 Welcome to the backstory on ballot question 3D, which asks voters to approve changing the city charter to allow the city of Longmont to lease ground or development or 30 rather than just 20 year periods of time. My name is Tim Waters and as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media, I have the good fortune of interviewing elected officials, city officials, community leaders, leaders in our business community and our nonprofit community on topics of interest and relevance to Longmont. And today I have the great good fortune to have a panel of folks who fit all those criteria, elected officials, community leaders of both business and nonprofit organizations in Longmont and in the St. Brain Valley. The names of the people in this in the faces of the people in this program are likely familiar to everybody in town, but I'm going to remind you who they are and then I'm going to ask them to talk a little about themselves. Marsha Martin, a council member representing board two in a member city council. Jessica Erickson is the CEO of the Longmont Economic Development Partnership. Dave Emerson is the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of the St. Brain Valley. Bob Bosman is both president of the Longmont Performing Arts Initiative of Lapai and of the Longmont Corral. And Elliott Moore is the director of music for the Longmont Symphony Orchestra and is the conductor of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra. So welcome to you all to this panel and thank you so much for carving time out of your schedule today to join me in this conversation. You know the big topic we have a ballot we have ballots are out as we are as we're recording this they just came out a big election this November on a host of issues and at least one of the issues on that ballot is one that you all care about as UI as does Marsha Martin. So Marsha I'm going to start with you tell us about you about why the council would care about this about you and the council generally and then we'll give everybody a chance to fill in some gaps of who they are in their organizations. Thank you council member Waters. I'm going this as a volunteer for Longmont Public Media not as a council member. Okay so but I'm doing this as a council member. Yes you are. Okay and even though my views don't represent the council I am a former engineer by profession and since I've gotten onto the council I have come to understand that the city of Longmont is a big technical problem. The city of Longmont owns land and it needs to make sure that that land has is put to the highest and best use in order to get good things for the people of Longmont and sometimes that means enticing people private investors to invest in that land and use it a different way than it has been used and some of the land isn't used at all and to get things have changed since the city charter was written and so one of the things that's important is that 30 year financing needs to be available to people who usually generously for the public good want to invest in improving city land. Every city on the front range has already amended their charter to allow either 30 or 40 year leasing for this exact reason. Longmont is behind the times and it means that sometimes Longmont can't compete for public private partnerships in the way that adjacent cities can so regardless of which of the very fine uses can for public land that is your favorite one this is an important mechanism to get all of them done. Jessica tell us about ledp. Sure sorry about my camera quality I'm not sure what's going on with it but economic development partnership is a public private nonprofit economic development organization so we're by all definitions a public private partnership organization on economic development and the economic sustainability and and long-term viability of our community. As part of that we lead an economic development strategy called advanced Longmont 2.0 it really began implementation late last year early this year right before we were hit with the COVID-19 pandemic and different than how many other places approach economic development we really focus on not just the traditional measures of growth for economic development but also on prosperity and inclusion so how does that growth benefit our entire community equally. Within that we're looking at the success and viability and growth of our industry base as well as our talent at work sorry labor pool here in Longmont and in the region we're focused on creating places in Longmont that are attractive to both industry and to talent as well as transportation connectivity for our community so we believe that in particular in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that adding tools to our toolbox to achieve the visions of all of those focus areas of our economic development strategies create resilience and recovery for our community sorry adding to our toolbox to be able to do that via the charter change to create the opportunity for 30-year leases makes good sense for Longmont and its economic future. Thanks Dave Emerson tell us about you and Habitat. Sure thanks Tim thanks for allowing me to be a part of this so my wife and I moved here in 2006 I started as a volunteer with Habitat down in south home beach was in the corporate sector and just fell in love with the Habitat model so we've been in Longmont for I guess 14 years I thought I'd do this for a few years and then move on but I'm just really really inspired by the things that I see with Habitat many of you know or may know what Habitat does we are a home ownership ministry to really understand Habitat I think you need to go back to the 60s when Habitat was formed a place called Conantia Farms in rural Georgia and at the time they saw very very deep division with people they saw people in need particularly farmers and so the visionaries back then really came up