 We've had some pretty large rates in the past. This one is not as, we don't have as many attendees today as we normally do, but so the council's decided to set some rules just so we can make sure that everybody has a chance to talk during any session. So if you can keep your questions or comments to three to five minutes, council member McCoy will raise a paper when you're kind of getting to that point. And four minutes and then five, I'll put it down and that means we're done. And then what we wanna do is get through everyone who has a question or a comment before we go back to someone else who has a secondary question or comment. Council members take your way and I'll be in the back somewhere if you need me. Hi everybody. What I hope we can do with this nice orderly row is we can just go back and forth from the front to the back. So don't be shy if you have a question. Raise your hand early so we know you're there. Thank you for coming out tonight. I was happy to do it, I'm really happy to do it, right? It's not a good sign. And so I appreciate you coming out and letting us know where you stand on things and what the hot issue is with you. So without any further ado, I'm gonna go ahead and end this up to Jeff here, Jeff Lomont. Oh, who else can we go? Oh, okay, how are you? I'm glad somebody's playing. Okay, so we'll go ahead and stand up and we'll turn off the power or do something like that. Okay, all right. Well hello everybody, my name is Jeff Lomont and I've lived in Lomont for 57 years. Starting off like I'm gonna say I don't rush it with things but I'm a longtime resident, we might say. And I just wanted to make everyone, including our five members here aware that there is a weightlifting facility on North Main, 1610 North Main is in the parking lot of the old Big Five Sporting Goods store. And the reason I chose from this venue to sort of raise a little bit of awareness is that there's an individual who has just made an extraordinary effort to stand this thing up. The business community has donated over $10,000 worth of equipment. And so the first thing I wanted to do was invite anyone and everyone who's interested to just stop by and visit the place. The daily hours are 7.30 a.m. to 11. And then 3.30 until 7. And the other reason that I think this venue is very appropriate is that I'm a business consultant. I have a fair amount of financial action and it's been my profession. And so I am helping this gentleman who has stood this up. His name is King Penny and I'm helping him with some of the concerns that are more of the long-term concerns of one of the money flows because he's not charging anybody, he's not charging anybody for his time. He wants this to be a free thing for people to experience working out outdoors. So that's my role in this is his helper in this way. And so what I had told him and he agrees is that the long-term destination that he aspires and I joined in this aspiration for this location is to be on city property somewhere because he's paying a substantial amount of rent right now without income. He's also paying insurance and these are necessities to keep this thing operating. And so for it to be sustainable, what we want to do over time is make the case to the city of Longmont. Hey, this is a valuable thing. Lots of people are appreciating it. And toward that end, I can tell you that we have about 15 to 25 visitors every day that are coming and that number has grown very quickly. It's only been open for about seven weeks now. And I have a little presentation to give today that I've been working on a presentation to submit to the city council. And one of the things that was on it was that a week ago it had 110 followers on Facebook and now it has 183, just to give you an idea of the grounds for support. The second thing I want to make clear about this is that anytime you create a public good, there's a concern about how does it affect the community, the private landowners and the residents in the area. And I'm delighted to tell you that this has been extremely well received. The local residents not only are coming, they are volunteering their time because they view this as a really positive thing in the neighborhood. It's not noisy, but it is very interesting. And people who haven't worked out are working outside and they're discovering that as another important element of fitness. And so for the city of Longmont, this is not what I would call a big deal. I reviewed the open forum video from January and I noted that council was dealing with some very big deals, affordable housing, homelessness, childcare, all kinds of big issues. The reason that this particular issue is so attractive to me as a financial person who thinks about return on investment is the heavy lifting, pardon the time, I can't resist. The heavy lifting has been done by this gentleman King Penny, the equipments in place and the businesses that have contributed have done the heavy lifting. And at some point in the future, we don't have a good idea of when there'll be an appropriate time for the city to very seriously consider this thing as something that is a low risk item that costs the city not very much, nothing to take it over in a relatively very low operating cost on an existing recreational property. And it's a very unique thing. There are only about four cities we've been able to locate that have done this in the United States and they've done it very successfully. And so this is my hope that this will be adopted and I'm available now to take questions or afterward if anybody wants to ask me more details on that. I use a question. Oh yes. I wonder whether King has, since he would say he's paying liability insurance now. That's correct. And since he does have other public venues for this, maybe his presentation can include the differential that a private business pays in liability versus a municipality would be forced to pay in liability. Thank you for that question. That is a question that I am endeavoring to get answered in the documentation that council we can expect to receive. We're gonna try to get it a week in advance so that people who would be interested, my members who are interested to review it will be able to have time to review it. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. As we, a couple of you came in after we announced the rules, we had five minutes. You're welcome to take less than that if you just wanna ask a question. And we're gonna try to go front to back since we have a nice orderly organization here. And that way we'll be sure that everybody gets a chance to speak. And then after that, if you have a follow-on question, she can speak again. And I guess we just want one other thing and that is just your name so that we can write down and see who we're talking to and your address here for a moment. Thank you. Question? Yes, sir. My name is Clay Richmond. We didn't, uh... So we, after the incident that you witnessed with Mike Stealing, we decided that we weren't going to get out the mic so I will repeat the question and... All right, I want to say as an advocate for the deaf that that is unacceptable because I can't hear 90% of what is said even if you repeat the question. And so I will be addressing this further. It's not acceptable. Let's slow down, slow our roll on this. What is our position, our city manager, about PDA, accommodating? Last time we were repeating the questions. But I think she's getting at the people that might make statements. Yeah, and I am willing, for my part, to give up the mic as long as everybody understands that when your five minutes are up, so is your time holding the mic. And I'm serious, this happened. So, yeah, I'll lock the mic. My name is Clay Richmond. My name is Clay Richmond. My name is Clay Richmond. I just want to commend this city for, this is a change of subject, right away. I called in probably about six months ago over a little section of sidewalk, concrete sidewalk, that wasn't complete. And the city did that, gosh, I think it was early April when we had some non-freezing weather. And it looks really good. So it's 100 feet, 110 feet of four foot wide sidewalk. So I'd like to commend the city for doing that. And that's all I have for right now. Thank you. Thank you. It's really nice to hear good feedback like that. I'll have to say they did a great job on my sidewalk, too. Mark, should we have, we can pass this one around. Okay, go ahead, go ahead and pass it. And then if you just want to pass it, then. Everybody can, if you just want to pass it, and then everybody who has a question can speak when the light comes by then. And when I can just take it, or get it, that would probably be. So my name's Anna Rivas, and I live in a 4501 Nelson Road. And I wanted to ask about, well, it's kind of the opposite about what Jeff was talking about. The rec center that's being proposed for the Dry Creek area, which is the opposite. It's gonna be a very big, noisy facility that's actually gonna destroy the outdoor area that people really are enjoying right now. And I've been talking to quite a few of the neighbors that I kind of encounter as I'm there. And they really enjoy going for their walks there and just being out, and then somebody referred to it as a sanctuary. So it would be the total opposite to have this huge facility in the parking lot being built there that reduces access, in many cases, to the neighbors, because now you have to actually pay, to actually go into the facility and use the equipment, whereas now kids, all the neighbors, anybody can just go for a walk, walk their dogs, ride their bikes, just enjoy nature for totally free. And also, I was just reading an article that had to do with policies that a lot of cities have regarding when new buildings go in place about the minimum parking requirement. So all the area, the land, that's actually used to build parking spots. And that is kind of a, you know, I envision a 90,000 square foot rec building would require a lot of parking spots. So now you're paving over a lot of that beautiful area that people really enjoy walking in. And creating that kind of parking, that's kind of a really, in that neighborhood, it would be necessary because there's no, I mean, it's kind of surrounded by housing in neighborhoods. People don't want people in cars parking, clogging up all their driveways and areas. And it just seems counter to what we need to be doing now, just trying to preserve some of the land and cut down on cars. And by building a bigger parking areas for bigger buildings, you're kind of just creating more reasons for people to have to drive more is, you can't, anyways, I was just reading an article about that. It kind of coincided with what I was thinking about. So I could send you the article, but it's cities are trying to cut down on the policies or change the policies that require minimum parking areas because they're realizing that's only making the traffic problem worse because you're creating, you're kind of creating distances between all these areas and those people are forced to drive more to get to places instead of just being able to walk to them. Okay, I'm gonna ask Ms. Marsh a question because I don't have the facts at hand. Strangely enough, both rec center venues, the existing one and the Dry Creek Park venue are in my ward and I live exactly precisely across the street from the existing rec center venue and while its parking lot is full almost all the time, it's certainly, I wouldn't say that it's clogged up and I know for a fact that it's not noisy. So I'm not sure what the concern is that rec center venue has a relatively little park area around it whereas I understand that this one has designated park area around it. So what I would like to ask Joni is first of all, what minima are being planned or being applied to the parking venue and what's the comparative size of the old rec center and the planned rec center if you know, I know that's kind of putting you on the spot. I would like to commend the questioner on her understanding of the pressures of new urbanism and I wanna say that that long lot has also begun the process of eliminating parking minimums and in fact moving in certain orders toward parking maximums. Thanks Marcia, good morning everybody, I'm Joni from the city manager's office. So we have adopted parking maximums already in the city so we don't have any minimum requirements and when the original rec center was built it certainly did I would say