to Dale Radamaker last week that the stamp well next to Union Reservoir is one of the largest contributors because it is fracking and it is flaring the gas. But this is the reason I'm bringing it up is that I feel like Longmont is at odds with itself. On one hand, staff is working diligently to keep our residents safe through this pandemic. But on the other hand, the wells that are releasing gas and methane are undermining some of our efforts. The population that's most vulnerable to the virus with asthma, COPD and autoimmune challenges are breathing the air being contaminated by these wells. The stamp well was supposed to be shut down per council's direction, but that hasn't happened. Therefore, I moved to direct staff to bring to council the contract that addresses the closures of the wells and possible directions we can go to to stop the flaring and releasing of gases from all the wells during this pandemic that affect our air quality. So again, I wanna look at that, I want council to look at that contract because I don't know how long this pandemic is gonna go, but we are working really hard to protect our residents and the air quality per the readings from our air quality monitoring, I think are undermining that. So again, the motion was to direct staff to bring to council those contracts so we can go over them that address all the closures that we voted on last year and possible directions to stop that flaring and releasing of gases from those wells during this, because they're affecting our air quality. Her Dr. Helmick's incredible scientific air quality monitoring. So that's my motion, if you understand it. We understood it. I said, by the way, when I'm quiet, I'm either waiting for a second or waiting for it to fail for lack of a second. That's it. Okay, so the motion fails for lack of a second. All seconded. All right, so we need to, all right, that's fine. So there's been a motion in a second and the motion is to direct staff to bring back the contract pertaining to the closure of the stamp well to determine whether or not there's a way to prohibit flaring and other activity that well. Dr. Waters. Thanks Mayor Bagley. We're all concerned about what's going on with the stamp well. That's why I brought the question up last week. I do wonder, both Eugene and Dale are part of the meeting. I don't recall the details of the contract to the point. I heard Council Member Peck make a statement that the stamp well was to be closed by now. It's my recollection, but this is just my recollection, that the stamp well was not going to be closed. It was going to be, the flow line, the gathering line was going to be severed. That was going to be contingent upon the night well being productive. So they accelerated, Cub Creek accelerated the severing of that line before the night well was productive. And then the stamp well was going to be, I forget the term of art, but it was going to remain active because it was, the whole leasing arrangement out there was contingent upon the stamp well. I think that was the understanding from the beginning. So if that was the case, is the proposal that we bring back the contract to want to renegotiate that part of the contract? I don't, now then, if we make a Council decision, we don't have the authority to impose, I don't think some new provision on the contract outside of the negotiation, without the potential of it being a breach of contract, which I want to hear from Eugene or Dale. And it's my recollection again, that a breach of the contract nullifies the contract and all those well sites and everything we agreed to is back in part. So what's the end game? What's the objective? I understand it's clean air is the end game, but specifically with respect to the contract, what authority are you proposing we exercise that requires somebody to take action on the stamp well? So the point that I made about bringing back the contract is so that we all have it and we can all reread it. To be honest, I couldn't find it on the website. That could be user error, but it could not. So I'm asking them to bring it back. So all Council has that contract and we can read it and reacquaint ourselves with the conditions. I am not saying to abandon, to close and abandon that well. What I am saying is what can we do, if anything, to stop them flaring and releasing the gases that affect our air quality? Can they store it? Can they, what can they do? And that, and you know, I was thinking about those Councilman Waters in that we have a whole city that all the businesses have suffered for a loss of revenue, for a loss of opening for that. Top and Cub Cree are part of those businesses within our city. So for them to not, for us not to ask how can you comply with our city to help with this pandemic and our health problems? What can you do to help us? You're part of our city. You're just businesses here. I don't think they, I think they're outside of our city limits that well is. So releasing it into. So to me, it is just a discussion. I want to discuss it. I would like to know, can we work with them to stop that flaring to, they don't always flare. Why are they doing it now? Is it because there's no market? Is it because what is the point of releasing that into our air? So is that a contract issue or do you think that's a contract issue? I don't know. I don't know. Well, okay. I guess I could, they can send me a contract. I could read it. It doesn't have to be a agenda item. If the objective is to a fuller discussion on the stamp well and what are our degrees of freedom or what are they willing to do? That's, I think that's a worthwhile discussion. I just don't know if it's the contract. I don't know where that's heading. I don't either. Well, I'd like to know that before we get into a public discussion of the contract. If we don't know what the end game is or what our degrees of freedom are. So putting that on the agenda, as an agenda item seems a little bit premature, when we might have a conversation about what's going on with the stamp well and what our degrees of freedom. I'll be quiet. Councilman Waters, when do you think we would have that conversation? Well, I'm not going to be quiet. Next Tuesday night, we could have the conversation or you remember, yeah, but that's unrelated to the specifics of a contract. And what, I just don't know where that one's going. I would like some advice from our attorney and for the folks who were in the middle of it. I'm negotiating. I would just like the contract available so that we can reread it. I'm not discussing whether the contract is viable, whether we're breaking any laws. I want all of us to be able to have it and read it. And yes, why does that require an agenda item for us to have it and read it? All right. Request. All right, I'm going to rein it back in. I'm going to rein it back in so we don't get into the conversations. It's really easy on Zoom and it's fun, but we'll be here all night. Councilman Martin. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I think that there are two smaller questions that we could ask now and then put this aside until we have read the contract and heard deputy city manager, ratamaker's opinion on what we're talking about. I'm sure that we could all get the contract in our mailboxes or in our drop boxes or something and that that could happen next week or before next Tuesday. The other thing is I would like the deputy city manager to tell us is this activity that hasn't been happening for a while, is this voluntary or is this necessary for the safe operation of the stamp well? I'm Mayor Bagley, members of council, council member Martin. My perspective on it is the contract does address that top operating agreed to never frack or re-complete any of the existing wells including the stamp well. And we do not have any information that would suggest to us that they have violated that part of the contract. It's section 3G and we can certainly get the contract to the council tomorrow. The second is that the well is in a shut-in state. It is not plugged and as such, it is still producing oil. And when it produces oil, there is a small amount of methane of natural gas that naturally comes up the well bore as it's producing oil. That amount of natural gas is kept in a closed system and it is burned in a emission control device that is approved by the state under the purview of the COGCC and they are operating it in accordance with that. We also know that the state recently completed an inspection of the stamp well with a forward-looking infrared camera and did not find any emissions, which can happen by the way in piping in different areas around the well. So at this point, we can certainly bring it back for more discussion but I don't believe that the operator is doing anything other than what they need to do for the continued safe operation of that well while it is in that shut-in temporary state. The well is set to be plugged and abandoned at a future date once the wells are completed on the night site north of Union Reservoir. That's how the contract is structured between the city, Cub Creek and top. All right, thank you. So I believe this was seconded by you, right, Council Member Christensen? Did you second this motion? Oh, yes I did. Okay, I guess to me, I guess Council Member Redagall-Ferring, did your hand go up? No, okay. I guess my thoughts are, I mean, I've obviously, I mean, I and all of us have spent a great deal of time working, negotiating, fighting with everybody from the state, the COGCC to everybody. I look at it as if, and now we can, if this pandemic is as serious as the national media makes it out to be. I don't think now is the right time to be instructing staff to be doing anything other than trying to keep our city afloat. We've got, I think we have a full plate right now. And I don't want to get, I personally don't want to get dragged back into the whole oil and gas discussion, especially when we're just dealing with one well, but I think it's more appropriate that we just remind Harold and Dale that the city policy or the Council has set policy to do what you can to stop this stuff. And there's a contract, they're aware of what it says. We're not all attorneys. I'm not an oil and gas attorney. And I think that Eugene and I think city management would be better prepared and better qualified to deal with this. And I just don't think, and I think that any individual council member is perfectly entitled to go out and request the contract and read it. But I personally don't want this to be discussed at a council level right now, given the current circumstances we're facing. All right, there's a motion on the table. I don't see anybody else with their hand up. Let's go ahead and take the vote. Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. So actually, and I agree with you, let's try to limit our council. I understand there's a lot of issues that we need to bring to the forefront that are outside of COVID. For this one, I feel like this could be more, if we could have something in our Dropbox, the contract, any kind of background information that we can look at on our own. And so if we decide that we do want to in the future have a conversation around it, we would already have the background information to know specifically what we want to be bringing forward. So I am going to vote this down for right now, but I do want to see the background information so I know more about what is entailed as we further discuss. Council Member, sorry, Council Member Peck. So I get the feeling here, so I am going to retract my motion. You move it. Do you care, Polly? I always care, Brian, but can we just get a copy, can all of us just get a copy of our Dropbox? We'll make sure that's sent out tomorrow. Okay, thank you. All right, perfect. The motion has been withdrawn. Anybody else? Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to direct staff to bring back information around the work that the city's done with the cultural brokers. This has really spawned out from two things that have occurred. One of them was a comment made by a constituent last week, that kind of lingered with me for a while in regard to the language of how we, disseminating information in the Spanish language and how it's enabling people not to speak English. As a person who will want, I am a native Spanish speaker. Spanish was my first language. And as a person who has studied culturally linguistically diverse since the late 80s, early 90s, knowing and understanding how the brain processes second language, multi-languages, especially as you get older. For a child, it's really between seven and 10 years before they master that second language. And it starts with the oral development, speaking and listening, or listening first, then speaking, then it moves on to the hierarchy of reading and writing. So with reading and writing being the last things that a person becomes fully competent in when learning a second language. So I think in the issue of disseminating information about COVID, we really do need to have multi-languages offering this information. Is this something we want to be under the assumption? Oh, well, let's just lay it out all in English and people need to learn English. And really not knowing, you know, that people are receiving this information or fully understanding the scope of what they need to take out of it. So that wasn't one. Another one is I still sit on the Hispanic Caucus for the National Education Association. And occasionally we meet with other caucuses or the ethnic minority. And we had the opportunity to listen on to the congressional caucuses and share out their experiences and what they were finding as far as the dissemination of resources and funding for small business owners of color. And they were finding that there is a lot of inequities and discrepancies on how the funds are getting allocated and who's having resources to that. I know that what we've done in Longmont, there's a lot of work around building equity and making sure we're reaching out to the right people and making sure everyone has that opportunity to access those resources. But I think as far as for our community and the reason why I'd wanna bring maybe Carmen forward and have her talk a little bit and share with the council, the work behind that addition to that also to let the public aware, not just people who can tap into those supports to acquire resources, but also to educate our community around why we have things like cultural brokers, why we are working to close opportunity gaps and reach out to our communities of color. Time and time again, and everything that I've seen in teaching cultural proficiency, the groups that are often left behind are people of color, people with disabilities and people in poverty. And so I think what the work that the city has done around closing those gaps with cultural brokers is essential in making sure that everyone has equitable opportunities for all the resources available. So we're short. I would like to make a motion that we bring Carmen forward to talk a little bit about cultural brokers, what they're doing, how the community can tap into those resources and yeah, and answer questions. That's where Martin. I'm willing to second that. I think we need to understand that this can happen when it's going to happen, as opposed to it needs to happen, you know, next week or the following week, because this is after all one person who made this public statement. I'd go a little further in saying that, I think we should recognize that we are a fully bilingual, bicultural community and that we don't have any business removing opportunities from people who happen to be Spanish speaking or predominantly Spanish speaking. If they live here, they need to be able to function in whatever language they speak. But yeah, I'll second that motion, just as long as there's not a time urgency on it because, you know, I know Carmen is actively being a cultural broker right now, so she may not have time to get a presentation together. No, I agree, thank you. There's been a motion on the table, Dr. Waters. Just somebody restate the motion, please. The motion is to direct city staff to have Carmen Ramirez give a presentation on the basically what cultural brokers do in our city. All right, I guess, I mean, I guess nobody's hands up. So I guess my thoughts are, I don't have a problem with the presentation. I think everything you said is extremely valid. I would just question that, I just don't think city council is the best or most effective, I'm gonna vote for it, but I just don't think that if we're really wanting to accomplish what you just said, I don't think people, anybody who's watching city council already knows what a cultural broker does. You know, I mean, most people in our town just don't pay attention to these meetings. I would rather see a city line article. I'd rather see some type of, you know, PR, something that maybe Marika and Rigo could do in order to get that message out to the community. Because I think that if we have a presentation, I mean, the paper's not gonna pick up on it. It's not, there's nothing in that presentation that'll sell newspapers, for example. But I do think it's important that people know that those efforts exist and that those resources exist. So I'm gonna vote for the motion. I just don't think it's enough. Council Member Peck? I'm gonna vote for the motion too. And I kind of disagree or I wanna push back a little bit on that very badly because I think any outlet you can do to get that conversation and that message. You use them all. It isn't about selling newspapers or who's gonna pick it up or who isn't. And I, correct me if I'm wrong, Don, but I thought there were a lot of people actually tuning into these Zoom meetings. So even if you reach one person who didn't understand it before, they have a whole network of people. So yeah, I think this is a good thing to do and I'm going to vote for it. Basically, you just said the same thing, John. But yeah, let's go ahead and take the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, motion carries unanimously. Thanks, Suzy. All right, anything else? All right, that'll go ahead and wrap up the agenda revisions portion. Let's go on to 4A. And Harold, this was on the agenda twice. Do you wanna present now so we can just breeze through the consent agenda? Is that your idea? No, I think we had to put that on because it was in addition to the agenda under the rules of procedure. Is that correct, Don? That's correct, yeah. I just wanna say we put the item there to call it out as a revision that was published after the agenda was originally published and the item went under consent where it belongs. Got it. So do you want to address it here or later? Consent would be the appropriate. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and move on to city managers, COVID-19 update and emergency items for consideration. Mayor Council, I'm here to give you an update today based on where we are and the types of issues that we're dealing with related to our COVID-19 response. The one thing that does tie in with this agenda item, so depending on how Council wants to take that, we can come into that conversation but the Boulder County did issue a masking order and basically in general terms, and I'll let Eugene and Liz, if she needs to jump in, go into more details, but basically what the order says is whether you're inside or you're outside, you need to wear a mask if you can't properly social distance yourselves from other individuals. I know in some of the conversations and Eugene will talk about this as we go into the item and we can talk about it more depth. You know, there were a lot of conversations in terms of, well, if you require people to wear a mask inside and they're in their office on their own, do they need to wear the mask? And we started getting to a lot of what-ifs and those types of issues. And so I think that's how they approach the situation to say, if you can't socially distance yourself, you need to wear a mask, whether you're inside or you're outside. I can't say on that that in talking to Mike and others, they did feel that they could work with that, although it's not especially clear, but they thought they could work through what they're seeing at this point. The one thing I will say is that the counties that have issued this and the cities that have issued this is really primarily an education first component in terms of dealing with this issue. We are keeping an eye to issues that have developed in other parts of the country related to masking and how people approach it. And so the one thing I will say is, it's good for folks to encourage people to wear a mask, but they don't need to enforce it. There are mechanisms in place to do that because we have seen issues. I believe there was one in Michigan where a guard was shot over a masking conversation and then Stillwater, Oklahoma had some issues with people reacting to it and the mayor and the city manager retracted it and then there was a park ranger that was pushed into a lake somewhere. I believe it was near Austin. So we're also being mindful of generally what's going on there. What I wanted to talk about a little today, I'm gonna share my screen because this is going to touch on this. Can you all see my screen? Yeah. Can I get ahead and on? Okay. Yes. So one of the things that we did here in the administrator meeting today is that the Boulder County Health Department really started talking about and they issued a press release in terms of letting the order expire today that they issued. If you remember, Jeff talked about some issues that for him were really important in terms of what they're doing and I will get into some of those points. But if you look at this graph here, what you're really starting to see, this orange that you're seeing in a lot of these cases are associated with long-term care facilities and the blue is not associated with that. So you can see a general trend in terms of what they're starting to see in caseload. The thing that we're going to start seeing is that in the call today, basically what they said is the capacity for testing, if you remember Jeff when he said, we need to make sure that that's in place, they are seeing that in place and they're seeing that faster than they thought they would in terms of the number of testing, a number of tests that they're going to be able to process. The goal that they talked about was 500. And at least in the conversation, it appeared that they were definitely moving to that. What I can tell you is that they are, I'm having conversations with multiple medical systems within Boulder County in terms of participating in that. Based on the information I received today, along my United, Longs Peak, Salud, they're all involved in that conversation. So they're continuing to move forward with that. So based on what he said, the last time he talked to us and what we heard today, if you take that first point of adequate testing, they're saying that's there and they're moving faster. They even went to the point, we're getting some questions of where are they? And these are still the tests that they swab in your nose or your mouth when they talk about capacity. They are starting to look at the other tests, but they're really moving forward with the capacity that they have on the traditional COVID-19 test. And so why I say that is, is because with more testing, you will also see more numbers because of what you're actually able to determine, but they are seeing more negatives as well. And so that data is going to start coming to us based on just the volume of testing that they're running through the system. The other component that he looked at, and this is hard to read, but basically when he talked about, where are they in terms of hospital capacity and are we in a position where we're running out of capacity? And so what you will see in this case is the majority of these, there's one, it's hard to tell because they flip flop, but I will. So if you look at this, you can see available adult critical events today. So you can see that they're still in the green. And as I said earlier, every day we get reports in terms of the number of people that are admitted into the hospital. And this is all on Boulder County Health Department's website in terms of the data that you can see. This one's interesting. So if you look the medical surgical bed shortage, again from a percentage basis in the green, available ICU beds, it's here. And there's been a big emphasis just generally from both the hospitals locally, RPIT team. You heard the governor talk about this is really encouraging individuals who are having symptoms of other significant health issues that actually go to the hospital because they were seeing folks that weren't going to the hospital and they had those symptoms. And then when they eventually had to go, they were in much worse condition. And so that's a broader state initiative as well as a local initiative. And I know that our PIT team, our public information team was working with the hospitals with some of that messaging. Available adult non-critical events today. You can see they're in the green. You look at the staffing and then hospital testing. And so this is a set of, and then you can see PPE right there as well. So this is an example of the data set that they look at when they're making that determination because you remember when Jeff was talking about that, what he was really talking about is the stay at home order was really about managing the capacity that we had in the hospital system so that you didn't overrun it and everybody had the same opportunity for the same care. And that was the same message that was echoed by the governor as they're moving through this. Generally what you see in terms of Colorado when you look at the three-day average, you can see that trend. Again, here there were some questions about when the data entry occurred. My computer just, so we'll go back to this one. One of the things that was an interesting model is, and this is the best explanation of this hash blue line is the total test. And so you can see, and this is not one that the state does but they're just estimating what the tests are gonna look like. And that really lines up in terms of what Jeff was indicating today in the conference call. So in terms of those issues, seems very confident in terms of where we're going. When you look at the hospitalizations, you saw that from the green, that that was relatively flat. In terms of the businesses and how they work, that was another key component of what they were really talking about is wanting to have a clear set of expectations and rules for local businesses. So they would know what they have to do in terms of opening those locations. And I know they've been communicating through various business groups around the county. I know the group that Jessica and Joni are part of. We have a representative, his name's Zach, that's on that and is working with them. And then as I said earlier, the testing capacity is increasing faster than expected. And they're really shooting for about 500 tests per day. What we all need to be cognizant of is that that will show more people testing positive but we're also gonna have the negative information with it hopefully. The other things that are really starting to come into play as we're dealing with this is how we continue moving forward and what is that gonna look like in the future? What we're hearing today is that they're not really expecting a shift to larger gatherings anytime soon. We will know that as more information becomes available. The thing that was probably the most interesting in the conversation is so they were actually getting together with some folks to take data sources from different perspectives. And one of the key data sources was actually the information that we get via 911 calls in terms of the symptoms that people are having when they call the 911 system to respond. It's interesting because that was a number in our daily can calls that I was always paying attention. So when we were on the front end of this, the numbers in terms of people that we were responding to with COVID-like symptoms was higher. But as time continued to go and we were hearing the reports from our fire department, those numbers were starting to drop. So they're really taking that basic concept and bringing it in with other data sets that they have to really start becoming a predictor of sorts in terms of are we seeing something so that they can take more focus action and deal with the situation ahead of time versus letting it hit the hospitals and then not knowing how, almost being too late. And so they previewed the model with us today. I know they're gonna go back and work on it but it's gonna be an additional data set for us to see. The other things that we're really starting to try to work on as an organization and it's really been, we've been spending a fair amount of time is really what do we do operationally in terms of when we're gonna open, what we're gonna open, how we're gonna open it. And as if you will remember when we talked about GOF, we also really talked about being able to ensure that we had the appropriate PPE, plexiglass, everything we needed to keep both our staff members and the residents adequately socially distanced as they were using our facilities. And so we're still going through that process to make sure that we have everything in place in terms of determining that opening. What I will tell you today is it'll be, we're gonna take a very pragmatic approach in terms of how we do this and it's really gonna be looking at what do we need to do and what do we have to do in order to start bringing those services back to our community. The other thing that we have to manage in this and granted we do have some exemptions but we also want to be true to the order because we also know generally the more we can support the orders of the state issue, the more that's gonna help us as we continue moving through these next stages in terms of our response. And the other piece we have to manage also internally is the 50% rule in terms of those telecommuting. So as we move into this, we already know that we have a significant portion of our staff that aren't able to telecommute because of the work they do, police, fire, public works and natural resources. And so as we start making this shift, we're also gonna be watching that number pretty close to make sure that we're also doing our best to achieve the desired results that the governor sit forth in his orders. So that's basically the update I have. We thought there was gonna be more movement but we anticipate to occur on the ninth is actually Boulder County, they will release that order. And we actually then dovetail in with the order that the governor has issued in terms of what can open. So that's really gonna be that retail component with the specific measures in place that they need with adequate social distancing and those types of things that have been communicated to them. So that's what we're getting ready for. And we're also getting ready for that internally in terms of what we need to do with our facilities to ensure that we're approaching that the right way. Different cities are doing different things. One of the things that we wanna make sure of to really tap into some of the points that were brought up earlier in terms of our resiliency for all program is to really say, especially those that need individual assistance, do they have a way to come to the city for that individual assistance if they're not able to communicate with us via an online service or via the phone and those types of issues. So those are the things that are at the forefront of our conversations and we'll have more information coming to you once we can get some clarity on hand sanitizers, PPE, mask, all of those things. Because as Eugene will talk about it, if we're gonna ask people to wear mask in our facilities we need to have mask available for those who don't have it. So those are the issues that we're really trying to work through right now. It's really becoming a pretty significant focus operationally in terms of what does the future look like for us in terms of reopening. In addition to that, we have a lot of programs that we're evaluating in terms of what do we do with some of these other facilities that have naturally larger groups and that's going to be, it's turning into some really interesting conversation. So what we may start doing from the rec center component is actually doing online rec classes. You may see some of those that they've started. And so our IT departments working with our rec department to see what we can do in terms of online classes. We're trying to understand the nuances of numbers to really set forth what we can do in the future related to libraries and rec centers and how many people can you actually have in a facility? I know the library is starting to examine a curbside pickup and drop-off in terms of library books and items that we have in the library. The challenge is we have to ensure that we have enough of the sanitation chemical or whatever we use to actually sanitize the books to ensure that we can continue doing that over a long period of time. So there are a lot of details that we're trying to put into a pretty large plan, looking at what that opening is going to look like for us over the next few months. If that, I can answer any questions you all have. Councilmember Martin, I see you follow your next. And then after you, Dr. Martin, or the new doc, you're muted, Marcia. Still muted. There you go. Yeah, somehow the my setting got changed because I was pressing my space bar and it wasn't doing anything. What I have been hearing from the governor, apart from the timeline, because I understand Mr. Dominguez that you have, but Boulder County is now syncing up its timeline with the states as of this weekend. But I hear a vision of cultural change from the governor that he's talking about getting into a mask-wearing culture where it's going to be the way we work and that it is not in service of so much any more keeping the requirements on the hospitals down because we've kind of got that under control, but rather we're trying to keep our infection rate down for the long-term, hoping for serious technology gains that will allow people to not contract the coronavirus as opposed to just contract the coronavirus later and later and later. But what I heard, both from Boulder County, and I've heard a lot of letters that are really not very happy with the Boulder County order that came out because it doesn't settle anything, right? And I don't like it, but it doesn't settle anything. And it seems to me that Longmont is concerned more with its internal goals. How are we gonna operate the city rather than how are people in the city going to operate? And because of that, I feel like we should be doing something that encourages mask-wearing by the public more or enables retail stores to encourage mask-wearing by their patrons without getting into a competitive problem or starting fights with the public. We need to do things to make it the way things are because if you look at the epidemiologists at the national level and the state level, what they're gonna say is we're gonna be wearing masks for a year. Well, I think we should start now. And I don't like the idea, frankly, that we are going to say, well, we're not gonna put any pressure on those members of the public who don't wanna comply because it makes it operationally easier for the local government. I think we should make it operationally easier for the people who wanna live in their city. So that was not the intent of saying it. So when you have the masking order, those are conversations in terms of what are we putting out in the information to encourage people to wear a mask when we move into, there are exceptions built into it based on health issues and other components that we have to be cognizant of in this. What we are saying though, and we are talking, I know there are a number of businesses that are placing that requirement on their own establishments. And I know those conversations are going on and that was part of the communication that the County Health Department was having in terms of this. And it was really about that educational piece in terms of wearing it if you can't properly social distance in that area. So we are looking at it both internally and externally and how do we communicate and how do we deal with that? What we are also saying to be very clear is if it gets to the point where we need to deal with the issue, then that needs to go in through similar to the way we dealt with it before through the County in terms of their process and what that really means so they can vet through it. And then they'll port it into the appropriate authority to deal with the issue at that time. Obviously it's a different issue if it's two people there or if it's a hundred people there in terms of where it really sets into the level of how do we respond and when based on the typical call volumes that we have in place. So all of those conversations have been going on in terms of what do we mean internally? What does it mean externally? How do we encourage people to do this? How do we look to the future if there is an enforcement component that's needed? And then that's where it gets tricky. Yeah, I'm not sure I just understood the last thing. So in terms of how you deal with issues, there can be any number of things that pop up that we have to be very careful with from an enforcement perspective in terms of issues related to constitutional rights and those types of issues. And I know you Jean can jump in and help me with that conversation a little bit, but we have to train our folks to have an appropriate conversation and to ensure that we're not creating a different issue for ourselves and you'll see this, it's happening all over in terms of how people are trying to manage the situation. And it's a complicated subject. Right now, I think you all are getting bombarded and it's about 50-50 either side. And so we just wanna make sure that as we get into that level of having to enforce, we're very clear on what that can look like and what steps we need to take to ensure that we don't create a different issue for ourselves. Eugene, I was giving a broad look. You can- Mayor and council, Eugene May, city attorney. I don't know if there's a specific question you'd like me address or should we save this conversation till we get to the mask ordinance? I'm just trying to figure out where we're at. I think we should wait till we get, I'm gonna pull eight B from the consent agenda anyway. So why don't we wait for your comments for when we get into that? All right, Eugene, and we're almost there. Can do, mayor. All right, so let's move on to first call public about it. There were other questions. All right, Dr. Waters. I think Polly was in the queue before I was. Sorry, Councilmember Christensen. Oh, it's been so long. I don't remember what I was gonna answer. Nevermind. That's okay. Dr. Waters. Well, just right off the top, you mentioned eight B. The agenda I got is for A is the ordinance. Am I looking at the wrong agenda? Right, but we're gonna, but it's yes. That was a procedural thing, but we're not gonna discuss it until we get to eight B when we're actually voting on it. So some of what I'll weigh into that. Right, yeah, we've got to have a debate on, I mean, there will be a motion and a second, then we'll have a debate at some point. I have some questions for Harold relative to the update. You'll go first in queue then. I can't ask him now. Go ahead, ask him now. I thought that's what we were asking. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Because this is not mask specific. That's fine, go ahead. We're gonna get to mask specific and social distancing. And those are the two topics that we heard most about, but I do have some questions and I'm not trying to put you on the spot, Harold, but some of this may be questions that come back in different forms. In the dashboard you shared, I saw hospital testing as one of the measures on the dashboard or one of the indicators or one of the variables we're gonna monitor. I didn't see or hear anything about other than hospital testing, about broader testing for people wanting to get back into the workforce so we can determine if anybody is infected and then you've got the antibody testing that goes along with infection rates, then the isolation strategy or I think requirement that goes along with that, treatment and tracing. So in the overall report, one of the things that makes me nervous about going back to work generally, not that we don't need to get back to work, but I don't hear as much conversation about number one, those components and what's the threshold or what's the capacity that we need to achieve to say we are X percent confident that we've got wrongness in terms of being able to identify quickly who is infected, I'm isolated, treat and trace. There's an answer I think and maybe it's within certain degrees of what capacity do we need, what's necessary and sufficient for us to have that part of the plan on which we can rely that we're gonna reduce incidences, number one or identify them early, isolate, treat and trace. The question that follows on to that is you made a reference to some leading indicators as you were talking about calls to the fire department or 911 calls. For me, you're talking about early, those are the early indicators as opposed to late indicators. Bit-a-laters are a late indicator. Death is a late indicator. So you mentioned a number of early indicators. It would be helpful for me, I don't know about other council members to know what are the leading indicators that you're monitoring and are there some thresholds or are there just like you look at the red, yellow, green dashboard on the early or leading indicators to know that in the absence of the kind of testing capacity we need that we're not headed, headlong into a second wave that's gonna be worse than what we've experienced so far. Now we'll get back to masks, but that's really in relationship to the overall report that we got from Harold and what else I would like to hear. So first answer is if you'll remember Boulder County was talking really about hitting that threshold of 500 tests per day. If you remember Jeff saying that that was a key piece. Yeah, so I get the number, that's a little different than what capacity do we need to be confident and what's the level of confidence at 500 a day, we're confident that we can account for all of what's gonna happen, 70% of what's gonna happen. I mean, I just don't know what the variability is based on 500 tests. Is that enough? Is that 50% of what we need? It sounds to feels to me like it's way less than what we ought to have. If we're gonna have a high level of confidence that we're sending people back into wherever we're sending them without it with minimizing as we minimize their risks of exposure. So, and I'll have to bring him in probably to the next meeting to give you that level of detail. What I can tell you based on at least what he said in the meeting today, or the presentation today, is that's, they're on the trajectory where they feel comfortable with that amount of testing that it's going to allow them to move into the next piece and he'll have to give you the background and the data on that. And you may need to bring the physician into it. The second component is they set a staffing target level for what they needed in the epidemiological tracing component. And he said they hit that in Boulder County and they're ready to trace the amount of calls that they get in terms of this. I can't give you that number off the top of my head. I was looking at the back mac report to see if I can find it and I can't find it right now. But again, we can get you that information which is really those are the two components combined with the hospital but we'll have to get you those details. What about leading indicators? So the leading indicators in terms of that model that they've built, they're going to finish that and get it back out to us. Again, they didn't even have the draft in this. And so what I can tell you as soon as we get that and it becomes available, we will present that to council. I know they had to make a couple of adjustments. It's a new model that's being built locally for Boulder County. Oh, I'm sure. It would have been hard to know with this particular bonus. What are all the right leading indicators? But we're far enough into this. That's going to be really important in terms of the screen. I think that's going to be really important from us from a policy and direction or decision making standpoint. And it really is. I mean, you could see a different curve outline in terms of what they were presenting. And as soon as it's ready, we will have them present that to you all. All right, councilmember Christensen. Okay, actually the question I had had much to do with was much the same the concerns of councilman Waters. After the governor's speech, I looked on the state website, which has an interactive map and shows you where all the testing sites are. The closest, there's nothing in Boulder County, nothing for the state. The closest one is Clear Creek County. That's, that's ridiculous. That's a very long drive. So in Boulder County, you have to have a doctor's, I mean, I think you can get privately tested as councilman Martin was, but that's $120. This should be paid for by our insurance and it's not. You cannot get tested still unless you have a doctor's certificate or doctor's slip and the doctors still are only doing that for people who seem to have all the symptoms of COVID. When I returned from March, I am 70 years old. I had two primary contacts allegedly. I was sick and the doctor still would not give me permission to get tested because I was not a first responder. So we're not, I'm sorry, but we're not really testing of people the way we should have. And now we've kind of missed the boat on that. All we can do is mostly serological testing, except for very big emergencies. Once you get to the hospital and you can no longer breathe, then they'll test you for COVID. But before that, they won't test you for COVID. We could still learn something from the serological testing, but that's kind of done willy-nilly. I have no confidence that a lot of those tests are valid because a lot of them are not and we know that. This is really just, I don't know. I feel like we are, and this is not because of the county or the state. This is brought about by national policy and problems, but nevertheless, here we are months into this and we do not have consistent testing for the disease. We don't have serological testing available to anybody who wants it. We don't have, it's just very frustrating because they say they're these resources, but they're not. If you wanna go to Salud, if you don't have insurance and you wanna go to Salud, you can't. They will not take anybody who's new. So where do people who don't have insurance go if they're sick? So they ran a pilot project. The county's run a pilot project. They've been Louisville or Lafayette. I know today they were talking about an expansion of that and that was the work that I was mentioning that they're doing with the various hospital systems, bringing that together and they seemed to indicate they would have more details in the very near future on that and that was associated with that next piece of really hitting the numbers in terms of what they felt they needed on a daily basis in terms of the number of tests that they can conduct. And again, those are issues that they need to speak to more directly because they're seeing the data. So for example, we had a question of folks wanting us to put more data on the city's webpage. We don't have access to that data. We have access to the data that's on the Boulder County site in terms of that process because they are the health department. And so it's similar to council members waters this question. We can bring Jeff in to answer many of those things where he can get into more detail. Well, the situation though is we really need to be gathering that information now because it is very likely as Dr. Fauci said that we will have this resurge in the fall again. And then if we don't get the information we need about who is immune and who is not and how long they're immune and all that sort of stuff, we'll be right back where we started and we can't afford to be right back where we started. We can't afford to keep going through this. We have to be gathering that information now. So that's my concern. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. There's even a pilot project looking at your sewage streams in terms of looking at the viral load in that. And I know we're working to see if we can become part of that. And that was part of the BACMAC conversation as well. And we have some of our staff engaged in that. So in terms of the leading indicators, they're looking at those things. And the point I think that we're all challenged with in this is that when you look at the SARS response or the H1N1 response, it was handled much differently at an international and a national level in terms of how they were able to test, identify and really move through this. The challenge for everyone, and it's been on the news, is really that testing piece. What I can tell you today is the numbers are picking up and this is the first time they've been very vocal about the numbers are picking up and how quickly they're picking up ahead of what they projected. And so that is a different shift in terms of how they're communicating those issues. They are saying they have the staff to do the epidemiological tracing. So it was a much different conversation today than it was a week ago, in terms of many of the benchmarks that Jeff was talking about that he wanted to hit. He said they're there and they're ready for this piece. Conditioned on a couple of things that I think it's very important that's gonna go into the next conversation to council member Martin's point. Adequate social distancing and as they're all saying, you know, the face mask masking component are those two things. Those two things are going to be with us for a long time as we continue to move through this. I think it's important to also remember that many of the actions that they took, you know, and this is somewhat as an outsider looking in, we're specifically focused on hospital capacity and really managing that issue so that it's not overrun. And so they had adequate capacity within the medical system to, so everyone had an equal shot to get the appropriate treatment. I don't think in terms of at least in Colorado, there was ever a conversation about eliminating it. It really was about creating the capacity in the system and to many of the points that you all made, if you look at numbers that you're starting to see where they are doing antibody testing, probably it is more widespread. I think everybody's always said that. And I think that's why I also said as the number of test increase, we're also going to see the number of positives increase because you're actually able to test more people. I mean, that tends to be pretty consistent in this. It's then how do those other components come into, are you able to identify quickly, adequately trace, and then adequately isolate? And the difference in this is it's becoming easier to get the test and that's another change in this. They're even changing the definitions for us and generally broader categories in terms of what qualifies as an essential employee. That's even changed for us internally in terms of what they're looking at. And so at first it was first responders, healthcare workers, police officers and firefighters. Now it really is wastewater workers, water treatment plan operators, finance people as we define those as essential. So they are making that category wider. And then that touches into the conversation that they mentioned in terms of working with, Walmart United, UC Health, Salud and other folks in terms of really increasing that, the amount of tests that occur. I just can't give you those details. Jeff will have to come in or one of his staff members and give you all of that. And I can see if I can work on having him put something together that we can send you all via email. All right. Council Member Pack, were you next? I was Mayor Bagley, but Harold just answered the question I had. So thank you. All right. Okay. Then is it okay if we move on? Yes. All right. Okay, cool. Then let's move on to public invited to be heard. Actually, no, we're gonna go ahead with the special reports and presentations the Alumni Economic Development Partnership quarter one report. Jessica, you're up. Hello, good evening Mayor Bagley and Council. Thank you for your time. I do have a number of slides, but I can speak to them relatively quickly. This is, as you mentioned, my Belongment Economic Development Partnership first quarter report to council. I don't know who's driving. Is that Harold or? Not me. It's Susan, Jessica just alert her when you're ready to advance. Okay, perfect. So you can move on. I'll start by saying that most of our focus over of course the last 30 days has been the work that we've been doing in partnership with the business response, apparently with two Ss team that is that's comprised of down the DDA Latino Chamber visit Longmont, Longmont Chamber, City of Longmont, Workhorse Boulder County, SBDC, us and entrepreneurship for all. Next slide. Really focusing our response efforts to the COVID-19 crisis relative to our business community on capital communication and education. I was here a couple of weeks ago or here with you a couple of weeks ago and provided a pretty detailed update on the work that we've been doing. So just wanted to mention real quickly and you'll be talking about this with Erica Zempa later in the agenda, in addition to our capital resources, the Strongmont Fund that was launched yesterday. So that is seated by the public dollars provided by you, the grant, the city grant dollars that we have historically administered at Longmont ADP, the downtown and the downtown development authority and then managed by the Longmont Community Foundation. So our goal is to have about 150,000 public dollars in the fund. Our goal is to at least double that with private contributions and start to accept grant applications on May 18th. Small locally owned and operated businesses will be able to apply for grants of up to $10,000 in order to support their efforts to reopen or recover after the stay at home order has been lifted. Next slide. And I'll get into my standard report. I'll just remind you that with our contract this year, it was the first time in a long time that we started from scratch with our contract to really align the goals and objectives of that contract with the Advanced Longmont 2.0 strategy. Next slide. And a reminder that the focus areas, the five focus areas of Advanced Longmont 2.0 are talent, place, industry, connectivity and impact. Next. With the focus areas specific to Longmont EDP, sorry, Longmont EDP and the work that we're doing in the areas of talent industry and impact from that Advanced Longmont 2.0 strategy. Next. Let's start with talent. Our first objective there is to recruit and retain primarily in 2020 through the development and implementation of a national marketing talent attraction, marketing campaign and development of associated key performance indicators. Next. And so an update on our progress. We have developed, we had developed the campaign and we did preview it at our economic summit on February 27th as well as had developed our preliminary KPIs were on track. However, we have postponed the campaign work due to the COVID-19 crisis and expect the work to start up again in Q3 2020 with likely a different focus than what it had as of February of this year. We think that while we've already made significant investment in the work and we also think that this will be an important component of long-term economic recovery as we start to welcome people back to our community whether it be through business of investment or talent relocation. Next. Our second talent objective is around growing