with two concepts that you'll still excuse me still see with Habitat today and that is building a house with volunteers so the community coming together a diverse group of people coming together all different beliefs and opinions and building community by building that house and then that house is not given away it is something that lower income individuals can afford we design the mortgage to be affordable and then that mortgage gets recycled into building more houses so when we look at just your local affiliate here your local chapter of Habitat over half of our cash flow comes from our mortgage payments and mortgage commitments so the home owner not only is helping themselves which is just incredible to watch over decades especially when there's children in the house the things they do their perspective changes and so forth but they know they're helping their neighbors which is really an agent of change for other things thanks for being in this thanks for all that you do housing we're going to come back to housing this is a big challenge in just a minute Elliott tell us a bit about you your high-profile in this community everybody has seen you perform in some way tell us who you are we know how talented you are and a bit about LSO well my name is Elliott Moore and I am the music director and conductor of the long months of any orchestra and it's such a privilege to have that position because what I get to do is work to transform our community through music and it's something I'm very passionate about and something that I certainly care deeply about the long month symphony has existed now for 54 years this is the though the first year that we're having a virtual season due to the pandemic and so it's really been you know something to behold how the long month symphony has come together how we've been able to respond to the the current crisis really that we're looking at and how we deal with that and and the wonderful ways in which we've been able to deal with that and bring music to people and uplift people we have several programs that I'm particularly proud of one is our sensory friendly nutcracker performance which is for differently able children and of course their families and and so this is an example of how we can reach every group of people through music in our community and we're very passionate about doing that so like I said it's been here for 54 years and we look to be here for many many many more very good Bob Bausman last but not least in this in this panel tell us about you about both Lapai and the chorale okay sure well I came to the chorale back in 2007 probably following a story of a lot of our members who have music way in their past but then had a long hiatus in my case about 20 years and then came back to randomly find this ad in the Times call calling for singers for the Mozart Requiem which was my first experience with the chorale and I was hooked and I've been there ever since and became the board president back in 2016 the Longmont chorale is Longmont's longest running performing arts organization and indeed one of the longest running community choirs in the entire western united states many people probably don't know that and what people probably don't know either is what a thriving performing arts scene Longmont has we have six member groups in Lapai all of which have been in operation for at least a decade most for multiple decades going all the way back to the 1930s but if you drive around town right now there's very little sign of the performing arts in Longmont that you can just see going down the street you might see the theater companies building and you'll see steward auditorium but as far as anything else you won't and that's because for the most part we are having to work with churches and schools and we're very glad to have them because if we did not we could not do what we do that being said they were not purpose built for what we do and they have other purposes so you know we're trying to fit around their schedule and whatnot and so that's why we're in pursuit of a dedicated performing arts facility in Longmont and 3D would go a long way towards making that easier to happen if you make for a 30 year payment on something versus a 20 year payment you you recognize there's an annual savings there if that savings comes in for the venue that trickles down to rents that we end up paying which then trickles down to lower ticket prices for our audience too so that's why we're really excited that this is on the ballot all right well I'm going to we're going to drill down on some of what you just talked about Bob I'm going to come back to you on on some of what's going to trickle down and and the implications if we don't have something that trickles down right I mean everybody's going to make their decisions about what to do here with this ballot question but I want to go back and start Marsha with you in terms of the follow-up this is the council put this question on a ballot a year ago it failed it's back on the ballot in this election cycle so go back and begin to drill down or unpack maybe on some of what Bob just touched on in terms of the difference between 20 and 30 years and why now why would the council want to put this back on after having so recently been voted down by the public from a council perspective why would it matter now and why 30 versus 20 years so I'm going to do it in the opposite order because why now is a really important question this whole issue of managing finance as a city is something that I like to call economic engineering and people are going to hear that word and say well that sounds shady and it is so not it's just the city using the resources it has to make sure that the city has good things for the public and of all the places I've lived in my life the city of Longmont and its municipal government is the absolute most devoted to providing good things