 We're about to call on the All right. All right. Next week. All right. You got Tom Duster is here online with us today. Uh Scott Holwitt here Lane. Here. Renee Davis here here. Uh Ken Houston here. Here. Chris Huffer. Here. Um John Gage. Here. And not here yet. But Cheerio. All right. Thank you. Um any questions or concerns on I did notice that I um attached something that was so that attachment of the um guiding principles should with November minutes. So you Okay. Anybody else? approve it. So move. Okay. Obviously not. Hi. Hi. Kevin. Yeah. Um The flow of the same range. one was 2.8. The 145 years for the average. Um the reason for that change or the difference there is so far in water. So that's not a good one. So it's about average. Um So the column of St. Brain and it's priority date of April 1st of 1879. And then the south by the color is the Riverside Reservoir. Well, the rough price Reservoir must not preserve is an elevation of 63.75. It's approximately 2.5 feet down from the year 2000. Union Reservoirs of the Gage from 8 or 9870. 850 down 2800. At the end of November, based on Reservoirs for 73.5. Do we have a couple to back me here? You don't. We don't have any development activity this month. Um, Roger, notice that the structure of it is a little bit different. And it has been since we started using the, um, agenda software that we've been using for a little while. Um, there's not really a way for us to do another indented 123 under the different categories. So, um, there's not really a way for us to do another indented 123 under the different, um, categories. So, each item is listed out separately in parentheses. It tells whether or not it needs action review. So, like here, we don't have any of either of those categories. But if we did have multiple properties or something that we were looking at, it would say the title of the property and then, um, action required or for information only listed at the end of that. Do you understand that? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, this, uh, I've made a catch of mood. Um, so I'm just going to go through a kind of a summary where we're at today. Um, share a little bit. Um, I think we did call back in March of last year. Um, City Council took action that based on water towards recommendation to set the current fee for cash and loo which is a 48,500 based on the entire cost of providing a full acre foot of water to the cities portfolio. More specifically, um, used as a principal project representing that methodology. So we've been, you have been looking at that ever since then at your quarterly meetings. As you may recall, the current fee of $385 is in two components, one at $30,000 per acre foot, which is based at the water rate, the parent project water rate valuation. And then the second component, the $18,500 was the cost of the winning gap permit project. So the sum of those two projects, total cost $48,500 to get a primary foot of water to the water fee. So that's been in place for going on close to two years. As we look at those two different elements within that determination, we drill down a little more specifically into the winning gap project back in 2022, the same year when Council last set the current fee. The Platte River board authorized their staff to sail up to an additional 10,000 units of winning gap. And they, this year, 2023, earlier this year, they put out an RFP to for the sale of five of their unfirmed winning gap units. And they put that out in June. And then later that year, excuse me, with a caveat that the minimum bid that would be accepted would be $3.8 million per unit. So they received their bids and received a total of five bids for eight units. They ranked those in order of the bid offering. The top three bids were selected and those three bids represented five units that they were wishing to sell. So the next step in that process was to go to the Northern Subnist Report to receive their approval to make, to authorize that transfer. So in December of this year, back on December 7th, the Northern Municipal Subnist Report reviewed and approved the requested transfer of two units for the town of Bergen and one unit for the Little Thompson Water District. So those three units represent three of the five. The other one will be going to their reward sometime likely in the first quarter next year. After the Board acts, then the staff can move forward with those entities and actually developing a closing and having a closing that would transfer those units. So as of right now, they kind of, if you think of it in steps, they're kind of on step three for two, for three of those units, that being the actual setting and closing date and closing. The other one is like on step two, got to get the Board approval, then they can set the closing and close on. So similarly, like if you were buying a house, there's often you do a real estate appraisal. There'll be some bids, some information you'll have that'll represent contracts that are ready to be sold and not finalized. Then you'll also have ones that are finalized. And so as we look at these particular bids, we believe, staff believes it would be, it would make sense to wait till those closings occur. Is it for any reason, those bids don't close? Then the staff would have to decide if they're going to look at a lower bid. And so the idea is that it's expected that, and hope that all five units will have been closed within the next quarter, although it could be sometimes the first half, which was 24. From what we've been told is that once those bids, once those closings have occurred, then Fat River will share with us, I'll say more details of what those closing amounts were. We know that they were at least 38. The equivalent of 3.8 million is that was the minimum bid. But that being said, it's expected that the weighted average for those selected bids will be around $41,500. So as we jump to the Whitty Gap burning project, as we talked about, there's been settlement costs from the lawsuit that we've had to work through and some other efforts. And those have increased to the amount of approximately $1,000 an acre foot. So that would adjust the current $18,500 to $19,500. So you take the two new expected costs, $41,500 and $19,500, it's expected the total project cost in order to deliver a firm acre foot unit of Whitty Gap water in the system will be approximately $61,000 an acre foot. So that's kind of the numbers behind it. Staff is recommending that any future caches will adjust, although we base some actual values attributed to the total projected Whitty Gap project cost and that final closed sales we use as part of that evaluation. So not just speculation, but not what we actually have closed sales. And so we're on the opinion that probably doesn't maybe make sense to make a have a recommendation for change until those happen. But that recommendation is certainly here for you to make. We're going to continue to monitor what the Northern Board Municipal Subnissue Board reviews, and we'll continue to have conversations with Platt River, but it'll be likely your next quarter review when we have open to those core sales. Let me say, as far as bringing in Jimmy Hollow that, those costs, I mean those finalized of the cost, finalization of those costs is out a year or so. About a year and a half, yeah. But now, are you saying, you're not saying you want to wait until the final before we just do this? Okay. So what you're referring to is one, so there's two parts, the parent project water, the water right, the Whitty Gap water, and then there's the Chimney Hollow curvy project. So what you're talking about is a Chimney Hollow curvy project. Yeah, that's going to take a couple years to complete. There's already money and reserves to help pay for unexpected overage costs. It's