we often get more complaints that it's under parked, certainly not over parked. So there won't be minimum requirements just like there aren't any commercial area in the city anymore and so that's been in place for I think three years, I think it's been a while for commercial and then the current rec center, the number escapes me Marcia. I wanna say like 45,000 square feet and I think the new one and again, the new one isn't designed to keep this in mind this is all conceptual at this point it's also conceptual on the master plan at Drag Creek Park so I think that including a library would be around the 65,000 spark foot marker is kind of the ballpark right now. Was there something else I missed? No, I think so the two are comparable in size it's not, it might be 50% bigger but it's not huge with respect to the existing center. Yeah, I think that we're looking for the same type of amenities in the other rec center that we currently have with some addition of pool space similar to what we have at the current rec center so but again, that's not designed and we have no approval from the voters to move forward with that rec center so there'll be more to come on specifics. Yes and so I would like to remind everybody that this is going to be a ballot question so we will have the option of voting no and another piece of information that's kind of not quite accurate that's been going around is that this is coming out of designated open space it is not, that city property has always been designated to be a park. And so just so you're validated that what we're hearing is your biggest concern in regards to that call paradise and put up a parking lot of attitude that you see here where we have these max we kind of want to make sure that we don't create problems for drainage and everything which is obviously our city's planning department's goal to make sure that we don't let anybody's home or that we also want to take away this feeling of a mean of heart either so is that what you're, is that what I'm hearing from you? Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's from my perspective just seeing all the open areas whether they're actually designated open space or just plain undeveloped areas just seeing all that banishing and being replaced by buildings and parking lots it kind of starts feeling a bit claustrophobic and it's nice having some just plain open areas that you don't need to, it doesn't have to be anything fancy just having something that's open where you can just kind of go and get a little bit break from all the buildings and parking lots everywhere and the other thing is with all the parking lots when you look around and see all the empty parking lots I know there's some financial stuff that has, would need to be worked out but it just seems like there's, there's areas that have already been developed that could be used to house things like portable housing or a rec center rather than going out and destroying an area that's still kind of in a natural state which a lot of people enjoy and yeah there are a lot of people there are kind of horrified when they realize that it's actually not designated open space because for them that's one of the things they like about the neighborhood is having that, so. Well, I should add that most of the land to the west of you is designated open space so you're not necessarily going to lose a lot of that feel and that, and again Ms. Marsh can confirm this but Longmont's overriding developed and bent right now is toward more infill, more density in the city core and so I'm not sure how serious your fears are gonna be especially since even with the building in place that designated area still has a lot of heartland around it it's not gonna be some sprawling complex that fills up the whole space that's available. So, but reminding everybody, this is a valid question for you to vote on whether you think this is what the city needs or not. Thank you, and thank you for being informed, Scott. Hi everybody, my name is Scott, I'm 229 Grant Street and forgive me if I'm not up to speed on the latest and greatest with the parking requirements and regulations are we're having fun but you know I've lived here for 20 plus years as homeowners it's difficult for us sometimes to keep up with what changes are happening so please forgive us if we don't know the latest and greatest, most of us are at a job trying to pay the mortgage and enjoy our weekends. Um, it has a homeowner, I want to put an ADU and I believe it's still part of the conversation that I need to provide off street parking for my ADU unit and accommodate for that increased number of people within my property. If I read the city code and I get my information from the city code and it needs to be updated, please update it, the parking in front of my primary residence, the intent of that parking is for the dwelling unit, for that dwelling unit. It's not common parking or what have you. Parking is obviously an issue on mind and the reason is the West Side Tavern. The West Side Tavern needs to operate as Richard's on third, they have five parking spaces at the top of Tavern since the Tavern has gone in. Parking has been removed, they're down to three and they do a valet service. They're also occupying the home with the residential home adjacent to to continue parking in the residential zone. I understand the West Side Tavern has an exemption because this was an existing building, it was a supermarket bird or a grocery first in West Side Tavern and it has the exemption. The issue is the exemption used to restrict the number of seats, the number of people at the restaurant. This was done for Richard and Eva who, I think the name was Eva, was part of the planning and zoning, she's communicated that Richard would have challenges because the building was already slender parked if you wanted to expand. Yet the current owner of this has been, as I counted, 50, Richard used to have maybe 12 and now they're seating four up to 50 according to the drawing and the community, what have you. It's just, it's difficult. I live around the corner, they open up at four so employees start parking in front of our homes at four o'clock. I don't get home until after five. So what I've parked in