for the people who live here you might know that Longmont is limited in its ability to grow and if you're going to have a city that can't get richer by growing you know as a city like Houston has you know just by growing out and out and out then you have to find other ways to make life better for the people who live here by improving the economy so that more money flows past each individual it's a to use the cliche a rising tide that lifts all the boats and the city of Longmont has is pursuing quietly a number of visions that do that that cause money to flow into the city of Longmont and stop here so that the raise the wages of our wage workers tend to go up so that people have more disposable income so that people have more options available to them and so that people's lives who live here can be richer and that helps everybody it helps our businesses it helps our students it's just good all the way around and it helps our people who are housing insecure and that's one of the most important things to me personally because it allows us to engineer a diverse ladder of housing options starting with things that are affordable to people just getting on the ladder or people who have had problems economically and you know providing options for people at every stage of their lives so that's what can be done with this why now there's really two things first of all last time we had this on the ballot we were just trusting the people that oh this is one of those things that the city asks for every so often and as a city council member I have to take responsibility for not realizing that we needed to explain so this time a lot of engaged residents of Longmont are trying to explain and make sure that everybody knows why this is the case we didn't think it was necessary last time because people of Longmont are very good and usually do trust the city and vote for things like like street taxes or a little bit of an extra sales tax to pay for extra police you know those things always pass and we thought this would pass but nobody understood what it was for so now you know what it's for but the other thing is we're in an unprecedented economic situation because of the pandemic we need to be able to engineer our recovery and that means doing things to leverage the assets we have to make more money for the city not to take it for the city and you know use it just for the municipality but rather to improve the economics of the city make money flow and help people out of the holes that they're in because of the pandemic the reason that public public private partnerships are going to be a big deal is because we hope that recovery grants are going to be flowing in to Longmont they already have to a great extent but most of the ones that are here so far are absolutely relief you know just just fill in the holes pay for things like childcare special measures that businesses and schools have to take in it to keep things safe during the pandemic but we've lost a lot of businesses a lot of businesses have have got recovery work to do they need to feel secure enough to rehire we need to build things that will create jobs and if we can use the money that's going to be flowing in from above to do that we can do this recovery better and just having a better set of financing options one of which is 30 year leases will help us do that so it's a big long wheel of causality to get this done and this is one little piece of it but it's one little piece that'll make a big difference hi i'm i'm going to come back to you you kind of frame this as if you're driving down whether it's main street or anywhere else in town what one might expect to see physically um to reflect how vibrant an arts community we enjoy in long line so what are some of those things you expect to see and and what do you what are your assumptions about why we don't see them in long why we don't see them i think is just a matter of growth and just you know it just hasn't been done yet um to some extent you need to look at the fact that these groups have been making do with what they have right now and so you tend to say well we don't really need to necessarily do anything there the problem is when you look beyond what's happening right now to what could happen not to just benefit groups like ours but other performers in town attracting regional acts attracting nationally touring acts we have this fantastic crossroads location in northern colorado where our groups already bring in people from other communities and so we know that if we have the proper facility that not only would we ourselves continue to build on that and we would become more visible as well the performing arts in general in long want would become more visible but then we'd be able to bring in these other acts that are not local but that people go to other communities to see and that's important because what happens with that on the economic side is then they take their money out to those other communities so we're talking about things like the Budweiser event center or down to broom field or even down to Denver where instead all of that could be coming back to long want well and I'm going to at some point in this I'm going to come back to what's at stake in this election but I want to I want to move to Elliott Elliott you made reference to the the the symphony's been around for what you say 54 years 54 yeah and and you've been able to adapt to various physical settings from the advanced brand auditorium to the steward auditorium and now you've had to adapt to no facilities right you've been doing the work virtually so good on you for all of that adaptation but we're going to come out of the pandemic and we're going to look forward to the opportunities when we can come back together again to enjoy our talent in this community so why would why would you as the as the as the music director and director and conductor of