our own. So developing industry and future responsive infrastructure for the development of talent here locally. Our role in that as the economic development partnership is really to be the voice of industry and connecting them with the resources available to them to connect to talent that's developed here locally. So our goal this year was to include talent needs assessment questions in our annual business retention expansion surveys what we call our elevate long wants surveys as well as to develop our target industry specific talent insights reporting that we could share both industry and our talent development partners. Next. So progress is we did include those talent needs assessments in our elevate long wants surveys and had launched a joint study of regional talent needs with the Boulder Economic Council. So that talent study we're expecting to go back to but completion and publication of that has been delayed due to the COVID-19 crisis. And our elevate surveys while we did include the talent needs assessment questions within that we're pretty much tossing those surveys out because they were completed in January and February and so we know that the game has changed completely and don't really rely on any of the data that was collected during that time period to be reliable as we look forward. So we will definitely be so we've been working with the business response team to do and post COVID-19 surveys online as well as the needs assessment that just went out late last week to help to identify what needs are today since we've been in the COVID-19 phase. Next. Our first industry objective is kind of traditional economic development, primary industry expansion and retention. Again, a lot of that work is related to the national development and implementation of the national marketing campaign as well as update of the city's incentive policy. So we had a goal to modify that policy or to bring to you recommendations to modify that policy to align with desired outcomes and really city council's work plan as a second quarter of this year and then continue to leverage those local and state incentives to attract business investments as well as utilize the small business learning program more towards primary industry businesses and administering the North Metro enterprise zone to achieve the goals of that program which are job creation and capital investment primarily within the designated enterprise zone area. Next. So progress related to primary industry expansion and retention going back to our goal to come to you with recommendations in Q2 for an update or changes to our incentive policy. We did convene a team of city staff at Long Island ADP Downtown Development Authority to begin to develop those recommendations. However, that's been delayed due to our inability to meet again, but we do expect that work to start up again likely in June. And so we'll be coming to you with that hopefully in Q3 rather than Q2 of this year. And then the North Metro enterprise zone. I'll just point out that the numbers there look compared to our 2020 goals in most cases do look a lot behind. I'll point out that certification typically happens so use of credits typically happens on tax filing which typically happens by April 15th. All of that has been allowed to be delayed to July 15th. So we expect that use of those credits to ramp back up again when people file now in July rather than in April. So we're not concerned that these numbers are significantly lower than what we've projected. They're just delayed we believe actually I think more people and we've been encouraging more people to actually certify and use those tax credits to get that cost savings as part of their cash conservation strategies to survive either closure or downturn during COVID-19. Next, our next objective for primary industry expansion and retention. This is similar to what we've historically had which is to generate at least 50 new prospect leads through collaboration with the city, state and Metro Denver as well as there it is the national marketing campaign that we've been working on. So that had two components to it, talent attraction and industry attraction. So this speaks to the industry attraction piece of that specific to our advanced 2.0 target industries. Next. So progress again we did preview that national marketing campaign at our economic summit on February 27th and we'll pick that work back up again in Q3. We think we'll have a little bit more clarity around what we need to do to reposition that for a post COVID-19 or during COVID-19 world to start to once again, let the world know that Long One is open for business and encourage investment in our community. From a primary industry employer prospect status we still have a very active pipeline we had 19 prospects in Q1, 14 of those are still active. We've reached out to all of them. Some of them are delayed. Many of them are waiting for some outcomes or some clarity on what's next in terms of being able to actually get into new facilities. But we haven't seen really a slowdown in the number of prospects that we're hearing from or that we're working with as of yet. So that's promising. Next, our objective 2.1 is related to local business. So very similar establishing and maintaining relationships with our local businesses, which are our locally serving businesses. So retail service, finance, those businesses that are serving our local community to identify expansion opportunities as well as to identify early warning system for potential risk or reduction or loss. So really we've been leveraging those relationships to understand what's going on with that local business community in partnership with the DDA and the chamber since we've been in the midst of COVID-19. We partner with the SBDC to provide 800 hours of consulting to long-term based businesses on an annual basis and conduct a minimum of 50 meetings with local businesses on an annual basis. Next, so from a local business prospect perspective, again relatively active, not anything more or less than what we would typically see at this point in the year. So we work with five, one, two and we have three still active. So everything's still on the board. You'll note that our meetings are significantly less than what you would expect after the end of a full quarter of business. And that's because we're having to redefine what the term meeting is. So we'll probably look at that very differently and have a very different outcome to report to you in Q2. And then consulting, SBDC consulting, they're continuing to do consulting via Zoom and by phone. And so have been very successful in continuing to provide those consulting hours to 64 different clients in long lines, total of 158 consulting hours in the first quarter. Next, second objective, local business expansion and retention, utilizing grant funds to help retain and expand our local businesses in partnership with the DDA and of course the city. We also typically deploy $5,000 of our own funding into scholarship funds for local business owners to participate in professional development programs like those offered by the SBDC. Next, this is a quick update that we have redirected all grant funds, both those that we match with the DDA for retail conversion, as well as the grants that were being used for innovate startup program grants have all been directed to support the strong fund and that was agreed upon by all parties that participate in those grants. So entrepreneurial development really revolves around the work that we do with Innovate Long Lot. You might recall that we actually spun Innovate Long Lot out of Long Lot ADP last year. It's its own 501C3, but it's still fully financially supported by the Long Lot ADP. So entrepreneurial development goals specific to Innovate Long Lot were to accept 10 new startups into the program this year, graduate eight of them and recruit and retain at least 30 mentors for the program, as well as deploy $45,000 in grant funding throughout the year to those startups participating in that accelerator program. Next. So again, all of those grant funds have been redirected to support the strong fund so they will not be deployed as part of Innovate Long Lot. However, I will give kudos to Sergio and team for the work that they continue to do with those entrepreneurs. We have some that are actually creating jobs. We have one that's in about 300 square feet rented from us in our office space that's now looking for 10,000 square feet. A number of them have pivoted to address needs related to COVID-19, both to support the community as well as to ensure their long-term success. So they're currently, they've currently accepted seven startups into that accelerator program and have 22 of their mentors. They haven't graduated any because they would not, they haven't been in the program long enough but we'll start to see that in Q2 and Q3, some that have, will graduate out of that accelerator program. So really excited about the potential there and think that our entrepreneurial development work, especially through Innovate Long Lot, will also be a critical component of economic recovery. Next. Also entrepreneurial development, establish and maintain relationships. So similar to what we do with our local businesses as we try to stay connected to them as much as possible through programming and direct one-on-one meetings with those businesses, again, with a goal of 50 meetings throughout the year. Next. So we've worked with three startup prospects, one still active, two went elsewhere for a variety of reasons or didn't actually end up being, or successfully starting up. And again, the number of meetings is incredibly low because we're looking to redefine what the term meeting is. So this is what comes out of our database of how we've traditionally tracked meetings. So again, expect to have a much better outcome to report to you relative to that in Q2 as we look at Zoom meetings as meetings and phone calls as meetings and email interactions as meetings or just get rid of the word meetings and talk about different types of interaction with those businesses under a social distancing environment. Next. So our first impact objective is around organizational alignment and that's the work that we're doing with the Advancement Partners and the four working groups that have been established as part of Advancement 2.0. So the goal is to launch at least 10 new collective impact initiatives out of that strategy in partnership with the working groups. Next. So 14 initiatives have been developed across the four working groups and four, or I'm sorry, eight have actually been started work and progress has been made towards completion of those initiatives which include that regional talent analysis that I mentioned earlier, the Wayfinding Implementation Project, DDA and Visit Longmont and the City of Longmont as well as an entrepreneurial ecosystem visualization project that we've been working on. We have not been able to meet with the working groups but we are planning to do so late May or early June to reconvene those working groups and really shift focus to addressing near-term challenges and developing more short-term initiatives to help with economic recovery. Next, our final objective or our second objective related to organizational alignment was to develop and launch a collective data dashboard that tracks high-level community metrics and Advancement 2.0 specific metrics. Next. And that one I can say has successfully been completed. So that dashboard now exists and lives at www.advancelongmont.org where you can get all of the data that went into the development of Advancement 2.0 and it's updated regularly so that we can track that data as we progress with implementation of that strategy. Next. So our second impact objective is collective problem-solving building productive relations specifically between the Leadership Council the Aspire Leadership Council of the Economic Development Partnership and city staff and council leadership as well as our state and federal delegations contributing the talents of those private sector leaders to council members and specific public policy initiatives as well as sharing their insights and collective knowledges with the larger community as those conversations are had. Next. So we have a goal of having 50 members of that Leadership Council. We currently have 30 and are working hard to increase that. It's a bit challenging. We'll talk about our private sector funding here in a second. So one of the components of being a member of that Leadership Council is a significant investment in the Economic Development Partnership that is actually set aside to fund the initiatives of that Leadership Council. So we're at 30 members of that council with a goal of 50. I won't guarantee we'll get to 50 under current circumstances and just nonprofit funding circumstances in general this year, but we'll continue to strive for that. We also had a goal to increase private sector funding for economic development by 20% this year. That's on trend with what we've been able to do over the last few years. However, due to COVID-19 and the inability of some businesses and some industries as a whole to be able to contribute to nonprofits currently we're experiencing a 13.65% shortfall in private sector funding through the end of Q1 and are actually projecting an annualized 33% shortfall in private sector funding. That's kind of a way based on what we know, based on conversations that we've had. We hope that over the next 90 days or so we're able to get some more clarity on that and have a more optimistic outlook on our private sector funding potential for the year, but being conservative and looking at what we consider to be worst case scenario are projecting a 33% shortfall in that private sector funding for 2020. Next, and I'll add that at the end of the report as you usually that you received in advance as we usually do, we did provide overall general economic overview related to jobs and unemployment rates. Those are there, I'm not reporting on them now because they're effectively meaningless at this point because so much has changed since the end of the first quarter and we hope to have more meaningful numbers to provide to your more meaningful data to provide to you at the end of the second quarter. It just doesn't make sense to put those numbers out into the universe knowing that they're so far from what's realistic in today's environment. With that, I won't answer any questions. All right, any questions? Where my baby won't answer any questions? All right, well, your baby sounds adorable. So congratulations, we're glad that you're able to multitask, so thank you very much for your report. We really appreciate it, Jessica. Thank you, have a good evening. All right, thanks. All right, let's move on to first call public invited to be heard. So for those of the members of the public who are now listening, go ahead and dial 1-669-900-6833. And when prompted, please enter ID code 814-1979-3358. And if you are watching the live stream, mute it once you dial the number because when we go to call on you, if we can't reach you, we can't call on you because there's a lot of noise in the background and whatnot. So we'll go ahead and wait 60 seconds to see if there's any members of the public. Don, are there people already in the queue or no? Nobody yet, it takes them about 60 seconds to get dialed in. So if we could wait 90, that would be great. All right, why don't we go ahead and take a three minute break then while we wait for them to, let's leave that up and we'll just stop talking, we'll stay in section but we'll go ahead and turn off our screens and our microphones and we'll come back in 60s or 90, three minutes, sound good? Great, thank you, Mayor. All right, be back in a sec, guys. All right, Don, are you there? Mayor, I'm here. She may have stepped away from the computer. Do we have anybody in the queue? We do, we have several callers. All right, perfect. We'll go ahead and wait for council to get back on and then we'll start. How many are several? I don't see. One, two, three, four, five, six. One gentleman did not call in and we're not accepting folks that are using the web app. So if the gentleman who did not call in, if you could hang up and call back in, we would appreciate that. I will wait till Don is back. We'll wait. I'm here, sorry. Good on. So can we, all right, let's go ahead and close the time to call in, just like picking up the list. And it looks like we got everybody, Polly, Joan, there's Susie. All right, perfect. So let's go ahead and I'll run the timer. But if you could go ahead and call them one at a time, please, Susan. All right, Mayor. So our first caller, your phone number ends in 112. I'm going to unmute yourself and let you speak when you can hear me. Go ahead and acknowledge me. You're alive. Yes, I'm here. Hi. Hi. Would you please state your name and your address before you begin? Okay, this is, my name is Joanne Burton and my address is 713 Snowbury Street 80503. Great, you may speak. Okay, thank you. First, I would like to thank you again for allowing the public to speak. And I just want to clarify that we are asking you to put a specific measure on the ballot, not just any measure. And the ballot initiative we propose would require local control of airport subsidies. So you are now in the process of developing steps to rein in unnecessary spending and ensure that the general fund resources are reserved for the intended purpose of providing broad community benefit. There seems to be an assumption that the airport is going to be a cash cow for the city. Where is the data that supports this? The airport enterprise fund has continued to receive significant subsidies without adequate citizen oversight and consent. We need local control regarding taxpayer funded subsidies for the airport. As for why this initiative is now because you will be looking at the 2021 budget for Longmont and citizens need to have a voice in the decisions of how taxpayers' monies are going to be spent for the airport. Thank you. Thank you. Our next caller, your number ends in 511. I'm gonna unmute you if you could state your name and address before you begin. You're unmuted, go ahead. I guess that's me, Clark Allen. Yes. Okay, I am. My name is Clark Allen. I live in the Green's Twin Peaks Circle. I am calling about two topics. First is it relates to wearing masks or face coverings in public, whether it be indoors or out. Wearing a mask shows you care more about humanity and others than a little bit of discomfort and inconvenience you may experience. Wearing a mask shows you are being socially responsible to others. This is just a small moment in time and wearing a mask should be viewed and promoted as a symbol of honor, not a loss of