 Thank you very much. I will go ahead and lead us in tonight's Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. At this time, we'll now move on to motions direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas. Do we have anybody? Okay, seeing none. Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to public invited to be heard. We'll take a couple minute break here to allow people to call in. The screen will be put up with the number, I believe being 669-900-6833. And then there will be a prompt to enter the meeting ID, which is 879-1742-7855. So we'll give this a couple minutes and be with you in a moment. Mayor Pro Tem, we're just going to give it a few more seconds and make sure that the slide comes down from the live stream. All right, thank you. Looks like that is gone. And we have two guests when you are ready. Alrighty, I'm ready. I will just a quick reminder for people to state their name and address and that we will be giving three minutes and I will let you know when you're three minutes. Thank you. So we have two guests tonight. The first guest, your phone number ends in 396. I'm going to unmute you. Please state your name and address for the record. You may begin. You have three minutes. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem. Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Okay. All right. This is Scott with the Longmont Chamber. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez and members of City Council. The Chamber supports City Council submitting to voters this fall an amendment to the home rule charter to allow for the lease of city property up to 30 years. Last year, the same question was asked to voters but failed. First in our Chamber's policy meeting, a number of our members had questions last year and again this year. We believe that many of these questions can be answered with better communication about what is being asked to voters and what extending the time from 20 to 30 years does for potential city and public-private partnerships. Secondly, times have changed quite dramatically since last fall. None of us knows exactly what the post-COVID future looks like. It's possible that we will enter a time when it's difficult to attract developers for city and public-private partnerships. By extending leases from 20 to 30 years, we can become more attractive. It is our understanding that 30 years is the norm for city leases in our region and around the country. The City of Boulder passed a similar ordinance back in 2012. The Chamber is interested in furthering conversations on this and is happy to help with communication on this important tool for future city projects. Thank you. Thank you. Our next guest, your phone number ends in 635. I'm going to unmute you. Please state your name and your address. You have three minutes. Hi, my name is Shaquille DeLal. I live at 609 Terry Street calling in to voice my support for Longmont Public Media, of which I'm a member. I don't personally view myself as creative in the way that people who are into making podcasts and videos are but I'm interested in lots of community-focused things like local politics and community organizations. What I love about Longmont Public Media is that it takes the mission of public access seriously. Despite the fact that I don't have any real skills on how to make content, because LPM is a makerspace, I can easily find people to work with there who do have those skills that are maybe interested in the same things as me. It's why in the early days of the pandemic, I was able to quickly put together a series of interviews highlighting a few community-based organizations like the TLC Learning Center, Longmont Meals on Wheels, and the YMCA, which were providing critical support to the community. Those videos were shared using Longmont Public Media's social media channels where they were collectively viewed over 2,500 times. It's not the sort of recheck it ever achieved on my own Facebook page. Public Access Media serves a really critical function. We live in a time of corporate media consolidation where it can be easier to find 20 podcasts about nightlife in Miami than it can be to watch a video of a concert performance here in Longmont. In a community as big as this one, an inability to share information and perspectives about ourselves to ourselves can really hold us back by making people feel like they're disengaged from the place where they live. The need for us to share with our broader community is exactly why platforms like Facebook and Next Door are so popular. But the fact that those tech platforms make money by algorithmically creating animus is bad for a community. One thing that can really drive a community apart is the sense that it's not a community, but each person is an island in the sea of others. Longmont Public Media is the organization I know that is most aggressively working on stitching us together by providing an outlet for us to speak to each other. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. There were only two callers, right Susan? That is correct. All right, that will conclude public invited to be heard for tonight's meeting. Please join us next week if you would like to have some comments in front of the City Council. Next up we have special reports and presentations, so I think I'll throw this over to Harold, I think. Mayor and Council, I guess we're going to have another weekly report on where we are regarding COVID-19. I have brought the charts that I've normally used with you all so you can see consistency and movement. Are those charts up for you all to see? Yes, we see. Okay, good. So again, this is the same chart that I've been showing you over the last few weeks when you look at the three-day average of COVID-19 cases. This is the three-day moving average, and you can see the movement. I'm going to then show you the actual, I wish I could figure out how to get this where it would do it more quickly. This is what's happening on a daily basis in terms of the number of cases. Again, this is by state. That really we're moving through cumulative numbers, and at this point we're really watching what's happening on a day-by-day basis. This is, again, the movement that we've seen in the number of deaths related to COVID-19. Again, an important slide, I'm going to show you this in Boulder County, when, again, you look at where the number of cases are in terms of the state, and you can see that it's in a 20- to 29-year-old group where it's over 8,000 cases, and then you're starting to see that they've had 11 deaths, 368 hospitalized in terms of this age demographic. And then if you remember what this looked like the other day, there's been, it looks like, some growth in this category as well from 10 to 19. This is the PCR percentage on a weekly basis, and you can see that when they look at it on a weekly basis, it's somewhere around 4%. I also look at this in terms of a daily basis. Again, it'll take a little bit of time to move through here, and you actually see what's happening day to day. So you can see the percentage of tests is moving, and so we hit another recent peak of 5.84% there, but on July 20th, it was 3.83% positive test, and so that's something that we like to see in terms of that movement. So while you see the growth in cases, you can see the movement in the terms of the percentages, and then it's starting to shift, and we hope that it's something that can continue based on the current data. When we look at the Boulder County numbers, again, graphs that you're used to seeing, and when we talk about numbers, I think it's also important to really, what we're trying to get people to focus on is the y-axis. So it's much different in Boulder County than when we look at the entire state, but again, you're seeing the general trends and the curves that are very similar when we see the state's numbers, and you can see this peak, and then you can see as a county where we're again starting to make a similar move that we saw here, and that we saw here, again, we hope that that can continue as we're moving forward. This is the five-day rolling average on the percentage of COVID-19 PCR tests with positive results. So you can see that we've theoretically, we've stayed below that 4% as Boulder County. We saw that peak where we got close, and then we moved, and then you see a rise, but still in that area. You know, part of that then is also related to the number of tests that are being performed, and you can see where we're really hitting in excess of 600 tests when needed and when folks are coming in. Then when you move to the demographics, you know, this is something that looks a little bit different when you compare it to the state numbers. When you looked at the state numbers, it was sort of this general trend that moved like this. In case of Boulder County, you see a high peak in the age groups of 20 to 29 drops, and 30 to 39 goes up, and then you can see the move back, and so we look different in Boulder County in terms of where those cases are coming from, and you're really seeing the growth in this area based on what that charts look like. This is the five-day average on the number of new COVID-19 cases. Again, this is a good sign. You can see the peak, we move down, the peak, we move down, we have a peak, and we're moving down. So again, those are things that you're wanting to look at over a longer period of time. So when you look at some of the parameters in terms of protecting our neighbor, I believe it's 14 days of declining cases before you can consider that. So we're still on that count in terms of what that'll look like, and I'll touch on that a little bit later in terms of what that means for us and what we're looking at in timing. This is the local look. You may have remembered I believe we were around 586. So we've crossed the 600 barrier in Longmont at 604. Boulder's now at 646. I think when you look at the ages in that previous graph, and then you see where Boulder's increasing, you know, was I think a number of 30, there was a 30 difference, you now see that move a little bit. Again, I think that's directly tied to the ages. And then as you look at this chart, if you remember last week, it was at 37% in terms of the Hispanic Latinx population that had COVID cases, it's 36.8. So again, I think when you tie that to age, you're starting to see some movements continue. And so we're watching the numbers. So and then when you want to look at what's happening in the system today, for the most part, everything is in green. Available med surge beds, again, they're still 120. They're still doing elective procedures. So that's coming into play. I actually have the ability to see more granular information. That's proprietary because it's by specific group units. And then you can see the ICU beds where they're, you know, they're in the yellow, but as a system, you can see that we're still tending to move in the green when you look at the state numbers. It's very similar to that. So it's much different here in Colorado than it is in some of the other communities where they've had increased cases. Remember last time I showed you all this graph. And so I also want to show it in terms of connecting, you know, what does it look like in Boulder County versus what does it look like in other places? Just to tell you, I chose other places that I've worked in the past just because I worked there. It was easy for me to see. There's no particular reason. As I was looking at this data, so this is a little bit more in depth in terms of what we're seeing in Boulder County. Again, scales important, you know, population of 300,000, 1,650 cases, 74 deaths. And you can see the number of cases in the last 14 days in terms of that movement. I started my career in Lubbock, Texas and went to school there. So I decided to pick that as another place. Again, about a 300,000 population, 4,482 cases, 65 deaths. And again, you can see the movement here in a county that has a similar population. I then picked the last place that I worked, which is in Tondering County. Smaller population, 120,000, 1,560 confirmed cases with 13 deaths. And then you can see the movement. So when you're seeing this in terms of the conversations that are happening in different locations, this is a website where you can go and you can get that information. You can even look at the counties in Colorado and see how that differs. Make sure I can in the right spot. So that's Douglas County. And then you can get a comparison in terms of what comes up, what's happening in Douglas County. And so this is a good data set to come in, just as if you want to start doing some comparison comparison and see what the movement is across the United States. And so these are things, generally, we watch, but I wanted to go over the data with you all. So you can, again, see the movement week to week in terms of what we're looking at, what we're trying to watch on a regular basis. Is there any questions about the numbers? Council Member Peck? Yes, ma'am. You're still muted. Sorry. It's somewhat a general question in that. I know that we get our data from John Hopkins, and I'm glad you do, but I heard that counties and other disc medical entities were not sending their data to John Hopkins anymore. Is that correct? Have you heard that? I haven't heard that. So that's why when I look, I actually have another website that really focuses on Colorado that I look at. And so if I see any differences, I'll let you know. I do this because of the national comparison, and I think there are some that may be doing that. But again, the base data that I look at actually is on the CDPHE website, Boulder County Health website, and then another one that I have to log into. I really like seeing that from John Hopkins. It's very, very helpful. I hope that we keep getting updates on it. So thank you. We'll update you on it. If we see an issue in the day, and we'll let you know. So some things that I wanted to talk about today. Council Member Waters has a question. My question isn't about numbers. It is about what we're doing as a city. Should I wait? Are you going to talk about what we're experiencing? You can go ahead and ask. So some of what's prompting my questions is, as we have heard so much about in our, continue to wonder, you know, where school districts will come down or universities will come down with their approaches to going back to school or not. It occurred to me. I had, there are questions I haven't asked about us that I would, that I'd like to know and probably useful for maybe some others to know as well. I have no idea who gets tested. Among the city employees, who gets tested? Does anybody get tested? And under, and what would provoke a city employee to be tested? I may have Sandy jump in to help me a little bit with this. These are not got your questions. I've just turned my mind wrapped around what the city's approach is to the very same challenges that school districts are going to face, at least in terms of their adults. Right. So I want her here to help me in case I miss something. So generally what we look at is, you know, so the first case and these are real examples. So someone comes in and says, my roommate is showing signs of COVID. They're going in to get tested. We then connect them with Kaiser, who is our health insurance provider. They then talk to them and go through the process to get tested based on what the condition, what, what it looked like. Or my roommate, my spouse is tested positive. Or I was at an event where someone tested positive and they go more in depth into, is it a probable exposure and a probable exposure is designed in terms of, are you inside or you outside? If you're inside within, you know, in excess of 15 minutes with someone and you weren't within the social distance and you weren't wearing masks, that becomes a probable scenario. A possible scenario is then a derivative of you were in, if you were inside a room or an office with someone, but you weren't there within 15 minutes, but people weren't wearing masks. And so then we go through that process. You've got tears. Tears that we look at. And then we're in communication with Kaiser on that. So in this case, employees don't have to pay for the cost of the test because it's part of our insurance program. Under what conditions would an employee, an employee of ours is tested positive? And you mentioned that the bulk of those would be our first responders. We have had first responders stuff. What happens to their colleagues? Are they tested? Are they quarantined? What do we do with four or with city employees when a colleague has been tested positive? So the first thing that we do, and we even do this with our recreation staff, if there's a person on the team or something. But so generally, public safety is a little bit different because we know when we're going into calls that there is, you know, what is the chance that there is a possible contamination on this case. And so then if it were someone on staff, we would then go through the same questions that we just went through. Is it probable? Is it possible? We would work with Kaiser. We would work with Boulder County Health, depending on what the situation is. We would get the individual tested. Now, when someone exhibits symptoms and depending on possible probable, we then take certain actions within a facility. And that was actually the first thing I was going to talk about. So today, we had a situation where that occurred with someone who's significant other was there. And they worked on the west side of the Civic Center. So we actually made the decision to close that side. We sent everyone home. And based on our protocols, we'll come in and we'll disinfect that area. Sandy, if I miss something, just feel stopped. We will disinfect that area. We'll then follow on the testing protocols. Was it positive? We will then watch the others that are connected to them. And then depending on the advice we get from the health care providers and Boulder County Health will then make the determination of when we open. Also a little bit different in when you have something that occurs in one of our daycare facilities. There's actually different protocols that we have to follow in terms of the amount of time that we have to have it closed. I believe it's 72 hours, Sandy, or somewhere in that time frame. So we have different protocols that we follow there. So it's a lot of work and it changes based on what are the conditions and what is someone potentially exposed to. But what we tell everyone, and it's pretty basic, if you're sick, stay home. If you're sick, call your supervisor, call human resources. If you've been into work, let us know because then risk management