the symphony why are you concerned about this ballot question in the future of the symphony especially in the time when we can you know post pandemic world we can come back together sure well you know Kim let me at least say also thank you for having me on the show and and this is a wonderful opportunity for me to thank the Longmont Symphony for you know agreeing to let me do this the Longmont Symphony you know is very careful they don't want to wait into issues that are going to be on the ballot box but because they understand that I have you know I'm an informed individual who has kind of a mandate to educate the public about these things that I know about like concert halls I'm really thrilled to be with everyone today you know I think that this is a transformational moment for us we are really at a crossroads and the pandemic I think puts kind of a fine point on that by the standards of most people you know an orchestra is kind of only as good as the musicians who are in it but I actually happen to believe something a little bit different I think that the orchestra is really only as good as the concert hall that they perform in and why is that I think for several reasons but when I think about like a violinist who obviously tunes their violin and looks after the care of their violin so that they can draw forth the most expressive sounds the concert hall is our instrument and so in order for us to really touch people's lives for in order for us to really have a transformational experience and to give that kind of experience we have to have the right kind of setting and I think that you know there's some other things about performing art centers one is that in today's modern world it is one of the few spaces where people can come together to celebrate and I think that a good concert hall is can be a place of beauty and it can promote all kinds of well-being and to that end I think that as we sort of come together as people come together in a concert hall it has the ability to unify people and that's something that I think is particularly important in today's climate that ability to to to have unified experiences or experiences which unify people is something that I certainly place very highly at this point and so I think that for many communities across certainly the United States if not the world at some point or other they recognize the need for these kinds of spaces and I think that this issue is something that can help us reach those kinds of goals and it's something that I would like to see for the performing arts because the performing arts make the community a livable place without the arts I don't know why we do what we do you know and so that's something that I want to continue the work that we've created and to really take advantage of it and so I think that this gives us an opportunity to take advantage of it well said and I earlier in this conversation uh both Jessica and and Marcia made reference uh to to what we do here that that attracts talent much of what Jessica does and we're going to come back to Jessica in just a few minutes in terms of the broader economic development sector is um is is try to create pipelines that bring talent to the community to accomplish what we the goals we want to accomplish as a community and um one of the things that we might be mindful of is what do we have to do to keep talent in the community once having attractive uh talent and I would and speaking for myself and I think probably lots of other people in lawnmower seeing you stick around uh as the as the director of music and the conductor of the symphony it would be a high priority for lso and for for the broader community uh so as people think about the kinds of things Bob referenced that we'd like to see um not only does it make a statement about the community it makes a statement to those who we'd like to bring to town and keep in town because of the talent um that they possess and that they share with us so uh just part of that perspective Dave we're talking a lot about the arts but there's a whole nother perspective and Marcia made reference to to housing um and what what's possible we there's so many ways that communities can get creative and collaborative to create housing options in communities which is one of our biggest challenges in this municipality and in every municipality is housing of access and affordability so from your perspective given your your your commitment with your professional life why do you care about this ballot question and what might it represent as opportunities for habitat for humanity for the st brain valley sure um and and so many so many thoughts going through my head uh but i'll share a couple of perspectives if you will so one of the things i didn't mention is that uh i'm spending a lot of time in estus park with habitat we also build an estus park we responded in lions um and it is very eye-opening to see the impact of a lack of affordable housing and an estus park and a shock to the system in lions what that has done to the makeup of a community so in estus park at one point they used to graduate 100 seniors every year it's now fewer than 20 a year um i have friends up there that will tell you they have lost a generation of people uh in lions because of the affordable housing that was lost in the 2013 flood they lost a lot of income diversity and from an arts and music standpoint a lot of the individuals that they lost were musicians were artists as you can imagine um so that's really why it's interesting to me and um you know there there's a lot of different things to consider with any ballot question and as elliot uh kind of alluded to habitat considers itself purple we appeal to a lot of different uh folks but i guess when i look at i'm i'm a finance person what we do beyond building the house is we set up finding financing that people can be successful with so across