possible those could go up. Those, if they do, are going to be a much smaller value. It's going to be something like that, $1,000 in acre foot type of increases, as opposed to the value of the parent water, which is based upon whatever the market is. And that's where it's went up on the current $30,000 an acre foot to what's going to be projected to be around $41.5. Don't you say, I think at the last four, we've been talking about an outreach program that you guys had already started. I guess there have been like anything given to council that would delay this out like you've done here for us in a study session or executive session, just so they're aware that as well as developers are going to be getting us another $13,000 per acre foot. So we do plan on doing that. We're not at that point yet. We've actually been asked internally to look at additional options. Also, there's a little bit of concern about how cash and loo will affect affordability in the community and also looking at what future projects we may use. Now currently, or at least cash and loo, we've been accumulating for some time now. We used bulk of that $4.5 million when we entered into the contract with the mini gap firming project. We used the remainder of the five-mountain dam fund with the $4.5 million cash and loo. We had a bond that the citizens approved and then some money we had already been transferred to us. We had a consortium of money that we put together. The biggest item in that, of course, was the bond. So that we paid on. So we will use some of this cash and loo. The goods have been part of cash. Right now, we're being asked to look at different alternatives. And one of the things I want to do about Council Member Hardin on the spot today, I apologize, but I wouldn't kind of like, so we've had the opportunity to listen to a lot of staff work. We're reaching out where we can and we're reaching out really heavily to our planning department because they're a frontline working with the development community. We're reaching out to our economic development partners and our economic development city. So we're reaching out to that and then wanted to work with Lord Hardin and the Council. So actually anything that you could give us any thoughts on that whole subject, that whole, I guess I'll call it the whole what Council's thinking about on that. I guess the the thing that we would say about Wes's analysis is that it is the kind of analysis that a public utility would do and be limited to in terms of their rate setting, right, and sort of cost plus. And what that, what Wes went through very carefully is what it costs us to get that water from our primary water sources. So there are a whole bunch of other policy things that the Council will look at before setting the final fee limit. And Ken just hit on one of the big ones which was the city's needs. Like how much, what are the things that the city is going to have to use, the funds that those fees go into before. So if the city's needs are really urgent, we might want, especially if there's high demand for the water, we might want to set that price higher. What's going to be the rationale for that? The rationale is that we need some, okay. In other words, we're not a public utility. We're not limited in our policy decisions to cost plus. At all. There are a whole bunch of other policy matters that I don't know whether this board should be in the business of analyzing them or not, but we can tell you that the Council is in the business of analyzing them. What is just what other municipalities are charging in the same position? What is the plight of the fee and loom for really when it doesn't minnexation or Don's Town or any other musicality? But it's pretty enough to have the water part. And what we found the last time there was a major change in the fee and loom formula is that we were way down at the bottom. Way down at the bottom, like a factor of five difference between lawnmots being loom and everybody else's. And we're still on the lower end of that, although this, nobody else changes. This 61, predicted 61 would put us much more in line with other, with other cities. But then we have to figure out what the policy objectives are for the city and how much that fee and loom effects, whether it's a transaction, transactions that people developers, particularly women, make with the city enter into are impacted by the fee and loom. So if the city's policy is that it needs more development no matter what, we need to annex all the land we can, then we might want our fee and loom to be as low as we can afford to keep it. I don't think we would want to be letting land be annexed below cost. But we might want to go with this at cost or a narrow cost plus cognitive policy. On the other hand, there are a lot of people, a lot of voters, and they've really analyzed the results of the last election. There are a lot more voters than there were last time around who don't think long mom should be growing as much as long mom is growing. And that would translate into a policy of really jacking up the fee and loom because more developers would go away and go somewhere else. And then there's again the affordability idea of well, yeah, we want to develop, but we want to develop a lot of housing that is lower cost, whether it's subsidized housing or whether it's not subsidized, you know, it's naturally affordable to more people below the average income. And that would be a good reason for keeping the fee and loom low. But there's a catch there, too, the council can have a policy, which we did last time, of discounting the fee and loom in exchange for a covenant with the developer that they're going to produce affordable housing. So there's all kinds of knobs that go into the termination of what the final fee and loom is going to be. And at least some of those should be considered by this board. For example, a survey of what other municipalities are charging, a discussion with planning about what kind of applications they're going to get, an inventory of what the inexorable land is. One of the things that has been observed right now is that all of the land that is left in the Origen to the long-long planting area is hard to develop land. We've got, we've got, we're awaiting the outcome of a lawsuit for the Kanapolo Estates parcel, which is not hard to develop land. It's pretty much a long land. But it's hard to get. There's a fight over that land. And then there's a sugar mill area land, which is the epitome of hard to develop land. It's blighted. It's polluted. It's a mess. And there's no infrastructure, even adjacent to it. There's all of this blighted land inside the city, and that's already, so that we're pretty much starting from dust as you start to develop that land. Have you, have you heard from developers recently that it's too expensive to do business in the long run? Have you heard much of that? Oh, no, you don't always say that. Like the long-long way out of the range of everybody else in the area. No, no, no. They're not saying, they can't say that. You know, what, what, compared to a friend break or something, you know, there's just time to grow as hard as it possibly can. We're probably harder to work with. You know, we've got bigger land use code and bigger development code. And so, you know, you have to tone the line in order to get your projects through the process. And that gets said a whole lot. It's said a whole lot, but it takes too long. But I don't think anybody has ever said that the city won't work with us or that this, that the city's costs are out of line. I mean, everybody in this area, the cost of land is out of line with respect to the United States of America. But, but for our area, no, I don't think, I don't think that's true. Yeah. So, I heard somebody say the other