and HR will work with the appropriate departments so that we can take the actions we need to based on the advice that we get from our health care provider and from Boulder County Public Health. Did I miss anything, Sandy? Nothing I would add, Harold, is that we follow the CDC guidance when it's time to clean an area. So for example, today we have a set of cleaning protocols that are part of our administrative regs and our folks follow that procedure to make sure that everything is clean and ready to go from when we reopen. Are there any circumstances under which a city employee would be quarantined for 14 days? Yes. And when that happens, and I apologize to council members. I'll try to get through this quickly. When that happens, they're home for 14 days. That doesn't come off sickly, I assume. Sandy, help me on this one. I don't know if you froze. So we have to quarantine. They're usually quarantined for a couple different reasons. So for example, if their roommate has been tested and is positive for COVID, now they're waiting for their test to come back, that's a situation where we would quarantine them at home. And we have another temporary admin reg around pandemic pay. And pandemic pay would pay for those kinds of situations where we sent you home, either due to a build enclosure or for quarantine, or you have been diagnosed with COVID or are taking care of a family member diagnosed with COVID. And that's actually the response that I was going to say is that's outlined by federal and state law. And so we have to follow federal and state law in terms of what's covered and why they're covered. So my last question is somebody has been tested positive. They've been home, they've gone through whatever kind of treatment they're going to go through. Do we test them before they come back to work to make certain they're not infectious or there's no risk of spread? We let the healthcare provider determine what they need to do for that individual based on the circumstance. And you may have seen it's the guidance is starting to change a little bit on that. And Harold, one thing that I would add is that our temporary admin reg basically says that after symptoms subside completely, we're asking employees if they have COVID symptoms to wait 72 hours before returning to work. If they're sick to something else, then we're asking them to wait 24 hours. We don't do any testing or we don't require the health care provider to document that there's been some additional testing. All right, thanks. And every one of the, every one of these cases, it's different. I see more hands going up. Council member you don't have a fairing? I had a question on that. So the 14 days and that was one of the demands that we as an education association put back on the state and our district leaders in looking at reopening, you know, the 14 days of declining positive cases. And there were some states who were pushing 14 days, no new cases. Where are we at in Boulder? I was trying to look at that slide and count them, but you changed it. Let me pull that up. Sorry. All right. So this is a question that I'm probably going to let me share my screen. This is a question that I'm going to need to verify with Jeff. I don't know if this is where they start the count, which was on June. I don't know. I don't think, actually, I don't think it is. I think this is where they started the count based on what happened in Boulder and what we heard. So six days from this point, which was on June 14, 15-ish. And then if we hit another elevation, so let's, you know, looking at the last date, if the next roll that comes in and it's higher, not to the highest peak, but to the to the latest data point, if it's higher, we start all over again. That's where I need to talk to Jeff because I don't know. So, you know, we went down and then when we went back up, are they considering this a movement upward? Are they considering this still the peak? So let me follow up with Jeff and get that information to make sure. I know we've talked about it and I just can't remember that off the top of my head, but there's other issues on that too. So the other components that come into that, and that's really when you look at moving to protect our neighbor that comes into play is it's not only the cases, but it's testing and it's the ability to do tracing. So there are other factors that come into play in terms of making the move to protect our neighbors. Okay. And then the other question I had was, has there been any discussion with Jeff or other, the epidemiologist or other experts in the field around scenarios? What, you know, as schools either open full capacity, what do they anticipate? What are the projections to the community at large or versus a hybrid or, you know, just sticking with online, you know, looking at those different scenarios, has there been discussion on any predictions? So I haven't been in any conversations with the school districts. I think that's been between the school districts and Boulder County Public Health. I can tell you that, you know, we're obviously, you've heard, and we're going to have a presentation on the work that we're doing with BioBot. We're actually, that's shifting to a partnership with the universities. And so what we're trying to do is look at, get the daily numbers for a long lot and relate that to the BioBot results, which is really, we take samples at our wastewater treatment plant and it grabs the RNA. They try to say it means X amount of cases, but the science is really, I don't go there in terms of the science, but what we've looked at is a number of copies. And that sort of tells you the volume that's in your wastewater system. And so if we can track that over time, then what that kind of becomes is a leading indicator. The thing that we do know, you can see the peaks from when people engaged in activities. So this peak in this area is right after the 4th of July. You know, you saw the peak that occurred associated with the parties and you can see what's happened in Boulder. So, you know, those are the things that we're walking there or watching. There's also some really interesting science coming out, studies that you're starting to see. I think it was with the PLOS. And if you get a chance, look at it, there's also articles on various news platforms about this study and they say there's three things. Wash your hands vigorously and on a regular basis. Wear your mask in social distance. And those components come into play. What I can tell you is we, I talk to my other colleagues in Boulder County on a weekly basis. And so we're going to have those conversations. And then there's the likelihood we may institute the larger conversations based on where the data is going. So we'll know more. We're planning for all of those scenarios locally. Or at least that's what we're thinking about. I mean, because we are not in silos, whatever the district does, it impacts the community at large. It impacts our elderly residents. People who don't have children in school, they're still impacted. So it's really important that we have that connected understanding of, okay, what are you doing? This is what we're doing and have that clear transparency. That was another one of our demands is having that disease data. If there is an outbreak, in the classroom or in a building that the community knows, parents know, other staff members know, and it's out there. So that's, and are we in a position to be doing that right now? If we are not, then we should not be opening up right now. And for us, it's even larger than just the local school district. So to give you a sense of what we're having to take into account when you look at federal state laws, who you take care of and those types of issues, we know that our team, we have members in Thompson Valley, Pudor Valley, St. Vane Valley, Boulder Valley, Adams County, probably the Aurora school district, Weld County school districts. And so the other thing we're having to do is actually also look at what those other districts are doing, because that then fundamentally impacts how we're going to approach staffing and how we're going to handle our daily operations, because we have to be cognizant of the impact on families and daycare. And you heard me talk about daycare before. So that's a piece that we're looking at to try to figure out what's happening in all the other school districts, because we know it'll impact us. Kind of wanted to touch on a couple of points. So many of the questions that you all talked about came up. We closed the West side of the Civic Center today, based on the very issue that you talked about in terms of testing. So the finance side in that area, we had to make the decision to close it and go through our protocols. Not the first time we've had to do it, won't be the last time we've had to do it. But we just went through and followed our processes in terms of how we needed to approach it. And I was actually going to bring it up to answer many of the questions you asked. So thanks for doing that. I see other questions. Mayor Prentin? Yep, Council Member Christensen. Harold, I had the same questions. I mean, about the, I think we can't underestimate the school, the schools and also Front Range Community College, which is the age group where most of the people who are carrying this are going. But as I think the city has done a terrific job at taking care city employees, but we really need to be working with the school system and bolder public health to see, to have a plan for when the schools open up. If this, so far we've been very lucky in that smaller kids by and large are having a very low rate of this, but we don't want that to change because that would be a disaster. And so I'm just worried that we are not going to be prepared for schools to open up and a whole lot of people to get sick and then carry it home to their families and yikes. That could just be, you know, I don't know. I was hoping to talk to Susie earlier today about this, but I don't know if she knows what the plan is, but we really need to have a plan and same-brained school system really needs to have a plan for what's going to happen in terms of public health if things don't work too well when schools do reopen on any level. So that's my greatest concern is that we don't have sick kids and sick families and that'll just undermine everything we've worked so hard to try to get stabilized. So what I can tell you and what I know is the way the governor's order was issued and I think Eugene's on, by the way Eugene and his legal staff have been great in terms of distilling these orders because I will tell you it becomes matting at times, but the way I understand that the order was issued in terms of school districts it actually vested the decision within the superintendents. And what I can tell you is part of the reason, you know, we normally have Jeff here. Jeff has been knee deep into conversations with both school districts. And so I told, you know, I'm going to carry this until Jeff gets through this. So I know he's in conversations. I know he's working on those issues. You know, from my experience with Jeff, he's going to say what he thinks in this. We've all seen it when he's issued masking orders and he's done these other things. So I know he's actively involved in those conversations now. And all I can tell you is I'm not in those conversations, but I can tell you the world's changing because I just heard that Denver made the decision to go online and delay their start date. I think Jefferson County has indicated they're evaluating that. So I think there's a lot of flux right now, not only in Colorado, but nationally in terms of how schools are looking at it. But as soon as I hear something that I can verify, I will let you all know, we're obviously going to be very interested in the same conversation that occurs tomorrow that you all are in. But as I stated earlier, we're not just going to watch it for St. Wright Valley. We're going to watch it for Boulder Valley and all the other school districts where we have staff members with kids because it may be an interesting first month or so in terms of how we figure out our operational plan if we have different plans in different areas. Speaking of that and sort of if I can, if there's not any other questions on this, the one thing I did want to talk to council about is, so when we look at safer at home and we look at protect our neighbor, the governor has delayed the consideration of any request to move into the protect our neighbor phase, which for a couple of weeks, which we know that's now going to put us into the month of August, we know the case growth numbers that we have to look at in all the parameters. And so we know the month of August is probably highly unlikely based on what we're seeing that will move into protect our neighbor, which means we're still in safer at home. And even when you move into that world of protect our neighbor, this is really a conversation about how we approach council meetings in August. And so I wanted to touch base with you all on this. We have run different scenarios as we look at it. If you get a chance, they're finishing up with the room. The challenge is the social distancing. You know, if you can't do that, or if it's close, then you're wearing face masks and how you hear and those types of issues. You then have to run a space calculator on the room to see how many people can fit in it. And then you have the broader issue of people that are in the high risk population based on the caseloads. And so at this point, at least as I've talked about it with my staff, we really think we probably would be best in August to stay in this zoom environment based on everything that we're seeing and what we're doing. So that would be my recommendation. I just wanted to get council's feedback on that or answer any questions I could on it. And that's just a pure look at the world of the data where we are in the process. Councilmember Christensen. I am so eager to get back in council chambers. But you know, I don't see how we can use the council the way it is the setup that it is. We would have to do a huge amount of work again to try to set it up to be enough social distancing, enough distance, physical distance between us. I can't imagine how to do that. And then we would have room for only maybe half the people that it would normally fit. So rather than go back to that and have some interim that is just also extremely frustrating, I agree with you that it's probably a safer thing for everybody. Plus we have people on council. I mean, I'm 70. We have people who are at who are more vulnerable, people who have immune problems and things like that. So you know, I understand. And I think the town will understand too. I'm sorry about it. But I don't think we should. We've already done the kind of thing at the library, which was an enormous stress and a lot of trouble for staff to set up and tear down every single week. I don't want staff having to do that all over again with the chambers and measuring out things and trying to monitor people so they don't, you know, get too close to each other. I think, you know, we should probably just keep doing Zoom for a while until we can actually reasonably get back to chambers. But that really irritates me. But, you know, that's life. And part of the reason why I wanted to bring this up, some councils are meeting. I don't think anyone in Boulder County is meeting. And so, you know, it's a difficult question. I've talked to folks about a hybrid model of Zoom and people coming in. Technically, that's a nightmare. It's what I've heard from even our staff. So that's why I wanted to bring this conversation point up to you all. Council Member Peck. Thank you, Mayor Prottam. I agree that we should stay virtual. And I have to hand it to Susan and your staff that I think we've got a pretty good handle on how to work this now. And I think it would be the wrong message if we're at a safe at home, stay at home, through the governor, but we don't do that. So I'm all for doing the virtual until the governor lifts that protocol. Council Member Waters. I would just say ditto. And I do think the message to the point that Council Member Peck was making that we ought not to say one thing and do another. We ought to set an example. And I think until we're willing to encourage others to reconvene in face to face in real time, that this format works as well or works well enough for us to do the people's business and is one that protects health and safety, not just of us, but others who would show up in the Council Chamber. So I think that's the right Harold. Do you need a motion or? No, I was just that was my recommendation. I just wanted to know this can be a difficult conversation and wanted to get your feedback and what we can just continue in this. I think what I'm going to do is look at it on a month to month basis. If we move into protect our neighbor, then that may be a trigger point where we bring it back to you based on moving into that phase. But again, there's other considerations that we're always having to we all have to look at that as an individual in our own situation as well. So those are all things we have to manage. Yeah, I just say real quick that until we can resume in-person meetings with absolute confidence that we can do it safely, I think it's just prudent to continue to meet virtually per se. I believe I saw Councilman, a bunch of hands went up. Councilmember Hedoggo-Fairing. You know, I'm just going to agree with what everyone else has said. I think as long as we are under safer at home, we really need to be continuing with the virtual and we can read, you know, have the conversation again once we move to protect our neighbor face. Okay, and that's sort of a transition into the new order. So the state order in terms of masking. So we have two orders in play for us. One, you have the state order for masking indoors. Eugene and his folks are working with the county to try to get some answers because there's a change in there for us. So we were under the county order that said you needed to wear a mask if you couldn't adequately social distance six feet apart. This says we need to wear it unless you're in your office. So we're trying to get some nuances in what that means because the example I will use when Sandy and I, we do my WebEx with the organization, we do those weekly where we open it up for any, our organization to talk to me. We're six feet apart. And we were in that environment. That order may have changed that. So now when we were watching that, at least for the last few days, we've been all wearing our mask, which has almost pushed us back into the team's environment