front of my home for 20 years is now occupied by somebody that's not gonna leave till after 10 o'clock in the evening because they're working at the Tavern. This is still a residential zone area, it is not a commercial zone area, the entire neighborhood is residential zone. Third Avenue is now being planned to accommodate additional parking for the Tavern. I get it, we need parking for that. But if we're talking about are we gonna be working more or are we trying to get bike lanes and everything, Third Avenue was appropriate for a bike lane. We're not even considering it because we're trying to do this for the Tavern. And putting two socks on and 50 yards of each other in Third Avenue because of the Tavern, because this gentleman has the ability to yell and scream and rally his people that he serves drinks to in order to petition for this stuff, it's a neighborhood. Still got a minute, right? Okay, I'll give you an example. Marcia, I know how close you lived to the rec center. Did they pull the parking lot from the rec center and only a lot of five cars there? How do you think that would affect your neighborhood? It would affect you pretty severely. I think I'm done for now. But I really just don't understand what's being applied as far as the code because the guidelines are there. We just don't seem to be implementing. So, yeah, I'm gonna start with some correctings and misunderstandings. The curbside parking in front of your house does not belong to you? I don't understand. Okay, well, you said it was. I said the intent of it is for the door. It's in the cone. It's written in the cone. I'd really like to see that because it's been, you know, what I was trained to believe is that all curbside parking is open to anyone who parks legally. Sure. And in Japanese over there nodding, yes it is. It's true. So, I'm not sure where you're coming from on that one. We've, you know, if the expansion of the number of seats at the West Side Tavern, if he's seating more people than he should be, then he's not. What I'm saying is that the planning zone has approved for 50 seats within the Tavern. He'd never had it. That is not historically for that property. What was was Richards. Or please show me where Richard had the ability to seat 50 people, please. Okay, I'm gonna have to defer to Joni on the code, but I think Sean also indicated that he had some remarks. Yeah, and I hear what you're saying in regards to when you do your landscaping, you mow your lawn, you clean the snow off the sidewalks in front of your house and everything like that. And the, even if it's not written the code, probably everybody in this room would come to the conclusion that we'd all say, well, that's my front spot parking, even if it's not necessarily written the code. I mean, there's at least a perception. I am not claiming it is, please don't change my narrative. No, I'm not trying to. I'm saying, but I'm actually trying to support where you're saying it in the sense that that is the general perceived idea, whether it be fact or perception. And so I know how difficult it is when you have a business like this coming in and having so many cars there, whether it be employee cars and, or customer cars in that area, you still want, there's still that general idea that you would continue to do what you've done for 20 years and now it's kind of changed on you in the sense that now they've got some of those things. I don't disagree with what you're saying. And I did have a little bit of time left, so let me just read some. Hey, Homa, you can still provide additional, I'll see parking area. Adequate to accommodate all needs created by home occupants without changing the residential character of the premises. The tavern is a residential dwelling with a grandfathered clause that allows it to operate as a business. It needs to provide additional off-street parking, not remove it. The removal of parking, off-street parking, that on-premise parking, off-street, that was allowed to the website tavern happened at the beginning of the pandemic when we were making all kinds of variances. Negative, it did not have started way before that. Well, it may have, but it was permitted at that time. With no notification to the surrounding neighbors within the radius that should receive notification. So I'm gonna defer on those manners of process to Joni, but the neighborhood does have the ability to report excesses, and I think he should have to put his on-premises parking back. He has actually done what I suggested to him, which was an unwelcome suggestion at the time, which is rent property from parking area from neighbors and offer valet parking. It's a constructive solution. So go ahead, Joni, I'm good. I could talk all day. So I'm certainly not prepared with specific details about what's been approved or not approved as what's been a legal non-conforming use for as long as I've lived in Loma, which as Scott said, is to be richer, very different than I think the transition to current restaurant that seems to be super popular. So I don't have the facts and details to provide the ins and outs of that. I will say that any changes for the non-conforming use have to go back to the planning and zoning commission. And so if that has happened and there have been additional entitlements granted to Richards, those are certainly unfile and have been approved. If they haven't, then there is certainly a process by which the owner would need to go through to do that. And I'm happy to follow up with Glenn and his team to provide some of them. Thank you, Scott. That's my deal. I appreciate your time. Yeah, I agree with Scott for what it's worth, that probably a review of... It's a great restaurant. I have no problem with that. I do all the respects right there. But I said all the respects right there. Why? Why? Because of the way he has behaved with respect to city government. As a personal, I'm just not gonna be there. But I agree with Scott that a review of that establishment's current use is appropriate. I had letters from residents and asked them on, as is my basic job. I'm just a conduit to code enforcement and to engineering, to make sure that the complaints have been registered and have never had the loop closed in this particular