day that the city ate up too many of the low-income housing tax credits so that their private low-income housing development is going to have to wait longer to get some. But that seems to be like whining. You know, I mean, everybody is, everybody is dipping out of the same bucket. There's a line of labels and buckets not very big. So, I'm not really advocating for a policy because I only speak for myself. You know, I don't think we should, my personal opinion is we shouldn't move the money on the table for commercial developers, but we should make allowances for affordable housing. And we already did that. You know, last time around, we, the policy now contains a reduced fee in the rate if there's a common development for us. So, I just wanted to talk about all the things that need to be considered. And I think at least all of the factual information needs to be brought forward by the staff and by this board. So, we need, we need all of the stuff about what's happening in the surrounding area. You know, it's up to the council to tweak the quantitative analysis, I think, to decide whether we're going to, you know, incentivize affordable housing, whether we're going to incentivize building in long-run, doing lots, you know, all of those things. But it's not up to the council to go and figure out how much all the other new municipalities are charged. It's not, it's not up to the council to go and figure out who's buying and selling water rights and for what. So, all of that stuff needs to be looked at. And, you know, maybe a trend analysis because, you know, there's no, you guys are professionals when you're adjacent to the business in one way or the other. The council's not professional in anything most of the time. And, you know, so we don't do stuff like trend analysis, right? That needs, that needs to come, right? That needs to say, well, you know, water rights are getting more and more expensive with respect to the cost of living, with respect to the cost of land. Or not. Good morning. Tom, you got any comments? I have a few, but I don't know that my voice will know. I just kind of, I just continue to advocate for the fact that I feel like it is our board's job to find out how much it costs the city to buy an acre of water. And all the kind of additional kind of planning, the most kind of pseudo-political kind of stuff is really not up to us. And that, you know, the professional role that we hold is just to figure out how much water costs. And I don't even know that what other municipalities are charging for their free and blue has really anything to do with us, either, because that's not our city. So in our city as a unique set of circumstances that, that result in whatever the cost is for us. So that's, I guess that's my two cents. Okay. All right. Thanks, Tom. Anybody have any more comments? I have, I have some questions. One of my first questions is, you guys are doing outreach to developers at one point to let them know that there will be an increase? Not that there would be, but that the name was suggesting it might be, yeah. As they've been going through the development review process or as they've contacted the contact and order division. So when they contact you, you let them know that there could be a change. Yes. Okay. How's that going? Like, do you have a sense of how many you've done, what percentage of folks know? Is it well known in the development, it hasn't been an outreach to the, to the impact? So as you kind of seen through the development review that you've looked at, there hasn't been a lot. So even since the March of 2022, since the last change occurred by for cash and loo, there's been a, I'm going to call it a limited amount of development that's went through this required water board action. And a lot of that has to do with right prior to Council's action in March of 2022, a significant amount of cladding that was sitting there and even annexations. So just a quick refresher, when you annex in the lawnmug, you transfer your historical water, that leaves a remaining deficit. At that time, you can satisfy all remaining deficits of pertinent to that annexation. You don't have to wait until a plaque. Most do, but you don't have to. So when the bigger change came out a couple years ago, some annexations came through, satisfied all the remaining deficit, which therefore allows them to develop a bearer timeframe whenever it is without having to bring more water or bring more cash and loo. And so, and then there was a bunch of final clats. So I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it was a significant amount of the developer land within Longland. So in the last two years, there's been some development proposals that have come through that have some outstanding deficits. But on a very small scale, somebody that's got, I'm just going to make up a number for illustrative purposes, they may have less than a five-acre foot deficit. So as opposed to somebody that's coming in and has a hundred and fifty-acre foot deficit, it's a significant impact. And so there are also, another point is, there is a handful of developers that represent a significant amount of the development that's going through Longland currently. So in other words, there, I'm making this number a little bit up, but it's, I think you'll get the context. There are five or six developers that probably represent 80% of the development that's going on right now. And we've had conversations with those. Yes, there's going to be other developers that just come through. In any given time, a developer can walk into the city's development building and say, I want to have a meeting and talk about a project. But I think we've had a lot of conversations that are, everybody, those people that are in the development process now, we've had conversations that represent that roughly 80%. There's an expectation, they just understand costs go up with time. It's very unusual for costs to go down. So as they go through there, they're doing their own performance, they're like almost expecting it, not wanting it, but expecting it. And so that's kind of the conversations that we've been having so far. Great, great. Thank you. And I would expect that you guys are communicating with the planning staff and economic development staff, and you're not directly interacting with developers. Because again, anything you say can counter-tuitive of what's going on with planning. So you're just kind of guiding the ship through other city staff. That's right. We've had, we've had very specific conversations with the planning staff. There's been a pretty good turnover of new planners. And any time that happens, I've had more direct, comprehensive discussions with them about cash and loo. And so what's been happening most recently is those clearinghouse planners are suggesting that the applicant directly contact water resources. So something doesn't get lost in transition. So I've had and continue to have a lot of direct one-on-one conversations with the planners or the developers when they come through. And that process can take a while. So even though, even though you haven't seen development applications in front, doesn't mean there's some in the pipeline. They're just not ready or in a point yet to come before the board for taking action on. But I think we're going to see a few of those in, in the near future. I'd like to maybe draw the distinction that Tom was trying to make a little differently. Because it is not this board's charter to make policy. That's the council. But the council is not chartered to do sophisticated data analysis. The staff and the advisory boards are supposed to bring that forward. So, you know, as I recall, the last time we did this exercise in a big way, we had, you know, an incremental same formula recommendation that came