personal freedom. Longmont has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in Boulder County and unfortunately has held this title for a number of weeks. Therefore, I would like to encourage you to take a strong stance on wearing masks in public. My second topic as it relates to the budget and the potential budget cuts that are going to be associated with COVID-19, maybe it is time to start considering charging for landing fees at the airport and increasing the green fees at the golf course so these facilities can start paying for themselves as opposed to us having to subsidize them from the general fund and any matching funds associated with it, thereby allowing these facilities to pay for themselves and reducing any burdensome costs associated with potential budget cuts for other important and essential services within the city. Thank you very much for your time. Our next caller, your number ends in seven to one. So I'm going to go ahead and unmute you if you could state your name and an address before you begin, thank you. You're unmuted. Certainly. Mayor Bagley, members of council, Scott Store 229 Grant Street, Longmont. Hey, thank you for your time and I hope everybody's doing well. Hey, I understand a decision that was made to not move forward in putting an initiative on the ballot without the signatures. Mayor Pro Tem, I thank you for your thoughtful discussion on that matter. I do, please know this initiative was not started during this current environment. It existed beforehand. I do look forward to future communications that can provide clarity and transparency surrounding the airport funding and the use of taxpayer dollars to support what is supposed to be a self-supporting enterprise. I appreciate your time. Everybody stay well, thank you. All right, our next guest, your phone number ends in 364. I'm going to unmute you if you could state your name and address, please. You're unmuted. Thanks, my name is Andrew Arnett and my address is 1704 Roma Court. Thank you. I am ready to provide links to back up many of the statements I'm going to be making here today that your request, however, actually, you've had a great discussion today and a lot of data has been shown. So I was delighted. I got some new data myself and refined what I was going to say here. My question is, are we really being data-driven regarding our COVID-19 response? It's tough to not let fear cloud our judgment and none of us want people to die. Often I hear people disagreeing with other people and they say, well, you must want people to die. I appreciate it in the meeting that there was a lot of good, thoughtful, respectful conversation. And it's important when we hear opinions and strategies that we don't jump to character assassination and close our minds to ideas based on that. Every public policy decision has trade-offs and we need to weigh those, of course. We've been focused on flattening the curve and the major argument for it has been to avoid deaths caused by infection exceeding our hospital's capacity to deal with them. And as we saw today from city manager Harold Dominguez, we actually have a really nice flat curve as far as both on-sets and hospital capacity, available hospital capacity has actually been, has been really flat for a month now and it's actually been, we've had hospitalizations being going down since April 15th, which is fantastic. However, the secondary effects of COVID-19 are significant and real, including significant health problems and even death because people are afraid to go to the hospital. Council member Joan Peck brought up some concerns about this earlier related to air quality. So the question I think is, what do we do now? And I've heard some talk that Boulder is planning on opening up, which is great. I want to re-emphasize that and also brainstorm a little bit. Got about a minute left, I think, so hurry. Basically, we can bring the virus to an end through immunity as quickly as possible and while the virus is still rampant, we can protect the most vulnerable. The data show that in Boulder County, zero people have died who are under 50 because of COVID-19 and only a couple dozen of those have been hospitalized and nationwide, this age group is showing incredible resilience to COVID-19. This group also represents the bulk of the people who have the power to keep our economy moving. The New York Times reported on April 29th that Dr. Mike Ryan, who is the World Health Organization's top emergencies expert, now praises Sweden's example of getting the low-risk group out in a major way. He says, I think if we are to reach a new normal, Sweden's represents a model if we wish to get back to a society in which we do not have lockdowns. I would love to see us really, not just open up a little bit but really push businesses and people to get out, especially in particularly the less vulnerable so that we can drive for immunity if that's achievable and keep providing for ourselves and those who need our protection and save businesses, jobs, and avoid mounting personal debt in these secondary health problems. Thank you. All right, our next caller, your phone number ends in 119. I'm going to unmute you. If you could state your name please for the record and your address, you're unmuted. Hi, this is Karen Dyke. I'm at 708 Hayden Court. Mr. Mayor and council members, I wanted to just make some quick comments related to the conversation on the stamp well. Dale stated that according to the contract that couldn't do a rework on that well and I don't remember his exact words but basically they're just letting it run but they have done a rework. I investigated the scout card that's on the COGCC website and it lists a definite rework done in December. It specifically states how much acid and stimulation fluid was used. So they have done that. We also know that there was a rig there in March and we just have to assume it was done because they needed to rework it again or there's an issue with the well. There is no data on the scout card for February or March so we don't know what was happening yet in March. We also know that there was a lot of activity noted at the site today. There were several vehicles and they've also moved in a port-a-potty meaning that they must be doing something that includes long-term activity at that site which maybe they're just reworking it again or maybe they've had a leak. This site has a long history of spills including groundwater contamination. I understand that COVID's taking a lot of time of the city employees and I'm concerned about that as well. However, the air pollution we're seeing at Union makes all of us more susceptible to this virus. So here's what I'm doing. I'm urging you to call COGCC. It is also time to see if the groundwater is still contaminated and I'm also concerned that with some of the high levels of air pollution seen there that we need a system that begins to alert people when they shouldn't be using the reservoir for recreation. Also, should we be building that new trail to the reservoir when the air quality at the reservoir is at times unhealthy? So some questions and I really strongly urge you to figure out what is going on at that stamp well. Something's not right out there. Thank you very much. One more. Yes, Mayor, one more. All right. Our last caller, your phone number ends in 078. I'm gonna unmute you. Hi, my name is Kim. Kim Dash. I live at 3715 Fowler Lane in Longmont. And I'm calling about the potential mandate for mandatory face masks. I think it's really important. I'm not only a resident, but I'm a nurse practitioner and as well, I'm a small business owner. I think it's really important that this be data driven and in fact, not symbolic. The United States government as well as the state government has no mask mandate in place. The Surgeon General in fact is not supportive of general masks worn unless there is no social distancing possible. There is actually no research as well on the effectiveness of non-medical face mask usage. So there's no data to support that whatsoever. Currently, Boulder County has 44 deaths. Today, the case rate in Boulder County is 333. I don't have the information on Longmont masks promote fear. And that includes fear for businesses opening as well as for businesses patronizing those businesses. I think it would be a huge mistake for the city of Longmont to become a nanny city and treat their residents as though they are children and can't make decisions for their own. Thank you for your time. Mayor, that was it. Thank you, everybody. We'll go ahead and close. First call public invited to be heard. Let's move on to our consent agenda and introduction to reading my title of first reading of ordinances. I'm gonna go ahead and pull eight B, but let's go ahead and read them. Don, good. Sure, mayor. Eight eight is resolution 2020-37, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving a contract with the Longmont Foundation for administration of the Strongmont Grant. Item eight B is ordinance 2020-23. This is the item that was amended that would cause the revised agenda. A bill for an ordinance or amending section 10.08.180 of the Longmont Municipal Code on disaster and emergency orders, public hearing and second reading scheduled for May 19th, 2020. I'm gonna go ahead and move resolution 2020-37. The only item on our consent agenda. Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. If there's no further debate or dialogue, all in favor of resolution 2020-37, say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, that passes unanimously. We do not have any ordinances on second reading. Hold on a second. Sorry about that. We do not have any ordinances on second readings. Let's go ahead and address ordinance 2020-23. Do we have a motion? Anybody wanna say anything additional? I'll move ordinance 20-23, 20-23. Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. Anybody wanna talk about, this is specifically the Longmont Municipal Code on disaster emergency orders, essentially allowing the city manager to have the power to require masks in public. Anybody else? Council Member Peck. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. So Harold or Council, I would like to know what you, well, I suppose this would be to Harold because you're the one that would initiate this. What do you consider an emergency? At what point would you enact this? So I think we have to talk about what do we have in place now? Okay. And what we have in place today, it is an order by the Boulder County Health Department that says you need to wear a face mask in areas where social distancing cannot be insured. There are a lot of different people doing a lot of different things in this. What they supported is typically what the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control is recommending. And it says wearing, in this case, you're talking about cloth-based coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain, especially in significant areas of community-based transmission. They use the example of grocery stores and pharmacies. And so we have an order today for Boulder County to wear a mask. Right. The challenge that it has, that we have right now is we obviously overlap. And so consistency would be a big issue for us in terms of clarity for the enforcement purposes of this. And so that's what I would look at in terms of what do we have today? What are the health professionals say that we needed to put in place and do we need to apply that uniformly across a long line? That's what I would be looking at based on that, because as we all talked about earlier, Boulder County Health, State Health and Orders, and that's how we look at this and they are our health department. So that is how I would approach it in this situation. The challenge we have to really get to some of the issues in here is if you looked at what Eugene's writing, that doesn't go into place until the 26th or 27th of May. So for right now, what we have is the order for Boulder County as it was issued by the Boulder County Health Department. More clarity, the order that we have is actually very similar to the order that New York has in the sense of if you can't have social distancing then you wear a mask. But people are doing different things. And so I would look at consistency in terms of what's in place and what has been put on, what has been ordered for us to achieve by the health professionals. Okay, thank you for that. And that actually brings up my concern because we as a council and staff need to give a concerted answer that we all agree to. So I don't want the conversation to be, we are following Boulder County Health Department mandates. However, what council has told staff is that this is only for an emergency and have the residents say, this isn't an emergency. So why are we doing this? So do we need both of these in place? And this is a bigger question for council I think to discuss is that does one outweigh the other or should we just be consistent with Boulder County and not do the emergency portion of it, the emergency? These sound a bit conflicting. If the Boulder County Health Department does not view this as an emergency, but an ongoing health strategy then I'm just nervous about that emergency word emergency and getting a conversation going with residents saying, why are we doing this when it's not an emergency? So, and that has always been for me, the challenge of especially with the emails that we're getting is how do we answer these consistently across the board? Are we giving too many messages? So an emergency is defined when I issue the declaration of emergency in council then adopts the emergency which you all have done. We are in an emergency as declared. And when you look at that from an emergency management perspective it is what defines the emergency there's no set time in that. It's when are you overwhelmed by whatever issue that you're trying to deal with during that time and what are those impacts that you're having to deal with as you're moving through that? So you may remember we didn't end the emergency on the flood, it was much later because we were still dealing and as an organization overwhelmed by what we were trying to manage. And so that's the trigger. So what I will tell you is today we're in an emergency and only until we reach the point where operationally we're not in a situation where we're overwhelmed will we consider removing that? But then that would be a conversation that I would have with the council in terms of what are we dealing with at that point in time? Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and then it's Marcia Ben-Pauley. Thank you Mayor Bagley. And so I just reiterate some of the concerns I had last week when we spoke about this was not creating patchwork policy and being consistent with previous direction council had as far as going with state health department as well as county health department. But unfortunately we are all aware that the city of Longmont in and of itself becomes a patchwork policy when we're going with Boulder County Health Department's health order knowing that we have businesses and parks also in the Weld County area. And so it would create a patchwork within our own city if we don't allow for the city manager to create consistency within our own city. And so I would be supportive of that outside of the fact I still have concerns with enforcement as well as some other issues that are specific to any sort of masking mandate which are kind of ancillary to the ordinance on the floor which is allowing the authority of the city manager to take on that. So I would be in support of this ordinance because it will allow us to be consistent as far as our city considering it spans two different counties. Councilor Martin. Thank you Mayor Bagley. I think pretty much the same thing. We're looking at several different topics. First we're acknowledging the need to extend city managers powers under the current emergency to make adjustments to Longmont's emergency policy as needed. So what the Mayor Pro Tem had to say was the foremost of it, we need to eliminate the differential between the parts of Longmont that are in Weld County and the parts of Longmont that are in Boulder County. The second thing is one of the public who spoke pointed out is that Longmont has the worst performance of any of the cities in Boulder County. And if that means that we need to encourage people to be more compliant in terms of the way they handle their social distancing and then we need to do that. And if that means encouraging them to make better choices about mask wearing in addition to physical separation, then I think we should do it. In fact, I think we should do it sooner rather than later but it takes a certain amount of time for an adjustment like this to go through. I think we're gonna be wearing masks for months and I think we may as well get used to it. Polly. Sorry. Yeah, those are a lot of good points. I just, I wish we could eliminate having this city in two different counties. That's very problematic. But anyway, that's another problem. I really, I don't understand how this would be different than just following the county order. And I would prefer generally always to have things be simple rather than a patchwork. However, as Mayor Pro Tem said, it's inherent in the fact that we have, we are in two counties, we can't do anything about that right at the moment. I don't know, I just think it's going to mean, it's going to make it very confusing to try to answer people as to who, what orders are we following and when do they take effect? And how are they different? I would rather just myself just follow the county orders because that's consistent with every other city in the county. And to me, that's the most effective strategy for managing this virus. I don't know. You're right, Dr. Waters, sorry. Very vaguely, we've all gotten the incoming emails with messages and personally, I haven't tried to respond to all of them and unless they're directed to me individually. I'm not going to get into debates with people about the definition of an emergency. If there's not a doubt in my mind, we are in one. We declared as much and I'm going to leave it to the judgment of the city manager in terms of where we are in a trajectory to get out of it, number one. Number two, I've read and I've heard the concerns about trust us to do the right thing. And I don't, I'm going to support this ordinance. I'm going to have one question about it. I'm going to support this ordinance. And I regret that it's going to be viewed by some residents as somehow not trusting people. But I've voted on a whole bunch of ordinances since I've been here on the council that set parameters, give direction, create limitations and not in a single case have I made those decisions because I don't