case. So, on conversation, is it time, please? So I agree that that should be done, Scott. Thank you. But, all the people who live in a neighborhood that was designed for one carriage, maybe should reconsider there are three vehicle ownership, two. Okay, next question. Yeah, our code requires us to add parking if we added an accessory. We're required in one end and we're being told we have too many cars in the other end. I would have basically, who else did it? Actually, a lot of people walked. I think I'm implied by this principle. Okay, but your time is up. When we come around, get in, Scott. Thank you. Okay, next. Hi, my name's Sarah Lewis. I live in the east side of your head. I served on city council for eight years between 2007 and 2015. So I know a bit about, I served with this in a point for four years. So I have a couple of requests of city council. Number one, there are so many taxation valid initiatives that you guys seem to be putting on. I think there's going to be a big risk that people are gonna pick and choose and things are gonna fail. Besides the one city council, one city council are going to put on. There's also a special taxing district similar to RGD or SCFD that would be a service district to provide services for early childhood education, which is an issue I worked on the whole time was on city council. So I'm in supportive of it. I'm just not in support of, at this time, an additional taxation when the state is still trying to figure out the mechanics of those extra 10 hours that they're paying for preschool. And then I just think that I have many neighbors that are retired and my neighbors are gonna have, they have invested in their home, they're not ready to go to the system, but they don't have the resources to transition into that kind of facility. They're best staying at home and these increases of property tax will force them to leave their homes in a time period when it's better for them overall to be at home in their environment. So I ask that any additional ballot measures for taxation that you ask, you petition on the ballot. I know that you gave the nod to the Arts and Entertainment Center. I think that should be petitioned because it has a trigger mechanism. They raise a certain amount of money and then we get debt five years later. I think most people forget about it. Couple of other things. I'm also very concerned about the provisions of the ballot proposal one, two, three for affordable housing that was passed statewide. The ballot that I encourage people to read the golden goblin book in it, if we accept money, it forces us to change our comprehensive plan and it also diminishes the amount of time that anyone could speak on a quasi-judicial matter of that piece of housing. So what will happen is we will have to change, be forced to change our processes for public input. The money that you get from the state would pay for staff to rewrite the comprehensive plan, to rewrite the public input part for anything that's affordable housing. But again, then you're creating a more confusing system for somebody that's doing for-profit housing, somebody that's doing something for non-profit housing. How much more is that going to cause controversy in the community? And my last comments are really around the First Amendment and I'll just take a minute and read the First Amendment, the presses here. The First Amendment of US Constitution states, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the pre-exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. This provision has a long history. In 1837 and 38, there were 130,000 petitions to Congress asking for the abolition of slavery. And under pressure from the southern states, they prohibited people then from exercising their pre-speech right. They prohibited them for introducing resolutions or permission to government. That was overturned in 1844. I think that if the city council continues on the path that planning and zoning acted on, you are going to have a very big lawsuit of First Amendment rights. I think you are trampling on our First Amendment rights. And we are peacefully speaking as a person who filed two appeals from Planning and Zoning City Council, one one lost one. I really knew the process. If you're going to go back to the system, if you're going to go to a new system where anything that might be ahead might be in front, an application that might be on file since 2017 and Bonn-Pardon initially was. How are people supposed to talk? How are you supposed to guess? If you come to Planning and Zoning and the city council and say, there's an over parcel that hasn't been annexed into the city near my neighborhood, they're going to say to you, there's no development application. They haven't had a request for annexation. I'm sorry. So what are you supposed to do? It's irrelevant. Your speech is irrelevant at that point. Thank you, Sarah. So would you like to address that one? Well, if you can go ahead. I myself am still trying to not understand it completely and want to make sure that we're not getting ourselves sideways with community members or with the law in regards to that sort of situation. We certainly don't want to jump on anybody's person in the rights. And I think that we should be able to have conversations, council members and commission members and others hearing people out and understanding that people are just trying to understand the system, understand how it functions, how it works. And when we're asked certain things, I know Sarah, when she was asked certain things, she said, well, you know, I would probably go about doing it this way, talking to people and finding out and looking into the ordinances and looking into our municipal rules around this type of thing. And guiding people that way is not it, there's nothing wrong with that. I think that's some of our responsibilities here as council members. I think we're gonna have to kind of feel this one out because I certainly don't want to have us in a situation where we're not respecting our citizens' right to communicate and talk to people and try to figure this whole complex issue out, you know. In other communities throughout the United States, people in our position here are experts in the