from the staff at the water board. And we had people, public water, public is likely to be heard, pounding on the table and saying, Longmont is charging a fifth of what all the surrounding cities are charging. Why are we leaving this money on the table? And what we had to do as a council was send that question back to the staff. And it'd be great if we didn't have to do that because that, you know, this is the thing, Roger, to your previous question, developers hate uncertainty. Because every time there's uncertainty, it equals to delay. And it means that they've had to finance because if they get their financing lined up in advance, if they can't finance, they can't even do an application, you know. So they just hate uncertainty. And so the faster when we begin this exercise, the shortest time possible from taking up the question until settling the question, the better it is for everybody who does transactions to the city. And therefore, bringing forward, you know, doing the data analysis, because, you know, I can tell you, the council is not going to be the best people for deciding what all the factors are. You know, they're not, okay, you know, there's one council member that goes through the witty gap meeting and eats the donuts and hears about the litigation and stuff. Hey, Brian badly thought those donuts were the only reason we're going up to the city. So, you know, but mostly the council doesn't even know, you know, that there are legal issues to be dealt with, let alone that they're going to impact the cost per acre foot of a firm. I'm used to all my words already. The cost of the water per acre foot out of Chimney Hollow is going to be impacted by those legal fees. So all of that stuff, the questions are that the staff and the board knows how to ask those questions. And the at least the data and the potential impact need to be part of the package that comes forward. What the council does with it. Yeah, that's policy. That's right. That's whether the council is still committed to more affordable housing or not. That's where the council is still committed to reasonable planned growth or whether the council needs more toward capping growth, as some city councils and other cities have done. That's council policy. But the data analysis that informs the policy making process is, we're going to depend on this board one way or the other with that analysis. And it's just a question of how many vouchers. What's anything else? No, I had one question and I thought when we first started knowing that this cash in the way we adjusted. Was there a thought that maybe water could be made to make a decision sometime in December or dead? Was that an optimistic thought? I think that was probably more optimistic on my part. I think I led the board to believe that and I thought that they were going to have closed sales by the end of the end of the year. But it's just taken longer than expected. And so again, that's where our recommendation comes to it seems to make sense to let that play out so we can know for sure what those sales and therefore today's value of that pair of water is. And then on top of that stuff, we'd like to be able to bring that to the board and then mention to council some of the data. And we have done that in the past sometimes. It's not a long standing story we've done for 20 years of other cities about their policies that hasn't been updated actually. Things like other cash in the policies. It's not as easy as saying this is the city chart, this is my system, this is my system. I mean, it's like a matrix. All kinds of, you know, everybody does it differently. But yeah, we can update that. We one thing we would like to do is kind of goes back to the question about how much is out there we have a law and very long standing GIS map layer that we occasionally bring in the water board. And I think we'd like to bring that back to you and show you it has by partial by partial partial by partial and then try to see what's in it. What's not, what's only not historical, what's fully met, what still needs to be met. You can't granularly go through it, but it gives you a good visual and good base information on. So those are the kind of things where over the next couple months we're going to try to bring back and then possibly have enough information on the table for the March review. So we do appreciate all you're about now and then, you know, the suggestion and we agree with it, we do need to get a study session with council. So we kind of think through it because there are broader policy issues. I mean, we're good at bringing the data to you, but the policy and also advice, we appreciate the board and the council do that. So we'll continue to bring more information. Anybody else? Oh, yeah, I can talk about this all day. I'll try to make it short. But when I was reviewing the numbers that are in the current packet, I will say there was one year that jumped out at me. It was slightly concerning and that was the the the current proposed or somewhat proposed windy gap firming costs of 19.5. Those are below like inflation index, meaning they're too low. I mean, I wanted to be real, but I think we should also be aware that those should go probably at least about $5, which is not the big piece of the puzzle. It's a smaller piece, but I think we should be making sure that that signal is out there. That's just comparing to indexes. But when they're not going up as fast as the construction cost indexes, then I'm like, Hey, is this number still good? And if we're going to delay even longer, I think we should be aware that that number should go up potentially. Maybe not. And then another thing I wanted to communicate to you, I guess, to council is that avoiding rate shock is lovely, meaning keep the increases small and steady. I'm hearing there's, you know, let's not do it now. But I think reviewing it frequently and small increases that are more frequent sometimes can be better than a big jump and more palatable to whoever's experiencing those increases. So just as part of this stuff to keep in mind for future events, if we want to do a market based thing, we can pay somebody to evaluate the market for us annually or every other year, so that these things are going up more, more incrementally, but also maybe frequently, you know, keep it going. So that we're not behind, because I don't have a key for that. But just it helps think people are powerful and workable for the developers. Because as you were saying, they know things are going to go up. And if they get a feel for it, it's going to go up this much, you know, or if they can expect these increases annually, you know, we're looking at two years now that we're going to do this in March, we were doing it annually, maybe it'd be smaller steps and more palatable. You know, and that's a really good point. And it's kind of the thing that the council sells them questions, it's kind of metapolicy, right? How often do we evaluate this policy of outpolicy? And the council usually is not quick enough on its week to question that. So I think an annual review of STC, or cash and loo might be like, like annual inputs of some of the bigger is potentially useful if we want to go with market, maybe to establish a new one. But also maybe contract out, give them some money to get it done. You know, so that's just for the future. Yeah, and then there's another thing, because if you do it more often, then now you're shorter than the planning cycle for a development project. And so then you're going to have to say, well, which development pipeline is affected by this and which is not. But it's two years, then it's a little bit of an easier question. Well, and one of the things that's always kind of troubled me on the board is when we advise on a different cash and loo, and we advise