because it's easier to communicate. And if you have my hearing, good luck. So they're trying to distill that piece of the order and they're working with the county. And it's really the county doing the work, but and asking questions of the state, but we're trying to get more clarity in terms of what that means to us and how we do it. But there is a question of, so how is this going to work? And just so you all know what we've been informed in subject to change is that if individuals have concerns about businesses or facilities, those calls will continue to go into Boulder County Health through the process that we've utilized on the business side. They then will engage with jurisdictions if they need our support to deal with those issues. But the difference is it really is up to me, our building managers to ensure that we're complying with the order in our facilities, just like it is in other locations. And if there's a problem, that goes into Boulder County Health. And then we and then we move forward on this. All that being said, we're still really trying to manage those that are working remotely. Because we are trying to do what the governor has asked us to do in terms of maintaining the 50%. It's becoming harder as we open different components up, but we're still really engaged in that remote work to the best of our ability. And so we are just adjusting things slightly as an organization as we move into these other phases. So still trying to understand as we get more information, as Eugene can brief us on this, we will then hopefully be able to provide you with more. And I know the county's trying to do that as well. Councilmember Martin, Heather? Yeah, I wanted to ask when we do move back into chambers, are the distances between the different seats on the council dais and also the seats, are they the same or as they were before or have they been moved farther apart? Sandy, you know the details on that one. That was your project. Councilmember Martin, Sandy Cedar Assistant City Manager, it's about the same. There's a little tiny physical barrier between council members before, and that's not there. It's one big kind of long dais table. And I measured out today, I just was there today. And it looks like it's about two feet, two and a half feet on each side for council members. So it's definitely not a six foot gap at this point. And when you look at the the seating area, so we've got permission to open the museum, but we had to run through the calculator in terms of how many people you could have. I think I've said this to you all, when we ran the calculator on the steward auditorium, seats 250 people, I believe the number that we actually came out with in that calculator was 50 based on that configuration. We've talked about having to go through then the same seating calculator in terms of the area where the public can sit, then that also includes where staff can sit. And then you have to look at that calculator in terms of the Civic Center and what that looks like in case you had more than that come in play. So the answer is a lot of details you have to go through in order to pull the trigger on some of these items. Council Member Peck. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Harold, this is a little bit off the topic, but it does go back to the school protocol a little bit. I had an email and I'm sure that it went to everybody on council, but it's basically a woman who has a therapeutic dance studio for physically and mentally disabled people. She's concerned about, I consider this because they have to enroll. And there are probably other scenarios that are kind of the same. And if you don't know the answer, I'm wondering if you would ask Jeff Zayak, how do we answer our constituents on this issue? Are we going to wait? For them, it's a health issue as well because they not only because of the virus, but because of their disabilities so that they need to continue this therapy. So when you have an answer from Jeff or from the school district, would you relay that so that any other enrollment type classes that are outside of a school district supervision, how do we answer that? So I think I got that email too and I replied, I don't know, but I want to facilitate a conversation with the health department. That's really an area where even we've had to do that with our own programs and get into some details. And so I want to facilitate that conversation. Great. And I would love for you to come back and let us know how we should help our residents. Thank you. Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. Harold, when you are getting, or as you guys are trying to figure out the city, the 50%, the spacing, governors, orders, and county and state recommendations, are you finding conflicting messages and guidelines? Yep. Okay. Yeah, because in the school, we're hearing what we hear is, okay, you need to be six feet social distance. And even as we were talking about our own areas in council chambers, two to three feet, so we're told that in the reopening of schools, we can have three to three feet spacing with desks. So that goes against what the CDC recommendations was with the six feet and what businesses are being told. So yeah, I don't feel we're in a good space to really look at reopening schools right now until these conflicts and inconsistencies are addressed and we get a clear message instead of guidelines. You know, I may ask Eugene to answer something. Eugene's part of some of the other conversations that I'm not part of. I may ask Eugene to jump in and speak to some of those issues, but are there conflicts? There are. I mean, we saw early on when they opened bookstores, but they said you couldn't open libraries. And we're trying to understand how can you open a bookstore but not a library. I mean, we're constantly moving through those situations. Eugene, do you have any added information? Eugene May, city attorney. I do. I mean, we're getting used to this after four months. So you know, I know schools is a very important issues. They issued the guidance yesterday. The pattern with the state is they issue this guidance and these public health orders, then they get feedback and then they, you know, we're up to the eighth amended safer at home. And so, you know, the cadence seems to be on these major orders that they tweak them through amendments every one to two weeks. And so, you know, I think that there's going to be a change of the masking order, for instance, because there's a lot of industry specific guidance about masking and in close proximity, you don't have to wear a mask. Yet this new public indoor spaces definition seems to indicate that you need to wear a mask all the time indoors. So I think it's an interim process and it's a hard call. I mean, it's a hard call for the state. I don't want to be in their shoes. And I think people are just starting to digest it now. You know, Boulder County Public Health has been awesome to work with. And I asked them four questions about the masking order yesterday and they're like, yep, those are our questions too. You know, I think we're in the clarification phase on the masking order and that came out last Thursday. So I think there is a clarification phase for the school guidance too. And people are just getting to it and looking at how to operationalize. I think the school order very much like protect our neighbors is pushing decision making down to the local level because counties are moving in different directions now. And the governor wants to give that flexibility to counties and school districts where, you know, if your numbers are good, you can do your reopening plan could look like this. If your numbers at county-wide look bad, then you have to have a different sort of protocol in place. And so, you know, it's very fast moving, you know, school openings a month away. They got this guidance out yesterday and people are figuring it out and getting feedback to the state. And, you know, I will give them credit and I'll give Boulder County Public Health more credit too because they hear our concerns. They have daily calls with CDPHE. If you have specific questions feed it into us, we are working very closely with the Boulder County Attorney's Office. You know, some of these bigger policy questions are above the attorneys pay grade. You know, they're the Jeff Sayak type CDPHE conversation. I mean, I did hear from Boulder County Public Health that the school conversations were held very closely to the vests. And now it has become public and now they're getting the feedback. So, you know, that's my experience after four months with these public health orders and it's shifting sands and, you know, we can't sit here today and, you know, I'm pretty sure it will change but that's the only thing that we're sure of is that these things just keep on moving and getting better because of feedback. And the state and the county have made clear on protector neighbors they want more local input because it's going to be locally driven. I think the same sort of strategy or philosophy would hold true with school guidance too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thanks. And now what I would say too is Jeff looks at the data and there's new data coming out right now and as a parent and as someone who is in this world, I'm also looking at well, what happened in Israel with the data there? You know, what's that saying? And even today, when I had a little bit of a break, there's other data sets coming out. So I think that's the other challenge. But what I can tell you that I think if Jeff didn't agree with something, I know he's told me when we've asked for different options and they said, no, we don't really think, I mean, he doesn't avoid that conversation. He's great to work with and we work through these issues but they've given good advice and been very clear with us too in terms of what we're doing. So that's good that he calls it like it is and he's more interested in giving out the facts and recommendations over what he thinks we want to hear and that's, I mean, that's going to be key. But again, like you said, we have several employees who have children in other districts. So while I appreciate that local control, what one district does or what one county does impacts the neighboring areas. So, you know, I just, I guess I'm having a hard time with, you know, I haven't been helping sift through 800 plus teacher surveys of what the concerns are. We've had teachers already put in for early retirement. People are afraid. And, you know, we need clarity, we need transparency and and we need, we need public input as well. So thanks. Yeah, just to give you a sense on the data, story came out 44 minutes ago about cases and infants in one county in Texas. And that's how fast this is changing and they're trying to keep up with it. They've got a tough job. They really do. But they've been great partners. Other than that, there are quarter shortages. We've been searching for quarters for our housing authority washing machines. And so it's just, it's just interesting how you run into these things of, you know, you're working these issues on testing. And then the next thing you know, we need to get quarters for the housing authority laundry areas. And, you know, you're just all over the place. I thought that would be a funny one to just kind of show, talk to you all about her. We chase everything from quarters to how do we go through testing. That's all I have. All right. Thank you, Harold. We're going to move on to study session items. Let's start with 6a, update on Longmont public media structure and governance. Hi, Mayor Pro Tem, Sandy Cedar again, Assistant City Manager. I would like to introduce Scott Converse from Longmont Public Media. I think General Executive Manager, he can, he can remind me of his title. But essentially this was a report that was supposed to come to you in March. During the first meeting where we decided that all special presentations and everything were going to be scrapped because we could only have 10 people in the room at the library. You may remember I was running in and out of the doors trying to not be the 10th person. So after much ado, I would like to introduce Scott Converse from Longmont Public Media. Go ahead. Hi, guys. Can you hear me okay? All right. General Manager, Longmont Public Media. And what we're going to do tonight is a six-month update on where we're at with Longmont Public Media and where we're headed. So could I get the first slide? So as I said, a six-month update. So we're going to just dive right in. As most of you know, we took over all the old broadcast equipment. On January 1st, we didn't have any training or any handoff whatsoever. Literally it was dropped in our lap and they said go and we went and everything worked. We got it all to work. We figured it out and we've been up since day one of January 1st. We have maintained and broadcast on channel 880 from January 1st to frankly today, not just January, July 1st, but to today with very, very few down times, basically planned down times that had to do with updates, having to do with adding new features to the software. And of course, since these servers run on Windows, you have to reboot them periodically and we time those to happen late at night, early in the morning. So there's no interruption in programming. We do broadcast live city council meetings, planning and zoning meetings, as well as school board meetings. Next slide. We also, as you may recall, provided an unplanned foreign unfunded remote city council broadcasting system for the library, which we did not know about until after we'd signed the contract and had to figure out a way to make that happen, which we did. We have begun the process of recording and transcribing and broadcasting all 17 of the boards and commissions and we had started going to the meetings and we had started doing the recordings and COVID hit. So right now what's going on is those meetings have largely been canceled. Some of them have started up again. Susan can tell you which ones are actually happening and they're all happening with Zoom. And what we're doing with those is Susan will record them, she uploads them to the LPM website. We then process them using our voice to text software to get the transcripts and we upload them to our website and we schedule them for playback on channel 880. We also transcribe all of the city council meetings, voice to text and that is also posted in publicly available on the LPM website. So if you go to like this meeting on Friday, the video will be up on our website and the full text of everything that you guys said will have been transcribed into a text file that you can search and read through. Next slide please. So these are some pictures of some of the stuff we do there. That's John Ellsworth in the top left corner there in front of a green screen. He does a weekly weather show just like you see with the maps and you know the weather lady you know showing the map and waving her arm around that's precisely what John does as well. John is a NASA rocket scientist during the day and has a full observatory in his backyard for fun and knows more about whether anybody ever met. He's one of the biggest weather nerds on the planet I think and he does just amazing stuff and he does it for fun. He's one of our members and he's been doing this for quite a while. He also wrote a weather article for the Longmont Observer and he also is doing the same thing for the Longmont Leader now. The next picture is most of our staff and one of our interns actually getting set up for one of your meetings right now. That's the control room over at LPM. The middle left that's Craig Stevens with Mike Butler and I think that's Glenda Jackson. I'll talk a little bit more about this in a little bit but that's a community conversations program we're starting up. You can see Mike Foot with Marsha there doing an interview. He was not very comfortable by the end of that interview. It was a kind of an interesting tough interview. You can see Tim Waters doing a backstory show down in the bottom left corner. The podcasting studio is in the bottom left, I'm sorry, bottom middle. So we have a podcasting studio. Anybody can come in and record podcasts. Eric Ozempa from the Longmont Community Foundation until we shut down the building during COVID had started using that to do his and we had a whole bunch of other people starting to do podcasts in that room. We also have a full-time radio station that plays those podcasts from our website 24-7. And if you look at the bottom right, that's the library setup. When you guys were over at the library doing your city council meetings from there during the beginning of the council build out, we designed a complete mobile broadcasting system that ran out of that space right there. So next slide please. As you know, we are trying to create a membership-based media makerspace. And it initially started faster than Tinkermill did. And I'm pretty sure you're all familiar with Tinkermill. It's something that I started with a bunch of other people here in town back in, I think, 2013-ish timeframe. And the first meeting we had at Tinkermill was six people. The first meeting we had for Longmont Public Media was about 15 people. And it grew pretty quickly by the time we had gotten to the end of February, we had 50 or 60 people on a weekly basis in our member meetings. And it was starting to really take off and then bam, COVID hit. We have opened the building up to the general public with free access to studios and to video editing software and hardware, as well as equipment like microphones and cameras and lights and like the podcasting studio we talked about. So all of that's available to the general public. That was initially available when we first opened and it shut down for, I think it was about three months that we shut down like everyone else, same time you guys did basically. And then we opened up again right now. I believe we're allowing five people in the building as members and you have to sign up through the website to come in. You can say, I'm going to be there from one to four o'clock or whatever you want. And that's available now currently to the general public as well as to our members, but we don't know how much longer that'll be. Same as you. Whether or not buildings stay open or not is to be determined based on how this pandemic goes. We also opened the ability for people to broadcast on the channel 880. Really, it's a much far and wider and a broader audience for the community to be able to take content and put it in. So we have a website form that you can fill out and you can upload your video directly to us and we will review