field. We have a different sort of city council makeup and it's primarily down in the West here where we have experts hired like Judy Marsh and others to be those folks. And so the only employees that the city council employees is the city manager, the city attorney and the city judge. And so then the city manager and the city attorney go about hiring their staffs appropriately for managing that type of thing. Anything that's going on out there in other parts of the country, you'd be the expert up here, you'd be the water expert, you'd be the electric grid expert or whatever or the collection of trash and compost and recycling expert. But that's not how we do it here. So as we try to maneuver through this, I don't claim to be the expert, is what I'm saying here to you all. I'm just trying to understand as well as I can and I'm going to be depending on our experts, whether it be our legal counsel Eugene May or our city manager guiding us through this tonight. And I hope people hear me on that that we're just vulnerable in ways of not doing exactly what it's doing exactly, correct? So we're going to kind of fill this out so that we're respectful of everybody's interests. I also acknowledge that the First Amendment says that we're allowed to address government, but it doesn't also mean that you're required to listen. I understand that. No, I'm serious. It's not required to listen to us. You know me, sir, I always think I know everything. So I happened to be in the city manager's office when the city attorney showed up to discuss adding the amendment to the council rules of procedure, rules of procedure that you are talking about that had already been added by the planning and zoning board and now it will be considered next Tuesday by council to limit communications on a specific meeting matter of permitting to the public hearing on that matter. So the thing that he explained to me and then subsequently in a communication to council that probably has only come out like yesterday is that the prescript, prescription, prescription against ex parte communications on a particular matter of permitting is prohibited because both the planning and zoning board commission and the city council are at that time only in their specific role as a quasi judicial body ruling on a matter of code. Which is not the typical function of council at all. We are a policy making body. So when one of those things comes up, somebody else who is an expert finds the relevant statutes and reviews them with us and then the planning and zoning board provides us with their opinion and we have very limited latitude for the kind of decisions that we can make. Similarly, although the planning and zoning board is an advisory body when it comes to big matters of city planning, when they are ruling on a specific permit, they have the limited role of comparing that the application to existing codes and statutes. And so an ex parte communication means that somebody is lobbying or communicating with one of the stakeholders in the party but not all of the stakeholders in the party together. And the rule is on those public hearings is that all of the evidence outside the codes has to be considered in that one single public hearing. So still- Everything in the file is considered communication. And as commissioner A.D. Saunders pointed out on Wednesday night as a dissenting voter, she said the minutes of these meetings are all anytime you speak about anything that's a project, the references to that and go into that file. And if you'd like to go around with that I'm sure we're gonna have another time around, Sarah. That's okay. But we should one of us are constitutional lawyers so we'll point that out. She was the dissenting vote, however. And I have to go by not the decision of a constitutional lawyer but the decision of the city attorney's office. So that's the instructions that we have been given. It seems reasonable to me. And is that my five minutes being on shot? We'll say yes. So I am gonna wrap up by saying that everybody gets a chance to speak on that and the opportunity, there's no limit on the number of people who can speak at unofficial public hearing. So the same thing that was being done off agenda in the class planning and zoning meeting could actually be done in the public hearing. You could have a 12 minute presentation with three speakers and it would be fine. So everybody gets a chance to speak. And that's what I, when people asked me that's the sort of thing I would have said that you can come in and talk maybe non-directly at the meetings ahead of time to the transportation board which obviously is gonna have an impact on this. You can talk to the point in zoning commission that's gonna have an impact on it about how, we don't have these board meetings that these boards set up just so that they can just rubber stamp all decisions and all planning parcels that are coming into the city. If people feel that they really don't meet the criteria or they don't think that it's going to negatively affect the neighborhood, they can vote in behalf of that group of neighbors. But you and I both know that at the time that the hearing is happening, there's very little capacity for city council or any hearing officer to take in new information. Right, that's what I'm seeing before. And so what I'm thinking is, you should, if you're saying that this one meeting is the meeting, you know, that you could appear in person and make an argument, if it's a new argument that you glean as a citizen for watching the file, it's too late, that's the night of the decision. And we've said this many times to neighborhoods that we've made decisions. You are too late, we haven't seen this, we can't, this is the night to make the decision. So maybe what you need to do is change the process and take the information and then make a decision at another meeting so that that new information can be digested, okay? When I appealed the Walmart on the east side of town, I discovered that they were the largest polluter in construction of the Clean Water Act. There was a federal court decision in the state of Delaware prohibiting them. And yet, when I discovered that information and submitted it that night, it was completely uncommon. Probably