this month. And, you know, if somebody doesn't know that advice is coming in this month, and when that exactly lands to council and following month, all of that stuff. That's another thing about annual that's lovely is if it were truly annual, and they can expect it, then it wouldn't be, oh shoot, I should have gotten it in last month. Which sounds silly, but if we're talking about increases like this, that's going to stink. All right, you know, so if they kind of knew to expect, hey, it goes up every April or whatever it is, then at least they could be like, well, I want to try to get it done by March. Right. So, so giving that normalcy, as you said meta, around it, so that it's normalized, that can help too. Yeah, and we just had that theoretical discussion with respect to the fee and loo of million for the units last month. So, yeah, it's that's really real. And it makes big difference to developers. So, yeah, anything that we can do to regularize the process and, and yeah, part of the problem was because of the pandemic, we didn't we didn't readjust that fee assessment as often as we had promised we would. So, that's what we're going to do. Anything else? I'm going to say that I did look at all in system development charges on a permanent basis from all the family and we're not that expensive. We're fairly inexpensive. We are, and that's going to compare to to stuff around. We are a little bit more on a spending side for a single family, but that's not necessarily where affordability lies. So, just one quick question or process. Yes, when a developer deals with his deficit, before applying, he's done right at that point in time. So, it could be three years before he does that development. So, and in between that time that he's settled that deficit, cash in lieu is increased by he doesn't have to then be done. So, yeah, so that's we've had some annexations do it now that have been satisfied for 20 years. There's been no development and the cash in lieu has changed 20 times up and down. So, that is an advantage for a developer. They told me that's why some of them have came in because it makes it, if you will, more marketable if you if you can sell it knowing to whoever and save the potential buyer. Regardless of what happens in cash in lieu of water that's received, you're satisfied. I don't remember if we saw this last time that you did. I'm not aware of the 20 times up and down in cash in lieu. I thought it was fairly static for a really long time and then we jumped. So, here's a historical trend line of what cash in lieu was over time. It could be interesting to see. So, you go on our website right now and we have a list from 1963 to current of every council action on setting the fee. So, starting at $100 back in 1963 to where it is today. It shows every change that we've highlighted it in red. There's not a line grab and says spreadsheet, but it shows that there was a period of time where it was changing frequently where I think we made four changes in one year, six changes in two years. Cash in lieu just trying to stay with the market in the early 2000s. So, usually it's not been huge and there's percentages listed there. So, you can see relatively speaking how big those changes were up and down. I think in the past 10 years we've done volume changes. So, it's about once a year. So, not much recently but right and because of the format that we've chosen to base our cash in lieu line, it's not as responsive to market changes anyways. That's right. Because we don't need cost inputs, we just don't really try to find out if they're right. So, we shouldn't be doing it having quarter frankly because we don't have the data that he suggests that that's changing on a quarterly basis that should be more than a rule. So, she moved away from using CMT as a barometer and she definitely has changed that right. Okay, move on. I'm going to go for the one. Yeah, thanks. Hopefully I can demo you. Yes, I have before you a proposed memorandum over the management agreement between the city of Longmont and the National Heart Service, the Rocky Mountain National Park. The city of Longmont owns 80 acres up in the wild basin area of Rocky Mountain National Park. It's just as you go in the park off of the state county road, there's an entrance station, you've got Copeland Lake. We used to also own Copeland Lake, but we exchanged that in the mid-1990s to the St. Green and left on a lot of Conservancy District for Golden Vonds. That was a good deal for both of us. But we still own 80 acres, which is really the willow cart. The main part of the valley predominated by willows, so we call it the willow cart. Very, very pristine area. We've owned it since return to the last century. I remember exactly around 1910 or so, we purchased that property. We filed for a reservoir site, the planned reservoir site in the valley at that point. Around 1915, we actually built Copeland Lake, the small lake there. We had a plan for about 1500 acres of that work. That never went forward. Quite honestly, the geologic conditions of the site wouldn't have allowed for it then, and even today, if it's all a glacial till, that would be a rock. You'd never be able to see it. And of course now, being all about that, you're really going to be able to build a reservoir there. So really, the city has not been using it. Owned by the waterfront, but hasn't used by the waterfront for water purposes. As such, in the mid-1990s, early 1990s, we entered in an agreement with the National Park Service, where they actually managed the property for us. They treated it. It actually got included in the Rocky Mountain National Park. In the boundary, it's aerial boundary. The Rocky Mountain National Park is still on the aspect within the park boundary. As such, they can manage it. They manage it for us. The great benefit for us is that we don't have to spend a lot of money to go up and watch the area and do the minor maintenance and take care of visitation and that type of thing. So they treated it as if it were part of the park. Basically, this agreement allows them to apply their park regulations to the land, which is really great for us. It preserves it. It keeps it in a better condition. And they have their rangers stationed right there. They have their district rangers out. This really saves us a lot of time and money. It improves up their maintenance. It's been working really good for almost 30 years now. But it needs to be updated. It'll be a 10-year agreement, so it'll be from 20 now, 20.4 to 20.33. It is 10 years maximum in the park to do an agreement this type of stuff. Staff's recommended to forward a recommendation to the Council to approve the agreement. The terms and the agreement basically aren't changing. They really aren't. It was very written a little bit, but it's everything that you would see today. Really, for them, it's a couple of benefits for the park. One is they use that whole villa car because it's so pristine, such a natural area. They use it for a lot of research, and they're able to actually do some research projects. Their property is just less of ours, and so the research can continue through the valley. Prior to our joint management of the area, we weren't able to get there quite enough, so people started camping. Then it became a piece of hole in fother and fother, where they were actually camping on the National Park Tourist Lands. They came just to say, hey, this activity is impacting ours. We got rid of overnight camping up there and installed a small daze area, but really for the park, a couple things they want. They want to keep the entrance to the National Park pristine. It gives them really the corridor for people to get into the park. There's a hiking trail, so a lot of people, not the visitors, most visitors are driving in, but