it obviously, but in general anybody who wants to get their video up on channel 880 can very easily do it by literally filling out a form and uploading a file. Next slide please. One of the things the contract asked us to do is to create a website and we decided that we're going to make as comprehensive a one as we could. So we live stream channel 8 and 880 to our website at LongmontPublicMedia.org and we also live stream directly to YouTube 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you can if you want, if you have a smart TV, which most people do it and all of them have YouTube on it, you can do a search on Longmont Public Media YouTube and it will bring up the live stream for channel 8 on your smart TV. I have a fire TV on Amazon fire TV and I just go Longmont Public Media YouTube and it literally goes out finds it brings that up and starts playing it. So you don't even need Comcast to watch channel 8. You just need a smart TV and I would challenge you to buy a TV today that doesn't have a YouTube capability in it. So the reality is there's 19,000 Comcast customers out there but there's 100,000 people in Longmont and I'll bet you 60-70,000 of them have a smart TV. So we have we have good potential reach if we can get them to understand that we're here. We also have archives of all the videos that we create on our website so it's very easy to get to those videos. They are as soon as they're created we upload them to Vimeo which is our private backend system and we also upload them to YouTube as long as we have the correct rights for it and we make those available to anybody who wants them. If they are city videos, city council meetings or boards and commissions we also run them through a voice to text artificial intelligence program that pulls the text out of the voice and post a transcript with each of those videos on that website. We also have a live schedule of videos playing on channel 8 and we just got this thing working correctly with Comcast. We've had it running for a while on our website where every day we sometimes we will make changes in the middle of the day of the schedule. It's updates immediately on our website. Comcast we're not sure how often they pull from that. We finally got them to actually come and pull the scheduling from our systems about maybe three weeks ago four weeks ago and we're working on it literally weekly with them to try to get them to do it and they finally started. We think it's daily but sometimes it seems like it's weekly. If you go to channel 8 on Comcast the show that's playing probably matches the description but it may not and if it doesn't it's not because we didn't do it right it's because Comcast hasn't updated recently. We also as I said earlier we have a live internet radio station so if you go to the website and click on radio you'll be able to listen to hundreds of hours of podcasts that have been created in Longmont. So we have that live radio station and it's also recorded stuff so anytime you want to do a live radio show we can do that from the podcasting studio and we also take all the podcasts that are created and that people want to make available and we make those available on I guess you would call it LPM radio. So as I said earlier anyone in the community can connect and submit videos or you'll see that slide there that's a link that takes you straight to that form it's a very simple form 12 questions things like name address do you have rights to let us have this video if you were to rate this from a G to an X where would it be luckily we get mostly G's never gotten an X and we also allow makerspace members including free level members so you don't have to pay for any of this to reserve and schedule specific resources at LPM which includes a studio you know we have three studios currently four actually cameras equipment so anybody who wants to access what's happening at LPM and what's available at LPM can do it next slide please these are some screenshots of the current website so if you look in the bottom left corner that's that's what the page looks like for live TV you can of course full screen that and it will blow up to the full screen the video archives page is in the middle and an example of why schedule is on the right you can scroll through that and you can go forward and backward in time and generally we schedule for about a week out we schedule Friday mornings for the through to the following Sunday and generally try not to change that too much but we can if we have to like for instance if there is an emergency something happens the police department wants to put a bulletin of some sort of we can change those types of things so next slide please so this is an example of a bunch of the content that we create so a lot of it's local we really focus as much as we can on local but it's also important that we do the state and national whenever we can so we do city council planning and zoning boards and commissions the school district we are currently doing a live streaming show from the lawnmower museum every Thursday night at 730 we're called the lawnmower museum summer concert series and what we do is we show up there with a multi-camera setup we take a live feed from the band itself and we live stream the channel eight to the museum's facebook page to our youtube channel and we record that for later posterity and rebroadcast so we've been I think we've got done five shows so far and we have two or three more left to do this month I believe we're also doing a virtual concert with the lgda guys the downtown guys which I know that Sergio our president is working with Kimberley McGee on getting that worked out so we're gonna we're gonna be doing more of those things as well we are working with the Longmont leader which is kind of the replacement for the Longmont observer to develop a news show the Longmont public media is not a news entity we are not a news entity Brian if you were here I would say it to you we're not a news entity we are a platform for other people to create content including news entities like the Longmont leader anybody can do it if the Times call one or two they could or a new entity if they wanted to do it they could do it so working with the leader a local executive producer and the Longmont public media we're in essence developing a news show for Longmont that we're hoping will have high high high production values and will be very valuable to the community right now Longmont startup week you're all familiar with it's been running for a few few years now but because of COVID they were deciding whether or not to even have it and what they decided was to go live and to do it all online so right now Longmont startup week is happening on channel eight and on Longmont startup week's website and on our youtube channel so you can tune in during this week all long all week long from 9 a.m to about 4 p.m or 5 p.m depending on the day every hour there's a new presentation from somebody about some aspect of entrepreneurial activity how to do startups how to create businesses how to run your businesses so there's this big long thing happening this week that's really being enabled by the Longmont startup week people and by the technology behind what LPM is doing and those those also each of those shows are individual titled and will be used in the future for rebroadcast so it's a great way of creating content that's Longmont specific and focused on entrepreneurship and starting businesses we have a show called the Savvy entrepreneur which is a local entrepreneur who interviews entrepreneurs he his latest show actually was with Brad Feld Brad Feld is a billionaire venture capitalist out of Boulder who is kind of world famous for for funding smaller startups you know earlier stage startups and he actually lives in the Longmont zip code and is aware of what we're doing so I did ask him for money at one point but I haven't heard back so we'll see whether he wants to sponsor we're working with a league of women voters we did the county commissioner debates we're going to be doing more debates with the league as the election gets closer we do a broadcast Longmont exercise classes every morning as well as Longmont story time every morning which is stuff put on by the local library by the by the public library here they do readings and we take those and broadcast those about the time kids get up so the parents can well you know how that works so we also have a weekly weather show which I touched base on before with John but he also does a show called the sky over Longmont where he does a monthly show on the stars above Longmont on that given month so in July this is what the stars look like how they're aligned and what you can see and what you should be looking for that's cool and he goes through and shows star charts and shows you how to find those things with your telescope and that is done every month we play that at least weekly we do do some political stuff but not us it's other people's stuff we're just the platform like capital conversations Marsha Martin who I believe is sitting there with you does interviews of state level lawmakers as well as local and county lawmakers when when the state legislature is in session also the backstory started as a podcast during the Longmont observer days with Tim Waters and has turned into a television show and is being worked out now what that's going to look like in the the months ahead also a show called voices and visions which is discussion about people's hopes and dreams the first season of voices and visions was Tim Waters talking with about 70 or 75 people Tim correct me if I'm wrong in Longmont about their feelings about where their lives are at with COVID you know with three questions which came up with some really interesting trends that he had found and you'll hear more about that in the future we do a show with Shaquille DeLau called values which is being produced into a live call-in show we're figuring out the technology for how to do that now we're just starting a kind of a really unique thing community conversations this is the Longmont Chamber of Commerce along with the Longmont leader and Longmont public media all together working together to create a show about conversations that are important to the community and you would not expect the chamber to be involved with these kinds of things but they are very socially conscious about how these kinds of subjects affect local businesses so that was very interesting the Longmont leader is obviously interested in any kind of local news and information and helping to promote that our job is to create the platform for that so our first show was with Mike Butler and you saw a picture of it earlier Mike Butler and Glenda Jackson talking about restorative justice and the chamber helped to run that Scott was one of the moderators and one of the chamber members I forgive me I can't remember her name right now as well as Macy May from the the Longmont leader moderated that show it's up on channel eight and you can also see it on YouTube and on the Longmont public media website we are currently working with the Longmont Symphony as you know you guys have just talked about this how do you have how do you meet how do you end up in a community space and do things like a concert a symphony concert with 1500 members which is what they've got and 60 or 70 people on stage that sit right next to each other so what we're doing right now is we're working with the symphony to figure out how they can take their next season starting in October it's about eight shows up to 12 take that virtual and to create a version of the symphony we don't know what that's going to look like yet we're working with Kay and with the conductor to figure out what what that all looks like and how it could be recorded and how it could be made available to their memberships as well as to the general public and we're also working with them and with Elliot the director to do a show where he interviews musicians and he talks about music kind of alternate every other show he'll switch between those two things and that'll be a 30 minute show that he starts I believe that that's going to be in the next few weeks that's in process now the production is just getting started on it so we have talked to the senior video club these are the guys that used to work with the old holder of the contract and they were not very happy with us when we won this contract and we're not very interested in talking to us but about three or four months in they decided to give us some videos which are quite good and we played those and we have not heard from them since primarily because we think of COVID but we're hoping to get that restarted where you've got this group of about 25 really expert video makers in town that are very familiar with Longmont we hope to get them more plugged in the hippie report you see here I put it here because this is public access TV and this is a very good example of public access TV and that's all I'm going to say about it strongmont downtown I just saw a note from Kimberly McGee thanking us thank you Kimberly if you're watching or if you hear this later I did not ask for that I was very surprised to see it and I really appreciate it where we did 40 I think it's 45 42 or 45 videos 30 second videos about Longmont businesses downtown with their owners and what their business is and the fact that they're open for business and we are showing those videos on channel 8 and 880 between every show for all the entire month of July and those are also given to LDDA and to the business owners to use as they see fit so they'll use them on Facebook for ads you know on Twitter accounts you know 30 second commercial you can put just about anywhere and it's really a quick little promo about the fact that they're there and it's you know everybody seems to really like them so did that we also are doing some stuff at the state level like Colorado Connections which is a statewide show that is put together out of Denver the latest show is you should check it out it is a fairly long discussion with Governor Polis about COVID and how it's affecting Colorado and where he wants to take it and it's fairly recent I think about a week week old but as Eugene was saying who knows everything changes so fast in that area we also have live from Red Rocks shows although those are not obviously current they're having shows at Red Rocks but we have shows like that that we play part of our content we have about a hundred hours of Colorado Parks and Wildlife video everything from information about parks about art shows and community a lot of outside stuff hunting fishing all the different things that are going on in Colorado there's a ton of content from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife and they have a professional video production house that is in-house with them it makes some great stuff and we play that pretty regularly same thing with the Denver Zoo lots of Denver Zoo videos some of them are kind of corny some of them are really good but they're all worth watching we also have a national news show Democracy Now which is kind of kind of like PBS a little farther to left but it is a daily news show Monday through Friday and we play it every day from 11 a.m. to noon and from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and we have a show called the Folklorist which is an Emmy award-winning show it was produced for a public access station back on the east coast it it's about I think three seasons or four seasons worth of shows and it's basically stories about America and all the way from the beginning of America up to today and all these interesting things that have happened and as I said they won several Emmys with it and it's really quite interesting and we also have about 50 or so hours of National Science Foundation shows which talks about the kinds of cool science and STEM and things that are going on in America and things that they fund as well as the things that they see happening in universities and schools and in business so a great show about technology in general there's also other shows that we're working on but this gives you a kind of a depth and breadth idea of the kind of stuff that we do next slide please so as you know we did attract the Longmont leader I believe and again another another note that went out to City Council from Mandy Jenkins I want to thank Mandy if you're watching we did not ask her for this she just sent this to you guys saying effectively what I say here which is it is a local experimental newsroom they're trying to figure out a way to create sustainable local news in communities around the country they started in Youngstown Ohio last year in October I believe they opened their first newsroom there and Longmont is where they open their second one they're funded by Google and they're run by McClatchy the second largest newspaper company in the United States and they're looking for a third one now but they haven't picked it these newsrooms were specifically designed to be different than a standard newsroom they are designed to work with the community and what they've told us is one of the reasons they picked Longmont was because Longmont public media was there and they would be able to partner with us in terms of using the space because we're a bankers a maker space and that we have corporate membership so a corporation can pay a hundred bucks a month and use the building for meetings use the studios and equipment to create media and these guys are uh there are news entities so they they need media they don't do a lot with video but they want to learn so perfect fit for them there and they are going to also next bullet is work with us to create a new show as I said so that's in development right now and again we don't do news but we're happy to create the platforms for other people to do it and this is a perfect example of that happening so we also provide videography services to the city we are contracted for up to 20 hours per week and we meet every Monday at 11 a.m with Marika Unger and her communications team in a production meeting to go over priorities for the city so if things like public service announcements or an example would be the the police tribute to fallen officers done a month or two ago um these the live um uh lawmont museum uh concerts that we're doing right now are good are all good examples of the kind of video that we can do we even do things inside of the city if you've got a meeting that sandys for instance giving to a bunch of employees that they want to have other employees see we will come and record those and make that available so you can make it more widely available to all employees