because it's, probably because it's, to your point, that it was new information and people needed to digest it. Right, but that was the only, under the peace rules, that was the only night that I could actually submit that to the council in that public bar. So we, let's move on to another one, folks, so we get through everybody and then we can come back and look back into the issues that are most present today, okay? Is that gonna work for everybody? Sure. Okay, we wanted to be respectful. Okay. So go right ahead. My name is John Pullman, I live on Spruce Avenue. Following up a little bit, I once heard it said, we're the group, we're part of the farm neighborhood, that's been speaking up, and apparently it's perhaps the business for some of these changes that are recently taking place. The reason that we have tried to get in front of planning and planning multiple times is because this issue is very complex. There was a lot of, a lot of sick code that depending on, depending on how it's interpreted, could lead a commission member, a city council member to either A, fully endorse the developer's proposal, or B, if they look at the way we've been looking at it, could really call it a question, ask you why even R&N zoning is an example in the south of Spruce and Bown Park. Why R&N zoning even would apply to that area? There are no collector or two other streets there, they're all local streets, there's no mass transit there. And so what we're trying to do is educate on a very complex topic that has a lot of code that could potentially apply one way or another. We're just trying to educate people as much as possible that we see great flaws in the developer's proposal at that particular piece of property. It sometimes gets misconstrued that we're against development. Some areas in one month, they're probably, they don't want to see, they'd rather see nothing going in that piece of property or maybe something. We're like, no, we want high density going there, but we wanted to be compatible with the neighborhood, right? We wanted to have adequate parking so that we don't run into situations like, I know Scott, but Scott's my neighbor, runs a few constantly. We want to have it where there isn't a canyon of that so that people in one-story homes are looking at three and a half-story homes because they have a road to party there. We want to see green spaces in development so that when children come down from their town homes, they can actually play on the ground homes. And we're just trying to educate people. And again, there's stress what Sarah said. We'll really be afraid that if we get one shot, one night, for five minutes or three minutes per person, by that time, it's too late. Something has to change here to allow the community because these infill developments, they're not the same as these developments on the outskirts of the city. These infill developments are in the middle. I mean, our neighborhood, there are homes of well over 120 years old. It's an existing neighborhood with a lot of character and a lot of history. And we're just scared to death that some of these projects that are planned to go in there, that the developers who's always in my understanding is developers in constant communication of the city, right? The neighborhood, not so much. So that's the reason we're trying to do this. We're not trying to subvert, we're not trying to do anything other than just make people aware that we have great concerns and we're trying to educate them. John, I would like to say first of all that residents are welcome to speak on matters of policy and to address the council for policy changes and also to give input to planning on a general level at any time. And we welcome doing that. I would also like to say since I was on council when the co-housing project was before us was that at that time, we heard a lot of arguments from the Bonn Farm neighborhood that said that that development which have approximately half the number of units that the current proposal has was too dense and would create too much traffic through the neighborhood. So maybe what the neighborhood should have been calling for and should have been calling for all along and not stopped when, you know, when Spaulding went bankrupt was changes in Spruce Street, you know, to- We actually asked to be down zoned from R2 to R1 or RLD and the council denied considering that and that was in the probably 2004. So the neighborhood activated attempt just like the start each side got RLD and now we're R1 now. So you're speaking out of turn but the council doesn't have to approve every petition. The petition was allowed and, you know, that's the risk you take when you invest in property, frankly. I'm not as, you know, not as sympathetic about this because I am more sympathetic to the needs of the wider Rauquan community, which needs housing. So I'm just saying that there are, we're not curtailing all opportunities to speak. We're not curtailing the right to petition. What we're saying is that at certain point there is a line between addressing matters of policy and addressing matters of code compliance and suitability of a specific permit application. And when you cross that line, then certain restrictions go into place. They've always been there about amendment to both sets of rules and procedures. Doesn't really change the policy. Just make sure that everyone's aware of it. So to the non-farm issue specifically, it sounded like, to my understanding, maybe Harold, you can correct me if I'm wrong, that somewhere along the line that the non-farm folks got the impression that they could have a kind of a rolling presentation at the meeting before the actual big presentation. And so they took, they sometimes got that impression from probably city staff or city attorney, getting in and out from John. And also from, and there was some sort of allowance by the chair of one of his own commission to say that that could go forward. And so then when that happened, now all of a sudden we're just seeing this issue around the quasi-judicial conflict and problems there. Is that what I'm hearing happened? Is that your interpretation of it, John? Yeah, not attorney, but city staff. Okay, city staff. So this is probably