a lot of people live in that area, actually walking through the park on the trail. But really, for the park, it's the entrance to one of the major, like personally, one of the best areas of the park. So there's no monetary compensation to them. Is their use able to oversee the land, and you see a lot of value in that? Yeah, they do. If you read the agreement, it does have, there's extraordinary maintenance. The long line would sit down with them and talk about how to fund that, and it would be more likely to fund it. But in terms of really, their maintenance is patrolling it. They do have volunteer work crews that take care of the trail. There really isn't too much cost for them. And, of course, one really great thing for them is they actually have their entrance. They're gated, they've got paid at all their set for the public. Right off the county road, it actually, the road goes across a couple of length properties, same grain up in water, conservancy district property, not property. So it probably is nice, otherwise they'd have to move there. Well, it would have to. It's awkward to have your gate, not actually at the end of the park property. It's at the ends of the park. So for them, it's a really good deal. And of course, they want to keep the pristine nature of that. Years and years ago, we actually, 40 years ago, it was leased by a stable, pastured horses on there. Disagree with when was it first put together? First, I think it was 1993, when we first entered. So, right at about, yeah, 30 years ago. We believe it's very, very good. Yeah, I was only going to suggest that in the future, there's some historical pieces in here, as I mentioned. In the agenda, we call it a Copeland Lake MOU. We should probably not call it Copeland Lake MOU since there is a Copeland Lake MOU that the conservancy district has with the parks. So, a particular parcel, just for confusion sake. So it's really just a willow car. It should be Copeland Willow car. Other than that, I would make the motion to authorize the city to enter this agreement or for recognition so you can also authorize the city to enter the agreement in substantial reform, presented the water borders, presented us. Second on the second that, with the comments that, you know, it makes sense for one entity to do the ecosystem management. A few different entities, then certainly times have different priorities. The other thing I'll mention to the board too is, you know, after the flood, the restoration of Button Rock, the city did a wide number of cuttings of those willows from this property in order to do the restoration of the Button Rock. And that's a really good point, and I probably should have mentioned the 35 acres that we exchanged the district, right, the district also has an MOU with the Park Service. So Park would be managing not only the park, but our property and our property. So that is In relative to the same manner, the agreements are not that much similar. I agree with your suggestion. The only reason I would know exactly where this is is because it's cold. What do I get? I have no idea where Willow will ever is, but no. It's a geographic point, it's just that there aren't two separate agreements. You're right. Just for keeping in mind. Okay, we have a motion made in the second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right, unanimous passed. Thanks again. Okay, John, you're up next. Yeah, great. Well, I don't have to take a whole lot of time here and distract from the water resources side of the conversation, but it's great. I think Wes initially asked that I introduce myself. So I know some of you are just from working with some of me, Dan, and presenting at some of the council meetings, but I'm an engineering and operations administrator with the city. I think one of the things that Wes was open, I can cover is just some of the reorganization of the water and way services department. So Chris, I don't know how much context you provided as to how our department has been remanded. So historically, I feel like public work was really headed by Dale, right? And so a lot of decisions in work went through Dale, you know, one person. And as we've kind of reformed this water and way services department, some of the vision was to create some management and supervisory, all called resiliency with the group, right? So Bob Allen currently is the department director. Chris is the assistant director myself. I'm one of the administrators and we have one other administrator, Joe Mahalski. And so among the four of us, you know, we kind of oversee and support all of the department functions. And really that's primarily our way services group, which is waste collection, recycle compost. We have our, obviously water resources division, our engineering section, handles our capital improvement program. We have our treatment operations, distribution and collection as utilities, and then environmental services. So there's really six core functions within the department. And then, you know, really two, two of those divisions are handed out between myself, Chris, and Joe Mahalski. So I think what was open I could do is just maybe say who I am as one of the administrators and what function I help support in the utilities. So I primarily support our environmental services part of the department and our utilities, which is our water, water distribution and sewer collection. And so without going into a ton of detail, I'm not high level of what does environmental services do for the city. Others have maybe heard environmental services in the past. And it was a more expanded role within the city in terms of what we would cover. It's kind of been dialed back a little bit in terms of its scope. And it's primarily associated with our water and waste services division now. So what does that mean? You know, our baseline of environmental services is to cover Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act compliance. Those are two big core regulatory needs for the city. And each of those is associated with water and wastewater. So we cover those. And then another component that environmental services provide for the city is really just technical resource to all of the other divisions within water and waste. And so what does that mean? What does technical resource mean? Just some practical applications. If there's a challenge at the drinking water plan, say there's change in water quality, or we have an algae bloom. That's something where environmental services would come in and provide technical resource to understand why that happened. We don't get into the nitty-gritty of how to fix it. That's our operations group. But we provide the technical background, research. Some of our staff are PhDs. And we provide that technical resource for our water staff. And then another component I guess would be sustainability. So there is some of that partnership that we have with our sustainability group where we implement sustainability type projects at our water and wastewater plants. An example of that would be the solar and battery project that's almost complete at our wastewater plant. So that's another good example of what environmental services does. Let's see. On the utility side, that's our water distribution and wastewater collection. So you think of that as pipelines. That's another area that I support. And so what are the big needs in those areas? In terms of water distribution, I think everybody here is probably seeing news of water breaks that have happened. I think that that's around the city. Somebody mentioned a service line. It's not the city. That's service lines or residents. That's a master. That's the main. But what was the main? That's the main. That's where you were. That's it? Right across from the top. There you go. And it's a very good illustration of one of the biggest challenges for our utilities operations groups. And so of aging infrastructure, I think is going to be something that gets brought up quite a bit with council over the next year, especially as we start doing rate studies to understand where are the costs of the utility. What are our biggest challenges? That is going to be the primary hurdle for a water distribution group is we have tons of cast iron pipe in the city. And not every city has a lot of cast iron pipe, but cast iron pipe primarily is installed in the 60s to 80s. And so that infrastructure, probably do it in the back of your head, right? 