stuff like that we also have been consulting on the city um for the council city council chamber rebuild primarily the av stuff i don't i'm not going to promise anything but i'm hoping that we addressed many of the issues around the system the um mic system and that it will work better the video has been reworked uh to be easier to operate and get better views of you guys and i don't know if you've seen the chamber yet but it's really quite beautiful they did a wonderful job there um we also have um done something that's directly affects you guys as you know we said we were going to start a board an advisory board uh and we had started that in february and we were just reaching out to the community and getting people plugged in and starting to figure out who we wanted to be on this board and covid hit um so we are starting that up again and are going to have our first meeting uh before the end of august and um well we'll talk more about that in just a sec and how that affects the city council we do want one of you to be on that advisory board and we are doing all of this right now for four hundred and twenty four dollars and sixty five cents a day which works out to seventeen dollars and sixty nine cents an hour that's a little bit more than you pay a uh minimum wage for a city employee and that's because we run twenty four seven and that's what you pay us to run this thing so i'd say you're getting a pretty good deal at least that's uh how it looks to us um we're doing the best we can with not a whole lot uh and because the me the media maker space kind of didn't happen we were hoping to have a lot more help but we're doing we're doing okay next slide please so these are some numbers we um started from zero uh as you know the longmontchannel.org was the old uh contract holders website that they'd run for 20 years um and they would not forward that to us or give us any access to it whatsoever uh by what we can tell it's effectively shut down which was a shame because people knew it was there so we started from zero uh with longmontpublicmedia.org we broadcast 24 hours a day seven days a week on channel eight eight eighty as well as on our website as well as on youtube uh and as well as on uh what's called t-vision t-mobile's comcast competitor so we actually send it out to four channels 24 seven currently we do as we've talked about do separate live streams um like to youtube and to facebook things like the summer concert series a bunch of other stuff in in the works we have on-demand versions of every video we've made and an important note about these numbers is that um comcast and t-vision are not in these numbers comcast will not tell us who's watching um and we we work on a regular basis to try get them to they just flat out won't do it their answer is hey it's not in our contract with the city we don't have to so you know toss off and they just won't give it to us so if you take a look at these numbers um the page views these are cumulative we've had about 21 000 page views over the last six months we've had about 7 000 people actually interact with the website and about 5 000 unique ip addresses interacting with our website and if you look down below in terms of social media this is actually how we tend to reach people our videos are up on social media on facebook and twitter and youtube we've read had about 100 000 people look at um our content and we've had about 50 000 people in longmont unique ip's in longmont look at our content on social media so we are getting out there um i would like to get a lot farther out there and i'd like to get a lot more people to understand that we have a website and that all of that's there but that takes time we've been around six months next slide please so challenges and risks um as you know COVID-19 has kind of stopped everything in its tracks uh maker spaces um our uh and co-working spaces have pretty much had their business model ripped out from under them people don't want to congregate in spaces so uh give an example tinker mill had 800 members uh at one point it's down to about 600 now that not that's not all COVID related but a big chunk of it was COVID related that has since leveled out and is starting to climb back up again but it really was a hit and we never had that luxury of having a large user base in place already we started at zero and we had just started to take off and COVID hit and that just it just knocked us dead and the problem with that is that was our plan for replacing the revenue that um was that's slowly dropping off and now more quickly dropping off from the franchise fees that pay for uh public media so without having a maker space uh membership base to help fund what we're doing it means that we are not able to do as much as we had hoped we would be able to do which takes us to franchise fees as you know we're allocated 25 percent of the franchise fees that come into the city and these are the fees that it's about a four and a half percent five percent fee on video services not internet or phone that Comcast provides only video and um Q1 Comcast lost 400,000 uh video subscribers nationally this is the largest single quarterly drop they've ever had and that was pre-pandemic and as you know in the pandemic people lost their jobs they um are worried about about having enough money to pay rent and a lot of people to pay food so we're expecting to see a even more severe drop uh in that in Q2 and on so that will directly impact the franchise fees used to pay for long long public media and other public media types of things and because the next last bullet is we have less community content than we planned on because we don't have a maker space the maker space the plan was to have the maker space and all those people with all their great ideas and all of their energy and enthusiasm uh to create these shows isn't there so we haven't been able to make as many long specific long-long focus shows as we would like to uh we will again but right now it's really hard to do without the maker space without the members in the community in the space it's difficult to do next slide so what we would like to ask from you are a couple things one is um we'd like to ask that you name somebody from the council to be on our advisory board um and that's obviously and we're not asking for that tonight uh but if you can decide who you'd like to represent the city on this board um we will invite them as soon as you tell us uh sometime between now and the end of august probably mid august is when the meeting will be somewhere in that time frame uh so if you'll let us know if one of you want to be on that board there's a seat waiting for you and the second question is considering all that I've just told you we'd like you to uh think about the potential of changing the deliverables for 2021 uh to line up with what we believe is going to be a fairly significantly decreased contract payment uh for this contract primarily because of the franchise fees dropping off and the lack of being able to build up a maker space uh that covid is the situation that we've been put in with covid so and that pretty much sums that up any questions councilmember christensen um well i'll be happy to volunteer just as I did for the cable trust board and um so um so I have a number of questions I I think this is a an excellent presentation you laid out a number of um problems that you have but nevertheless I think this is an incredible uh pile of work I don't know there's a way to put it uh a huge organize that slightly more pile yeah but a huge variety and um a huge leap forward in modernization and potential for um uh a lot of cross collaboration between the library between Longmont observer which is not the Longmont observer anymore it's Longmont leader um the museum I mean it and the fact that you're videotaping or well you were videotaping and now you're using zoom meetings all the plant I mean it's just an amazing amount of variety that you have done and added to this city and I I'm very grateful to you because this is this modernization is exactly what we needed and much as I'm fond of the cable guys and I am I they're nice guys but we really needed to take a fresh look at everything and move into this century and that really wasn't happening fast enough or maybe at all but um so I I'm very grateful to you and I I think we do need to discuss uh and you've also done this during COVID which is like a totally impossible situation for everybody but you've been enormously flexible and being able to reuse the work on the meetings at the library switch from um videotaping everything to doing zoom meetings to having translations or transcriptions rather all these things are really going to be very helpful in the Longmont to this city and so I I thank you for doing that um I do think we need to figure out some way to be more helpful because cable isn't Comcast in my point of view and I think most other people's point of view is not going to start adding people back again it's yeah so we know that and the makerspace will come back and I think we'll get more people content we need to advertise this more vigorously so that people know the difference between I don't think a lot of people understand the difference between a makerspace member and uh just a member of the public any member of the public can come speak because that's why or come produce work and that's why it's called Longmont public media and that's a very old tradition in well old enough tradition in in the United States and a very very good tradition but people also can get extra perks and extra access with makerspace and have more opportunities but if people understood that they anybody can do this anybody can come and produce content and have it aired it has to be worthwhile but you know there's a lot of latitude not always but yeah doesn't it well sometimes you have to put up with people you know some things should probably not be put up but they are part of the public voice yeah that's right and that's a good thing that's what public media is it's like um so I do think we need to have a discussion about what we can do to be helpful to keep this going because you guys have really been working at a huge disadvantage I mean everybody right now is working at a huge disadvantage but you've nevertheless produced a whole lot of stuff that's good for this town so I would like us to discuss in the future pretty soon uh some way that we can be helpful to you so that's all I have to say except we already did discuss this about you know who we were going to have for the cable trust and Councilwoman Peck and I were interested and then that got eliminated and so I'm still interested thank you guys uh Sandy I was just wondering this would be stuff that would generally come up when the contract is up for renewal is that correct actually Mayor Pro Tem I believe that Scott is asking for that advisory board member anytime not necessarily as part of the contract and we are not planning to bring you back that decision about the contract tonight tonight was really a presentation from Scott I did send you all survey results from our public engagement that Councilmember Peck asked for when we did sign the contract and so our intention is to bring it back in a month or so but if you had some specific direction you'd like for us to pursue tonight that would be that would be great to hear otherwise we'll work with Laumont Public Media and bring you back a contract later in the year uh Councilmember Waters I think um I think when we weigh in not when there's a contract negotiation we would weigh in I think this is what Councilmember Christensen was suggesting as we build budgets the the the source of funding we know of the camp the cable franchise fees based on Scott's presentation and we talked about this a year ago yet that continues to decline and if we're going to maintain the 25 percent of a total franchise fees then that revenue stream is going to decline so in his presentation it was it was to renegotiate deliverables and I'm not certain that we want to do that in this setting but I would be curious if if we don't do anything in terms of budgeting and revenues cable franchise fees decline if Scott's prepared to talk about what deliverables from his perspective would drop off so we would we would have an idea about that when it comes to our review of budget proposals and um and at some point in that context as well if there were if what you would buy for additional levels of or commitments of funding at x would would result in some package of deliverables uh beyond what we've seen this year uh which is pretty ambitious but but I do think it's a it's a budgeting question first and then it's a renegotiation of deliverables if if there isn't going to be additional consideration or what we would get if there is so to the degree that that's a question Scott you could respond to and I know I think the negotiation of deliverables also is going to be between Sandy and Scott that's not for us to do but to have an idea of what we give up if if there's no if there's not another budget dollar committed to it other than 25 percent of franchise fees or what we get if we wanted to make a bigger investment well I'm not really prepared to say what we would cut right now um but I can say that as this drops the we actually have hit pretty much all of our deliverables so far I mean it's surprising to me that we I mean if you look at the list of stuff the things that we couldn't do for instance we're high school sports because no high school sports right so you know things like that um we haven't done as much um arts and entertainment stuff but we've done you know a fair amount um and we have a bunch in the works so the reality is there pretty much you could make the argument that we are kind of hitting most of our deliverables even though we are working without effectively the volunteer staff we assume would be there um that said there's no way that that's right now we've got five people we've got Sergio Angelos who's our business development guy we've got Craig Stevens who's our executive producer Devin Hendorf who is the maker space manager as well as a producer videographer and myself and that's it and we are doing pretty much all of the work right now um Tim is doing a show Shaquille's doing a show the you know there's a series of people that are working on stuff and we help them um but I'm not sure that right now we're all working for about minimum wage including myself um and I'm talking city minimum wage so between $15 and $17 an hour is what we what the five of us make in that area and that's because we love what we're doing but I can tell you that that's not sustainable long term that's a bunch of people who said we love this we want it to happen and we're willing to give it a year to see what we can do um I'm gonna probably by the end of the year have to lower the number of people that are in this organization you also can't have somebody like me um and pay pay them because I'm not gonna be I'm an old guy I'm not gonna be around that long um you're gonna have to find somebody to run this thing and you're gonna have to pay them enough to you know to be able to live on I mean I can live on very little because I own my house and I own my car and all that stuff so but that's not true with most people so I would say that you would probably see things like the boards and commissions drop off um you would see less shows you'd see um not as much access to the space because we wouldn't be able to keep it clean we wouldn't be able to monitor it like we we would need to so it would probably drop down into two or three people that were working there because we're headed towards the you know this when we when we first came in we said it's 185 thousand dollars to do all this and you guys came back with well well what can you do for 165 thousand dollars we said no we can do most of it you know pretty much all of it we just will have to work hard and we signed the contract and then we got a notice from the city saying well actually it's a hundred and fifty five thousand dollars and that is dependent on whatever we get from Comcast whatever the city gets from Comcast so I don't even know if it's going to be that by the end of the year it could be 140 thousand we don't know we don't really don't really know because we don't know what's happening with Comcast so you can expect less and you can expect to look more like the old channel 8 if you don't do anything that's where you're that's where eventually it'll head um if you were to give a larger percentage and I I've made this argument before and Sandy please forgive me I'm I know you don't like this argument but um the idea behind the franchise fees when they first were created was to fund public act a platform for public access television and for the community and the people in the community to have a place to have a voice it was a platform for community voice and the full amount of the franchise fee was intended for this kind of thing what happened was they didn't put enough in the law to say that it must be that way and cities started going oh we can take because it was big money in New York it was hundreds of millions of dollars in franchise fees and they were you don't need that much money to do public access which at the time was true we'll take this much of it and use it on other stuff for the city that's good and there was a time when that made sense because there was a lot of that franchise fee money but now that these numbers are dropping it's getting to the point where the the actual intent of what that fee was for is not being starved out of existence we are the only city outside of Aspen in Colorado that has a separate public access tv entity every other city in the state has taken it in into the city itself as a video group and generally spends more money than substantially more money than what you're spending on us the city of Fort Collins for instance has five employees being making city of Fort Collins wages and all the equipment and stuff that goes with that they're looking at about four to five hundred thousand dollars a year is what they spend on video stuff for the same actually quite a bit less than what you're getting from us right now if you look at it which we did so so some of the things you could expect from us if you if you were to add more would be more original programming we would be able to add more people to make more original programming available things like documentaries on Longmont which I would love to do a big and important one is something I touched on is staff retention being able to you know fair market pay at least you know close to it channel expansion as