trust our residents to do the right thing. But we pass all kinds of laws that set parameters and send messages and create limitations on what you can and can't do with your property, your car, your attire, whatever it is. It is part of civil society. The part of the role of government is the health and safety of our residents. That's the highest calling of for me as a member of this council. And it not a statement of lack of trust. It is a statement of obligation to the greatest good for the largest number. That's, I feel that's my responsibility. And to fulfill that responsibility, this ordinance makes sense. I want to say to Harold Dominguez as a city manager, that the ordinance charges you to make the decision. I want to be on the record that I'll stand with you in whatever decision you make. I'm not going to vote on this and then step back and say, well, it was a city manager's decision. I think to make the call a mask is the right one because we've heard about data. We've heard a lot about data from residents and from Harold. And I'm one that argues that we ought to make our decisions based on data. But somebody's going to have to show me where what I've done with my understanding of the data is wrong. That the preponderance, I can cherry pick data. I can cherry pick an opinion. I can cherry pick a study to arrive at all kinds of conclusions here. But the preponderance of evidence is we're not in a position yet where we can contain this virus. If we have the testing regime, we could test, isolate, trace. Then we have the potential to contain it. We're still mitigating. And as long as we're mitigating, it's my understanding the preponderance of evidence in the interest of the health and safety of the largest number is that it's a mask in combination with other things. It's a mask in combination with, it's not masks alone. It's a masks in combination with social distancing. It's masks and social distancing with no groups of more than 10. It's masks and social distancing and hand hygiene. And I mean, all of the other things that we've talked about, it's not one of these. It's the combination of them. But to leave any of them out, in my view, it takes a step away from the obligation we have to the health and safety of the largest number. I don't care what your age is or your underlying health conditions to the largest number of residents in this city. And I'll say, and I'll be held accountable. That's my, that's my obligation. And I'm not taking a step backwards on that being, I think the right thing to do. The only question I have about this ordinance is the word masks doesn't show up in the resolution. That's about PPE. And I guess I should assume that PPE is the equivalent of masks and other things. Is that, would that be fair, Harold? Since masks- That's my understanding, but I'll let Eugene come in, he drafted it, so. All right, I'm done. But I'd like to hear an answer. Council Member Waters and Mayor and Council, Eugene May here. PPE is defined in the ordinance as equipment warrant to minimize exposures to hazards that can cause serious injuries and illnesses. So it is contemplated to be masks. It could be expanded to gloves. It could be gowns. It could be face shields. We wanted to choose a term that provided flexibility to the city manager. Right now it's coronavirus. Hopefully we're building his emergency authorities to deal with a range of hazards. And so personal protective equipment is a term of art. And I think most people certainly nowadays knows the intent behind that term. Thank you, Gene. The only, among the things you mentioned, gloves, gowns, et cetera, are all listed or included in the ordinance. It was just the masks were, that was what caught my attention. Council Member Yvago-Fairing. Here we go. Okay, so I do echo the sentiments of the rest of council and I will be voting to move this forward. And the reason why is, so we look at the data. So something that the data showed or what recommendations were at the beginning and this is kind of the question I asked is it was recommended that not to wear a mask and you touch your face and you'll do other things and it could cause, it could be, explain more contagion. And then the recommendation then pulled away from that. And I remember, I remember when that happened. And I guess, does anyone have any background as to why they switched? So we can, because I'm getting some responses from people who are still holding on to that belief and I know it has changed since then. Then not what we think, answer a question if we know. There is not clarity on that. Only in that what health officials are saying is that by wearing a mask and covering your face, you are reducing the amount of droplets as you're talking. So if I don't have it and I'm talking and sometimes you can see stuff, it's that reduction. So when you hear them talk about it, that's what they're talking about in terms of the masking now. In terms of why they were saying that at the beginning, there's a lot of theories, but no one's really answered that. Okay, so thank you for that. And the other piece for me, it's not a matter of being a nanny state. It's not a matter of not trusting our residents or even having it be a political. For me, it's a public safety issue. Why we wear seat belts? Why people wear hard hats? Why are there certain areas when there's construction that you have to have those protective measures in place? This is one of those measures. And the fact that we are, and I don't know what the exact number for long want is as far as cases, but it is concerning to me that we are of all the Boulder County cities that we have the highest incidences. And so it's a precautionary measure, it's a safety measure and we're making choices to protect the health and safety of our constituents. So that is why I'm supporting this. And even if, so with the mass usage, if it protects one person, if it saves one life, that is an effort worth making. And so that's why I will be supporting this ordinance. Council Member Christensen. I sort of liken this to the habit that was pretty common in the old West and up until actually the 20s or something where people would go walk along and just spit all over the place. Let's just, I don't know, they just spit. And then they began to understand germ theory and realized that this was how tuberculosis, one of the chief ways tuberculosis was spread because it vaporized in the air. And once people put up signs that said no spitting, and people actually started not spitting, they reduced the rate of tuberculosis enormously. And we've been using masking since 1300s. We certainly used it in Longmont in the 1917, 18, 19, flu pandemic. And so this is not a new thing. As Councilman Waters said, this isn't alone. You still have to wash your hands. That's the main thing you have to do is wash your hands about 50 times a day, try to stay away from people, try to stay home. This is just one more thing that will help a lot. And as people have said, it's very inconvenient. It's very uncomfortable. But think of how inconvenient and uncomfortable it is for someone you know to live, to suffocate to death alone in a hospital on a ventilator. That's very inconvenient. If we can save people from doing that, then that's what we need to do. There is conflicting data on the effectiveness of masking. It certainly doesn't prevent you from getting things, but it can lessen the transmission. And I think a lot of the reason initially that they didn't wanna encourage wearing masks is because the masks had to go to the people in the hospital first to protect them. That's certainly a substantial reason why they didn't wanna encourage people to be wearing masks because every one of them needed to go to doctors and nurses and hospital providers. Thanks. Anybody else before I say my comments? Council Member Peck. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I am gonna support this motion or ordinance. I'm the one who made the motion last week after all, but Councilman Waters brought up a good point. And it was the point I was trying to make and probably not very successfully when the ordinance actually says PPE and not masks. And this is where I feel that we get in the disconnect with the public because we are telling the public if you do not have a specific mask, you can, a PPE mask, cover your face and nose and mouth with a bandana with whatever you have. So when, and that was my point of asking is Boulder County's health recommendations or mandates any different than our emergency because words matter and the way you present it to the public matters. And I agree with Mayor Pro Tim that we are not just one county. And that's why this emergency order is very important because when you say we're gonna follow the county, well, then what is Weld County gonna follow and how do we make that work within our city? So our city manager runs Longmont and that's why we need to give him the power. But I do think words matter and how we put that out to the public is really important. So that was the whole point and I do support this. Thank you. All right, anybody else? All right. So I guess my thoughts on this are a surprise prize. I'm the lone minority, but I'm gonna be a little bit more measured in how I say this, but six weeks ago I made some comments and I apologized for my tone, but I did not apologize for my perspective. I'm looking at my screen here. I don't see one MD or medical expert, not one. I see a lot of very smart people, but I also hear everybody regurgitating what we read online, here in the national media, what we're told by other people. None of us are experts, not a one. We have conflicting input. Surgeon General and the World Health Organization say that masks don't do any good. We have others who are saying, oh my gosh, let me tell you why masks do some good. I don't know if the government lied to us then or now, but at some point the government lied to us. They said, masks don't work. Now they're saying masks work. So I don't know. I don't know. I do know that when I'm out, so the Baguio Law Firm, we decided to use masks. That's my call, right? Even before the order was issued, but I also see that people are frequently taking off their masks. They won't let you into Home Depot without one, but everybody takes them off to talk, including their employees. I rarely see anybody with a mask covering their nose for more than 10 minutes, because they can't breathe. I also think, I mean, I'm also frustrated because usually, not right now, but usually online, not all the time, but usually this discussion is usually followed up with conversations about Trump, presidential election, Medicare for All, socialism. I look at the divide between who wants masks and who doesn't, and this has become, I mean, this COVID-19 crisis has become clearly political. I don't know what it all means. I'm not smart enough to digest it, but we voted to follow the governor and the health department of the counties. That means if Weld County does one thing, I say we let them do what they're gonna do. And if Boulder County does one thing, let the county health directors do what they do. But when I spoke before and I was upset, the same information that Jeff Welch was giving us back then is the same information that is currently available. This all started by saying that 10% of our population was gonna die. That was the fear. And then, oh my gosh, our hospitals are gonna be overrun. Then, oh my gosh, everybody's gonna get sick and our grandparents are gonna die. So, and now, so bodies are in the streets. We shut down our economy. And now it seems that masks, masks are the only visible sign of this pandemic. I'm not a virus denier. I am saying simply that the data then and the data now, if you look at New York, New York, on a certain day, they did a random sample. 21% of the people in New York had the virus and didn't know it. 13.9% of the people in New York had the virus and didn't know it, which means that out of 10,000 people who get it, that's six people who will pass from this. Now, that doesn't mean that we won't have an overrun or possible run on our hospitals, but other than New Orleans, Detroit, New York and a couple of hospitals, we have not seen a first surge, let alone a second surge. I have yet to hear what we've seen other than it's coming, it's coming, it's coming. I think that I questioned, I mean, from the beginning, I think that this was mishandled by all levels of government. I think that we should be locked. I mean, you look at all the deaths that are occurring in our nursing homes and among our seniors, they should be on lockdown. Again, my parents are there, they're not coming out of their homes. I hope that you folks here at council aren't coming out of your homes because you're vulnerable, but when does herd immunity come into play? Let's suppose the masks work and it keeps us all from getting sick for a little while. Well, at what point do our elderly come out? And so if under the age of 60 or 50 are healthy, there's reports saying also that children don't pass it on to their grandparents, there's something about kids. So I'm just saying that we continue to make decisions with little or no data. And I'm not saying that I have all the answers. All I'm saying is that I don't think city governments, I stopped getting on the calls with Mayor Hancock and the other Metro mayors because they all have a different opinion and they're all going off in a thousand different directions and government continues to give our citizens conflicting data. And so I'm not saying that they work or don't work. I'm just saying it's above our pay grade and we should follow the counties. If Weld County wants to do what they do, there's like what, 12 people that live in Weld County as well as stores. And if Boulder County wants to do what they wanna do, let them do it. But I think that dictating mask wearing when we don't know if it's effective or not effective. I mean, how many of us have masks that have washed our cloth masks? Are we washing those every day? Good job, Joan. And so my point is how many people are doing that? And so it's just we continue to make decisions that defy, I think, common sense. So I'm gonna vote against it. So everybody can say I suck. So Dr. Waters, let's start with you. You know, I'm not gonna say you suck. I am gonna say this. I've expressed my position, my view based on what I think is my responsibility in the Providence of Evidence. I've chosen not to lecture you or anybody else on this council or anybody else in Longland. And I don't appreciate being lectured about my ignorance, my haste, my inattention, or my unwillingness to consider all of the evidence out there. I just on the record, you know, we can go at it that way if you want to, but I'm not gonna sit here and be lectured about what I think is my responsibility to this community. And I wasn't lecturing you. I'm just arguing my point of view. Well, it sure sounded like a lecture to me, Brian. Well, I'm in the minority. So, I mean the- Listen, I respect you and I respect your position. You're right. There are no experts on this council. There are no city councils, I'm guessing, that are made up of physicians, epidemiologists, or virologists. Every policymaker in the country has taken the best they can take or best they can get from the proponents of evidence, making their judgments, filtering it and whatever name we're gonna filter with one, with two purposes in mind, health and safety of our residents and trying to reinvigorate the economy. So, if we're gonna talk about data, I mean, if I'm gonna argue your side of this, I don't know how I could argue, I could not. I'm not gonna lecture you. I could not argue that your side of this without being able to answer a couple of questions. What is the acceptable casualty rate for me if I'm gonna push an agenda to move people back out there? If you can't answer that question with at least a parameter, given the data, and I understand the argument is on the other side of it is suicides, domestic violence, child abuse, all the things. Bring those numbers. We've heard from residents, I've heard you talk about data. What are the data? I don't wanna hear speculation. I don't wanna hear wild estimates. Give me real data so I can do the calculus of the risk of putting people back to work without the testing regime we need, right? Against what the real, at least the parameters are for forecast, but nobody gets that. I heard Chris Christie, I don't wanna make this political, but I hear leaders at every level saying, let's, we send people off, you know, World War II to fight for the way of life. Well, we send them off with weapons. You know, we send them off with strategies. For us right now, our strategies and our weapons are our testing regime and being able to know how to test, trace, test, treat and trace. That still sounds to me like it's absent in most of our, you know, get back to work policies. So if we wanna have a really robust discussion about all that we should, I'm just saying, I'm not an expert, but I'm just doing my job. I just, you only give you one point of data, right? For every increase in unemployment, they anticipate 40,000 suicides, increased suicides. We're well over 20%, 17% increase. If you actually follow through, through how what the population United States is, 328 million multiple, we have 1.75% of the population in Colorado, you actually extrapolate it. That means 800,500 people have gotten the virus and gotten better. That means if everybody gets it in Colorado, we will have 3,455 deaths. Throughout the United States, it means we'll have 200,000 deaths. If you look at the suicide comparison, that means 11,900 people in Colorado will kill themselves versus 3,455 dying from the virus. I know how many have died in Colorado from the virus. How many have killed, how many suicides because of the virus or the state or more? It's right now, we don't know that because they don't get reported. I know we have 80,000 Americans who have died. How many nationally have committed suicide? You don't know that either. And my point is, until you can answer that question, I don't know how you can talk about put, put them back out there or herd immunity. What's the casualty rate to achieve herd immunity? My point is, my point is, those questions aren't being asked and aren't being answered. I'm just saying we're just acting without data. That's it. Well, we're acting with the best data we have. Right, and oftentimes that's not enough. All right, go ahead. Council Member Martin, I'll shut up now. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I also take exception to the accusation that council members can't understand science. The question wasn't asked of me, but in fact, I could have explained in a lot more detail than you're gonna wanna hear. So I'm gonna slide right past it. Why the apparent contradiction between masks don't do any good early on and masks are necessary now? And they were two different questions. When it was first discussed, it was masks worn by the public to keep themselves from being affected. And yeah, they don't do that. You have to have a really swell mask to do that. And you have to be a healthcare worker who understands how to be a masked person. However, if you have two members of the public who can't social distance and they're both wearing masks, then they protect each other. It's a different question and it's a different answer. Not only that, there have been scientific studies of the fluid dynamics of the survival of the virus in big droplets exhaled versus aerosol droplets exhaled and the length of time that the virus survived. And the only reason that those are not considered definitive result that says we all should be wearing cloth masks to walk around in public is because the experiments are so new that they have not had time to repeat them. And so they're not statistically significant. But the explanation is there and someone who takes the trouble to do it and has a basic high school understanding of physics can understand perfectly well why we should all be wearing masks. And that's why I think we should all be wearing masks. So I don't appreciate being told that these decisions are being made by ignorant people because not all of us are ignorant. And we need to explain to the public what they're doing, okay? Oh, hold on. Be clear, I never called anybody ignorant. I didn't use that word not once. So I hear a lot of straw man arguments being thrown out there. That's not a straw man argument. That is I picked a different word than you picked. But you said that we don't know what we're doing. You said that we don't understand. What I said is we're not medical doctors. And I pointed out that there's- You don't have to be a medical doctor to understand. I pointed out that there's conflict conflicts among medical doctors and the same people that we passed the motion on. That's all I was saying. As in the conflict that you pointed out was a false conflict. Okay. Council Member Peck, did you have your hand up? All right. Council Member Christensen, you have your hand up. All right. Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring, got your hand up. So, yeah, the issue in relation to the suicides. And I guess that is something that is particularly hits home to me, having a daughter who survived suicide. It is the leading cause of death for our youth. It has been an issue that has plagued our society for a long time. But there isn't specific data that shows the number of suicides are directly related to COVID itself. I know that we've had issues in trying to get to therapy, to, you know, so there are some issues in that respect, the fact that schools aren't in session. The idea of if we all wear a mask, and the reason why, and so now I feel like I'm jumping around, but the reason, if we wear masks and we are able to get out there more frequently, we are not going to inundate mental health facility or not mental health, sorry, we're not going to inundate health facilities, hospitals, clinics with people getting sick. So if we do something to kind of slow down that process, that is worthwhile. For me, one casualty is, it's too much for me. And I understand the notion that we have to get back to business, that we have to reopen our cities and our schools, but if we have a safety measure in place and it is something as simple as a mask, let's do it, let's do it, it's a mask. And the other issue is, you know, it's not a protection for yourself, it's a protection to the other person. So if somebody's wearing a mask in my presence, it's protecting me from their germs or from their contagions or if they're exposed or if they have COVID, it protects me and vice versa. So that is an aspect that we need to be looking at. The other piece is I don't think it's political and I don't wanna make it political. It's a matter of public health and public safety. And that's what I wanna keep focused. I don't wanna go in and listen to, I've stopped getting on the internet, I don't have time, I'm doing all my online lessons anyways. I don't have time to look at what's happening on the news and what's happening on Facebook or whatever. What I am looking at are the Boulder County sites, what I'm hearing when I talk to Harold or what I hear when the governor talks. Those are what are being processed through my head as I'm making decisions and moving forward. And that is why I'm supporting this. It's not trying to make this issue a political issue. And that's kind of what I wanna drive home. So that's all I have to say. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I think just in this conversation, we've seen a bit of a microcosm of the emails that we've all been receiving on the topic as well as probably a lot of the arguments we've seen playing out not only on the national stage, but also here in Longmont as well just probably amongst, I mean, my parents' household, for instance, is a bit divided on the issue, for instance. So we see this even at personal levels, kind of the disagreements that go on. And I also think that when we talk about data-driven decisions, I think that we're all right in the fact that the data has continually changed. That is part of this being a novel coronavirus is that we don't have good data. And we can only hope the data continues to get better. I think that's the real hope here. And so we can continue to make better data-driven decisions. One thing that I think we can all agree on is that restrictions are easy at the state level. I think I'm pretty sure the county has said they're not extending stay-at-home order past the eighth. And so we know that restrictions are going to start lifting. I believe as restrictions lift, it's only prudent for precautions to increase. We're not further restricting business by having masks being worn. In fact, it should be the opposite. We should be having businesses open up more freely with social distancing and with masks being worn. It's something I've actually talked to many people about is I don't think we necessarily need to close down businesses at the level that we did if we did maintain good social distancing. And we did take further precautions, specifically with office buildings. I feel that was an easy one where you can maintain social distancing and work in a safe manner. And I think that we see that coming as these restrictions are being lifted at the state and local levels. And so I don't find it too much an infringement on people's rights as it is an ask for us to return to more of a sense of normalcy and to get back to an economic system that's more sustainable. I think that's a small price to pay to get back to the economic normalcy that so many people right and left are actually yearning for. I understand the anxieties that are coming with it. Everyone's anxious for one reason or another, be it your health, be it the economy and providing, be it your housing. There's so many anxieties right now, this level. And again, like I just wanna reiterate, we don't have the best data. And when we do have good data, it changes. When they decide to report differently, it changes. So again, this is just a plea with people to have patience. Have patience for other people around you. Have patience for us as your council and your policymakers, we don't all agree. And we are trying to do the best job we can with the data that we're given and the data is changing consistently. We're not sitting in a layer dreaming up ways to make your life more difficult. That is not what we're trying to do. And we're not on some weird payroll to make your lives more difficult. That is not the point of the policies that we discuss and that we enact. We are trying to do the most amount of good for the most amount of people as council member Waters previously said. So I hope that we can at least just move to a vote on this and understand that, yes, we're not going to all agree. I don't think I necessarily, while I am voting for this with the majority of the council, it appears, I don't think I even necessarily agree with some of the things that we've all said, but I don't think this is neither, either at the time or the place to go into a debate on those issues rather as a point just to, let's have a vote and move forward because the budget is going to be a lot of fun, I know. And just to be clear, my comments were not about yes masks or no masks. I am wearing a mask in public. I am committed to following the orders of the governor and the local county health department. My office is using them. My family uses them. My comments were not about no masks. My comments were about following the governor and following and leaving it in the hands of the local health departments. That's my opinion. And so a lot of the response was about mask versus no mask. Just to be clear in the paper as you hear this John Friar in the Times call, it's not, I'm not advocating no masks. I'm advocating that anyway, just leave it up to others. But let's go ahead and have a vote. So the motion, do we have a motion? We do, right? Who made that? Yes, mayor, you have a motion. Tim Waters made the motion. Yeah, all right. So the motion on the floor is a bill for an ordinance submitting section 10.08.108, the Wal-Mart-Muse-Pakotin Disaster and Emergency Orders which allows Harold to issue orders in emergencies requiring the public to use PPE. So all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay, nay. All right, the motion passes six to one with myself dissenting. All right, let's go on to general business. 2021 budget planning. Harold, you're gonna make any comments first? Go for it and then I'll jump in. Okay, Mayor Bagley, members of council, I'm Jim Golden, the chief financial officer. And with me tonight is Theresa Malloy, the budget manager. We put a little bit of communication together for you for tonight. Before I jump into covering some of that data, I wanted to point out a couple of things on some related matters. Today we, earlier today, we provided some updated attachments to you, attachments to B and C. Apology for the late submission, but we realized that the program revenues were omitted and they actually were combined in overstating some of the program expenses. So we wanted to get you correct data for the priority-based budgeting data. The secondly, the question was asked about whether, asked by the press of me about whether we would be doing an update to our projections for the shortfall from the COVID virus for 2020's budget. And we're not able to update that quite yet at this point in time, but I can tell you, I did just find out at the end of the day today, we did finalize that our sales tax in March was up 5% over last March. That's something that we're gonna need to spend some time on over the next couple of days, dissecting that to figure out exactly where all of our businesses are falling how well they are, aren't doing. Two weeks of that month's data is part of what I consider to be part of the two months that we projected we would have severe sales and use tax shortfalls. So obviously this is exceeding my projections for those two weeks. There's a lot of big box activity as well as internet sale type activity that are boosting this, but I don't have all of the details yet and we'll probably be working through that the next couple of days and we'll get my monthly email out to you with details. Probably next Tuesday, hopefully we'll be able to come back with some revised shortfall projections for 2020. So go ahead. So to kind of jump into what Jim's saying. So we had been, as the numbers were coming in, I was asking him, well, what are we seeing? What are we seeing? And we have a lot of questions. Obviously the one thing I would say based on this statement and what we've seen is March is we need to be extremely cautious in assuming that that's gonna be what we see in April. If you remember me talking to you all last week we were getting a sense and I said, we really need to see what's happening in April before we can truly at least get a sense of what the immediate impact was for us. What I can tell you is in conversations with my colleagues in terms of looking at the data what I'm anecdotally hearing right now, those communities with big boxes are tending to do better than they projected and those communities without those are tending to do actually worse than they projected. And so we know that's a piece of the equation that we need to look at as we're digging in the numbers and seeing what's happening around us. And then understand was, so the questions that I've thrown to Jim on this was, A, is this part of what we saw in the bin shopping that people were going through in March and is that part of what we're experiencing in this and is that going to change dramatically? So that's a piece that we have to understand. Another interesting question that, and I don't know if we'll be able to get out it, but this is the first time that as Jim and I've talked about have we really seen, since people are more sedentary are we seeing them stay in the community and shop? And so that's something to look at. And so we have a lot of questions. So I wanna be very focused in saying it is too early for us to tell what this is going to look like. And I know that's what Jim's alluding to. I just wanted to be more overt in saying we've really gotta see April and then we're gonna have to see this every month to see what's happening. Because there will be a recession component in my mind in terms of what this looks like in the future. And I think we have to prepare for that. Jim, did I misstate anything? No, you didn't. And I agree with everything you said. And also as I'm beginning to look back on some of our historical data seeing how much of a recession impact we had 10, 12 years ago, I am gonna probably be revising my recession projections as well higher than what I was using at 5% because we saw 8% in back in 2007 through 2000. And 9 differences. So we'll revise everything. We will look as well at some other funds that we didn't include in our first review to make sure that we're identifying any impacts that we can. So with that, I'm gonna move on into the 2020, 2021, I should say, budget discussion. And last year at this time, we had a study session where we discussed the 2020 budget and we asked council for budget direction at that time. We went into that process knowing that we were going to have some pretty strong revenues available to us as well as fund balances. And then we were able to use those revenues to be able to fund some resources and efforts that the council wanted to see us put some more resources towards. We're looking at a much bleaker picture this time alarm. We were hopefully not going to be focusing too much on trying to add things to this 2021 budget. Everything that we've done so far over the last month or so in the budget actions that we've taken, they've all been trying to focus on how to deal with this revenue shortfall in 2020. Many of those actions that we were taking, they are one time adjustments and they are really just allowing us to be able to maintain the services throughout 2020. 2021 gonna have to be a different story because we need to keep with our financial policies. And one of the biggest, one of those is our balanced budget financial policy, which requires that all of our ongoing expenses need to be funded with ongoing revenues. So we can't use one time revenues to fund ongoing expenses in that annual adopted budget. So that's gonna make it tough for us to build this 2021 budget. So revenue projections are gonna be critical. And so as a result, we're gonna have to hang on as long as we can before we finalize those projections because we're waiting for so much to unfold to give us an idea of what the changes may be. But we are going to probably need to finalize those projections within a couple of months, early July, probably at the latest to allow us to be able to make decisions on what's gonna be included in the ongoing expenses for the 2021 budgets. Reduced ongoing budget revenues will force us to reduce ongoing expenses as well. We will obviously have to project sales tax, property debt tax and any other significant revenue generating services and project what the impact of all of this will be on them for 2021 for us to be able to decide or to know what kind of resources we have available for that 21 budget. So really as a result of that, we will really have very little to no ability to entertain new ongoing resources for existing or new services is that that would require an offsetting reduction in other ongoing expenses. General fund's not the only fund where we need to make reductions. Though likely it is one where we probably may have to make the most reductions or we're gonna need to let the situation play out through June so that we can get a better handle on the impacts on our revenues before we can finalize and know for sure how much we have available for the 21 ongoing expenses. So at this point in time as a staff, what we are doing is we're focusing on our base budgets throughout this month. Staff is building their budget submissions for the 21 budget process. We've asked them to focus on looking at those base budgets and seeing what can be reduced from the amounts that they carry forward in previous years to ask them to take closer looks at that rather than come into us with a request for additional funding for new additions to the 2021 budget, which are very unlikely to be able to be funded. In addition to the base budgets, beyond that, we're gonna use priority based budgeting as a tool to assist us with budget reductions as necessary. I'm gonna ask Theresa to step in here and to briefly give you, take you through that priority based budgeting process to update John that and give you an idea of what we'll be going through and then also just a reference to that data and the attachments that we provided. So Theresa. Good evening, Mayor and City Council, Theresa Malloy, Budget Manager. So the City of Longmont has been doing a priority based budgeting process as part of our normal annual budget process for a number of years now. The notion behind a priority based budgeting process starts with identifying the results that the city is in the business to achieve and goes through a multi-step process that then ends with a prioritized list of city services or city programs that fall within a quartile perspective. In 2016, the City Council adopted Envision Longmont and then in 2018 for our 2019 budget process, we worked to incorporate the Envision Longmont guiding principles into our priority based budgeting