the nation habitat has a less than two percent foreclosure rate and these are for working-class families um who never would have really been able to afford a home um so when we look at uh that's excess obviously we have to keep the cost down so that's where land becomes available and at a affordable rate but also the difference between a 20-year financing and a 30-year financing as you can imagine is profound it's $300 a month minimum and uh that obviously makes a huge difference for someone making $16-$17 an hour i also think it's kind of ironic that i'm asked to speak today um as i shared i started in 2006 today is the first day that i do not have an active project in longmont we dedicated two houses on saturday um and right now we do not at this moment have a project now the pipeline is very very good thanks to the support of the city and others but uh those projects are in the entitlement phase and it takes time to do to do it right to to account for everything so land is only going to become a harder and harder challenge and if we could stretch out somehow the financing and development we know we can recover the cost within 30 years so the so is it fair you know i'm not in the real estate business and i'm not in the finance business but i everything i know about this has learned since i was on the council i like that again so like 20 of the cost of developing residential properties is is tied up in land is that a fair estimate that that's fair and that's probably understated so if the city owned undeveloped ground which it does then it could lease to habitat or to the land conservancy or to a developer that would partner and the conditions of that lease would be to partner with the conservancy or with habitat or with both to do to do residential development that's financed over the cost of 30 years and at the end of that 30 years all kinds of options in terms of what would do what one would do what the city might do or the development might do with either selling to the homeowners or uh debt uh deeding it to habitat or to a housing authority ways to maintain housing as permanently affordable to achieve all of which could be possible it's possible now but now it's limited to a 20-year horizon or cycle for financing yeah right right and it just is not quite um quite long enough to stretch out the the development jessica um uh from your perspective you've done economic development in not just this community you brought experience to this community doing economic development in different communities and at different levels uh why would the long month economic development partnership care and i and i do know that your organization has endorsed this ballot measure encouraging long modders uh uh to support it why would ledp care about this what's the what's the bigger competitive uh context within which we exist now and will in the post pandemic world sir so i think when most people think about economic development and which is fair they think about um the announcements of large employers and making significant investments and creating a significant number of jobs in the community um we also look at retention of our existing primary industry base and their ability to stay here and grow here in recent years the number one factor in those decisions whether it's to stay and grow in place or to relocate to another place coming from somewhere else into long want the number one decision making factor is availability of talent availability of talent in the local region but also the ability to attract talent from other places where um the talent that they need is currently located and in order for us to be an attractive place for talent here in long want there are a number of factors that we have to have as a community those include things like affordable and attainable housing um affordable and quality child care um as we've talked about so many times quality education um and a quality of place a quality of life that is unmatched by other places in the country and in the region the reality though is that projects that create those things that create education and child care and affordable housing and cultural facilities aren't necessarily the most don't necessarily have the highest direct fiscal return on investment what they bring is the bigger picture economic return on investment for our community so in the form of wages in the form of quality of life in the form of ability to attract and retain talent to develop our own talent and an induced and indirect spending for those people who are coming to and moving to our community to take advantage of that value here and so in order to make those projects happen understanding that on both on the both on the public and private side don't create the highest ROI from a direct fiscal perspective it creates an environment where public private partnerships become necessary and a stacking of financial tools in order to make those projects fiscally viable is absolutely necessary and one of those things that we can do is as Dave's talked about create a financing mechanism that allows for the city to enter into 30 year leases in order to support on the public side financing of those projects that out of necessity are going to have to be invested in by the private sector and for you I'll ask you I'll ask but I'll extend this to Marsha and to the gentleman in this in this panel as well and I think it's a pretty straightforward answer to the question if this does not pass what are the options available for the pie a concert hall for for housing for development of affordable housing or any a vast number of other things we might want to do as a community if we're not going to be able to create an environment where we can put together public private partnerships that benefit the community what's the option for generating the resources to do the kinds of things we're talking about wanting to do