you know we have four channels actually we have channel eight and 880 which we basically send the same signal to but we could send two different signals to it and have two two channels there and also channel 14 which is educational and channel 16 which is government currently channel 14 is a guy named George Driso I'm sorry George Bascos who runs K good radio he has a little computer down in his office and he plays he plays pictures of birds that's what's on channel 14 and we have no control over it he controls that system channel 16 is run by a similar system at the city of Longmont it's a it's a fiber cable channel from the city the Civic Center to the Comcast head end and a woman there puts up those cards that you see in the TVs around the Civic Center you know like jobs postings you know different types of stuff that's going on in Longmont both of those channels could be full-blown TV channels you know like a full-blown government channel where we put the city council meetings and we play them all you know 24 7 and along with all the boards and commissions so you got a place where real government transparency and information lives we could take channel 14 and I have offered this to the st. ring valley school district to have their own channel they have a television studio at the innovation center a full-blown green screen you know 800 square foot television studio that cost probably 250 300 thousand dollars to build it's amazing they could easily run a cable channel with tons of content they create tons of video now they just keep it all inside so things like that we could work with different organizations to make those things happen and really make the media landscape in Longmont rich far richer than anything but bolder any of the guys around us doing I know you guys have been talking about attracting businesses you want to attract business make your media landscape rich make it so that we can go out and we can take entertainment venues and put them on tv and put them on the internet to get more people to realize what's going on in Longmont media is the key to this stuff and this it's dying local media is dying so if you don't invest in it it'll be dead we will be dead in two years maybe three we'll be gone pardon sorry i'm just trying to uh sandy's had her hand up oh sorry should i be quiet thank you more of mayor pro tem uh sandy cedar assistant city manager i i just want to clarify a couple things that scott said so one franchise fees are actually created because of the right of way that cable companies at the time used of city right away so they paid us for that right away because it is actually public land and that's what creates franchise fees that's why they are created they weren't created for public access um although they're used often for public access as scott has mentioned there is a secondary source which is called a peg fee public education on government channel fee which can be used for equipment that's a hundred percent um given to Longmont public media in this particular case because it's that is the section that is completely dedicated towards public access so i just wanted to clear that up a little bit the other piece of it is that our franchise fee as a whole is one of the revenues that we use in order to provide all kinds of city services so everything from your public safety officers to librarians to um other folks in the general fund and so when scott and i have talked about this i know he has talked about could we have more of the franchise fee but as you all know we're not exactly in the best budget situation this year so my suggestion was that we work through the contract instead so um at the same time if y'all wanted to do you know some different way of looking at it you know we could certainly talk about it but i wanted to just point out that the franchise fees actually are for the use of the right of way and that peg fees are used for public access of which by my public media gets a hundred percent of one one note on the peg fees is that they are for things not people it's for capital only we can't pay people with them yes that's exactly right which is i think why in law month's case we do have a portion of the franchise fee as part of our financial policies going towards cable access because you're right the peg fee can go towards the stuff but not the people it's a capital a capital fee basically so so just to quickly run through the last of it um we would use money additional money for licensing of music programming we would use it for remote studios we've talked to justin about putting cameras up in the law month museum like you guys have in the city council chambers and we could very easily do and we could do the same thing at the library and make it so we have remote studios in different city facilities and other facilities if you thought it was interesting would not cost that much but it would you know cost some money and it would give a huge advantage we would also do more community outreach and inclusion more marketing more engaging of groups and we would work a lot closer than we already are with the city communications folks with bulletins and doing videos and augmenting city communications so there's a whole bunch of areas that we could do more if we had more budget but to sandy's point i totally get it um you and i are gonna have to agree to disagree on this point though because i did do the research into the laws and the intent 40 years ago was what i described you're absolutely right that what happens today is that it is set up as a contract based on access like you said so cast member barton i was uh forgot i had my hand up um i actually just wanted to um give kind of a shout out to the members who have hung on um the level of enthusiasm and creativity in the small group who calls into the member meeting every week is just amazing um the people who are working uh for long month public media started out as members and fell in love and their enthusiasm is amazing um you know i might ask for some technical support and get an offer of help and i'll say no no no you know you you work for lpm and i've gotten the answer well i'm a member too i want to help you so um i still say no because i want lpm to come first but it's just an amazing you know amazing amount of loyalty among the core employees and volunteers and i just think that that that needs to be um noted and honored um i'm tremendously grateful for it and i enjoy uh honestly being part of it even though um i don't produce nearly amount the amount of content that uh for example uh dr waters or shekel um or or uh john the weatherman does um they're amazing how they get so much produced um but uh i do want to note that that meeting that weekly meeting which is on Wednesday night and you can find it from the website is a public meeting so anybody at all who's curious to learn more can drop in um the zoom link is on the website don't all drop in at once because i don't know there's some zoom limitation you know but uh if anybody's scott wants to say something scott's muted i just said it's a hundred people you could have up to a hundred people so please do come so councilmember peck i just wanted to thank scott and uh sandi and i'm looking forward to sandi bringing back this information during our budget process so whatever you you put your heads together what you need and until then i can't wait to hear what you have to bring back to us so thank you thank you councilmember christensen scott i think it would be useful for you to explain the relationship between mclatchy and which apparently just went through around apparently actually just went through bankruptcy and um was sold 100 after 163 years to chatham assets um and google and the observer and long month public media and um also what efforts have uh i i've realized you guys are small staff but what efforts you've made to trying to get grants for um for this entity uh you know for a long month public media can you hear me now there we go um so mclatchy as you said was purchased by hedge fund uh the good news is it wasn't the bad hedge fund the bad hedge fund that owns uh like the times call on the denver post and then is known for ripping out the hearts of local media uh bid on this but lost um so that's the good news this is a hedge fund that actually does give a does care about news so mclatchy is intact uh it is um still a healthy company from the perspective of having funding now from the hedge fund they are still operating all of their newspapers i believe it's 37 newspapers some of them you know many of them are major Pulitzer prize-winning entities um the uh Mandy Jenkins who runs this for the uh mclatchy folks uh is in New York City and she is been in she's uh i think in her early 40s and she's been doing this and she was in high school she's been doing local news so she's extremely well um versed in how to do this macy may ran the long month observer for us uh and she now is running the long month leader along with a staff of four people two or three reporters and a business development person and another editor reporter so um that entity is its own standalone entity the the mclatchy entity the long month leader google funds it uh to the tune of i believe i don't know these numbers for sure but i'm guessing around a quarter million dollars a year for the next two years and uh their goal is to at the end of that two years figure out do you shut this down or do we have a sustainable model and they're trying all kinds of different things um their relationship with us is purely a makerspace relationship just as if if you were a member at tinker mill this would be it's the exact same relationship as you as a member at tinker mill would have there is no tie to us other than they pay us a hundred bucks a month to be a member they have access to the building access to the tools and they can ask staff questions you know how to run things we have nothing to do with their contents we have nothing to do with anything that they produce they do all of that the long month observer is actually what owns long month public media it is a 501c3 corporation that myself macy may and sir joe angelis are the are the officers of and then we have three more four more people that are on the board that's all going to change here in the next month or two uh we are going to change long month observer to long month public media and change the mission from creating unbiased local news to creating local public media so the mission will change the entity will change the name will change uh long month public a long month observer goes away uh completely so they're the relationship there is there isn't one for the long month observer so what was the fourth one there was one other piece i i see you see why it's confusing to most people they don't yeah they don't get that um but the other pieces uh whatever it's have has long month public media made to find grants uh and things like that i know grants are hard they are forever to write them it takes it it's hard to get them but they're important they're really important and we have so sir joe um was our cto and now he is our business development guy and because of his work with ledp and the innovate uh project um he is very well versed in talking to different organizations and he is point on grants with us we have a grant committee which is made up of a guy named anthony main who is on our board and has written in one grants before she killed all who you've heard from um uh Sergio drives that run thomas from tinker mill is part of that he's also a member at long month public media and we are talking to ron about doing stuff with tinker mill uh to create joint grants right now we think we have a better chance of getting grants if we're doing particularly education and how to and uh grants that are much easier to explain to to um to uh foundations and have a distinct specific thing they get at the end because that's what they really want uh so we've when you talk about public media it can be kind of ethereal you know and unless you can show something very specific so we're going to start with stuff we really know which is tinker mill and what tinker mill can do and it's got you know hundreds of people who know how to do all kinds of amazing things and long month public media which knows how to produce that stuff and together we're going to find a series of potential donors and start that process actually started that process about three weeks ago to really dig into it so i'm hoping to see some results in the next few months we also are working with the community found the boulder community foundation um boulder county community foundation uh having those discussions as well so we are very much aware of grants we see they're they're being five revenue sources which is membership fees um from makerspace the contract with the city um sponsorships potentially advertising uh grants and sponsorships and advertising are the same thing grants and then um pro services professional services so somebody wants us to produce videos for them and uh it's not a makerspace it's like a company that like the suburb dealership in town wants us to do and add we can do those things we can but we charge for that so that's how we make that's how we plan on making money if covid would go away we'd be doing great we really would i think we would well and if you could get a um a cooperative agreement with the school system that could bring in some money too that would be awesome but you know like with that though you know our school system yeah they're great i mean we have an amazing school system i mean they really are they do amazing stuff but they are not you know working with outside organizations is difficult for them largely because you got these kids to worry about so i get it i understand what they're worried about but it's hard it's very hard all right thank you i don't see any other questions all right so uh thank you scott thank you all of you take care do we need a breaker is everybody good to go on or we do you want a break really quick can i get a break yes let's let's take a five minute break i think paulie's probably close by i thought i saw her yeah there she is all right if everybody's ready i think we can move along to item six b sales and use tax simplification code changes all right may approach them i'm jim golden i'm the city's chief financial officer and i'll be making this presentation tonight but i'm also gonna had a couple of staff members who will also be here to help assist or answer questions richard east is our sales tax administrator and jamie roth is the assistant city attorney for the city and they've been working hands on on this project so we will be bringing it to you in a regular meeting in august some action items an ordinance or two and an intergovernmental agreement related to this and this is all about sales and use tax simplification efforts so i'm going to try to give you a sort of a summary presentation so that you have some background before you see these items on your agenda next month and also give you all an opportunity to maybe ask some questions if you have any currently so this has been an issue in colorado for a number of years on sales and use tax simplification what we've got that will be bringing to you are a few items to address it one would be a model ordinance that's been put together that by the cml and home rule cities in the in the state that will include standardized definitions and those are going to be key in the next stage of what we're going to be doing was an iga between the city and the state for the use of an online portal for businesses to to file and remit returns and payments and also to access a gis location database for out-of-state businesses so these these are going to be critical efforts to make it easier for businesses who are outside the state to do business within the state of colorado and of course with the city of longmont and they will hopefully eventually lead to the city receiving more sales tax from out-of-state retailers the background going back about three years ago well first of all i should point out that there there's a number of home rule cities in colorado and there are 72 of them that have their own their own they'd self collect their sales tax and so they can also have their own sales tax basis and that's what presents a challenge for businesses doing business in the state of colorado because they have to report to 72 different entities they may have different bases different tax rates and if you're set from outside the state you're probably not familiar with those and so that's been a barrier for us to be able to try to be involved in any internet sales tax collection so a few years ago the state decided to put together a a task force to address the sales tax simplification to move the state of colorado towards a position to make it easier for businesses to do business with with cities in colorado so this task force did work and put together some standardized definitions and longmont was involved in that and we did implement those standardized definitions about three years ago and then about two years ago the US Supreme Court had a decision in the case of South Dakota versus Wayfair and in that case South Dakota had enacted a statute regarding internet sellers and that don't have a physical presence within their state and they were trying to get them to collect and remit sales tax that was not allowed under prior Supreme Court rulings but the Supreme Court overturned those rulings two years ago and they held that out of state sellers physical presence in the taxing state wasn't necessary for the state to require a seller to collect and remit its sales tax so South Dakota showed they had things in place that they that it was allowable under by the Supreme Court they were able to show that they were not putting an undue burden on interstate commerce so what they did is they had a threshold that if you didn't have if you had sales below a certain threshold then you didn't have to remit and they also have a single state level uh tax level administration and then they created uniform definitions so um so what we've the state of color colorado has been trying to do the last couple of years is to put similar things in place as well the state did pass a sourcing rule in late 2018 which essentially addressed where a sale occurs and a caveat to that rule is that the filing and collection of the tax can't take place again unless if an undue burden is is put on interstate commerce so what happened is we didn't weed cities the home rural cities in colorado including longmont did nothing to get out of state businesses to apply or to collect and remit