50s, 60s, 70 years old, that infrastructure is prone to failure. And so we have a water rehabilitation capital improvement program that our engineering group manages to replace that infrastructure. But is it being replaced at the frequency that we need? That's an assessment we're doing as part of our rate study that we'll council see probably in the next year here. That's a big consideration for distribution. And then on collection, I mean aging infrastructure, again, same problem, right on the sewer side. So if you think about it, water lines are being laid. At the same time, sewer mains are being laid. So that infrastructure is just as old. And we have a little bit of a more cost savings type of method to rehabilitate sewer mains. We can do that trenchlessly by lining pipe, whereas most of that infrastructure, when it comes to water distribution, is more expensive. We're pulling up the road most of the time for that. We don't have the same technology to do that in a more cost-effective manner. But rehabilitation of our collection system falls with that big part of that work. And then you all have been talking a lot about developments and the impacts of development, cash and loo. And so the collection system was designed at a time when Longmont may have been planned differently or commercial or single family. And as we continue to add density, which we're talking about for cash and loo financing, that's a consideration for collection system capacity. And we continue to analyze the system through flow monitoring to understand, did we design the system for the amount of development that we're occurring in the city? And that coordination, again, is with planning quite a bit. Where is the development happening? Is our infrastructure adequate to densify? So there's some other area of utilities that I hope support, but you've planned engineers and good build staff. We're also tackling that quite a bit. Chris, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add. I just wanted to point out to you as well, John, to give a great overview of what we've been doing and how we've reorganized. One of the things that happened when we split that out from public works and natural resources, obviously, parks piece is separate from our group now, and the storm drainage piece also got pulled out from the public works. So public works streets and storm drainage, but because of the way that we've worked in the past and we've set up now, we have a lot of overlap. As Joe presented last week, there's a lot of C&T projects that are within the raw water system that we're trying to look at system politically and not so we're not just doing sewer, we're not just doing the storm. It's all working together. So each of us and maybe that kind of leadership team support each other and have different experiences that have a lot of value. So even though I support our distribution and collection teams, Chris has had a lot of experience with development. How does that work? What's the application to say? How do we support each other? Well, one of the big challenges for utilities is development. When the contractors want four new lines for fiber or for whatever underground utility they want, and they strike, potentially strike, our underground assets. We work really hard. We don't want that to happen. And so Chris has been helping us, I think, work on the development side, being our advocate there to say, how do we better protect our underground assets so that contractors have some some boundaries and safeguards in place that don't hit our the city's assets. And so he's been a really good resource to help on that. Do you core drill at all to locate existing? Is that a mandatory thing to do? Yes, there is state legislature that anytime the city has a contract with a contractor or a designer, they're required to help bottle them, hire a whole truck to turn our streets into Swiss cheese to locate everything. So we work on both sides of that. How do you interface with water treatment? I mean, is there an entire? Yeah, great question. So I mean, water and waste is cradle to grade water, right? So we have water resources. There's no grade. There's no grade, right? But yeah, so it goes to environmental services, right? As I was saying, kind of support can support technically our treatment operation staff. But within water and waste department is our water resources, water treatment, water distribution, sewer collection, waste water treatment. So everything all the way through the system of water life cycle, as within water and waste department. So our operations group is led by Jim Halske. And then we have supervisors and treatment operations managers who are overseeing those individual operations. Great. Who's question? I'm lost. I know I'm lost. I didn't. Down the primrose path, how close is that solar plus battery project? Because it's been hanging fire for a long time. How many megawatts or what fraction of a megawatt? It's fraction of a megawatt, for sure. Yeah, it's smaller. And it has been the batteries installed on site. And so as a solar, they're working on the integration of the two now to understand how those are working together in terms of storage capacity offsetting peak demand. So it's definitely not a project that we're touting as a megawatt type project. But what it is is a really good demonstration project that LPC has even offered some funding assistance to get better monitoring approaches on. So when we talk about distributed energy resources, this is what we're learning, right? It's how can we be offsetting peak demand? So our wastewater treatment plant has a very high peak demand that's associated with one of our aeration processes. And so as much as we can time the discharge of the battery or electrical system at the same time that we're using this high demand aeration process, we can start reducing the grid load. And that's that is what we're learning as part of that process. But there's definitely not a offsetting the whole wastewater plant. Yeah, it's a kilowatt. And I don't know off the top of my head the actual size of that. Some number of kilowatts. Correct. Yeah. Do you have something, Dan? I'm just asking John, are you coordinating all the federal permits for like wetland mitigation and stream restoration and all that fun kind of stuff? Are you the go-to guy? Chris and I both look at each other for that one. I am not specifically the go-to guy. Environmental services, historically, maybe that's your speaking from experience, you know, when Caliomberg was leading the environmental service group. He, I think, coordinated a lot of that work as Chris was alluding to these different departmental changes. Environmental services is working to coordinate with our stormwater group specifically to keep that kind of technical resource in-house. And so folks can come to environmental services for assistance, but I wouldn't say environmental services. But we now want everybody as a project manager as well. We could have our first call. Yeah, exactly. But we do have different staff in different areas now, like you said, expertise in house. There's an article in the paper, did we treat less water this year than