one of those definite situations where there was, what do you think, Harold? Why don't you go ahead and hand it over. So this is actually more of a Eugene question. He's not here today. So what I understand happened was during the meeting when the presentation occurred at the end of it, many of the planning commissioners actually were concerned about the potential crossover into the quasi-judicial world and pushed that question into the city attorney's office and kind of said, what do we do in this case and led to that conversation? So it was actually generated via the planning commission. And I understand that you need to have some. And so, and basically that's what started the conversation. Then they had the item in the planning commission, the same item coming into the city council. It gives the chair the ability to say, we're fighting over into a quasi-judicial matter and then they can end the conversation if it's moving into that world in consultation with the attorneys and so it does have some flexibility to the point that Sarah and work with Sarah. We have had, actually in some cases, I don't know if you were on council when you did this and they've been a little bit after, but council has actually continued some of these cases that are filled to them and I know this because Eugene had to kind of go through and say, we're ending public invited to be heard, we're doing this. We're gonna then carry the meeting over and then the council can debate the issue amongst themselves as they're considering it. Now, if you bring in additional testimony at that point or ask questions and you have to open it up again, so I know we've gone through the process. I've really been forming council. It doesn't need to just be done tonight. You can take it over and somewhere in Eugene's history we have that all laid out. Can you remember what it was when we did that, Joan? Probably on an appeal, I would guess. It was an appeal that just then it took, yeah. It took a couple of meetings when we went through so there is a mechanism for council to continue that conversation, but that's kind of how I was made aware of this. Eugene's been talking with me on this few things. I've already asked him to say, this is your world, not my world. I really need you to go through this process. I look back into some questions. Is there anyone who has not had a chance to speak? We are at 10 o'clock. Now, Sherry. Hi, I know it is time to clap and I'm sorry if I just got here, but I'm sure this has been brought up. I just want to turn it over. I'm sure this has been brought up, but today's front page about Liberty's free speech at Plainland Zoning is a concern. So I just want to kind of weigh in that I also have that concern. So I'm sure you're very interested, but I just want to grab your face. It's been a concern a lot. Discussed a lot, Sherry, and it will be discussed before council and you'll have a chance to speak then. But I think the thing that we need to all remember is that there are times when certain speech is appropriate and times when it isn't appropriate. The First Amendment doesn't actually protect that inappropriate speech. So we have a number of cases where speech is not protected by the First Amendment. The classic yelling fire in the theater is not protected speech unless there's a fire in the theater. And I think the analogy there is obvious. Some speeches always not protected. Hate speech we have ruled under the constitution is never allowed. Privately funded speech like on a social media platform is never allowed. We are the government and we have the right or we have the duty to protect speech, which means allowing residents to petition the government. But we need to put limits on it. And we've discussed at length that there are times when certain speech is appropriate and times when it's not. Speaking to policy, speaking to the council on policy is always appropriate outside of the quasi-judicial hearing when policy may not be changed in the context of the hearing. So, you know, Sherry, that's basically what we're discussing is where the line between these two types of speech and venues for speech happens. And I hope that Eugene will clarify that a lot more next Tuesday. Well, thank you for coming down Sherry, I appreciate that and we always appreciate your insight on what's going on in the community and know your community activists. And so we want to be, we certainly, we had just had several conversations about that. So just letting you know that it was, had been discussed and again, to Marcia's point, we're just trying to maneuver through this. We're all kind of learning a little bit more about, you know, how to handle this. We want to handle it right, respectfully, and without stepping on anybody's rights, first minute rights. Wouldn't you agree there, Sarah? Yeah, well, you know, when we tried to make new election law policy, we got called into federal court, goes to court in Denver. You know, they're free speech rights were being driven by. So we backed off. Well, you know, sometimes trying to do the right thing from a government standpoint, sometimes comes across and somehow you're doing the wrong thing. But I really think that the spirit of the council is to do the right thing by the community and making sure that everybody's voice is heard. And I know that I'll continue to be out there talking on the end of what Marcia will be doing. And you know, the best thing we can do is just hear each other out and make sure that we're all being respectful of it as we do that. So is there anybody else that likes you today? I'd just like to say thank you. I know you folks have other things you could be doing on your Saturday morning. I appreciate the fact that you're here listening. Thank you, Steve. That's it. It's very nice to go out on a high note. And I want to thank you all for coming and more for coming well prepared. It especially warms my heart to see someone speak in favor of eliminating parking and promoting urban density. So thank you in particular ma'am. I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Ann. Ann? I'm Anna. Anna. But you're welcome. And thank you all for coming out. It looks like it might be a nice morning. So have a good time. Thank you.