taxes as a result of wafer we didn't want to act on that and the state through cml the the cities in the state all acted uniformly and not doing so instead that they were they're moving toward was creating that sort of an interstate portable portal for the collection of those taxes and um also the standardized definitions so um the task force uh they they uh move forward and put out r of p's to try to to get uh a software for that interstate portal connection and also for gis uh database for able to to do address locators all of that was um identified uh late last year early this year and and so those have moved into place this this uh the cities got together with cml and they created a this model ordinance with more standardized definitions uh that are relevant to these out of state sellers that would be uh need to be adopted so um we're in a position now to move to put all of those into place um i wanted to kind of curve off in a little parallel direction in that a couple years ago the city uh did budget dollars towards a replacement of our own sales and use tax system we've had our own in-house systems and in-house built system for uh 35 40 years and it obviously doesn't have very good functionality and so we have limited reporting capabilities and so we've been moving towards replacing that but knowing what was going on at the state level we put that on hold until the decision was made at the state level about the um the the portal that would be available and and so what we did is once that decision was made we were able to piggyback on the state's uh contract to be able to select the same software provider who was going to provide that portal to use as well as for our own sales and use tax system so uh part of what we're bringing forward uh in a couple of weeks are amendments to the code that will address our licensing requirements so we currently are um we require any business doing any business doing business in the city of Longmont to have the retail sales tax license so we have contractors who have been required to uh file um file an application for a license with us and they do most of their business they're building contractors and so when the only sales tax collections or uh payments that they make they are making when they are pulling building permits so they're really not remitting any sales tax to us in our sales tax system they're also licensed elsewhere under the code as contractors excuse me so what we're proposing to do is to exempt them from the the business license requirement because part of the uh the cost for our new software system is driven based on the number of licenses we have so we're trying to purge the licenses that really are not producing any sales tax for us anymore and even though these they're still in business we can still get their sales tax through the building permit system so it's also kind of a simplification for them that they don't have to license with the city twice so that would be uh the second part of of this change so the ordinance or two that you may see in a couple of weeks are standardized definitions addressing the marketplace sellers and then the change in the the licensing requirement as well and then the iga is an iga between the city and the state to to use their internet portal system uh we we think that this will probably have a positive effect on our sales tax collections we do receive a lot of of internet sales tax already uh from amazon and from the large retailers in town that already have a nexus here and so they have to collect it and so we're receiving um currently over over two million dollars a year of internet sales tax but um i'm sure there's going to be a positive impact from this that will probably uh generate more sales tax and certainly from a staff efficiency perspective we believe once we get this new system in place it's going to help us with our processing or returns certainly going to help the the tax filers as well and they'll be able to easily make electronic payments and file their returns online and our reporting hopefully will will also improve as well so that's all i had i can answer any questions you have councilmember pick thank you jim i'm really happy about this wayfair and cml's about being able to use a portal on the state i've talked to you about that wayfair decision a couple of times and why why we couldn't move forward uh with it so i'm very very happy to see the city doing this um what is the timeline or do you even have one for when this ordinance uh we'll go forward with cml or so at at this point all cml's done what they need to do so now it's on the city to to um adopt this ordinance which we think will probably bring to you in the first meet regular meeting in august and so once we have that in place and the iga signed with the state um it's just a matter we can the portal will probably be available to us uh within a month or so from then and we'll be moving towards implementing the new sales tax system in the second half of this year so that we hopefully have that in place by the end of the year so i mean we could probably begin to see uh new licensing and remitting in the fourth quarter a little bit how just uh out of curiosity how does that work with because there's a lot of online sales going on right now uh not only with uh with big departments but the smaller ones too are the smaller uh online services or i'm sorry retail outlets like Nordstrom like uh uh as well like like any other how does that work how do we capture those smaller but very active uh retailers you know a lot of them have been um coming forward on their own because they may have a uh decent amount of sales to long mon addresses so they have come forward and and uh license with us and they may have also done it because they had some sort of economic nexus here in longmont and so they would in that case they would have been forced to and just recognizing that they just come forward and and they have uh applied for a license and remitted to us so others i think as we start to begin to see this internet the statewide portal utilized i think they'll see that longmont is also uh self-collecting and so as they sign up with the state and they see these 72 entities they can begin to remit very easily with one form to all 72 of those entities would there be any way for for transparency for uh at least council to see who those uh online realtors are just out of curiosity online retailers i said realtors but i did mean that um i don't know jamie you might want to jump in here i think as long as we're not giving the amounts we may be able to do that just out of curiosity i would be interested hi can you hear me yeah um i believe that the reports are um that the reports from the statewide portal um will feed into our system as well so we'll be able to see who's making those payments um and council member peck you spoke of smaller retailers there there is um a threshold because wayfarer spoke about a certain sales threshold that must be met so we won't be capturing absolutely every single sale um and that's in part because uh the system is designed not to place a burden and then do burden on interstate commerce so they do have to be of a certain size to even register but then i believe once they're paying into that statewide portal we receive reports um from that statewide system so and the question was is there any way that we could see who it was just out of curiosity and that my my question jamie is whether that's public information or not i believe it would be but i i'll look into that council member peck and i'll follow up with you great thanks jamie council member christensen thank you mayor pro tem um thank you jim for uh i i'm very much for this um and i think you did a very good job of explaining it um i'd like to add a few things uh national league of cities has been working on this for over six years and they were one of the main forces that helped get this through because cities well every every municipality of any size needs uh to be getting the taxes that they deserve and um cml has worked on this for just as long um so colorado has one of the most complicated systems of taxes apparently that that exists which makes sense but um um so the reason for this was that states were losing piles of money and um in uh uncollected sales tax um and also the um small businesses and brick and mortar shops were at a huge disadvantage because they were competing against um entities on the internet that didn't charge any sales tax so this is was a really important victory uh winning wayfair to getting uh more of a level playing field for brick and mortar shops with um um with the internet and you know sears roebuck has been doing mail order delivery for over a hundred years and they charge sales tax i mean you know the the the argument that the internet people made that they couldn't possibly do this well people have been doing this for with paper and pencil for years um the other thing that i really like about this is i've talked to a lot of guys i know in my neighborhood are small time contractors and for various things they have they're supposed to be getting a license for every single city that they do work in which costs money and it's annoying and they have to keep uh track of reviving them this is uh this will help them a lot but you know this is one of those things like wayfair we won wayfair yay the money will be rolling in well it's very very complicated that's why since that decision cml has been working on a statewide basis um with legislators and with everybody else to to create a statewide system and consistent definitions and and you and uh sandy i know are really experts in this and but now that we have the portal and we have the definitions and we have some consistency it should be very good in the long run for everybody because before that it was the for small businesses it was a impossible to be trying to send money to each of the 72 zip codes and yeah so this is this is a huge amount of work that a lot of very dedicated people have done on a pretty to most people pretty boring subject but it'll really help all the municipalities of any size um get the sales tax that they deserve so thank you for all your hard work on this uh you bet now i need to point towards uh richard eastis uh jamie roth as well they're the ones that did most of work on this i'm just presenting it to you all but uh richard's been working with cml on this for years hi i don't see any other questions amongst council members is there anything else from the staff no that's all thanks we'll be back in a couple of or three or so weeks with it all right well thank you richard jamie jim uh looking forward to seeing these come across because they make perfect sense to me as far as everything that you explain and so i believe that we'll be now moving on to item six c the discussion to resubmit the ballot item concerning 30 year leases as a charter amendment for the november third 2020 ballot girl um mayor council i know you all asked for this item to be placed on the agenda to to have this discussion in terms of um is this something that you want staff to bring forward in the terms of a potential ballot initiative essentially what we did is we just took the item uh that we presented to you all during last year when you put this forward um so you could start the discussion and advise staff uh in terms of what you would like us to do with this item in the future when we started looking at the meeting schedules we knew we were running short on time um and so then to bring that in a study session and then turn it around for action based on the amount of time we had we just wanted to place it on here um and get your policy direction councilmember christensen um i am very much opposed to just whimsically altering the city charter but i do think that i i don't know when this uh the 20 year um restriction was put on what year that was but i suspect it was a long time ago and uh while i understand the reason for this that city founders did not want to whimsically uh rent out city property for a very very long time because it makes it um it hamstrings the city on one hand but things have changed a great deal i think since uh this was put forth and the truth is that banks really don't want to loan people something for only 20 years they really do want to loan somebody something for 30 years and i i understand that too and i understand from the business point of view they had that may take 20 30 years to get their money back you know to earn enough to pay that back and blah blah blah and make a profit um i don't have an objection to putting this on the ballot again my objection is that if we keep putting stuff on the ballot that people have rejected it kind of makes us look like idiots and like well well we're just going to keep putting it on the ballot till you vote for it it's so i might suggest put it waiting for one election cycle before we put it on the ballot but you know i i will support it if i think it needs to be on the ballot people need to vote for it one way or the other um i don't think it's wise for us to put it on the next ballot but you know if that's what everybody else thinks then i will support that council member martin thank you mayor pro tem i might agree with the not every single ballot rule of thumb that that council member christensen mentioned if we were in ordinary times but we're not uh we're going to have a recovery to manage and we're going to need partners in that recovery and like other cities who engage in public private partnerships which really weren't a thing in the 1960s as far as i can tell we're going to need those those 30 year leases and uh i think that we are able we are we need to be able to communicate to the public um that this is important to the recovery this is important to the quality of life in longmont uh in enriching the city and and attracting people who are willing to invest in the city we also have a situation now where borrowing is very easy because that's the way we the that's the way the feds make it easy for people to invest and we need to be able to take advantage of that so i am hoping that they're the city's um the city's potential investors and you know i think everyone on the council knows who they are um will get themselves together form an issue committee uh and uh explain to the public as we can't other than just by talking here how important this is going to be because um i know i got a lot of questions from voters in 2018 and i think the people that i explained it to voted yes i've gotten letters from a number of them um who you know read the council agenda and said yeah i want to vote yes again i voted for it in 2018 and it wasn't enough votes so i want to vote for it again um uh because that's the difference i think that that uh people didn't understand what they were voting for and maybe with more consciousness of the way public finance and public private partnerships work um they'll get it this time and the people the potential investors will will understand that they need to um sell their value to the public because if you ask everybody uh you know who's a homeowner in long month do you think you could have bought your very first home if you'd had to take out a 20-year mortgage most of them would say no i'd still be renting and um that's the way public private partnerships work our our our private investors need a 30-year mortgage too they need a 30-year lease to get it done council member waters thanks we are for tim yeah i i i don't i don't think among the council there's it would be disagreement about the value of changing the charter because we agreed to put it on the ballot before for the very reasons that council member born just described and i want to i i think council member christianson's concerns i share about how how soon you would go back to the ballot and not having it appear as though we're going to keep coming back you know over and over again i i do remember that next like failed the first time and came back successfully subsequently and was one of the great decisions that the this community made to support the creation of our own bandwidth and as a utility but i i am of a mind as well that these are these are extraordinary times we live in right now if i were to go back to the last ballot we had a number of items or questions on that ballot and from my perspective my assumption was this would have been a no-brainer there was no cost attached to it it would pass and we didn't we didn't do really anything that i recall to to explain to the public the relationship between that ballot question and potential investment in long life in the interim the uh the performing arts and conference center feasibility study i think has been completed although in this you know during the pandemic we haven't it hasn't had much attention but if there's any chance of moving on any of the recommendations at some point in time and it won't happen quickly but the prospects are are not strengthened by limiting the potential length length of a lease if if somebody wanted to build something of the investor wanted to build something on city owned property and do that in partnership and see it financed both from the private sector and in some from the public in terms of a land uh deal uh the potential then the something is needed back to the city at the end of 30 years that kind of thing i just think i think we ought to position longmont uh to be as competitive as possible to be as attractive as possible to investors and um we don't have well we know we're going to have a water bond well we don't know that if we make that decision there'll be a water bond question on the ballot but i don't think there'll be anything else and who knows what would be on the ballot from us in the county and others uh in you know in another election cycle as long as we don't have other other or many items certainly no other cost items other than water bond i just think this would be the time to do it it ought to be a good turnout a big voter turnout in a president elect presidential election year we've already heard from some elements in the community ledp in the chamber we heard from scott cook earlier in the in the call tonight that our business community is ready to get behind this i don't think anybody was behind it last time so i think even with minimal organization behind it it's a no-brainer to help the community understand the value doesn't cost anybody anything positions longmont to compete at least equally with municipalities municipalities around us that have already done this to attract investment to longmont so i hope that we would as a council give our community a chance to support it get behind it