that was a softball question Marsha I mean there there's always putting a tax question on the ballot that's the answer that's the answer I mean and recent history tells us that there's not and whatever your opinion on that is that there's not a lot of appetite for that right we at a state level turned down funding of transportation through increased taxes we had a local level turned down funding public funding of an additional recreation and sports facility with the hockey rink and pool and so if that's not an option let's consider some of these the other options like the 30-year lease to allow for us to be able to provide those amenities to our community yeah a year ago some of the criticism and marsha you may want to weigh in on this some of the criticism of this of this ballot question was that there wasn't a proposal on the table there wasn't a public private partnership on which we could vote well that's not the way these things work right first you have to change the condition to attract you know the interest so there's not a proposal on the table and it's unlikely that we would have one if we're competing with other communities that allow for 30 or 40 year financing and we're limited to 20 is that fair yes i certainly think it's fair and i i think that although there is not a proposal on the table now what is true is that there is a vision um you know the long month long month has a vision constructed by the city council over the last several years and it includes ways to bring in outside money for the city through the the performing arts through having a a convention or convocation center through having a center for higher education the um the city council's uh acronym for that is steam which is science technology engineering arts and mathematics uh took me a second there to come up with the m but uh you know what i have seen as a council member is that that vision and by the way part of that vision is making sure that all of the children and all of the people are properly housed that growing up in long month is the best experience that we can make it so that also means affordable housing it also means uh a clean environment um you know it means a lot of things having that vision and as i sit on the different um boards and commissions that as a council liaison what i hear people talking about that vision is a lot of excitement among people who are stakeholders in the community but not necessarily fiscal stakeholders in a particular project you know um uh jessica you can uh can verify this you know uh erik wallis who who is left-hand breweries right he's not going to go build a concert hall and he's not going to profit from that but he knows that the value of this being a rich community and i sat in a economic development board meeting where he said let's build steam and and so this vision is something that can get everybody in the community excited about enriching our community and um you know it's a it's a no-brainer given that 30-year lease is just lowers the cost of money and this is a great time to be borrowing right because we have a really low cost of money and we have a an environment where where stimulus is going to be something that the higher levels of government are going to try to be giving us so this is a no-brainer it's just an enabling mechanism that doesn't cost anybody a dime so one of the criticisms that that you heard uh relative to this topic last time around and maybe you've heard some of this as well is that that's all pure speculation uh and i guess i would say based on what you just said marsha one person's speculation is another person's vision of what's possible uh so i want to give everybody in this on this panel a chance if there are any final thoughts any last thoughts if i can tim i would say that the the only thing i would add is when you're you're talking about land and and doing something with land um you have to have a bit of certainty to begin investing in time and money before you really know what you have and if um you don't have the option if it's if it's 20 years you have to set your expectation there and it really i can see a lot of potential really never getting off the ground because the conditions are not there to even explore what is possible if that makes sense and the conditions that do exist in other communities with which we are competing right i mean you're you're not dancing we're competing just straight up any other final thoughts and i'll just add you know to the point of it being speculation even if it is speculation and the city never signs a 30-year lease on its property um just having the tool in our toolbox available to us um as as a negotiating chip for uh some of these projects that we have as part of the vision of our community um absolutely harms no one that this charter change does not mandate 30-year leases it allows for the option if it's in the best interest of the vision that our community has for itself and it's fair to say that voters would have to decide whether or not they believe their city employees and their elected council members are smart enough to negotiate terms in a public private partnership that serve a variety of interests but fundamentally first the community and and long month residents fair yeah all right i i want to thank you for your time in this program but more importantly i want to thank you for all that you do everybody on this panel you make such extraordinary contributions to the life of this community uh so as as a resident i want to say thanks as a city council member i want to say thanks and as a representative of the larger community i want to say thanks for all you do every day 365 days a year on behalf of long month thank you thank you so much thank you and and viewers that is the backstory on ballot question 3d coming up showing up on your ballot as it arrives in your mailbox thanks for viewing thank you jim