process. So this included the involvement of City Council and the community, along with a diverse representation of city staff. So we are now using the guiding principles from Envision Longmont as the desired results in our priority based budgeting process. And those guiding principles and their relative priority weightings were provided to you in our Council communication. But just to recap, they are livable city council centers, corridors and neighborhoods, a complete balanced and connected transportation system, housing services, amenities and opportunities for all, a safe, healthy and adaptable community, responsible stewardship of our resources and finally job growth and economic vitality through innovation and collaboration. So those are what we mean by the desired results. And so through our priority based budgeting process, staff has identified the programs that we provide as services to this community, as well as the programs that our internal service providers provide to support departments who are providing those direct services to the community. Those programs then are scored based on a variety of several factors. So the first factor is they're scored against how they influence those desired results that I just mentioned to you. Then they are scored against some basic program attributes. So the first is the mandate to provide the service. At what level are we mandated to provide that service? They're scored based on the reliance on the city to provide the program. They are also scored based on a cost recovery component. And then they're scored finally on the portion of the community that is actually served by the program. So it's a pretty elaborate scoring model that basically results in an overall score that is made up of those different components. And that score really determines where those programs will fall within the quartile ranking. So higher scoring programs will fall in a quartile one and our lower scoring programs will fall in quartile four. And then in between. So the step, each of these steps is not something that we update every budget process. The step that we really do every budget process is to reallocate our costs and program revenue against our programs. So that is a step that our departments are going through right now is to take their existing 2020 budget and allocate it then to their programs. And so the attachments that were included with your communication attachment A shows the quartiles, both quartiles for our 2019 budget compared to our 2020 proposed budget. So this was information that we provided to you back in September as part of our budget process. And as I said, we're in the process of updating that the costing and revenue allocation right now. So those quartile views will change because we did, as Jim mentioned, added some new resources and then departments will shift resources to various programs depending on how they're covering those programs. So that's attachment A, attachment B was the list from again, our 2020 budget process. This is the prioritized list of our community programs and attachment C was the list of our prioritized governance programs. And so the governance programs, again, those are the internal type service programs where we don't provide direct programming to the community, but we are supporting the departments who do provide direct programs. Direct program to the community. So it's things like human resources and finance and the city manager's office and those types of programs. So that's kind of the overview of our party-based budgeting process. As we continue to update the costing, we will use that then to review as part of our 2021 budget, what we will then eventually be submitting to you as our proposed 2021 budget. So council, that's our presentation. I would be glad to try to answer any questions or take any comments or direction. Are there any questions from council waters? Before. Thanks, Mayor Bagley. Two questions, one just, it's kind of technical, I guess I should have asked last year on the weighting of the categories that are tied back to a vision long bond and the principles of livable centers and balance and connected transportation system, et cetera. How do those weights get applied in the scoring process? Then I understand weighted scoring. I'm just curious how these percentages get applied. Teresa, you wanna take that? You bet. So councilman waters, that's a great question. So I mentioned earlier that the scoring component is based on a few different criteria. And one of those criteria is how the program influences those desired results. So each of the programs then are scored against how each of these desired results, how the program itself influences each one of these separate desired results. And then that relative priority weighting then weights that component of the scoring. I appreciate that. I probably, you know, tutorial, we don't need to spend any more time on this. I'll get, said, Teresa, I'll sit down with you and you know, I just need a better working knowledge of how you're doing it. The other, it's probably not a question. It's an editorial comment and you've done a terrific job. So what I'm about to say, I don't want to be interpreted as anything other than I appreciate what you've done here. And Jim, I got everything you said. It's gonna be a tough second half of this year and we don't have extra money. And you know, we're gonna have to be really clear on our priorities in terms of keeping the lights on and things moving forward. But I will wonder, nobody has to answer this tonight but maybe it's a question I'll follow up with Harold on. As much as I appreciate a vision long run and all the work that went into it, it still would, it would be somewhat affirming at some point to see where the vision and the goal statements that this council has adopted show up along with the other criteria like the principles in a vision long line because it just doesn't get acknowledged in this document. Maybe it gets acknowledged someplace else and understand that's not gonna drive budget decisions for 2020, given where we are financially. But I guess just saying at some point, I guess it would be helpful to know what does it take to get some of that shoehorned in here? So I think part of it, when we talked about this last year, I know we took your council goals and visions and we also then tied them into these categories in envision long run based on where they fit. So that's the short answer and we'll have to give you the details on that. And if you remember when we talked, we were talking about alignment within those categories. So we'll get that information to you. All right, Council Member Ridaglifer. Okay, thanks. Yeah, so when we start reevaluating or when you start reevaluating just what, where you might have to do cuts, are you going to be I guess looking at the reevaluation of the where certain programs fall in which quartile. So if you end up reevaluating and deciding something that is in quartile too, might need to drop down or they all, is it pretty much set where these programs fall? Like are we looking to see anything change on how they're evaluated? Does that make sense? Do you want me to take this one? Yes. And then I'll jump in. Sure, so the order that programs fall within the priority ranking, I guess I will say is set by the scoring. So that won't change. We don't re-score programs every year. We don't have a need to re-score programs every year. The only time we would need to re-score programs would be if our desired results were to change. We do though from time to time have new programs that need to be scored. And so they may fall anywhere within any of those quartiles and may ultimately change the complete list of ranking of programs as new programs come on. The piece that we do every year though is what I was talking about earlier and that's just the costing piece. So taking our ongoing current year-based budget and recosting it or reallocating it to the program so that piece will change the dollar amounts that are shown in the quartiles but the number of programs within a quartile is set. So part of the answer to that question and this was something that I was gonna touch on is so I think one of the challenges we have coming into this budget is it's going to be a different one in that we have a sense of what's gonna happen with revenue. The thing that I think we're gonna have to pay particular attention to is what's just happening in the world around us generally. And what needs are we going to see that may become more significant as a result of everything that we've been through. And so what we, to give you a point of that we talked about in term that we're talking about in terms of the 2020 budget is we know that we counsel directed and we allocated money for early childhood education. And it was really to look at a component of how do we help people get licensed and some of these other components in terms of what they need. What we know today is the need in early childhood education is much different than it was when we had the conversations. And then that has a connection into businesses and workforce and these other issues. And so there's going to be an added component that we're gonna have to be very mindful of generally in terms of what we're dealing with. And there's other things I wanna touch on and see more questions, but I'll hit that as well. Yeah, and I guess some of these you don't have to cause I do have other questions, but I think that I can just direct an email and maybe have, if you have an opportunity to do a little tutorial for a couple of us, I just throw me in there. Mayor. Councilor Martin. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Actually the example of early childhood education was one that I was going to use. So it's a good segue, I guess. I'm not quite sure that I, whether this is an example of re-scoring or not, but the example that Harold gave about the needs of early childhood education being different seems appropriate to use in terms of what re-scoring means. Because we were looking at upgrading it and making more available in terms of putting together training programs and expansion programs of various sorts. And now what we're finding is because of the need to maintain social distancing in terms of the need to never ever ever let a caregiver work sick, it's having stable classes for childcare so that we can't mix the kids up when the number in the class goes up and down. All of those things are making early childhood education be much more expensive than it was. So the way in which we subsidize that and the amount to which, the extent to which we subsidize it, they need to change just to keep stability among the childcare for low income people that we already have and have had available to us in this city now. So is that kind of consideration going to be part of the priority-based budgeting? Because I think it has to be, but I'm not sure how it works in the process. I think Theresa, Theresa, if I'm gonna speak, you correct me immediately, but one of the questions they look at is is this service provided by others? That's one of the criteria pieces. Well, if that changes dramatically, that's gonna change that component in terms of how you rank it. If, let's say, theoretically lost, and this is, I'm just throwing a number out, I don't know anything about this, but if you lost 40% of the childcare providers, that's gonna impact that component of the scoring, correct, Theresa? Correct. Because it changes the landscape dramatically and so it'll be embedded within those components in terms of how we evaluate. Did that answer your question? Kind of. If you needed 50% more caregivers, it would be the same thing, which is more likely to what's gonna happen. Correct. I mean, and that's what, that's where I said, I think the science or the arts gonna meet the mathematics that go into this is really evaluating those areas. Some other examples, if you have grants for certain projects, that's gonna impact the cost recovery component of this, but the one thing we know is we're not the only one having financial issues. States having financial issues, RTDs having financial issues, and so does that landscape change on us as well in terms of potential grant dollars we were anticipating coming in, and does that look different? So all of those, all of the world that's moving around outside of us right now, we're gonna have to be mindful of to ensure that those scores really reflect what we're looking at today, because as I've said before, normals new and how we look at many of the programs and services we've been providing. All right, anyone else? All right, Harold, do you have anything else? I do have a couple of things. I forgot to mention earlier my update. One of the things that we're trying to do is also work collectively with our partner groups to be creative on certain issues. So one of the things that you're gonna see, at least for the next few days, and then we're gonna evaluate it on a regular basis is the whole concept of curbside pickup. So I know Public Works has worked with the DDA because their situation's different than retail establishments in larger developments. And so they're gonna designate a lot of spaces if not almost all the spaces along Main Street for curbside pickup for the retail to help facilitate that. And then as the opening starts transitioning there will be managing that more globally because now they don't necessarily need parking spaces in front because they're not open. So just to let you know, we're gonna be working on issues like that. One that just hit me this week is, is there a way for us to facilitate a concept and it's way too early to say whether or not we're gonna be able to do it, but an economy is scale aspect to PPE programs and purchases for businesses that have to have it who haven't been able to do it. And there's a way for us if we can really work with Jessica and Kimberly and Scott and all the businesses and find a way to bring that information together, can we help facilitate the acquisition of PPE for them utilizing an economy of scale while it's not a direct allocation of dollars it still is an ultimate cost savings for businesses. And so those are the kind of things that we're starting to see because I think the one thing that we all know is creativity is going to be incredibly important as we continue to move through this and we see issues that are developing across our community both from a business perspective and an individual perspective. All right, that it for the budget? Two. All right, Mayor and Council comments. Anybody? Let's start with Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. Okay, thank you, Mayor. So I have a couple of comments. One, it is in regard to, and again, this was kind of going on prior to me sitting on Council. So I've never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Helmig. I've heard him speak and I followed the work but I've never really had a chance to know him or get an insight of what happened at CU Boulder nor do I, that's not my concern. The information that he's provided is, to me, it's very profound and it's really opened my eyes to what is happening to our environment and how it's impacting our health and wellbeing. And so I was disappointed to hear that. The piece that disturbed me the most was the firing of the TC reporter, John Spina. That was something, and I just felt like I need to make something public. I'm very concerned with that piece that someone who is reporting this information and then all of a sudden gets fired and is discrediting. The institution seems like it's discrediting not just Dr. Helmig and this reporter but just the whole research in and of itself. And so that is something that I am really concerned about and I would like to kind of know more about why this is all happening and I really wanna make sure that, and I support Dr. Helmig and his work and I would like to see something in the long run where we can collectively say, we do support this work, we value this work and we need to have his work continue. The other one is in regard to having a presentation and whether or not this is, City Council is the forum to really have a presentation on cultural brokers and the work that the resiliency for all and what that work is doing. I do feel this is the place and I want John Friar, if you're listening, bring attention to this work because it's impacting a lot of our community and we need to bring attention to the strong work that is being done to build equity and break down these institutional racism and an oppression that is happening among our community of color. So thank you, that was it. Council Member Christensen. Oh, not the wrong thing. Okay, so today is Cinco de Mayo and so even though there is no fiesta, there's a fiesta in our hearts, we cherish the traditions of Cinco de Mayo. It's always been very important to this town. Secondly, it's National Teachers Day. So thank you, Suzy. Thank you, Dr. Waters who spent most of his life in education and all the other people who are working tirelessly, trying to educate people in a very different new way. From what I hear has many, many glitches, but that's okay. They're kids, they're tough, they're resilient and the teachers are even tougher. So thanks to all the teachers and everybody stay healthy and wash your hands and don't forget to fill out your census form. Dr. Waters. Thanks, Mayor Begley. It might not nearly as philosophical or as enlightened as Council Member Christensen's, but earlier this evening, from one of our residents who called in made a reference to budget priorities and the golf fund and grazing green fees because taxpayers are supporting the golf fund. And I just want to just clarify, that's not true or it's not accurate. If there are capital construction needs like what got done with our bond with the as a result of the last bond election, recreation services and golf courses benefited from that. But on an operating basis, the golf courses pay for themselves. It's cash and carry. There are no tax dollars subsidizing our golf courses. So as we build budgets, that's not a place that you're gonna cut to free up tax dollars. I guess for the record. Anybody else? All right, I guess the only comment I want to make is my belief is that once we take a vote, I forget about it. So that's it. All right, anything from you, Harold? No comments, Mayor Council. All right, Eugene? No comments, Mayor. All right, appreciate everybody's service and doing this tonight. Later, we're adjourned. Actually, do we need somebody who want to make a motion to adjourn? Council Member Christensen. Okay, good. I moved that we adjourn. All second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. We are adjourned unanimously. All right, see you guys in that later. Bye.