and and give us a chance to put us in the same kind of competitive position that we see other boulder county municipalities council member peck thank you mayor pro tem i i also agree we we already voted unanimously to put this on the ballot before so i don't think there's going to be any real discussion about um should we or should we not put it on the ballot my my concern is the passing of it uh and we debriefed about this uh a couple months ago and kind of talked about it was it was our marketing strategy or maybe we didn't market it but we are in a different time right now than we were last uh november and uh people are thinking differently and not are thinking more personally what is going to happen to me and lost my job i'm going to be evicted my rent is going up my i'm not sure that i'm just playing devil's advocate here a bit i'm not sure that this is going to be an important issue for them to even uh consider um because even though the business community is behind it they're not the only ones voting and i think we've seen this on many issues that we've put on the ballot is that the surprise that why didn't it pass and i don't have any problem putting it on the ballot but if it doesn't pass i don't want to put it on the ballot again uh at this point so that's where i'm stuck uh like like councilwoman christensen i don't have a problem putting it on the ballot but i do want it to pass if we do that and um when we talked about it before the virus was not an issue and personally to every voter who is not abyss in business who just goes to work every day and is losing their jobs etc my fear is that they won't consider it at all and uh or or learn about it but just based upon history on other ballot issues so i i'm for putting it on the ballot if that's the majority uh council member you don't go faring you actually were not on the council at the time we last put this on the ballot so just wondered if you had any thoughts um no um i don't have anything new to add i think everything that had been kind of mulling through my head has already been stated i think what um council member martin had pointed out about people who are you know the potential partnership city business partnership they really need to come together and start um getting the word out and educating the public um i think that that is going to make or break whether or not this passes is getting getting the word out there to to the public so um yeah and i will be voting to put this back on the ballot okay just uh from my perspective i guess uh i do share the same concerns as far as uh putting something back on the ballot so quickly after it lost uh real quick question i don't know if anybody has the numbers but what was the spread on the votes for when it lost um i can't remember sandy do you remember let me look it up real quick i don't remember herald yeah ask us to say i can look it up if you all want to continue your conversation yeah so on that note you know i think that we all to a certain degree uh a certain degree came to the consensus that there was a marketing problem the last time that we had this on the ballot and i heard 2018 but for some reason i thought it was last year 2019 that we had it on the ballot well and be my point being is that obviously in these odd years we're going through city elections at the same time and we as council members may get somewhat maybe not everybody but some may get a little bit more wrapped up on either their personal campaigns or the other campaigns going on at the time to not give kind of an adequate uh effort to pushing forward something that we all obviously feel is necessary but might not make a whole lot of sense to the residents of long month and so i think that it benefits us to try in a year like this where it is a higher turnout with the presidential election we're not worrying about any municipal elections as far as seats are concerned and so i think it would be more advantageous to run it in a year like this than opposed to waiting till next year when there's going to be another municipal election that's just uh you know something that popped into my council member martin thank you a constituent just looked it up a little faster than the assistant city manager did it was uh it was uh 16 000 votes against versus 13 000 votes for uh so it was really pretty close only a margin of 3000 votes with no messaging whatsoever this seems like we could probably close a gap of those proportions thanks council member martin that's 45.47 percent four and 54.53 percent against quick quick on the draw so it seems to me that you have consensus pretty much to move forward with this with the understanding that we really will have to have some sort of robust communication strategy as far as it's concerned and i know that you know we have to be fairly neutral as far as some of the issues are but i think for you know my fellow colleagues here on council that in our personal endeavors to make sure that we're doing a really good job of communicating why this is important why it's a good thing so but i think outside of that we're all seem to be in agreement and have consensus on this. Do you have the direction from council to then bring that back to you all to place it on the ballot yep yep i definitely see the head nods so all right i'm good all right that that takes care of the study session items now we'll move on to mayor and council comments any comments tonight council member waters. All right down to comment too much is a question i've got to look find our i can't get i can't get to a council calendar beyond august and i know we got the whole years worth of of stuff from maria early in the year um but i can't remember right which folder i put it in we got five tuesdays in september are we meeting on all those five tuesdays in september um i think we we had them available because that's budget time um and uh so historically what we've done is i think if we didn't need one we didn't use it um this budget it's going to be a bear so so likely we will need all five right but let me get with um jim and sandy and the budget group and i know whether whether we'll be meeting in person or virtually right based on earlier conversation correct all right okay thanks uh council member christensen let council and peck go first all right council member peck feel like i've talked a lot tonight but thank you mayor pro tem and um so i didn't know at what point in the agenda to bring this up because there really wasn't any i asked don to don quentana to forward to you a an email that i got with the petition from 350 dot or colorado and basically it is from uh about 50 uh 30 individuals and 20 some organizations um that would like us to sign on there this these organizations these 30 organizations are not coming to elected officials and city council and commissioners to see if we will sign on a petition to ban fracking in bolder county and the reason i think this has come up is because uh eerie is being overrun with uh with all kinds of gas and oil sites that are just outrageously large um they need help and with sp 181 out there um we i i actually didn't even know about this until she emailed me and said would you talk to council about it so what they were wondering is to me it's it's not a heavy lift because we've already passed in our local home rule to ban fracking in in longmont and the county commissioners have put another moratorium on fracking within bolder county so with this larger organization going to co gcc and uh trying to get all of the elected officials and the municipalities within bolder county to help each other basically at this point to help eerie um i don't have a problem asking if city council would sign on to this and i it is in your email box if you wanted to read that it's very very short and if you don't want to do it as a council i will do it individually um so that's what i would like to know this is this has to be done by thursday which is why i'm bringing it up very late so let me know you know do you do you want to sign on this with uh as a council body do you not want to sign on to it uh it hits all our environmental issues it hits uh it hits our air quality we're getting alerts all the time um it it supports our air quality monitoring even though we have taken a position of neutral on sb 181 it just supports each other and working as a unit rather than as individually so that's it that's my comment did you so wouldn't it take a motion in a vote for the council to sign on as a body um and that is for you gene or sandy or herald or is it just a a consensus yeah that we want to do this well i think we'd need to to motion and vote on it as a body if that's how we want to go forward with it but there would need to be a motion okay um everyone i agree and my my point was that i didn't know at what point in the agenda to do this is it okay to do it at council comments or Eugene are you there he probably doesn't want to answer this question i am here according to council rules of procedure the city should not be taking a final position or official action at study sessions i would recommend that you suspend the rules of procedure and if it's representing the city i do think a motion and vote would be needed okay i move to suspend the rules of procedure so as to be able to make a motion on this second okay thank you we have a a motion on the floor by council member peck to suspend the rules of procedure in a second by i think council member you don't go faring i heard a couple different people say something uh looks like there might be some discussion council member waters um yes thanks uh mayor perkin um i mean there's not all of us in my view would would favor uh banning fracking everywhere um so what i'm my question isn't about disagreeing with the concept but as a defendant in a lawsuit um uh brought to us to enforce a fact practice fracking ban and and we've taken a neutral position in that lawsuit uh i guess i'd like i would ask you gene uh how do we how would we take a vote to sign on to a petition and maintain our position of neutrality in that lawsuit and i don't we weren't neutral on 181 we were neutral on on a position in a lawsuit we all favored 181 but but this is quite different and i want to make certain i'm real clear where the where the lines are that i don't want to cross and i would say just as an editorial comment the the the people and the organizations uh about which uh council member peck is referring you know to cooperating with one another not one of them uh approached us to ask how did we feel about being sued to enforce what the court had already told us we couldn't enforce and to spend more tax dollars i mean i i don't want to get too wrapped up in it but i i still honestly have a little bit of an edge on about being sued by our friends uh to cover the cost for other people who would like to see fracking bans imposed in bolivar county um so that doesn't feel like in the spirit of of cooperating with one another that's the way it should be approached but that's the way it was approached and now on short notice the question is we're just signing a petition to do exactly what people didn't do for us so um i have an issue with that but i'm i'm more concerned about the legal status as defendants in a lawsuit in which we've chosen to take a neutral position jean mayor and council you know that was the direction that council gave me for the litigation i'm going to carry that out until it's changed by majority of council you know i i think this is somewhat of a separate matter uh i i will follow direction and handling the litigation as directed by council uh thank you council member waters uh just to go forward here uh i appreciate the the question as well as the answer from city attorney that we are specifically talking about a active motion to suspend rules of procedure so if it's not pertinent to that or germane to that uh is it council member martin do you have comment on that specifically uh no i'm willing to suspend the rules of procedure assuming that we will have discussion on the matter after that i'm just staying in the queue so we don't have life absolutely um so i guess seeing no other discussion on the motion on the table all those in favor of suspending rules of procedure to allow for a motion in vote during a study session say aye aye all opposed say nay nay the motion passes five to one with council member waters dissenting and mayor bagley absence all righty now that the rules of procedure have been suspended can i do i hear a motion council member beck okay i move that as a uh as a council we sign on to the 350 350 dot org colorado petition to ban fracking in bolder county second uh motion by council member peck to sign on to the petition as referenced to ban fracking in bolder county or be in support of banning fracking in bolder county in a second by council member christianson council member martin i have a number of concerns the the first one is i'm hesitant to vote for anything i haven't read and i don't think that even if we took a moment for us to all read what's in our mailboxes now game under the pressure i'm not sure i would consider that a a thorough reading at least not the way my my mind works um the other question i have is how much it helps eerie as a former eerie resident a whole bunch of areas in weld county and a smaller bit of eerie is in bolder county and we're certainly not going to get a fracking ban in weld county any in till the state does it um so or the or the industry collapses which is where i'm putting my money um but at any rate um i think that that that is a concern that it maybe does not have the desired effect and uh takes uh bolder county's eye off the ball bought bolder county has just in uh extended the moratorium and the moratorium uh stops drilling in the bolder county part of eerie just as well as a band would uh and uh and then finally i'm not sure us acting as a council does not necessarily you know have have some impact on on where we stand in the lawsuit if if we come out as a body for fracking bans um then does that allow us to remain neutral in the lawsuit or not um because if uh the plaintiffs win this lawsuit long mon in my opinion could be in the position of paying for the fracking ban twice in a lot of ways um is scott uh converse mentioned my interview with with mike foot um that was done on long mon public media and uh you know he admitted that that uh long mon has already spent a lot of money on a fracking ban um and then you know found other ways to get fracking uh out of long mon and i would just like to not have the people of long mon have to pay for this fight again because i think we've done our share um so i will not be voting to endorse this motion as a body um sometimes think longer than things take longer than uh we thought and so maybe there will be an opportunity for us to do that when we're prepared to do it but i'm not going to vote for it tonight i don't see any other discussion so i guess that takes us to the vote all those in favor of signing as a body to the 350.org petition of ban fracking in boulder county say aye hi hi all those opposed say nay hey motion passes four to two with council members water council member martin dissenting with count with mayor bagley absent thank you are there any other uh mayor and council comments council member christensen uh thank you i um i would like to be indulged for a little bit here because we lost uh two extremely courageous and uh important and powerful leaders in the civil rights movement last friday the same day and so i would like to read a few things um part of this is from uh jamal smith's um article america failed john lewis and ct vivian ct vivian and john lewis met at the uh baptist theological seminary which makes me happy because i was raised as an american baptist um and that was the heart of one of the hearts of the civil rights movement um so in 2015 vivian was asked on democracy now whether full writing voting rights has been achieved he said there is nothing we haven't done for this nation we've died for it but it's been overlooked what we've done for it we kept knowing the scriptures we kept living by faith we kept understanding that it's something deeper than politics that makes life worth living um so here's what smith wrote um it is admirable certainly but this kind of valor is unfortunate necessity in a nation that continues to fail black people and other americans of color congressman john lewis and reverend ct vivian employed their intellect and altruism for incredible benefit and they are two of the finest americans who ever lived but they shouldn't have needed to be those today who have similar talents should be free to exhibit moral clarity in ways that go beyond the battles for basic human rights in the supposed land of the free as we both mourn and celebrate these men we need to demand more of the country that sadly continues to require their brand of heroism here's what john lewis said and keep in mind that this is a man who fought for and achieved voting rights acts the civil rights act the fair housing act the labor labor law and all of these things have been rolled back and rolled back and rolled back since the mid 70s and especially the 80s but this is what he said about the latest um things with black lives matter sorry i have very little light it was very moving very moving to see hundreds of thousands of people from all over america and around the world take to the streets to speak up to speak out to get into what i call good trouble this feels and looks so different he said of the black lives matter movement that drove the anti-racism demonstrations it's so much more massive and all inclusive and this time he said there will be no turning back so those are our marching orders to make to make to be not turning back to move forward and to harden up all those things that we have lost that we have allowed to drift away we need to fight for them all over again and make sure they don't disappear thanks all right last call for council comments seeing none moving on city manager remarks i did forward you all council on email i found regarding some of your questions concerning um covid spread um with different populations it was on the cdc website it appeared about five days ago i just wanted to bring that to your attention um other than that um obviously i haven't had time to read it but it was a cdc document so i felt i could share it other than that no comments thank you herald city attorney remarks no comments mayor protam thank you eugene all right i move adjournment so that's okay all in favor of adjournments say hi hi hi all opposed motion passes unanimously we are adjourned thank you everybody