previous? I think Chris was quoted in that one. Ken was kind enough to allow me to be quoted. He'll do that. Yeah, it was especially bad in a hundred years, right? So we don't need to do a lot of what's right. Yeah. I guess, you know, it's already been treated. It was about two thousand eight feet less this year than the average. Any other questions? Thank you. Yeah, thank you all. Very warmly, thanks for coming. I know. So I can make my programs look really good. That's definitely something I can say to my team. All right. So I'm presenting to you all the Growing Water Smart Impact Report from 2023. This is different from the water conservation programs as a whole. This is just the Growing Water Smart Program. So as a reminder, the Growing Water Smart Program is a program that we're that I'm running to create a path forward to foster an equitable, safe, and resilient community that contributes to Colorado's sustainable water future. Basically, it's growing, developing waters wise, changing codes, making sure that we implement water efficiency strategies during development instead of post development. But since we're not there yet, we're working on our post development water efficiency strategies with the largest project being the Kensington Park Brass to Garden project. I presented to you all in, I think, October with photos from the actual event, but here are some hard numbers. We have 131 community volunteers. We also treated this event as a resource fair. So we have seven resource booths participate and 354 water wise plants planted. We also gave away 99 plants to the community so that they can start their water lives in their homes. So that's the Kensington Park Project. The Growing Water Smart Program itself worked on several other projects this year. We did a code review for resilient landscapes, and that is basically a comprehensive review of the City of Longmont plants and policies to assess our codes and policies for water conservation, water efficient landscapes, and climate resiliency. The aim of this project is to identify best practices, policy gaps, and opportunities for improvement for efficiency standards with the water lines. We're meeting with our consultant tomorrow, actually, to go over the first draft. So we're really excited that this project has started growing some fruit. So we're hoping to present to Council some code changes for water efficient landscapes specifically in spring. We are also doing a turf replacement plan. So we're working with the Water Now Alliance to do a plan for us to establish data driven targets for reducing non-functional turf on City of Properties. We met a couple weeks ago to do a workshop to discuss co-benefits of turf transitions with a variety of different cities, staff members from different departments, so that we make sure that all groups are being heard so that we don't unintentionally attack someone when we pick a turf replacement on City of Properties. We also are doing the LEAK notifications. So this ties back to a water smart grant that Francie received several years ago for our AMR water meter infrastructure. We're required to do notifications to customers who have continuous usage on their meter. This is the first year we were actually able to start sending out letters, so that was really exciting. We sent out about 400 letters and our call team made 200 calls, our customer service team, so really thankful for them. We found three City of Longmont Leaks that were found and resolved, and just from those City of Longmont Leaks, we saved 1.3 million dollars. So that was really exciting. And then last but not least, we did our water loss audit, which is the N36 from the AOWA. Thanks to John Steen for his all of their help. There's no direct water savings realized from this report, but it's really crucial in understanding our system losses and kind of where we stand with that. So we're looking forward to continuing that report and making sure that the QR Dawson line is going to help you guys identify your CFP project so quickly. And then just a funding summary. So the City for just our growing water smart program, we set aside $15,000. We got a $25,000 state grant from the CWCB for the turf replacement project. And then in between other grants for our water now alliance project, the code audit, and the water efficiency plan is that the additional dollars for growing water smart projects. And then in 2024, looking forward for growing water smart projects, we're going to be doing a more in-depth city week procedure with the outstanding. So making sure that we get our city needs to be more efficiently, more timely. The code updates, which we're really exciting for, really excited about, and then a couple more turf projects on city properties. The $1.5 million gallons is at $20.3 million. $20.3 million. And the one to number was the $20.22 million. We didn't have any growing water smart projects happening in 2022. So this was what from January to now is $1.5 million gallons. It was just for growing water smart projects. What are the hours that you saved, Marcia? Well, I had, you know, I had a lot of new smart roof. And the roofers squashed all my new, new perennials, throwing stuff down off the roof side. I used a little bit of water near a second back, but. Yeah, that's common experience. Anybody have questions? So the code review is very exciting. That has, I think, potential. I mean, I'd love the idea of trying to get stuff done right, rather than retrofit. That's smart. So I guess my question is, is there any way of water working support and help with code review? Like, if you want to do a presentation to us, we can give a sample approval and we do approve. That's the thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that would be really helpful. Once we get our second, I'm actually not the project manager for this. Our environmental sustainability planner is managing the, or the code review for this project. So he'll come and present to you. Our plan moving forward is to meet with the consultant tomorrow, give her our first round of edits. When we get that kind of trimmed down version, he's going to get it to his leadership for like their, for their drafts. We're going to give it back to her, and then we'll come to you guys before we go to council. And then obviously having you all scan the referral when we go to council is really that one thing. I'd love to know more about it. Yeah, yeah. It was super helpful. She reviewed all of our development plans too. So all of our comprehensive plans, from Envision, Longamount to our water efficiency plan, and outlined everything that had the water efficiency in it. So we have all of that in one place, which is really helpful. Excellent. And then water loss is also really huge. Yeah, that's one of the favorites, because water losses, well, no, it's like one of the conservation measures that's also really positive. So like, how would I not love that? Right? That's like two different things, conservation. And so having both happened together is not that common. So yeah, I'm excited about that too. Is there any way we can see results of that? Should it be done soon enough? Maybe if it's cool with everyone? Yeah, absolutely. Do you guys track water loss on a monthly basis? Is that something to be recorded internally in the outskirts? Yeah, we have flow meters located around the city, which are primarily used for larger leak identifications. You know, in instances where we have main breaks, those are measurable pressure losses within the system that we see pretty quickly. But in terms of water loss accounting on a routine basis, we use those larger flow meters throughout the city to do some some accounting. You know, this, I think what you'll see in the report when you guys see this water loss recording is just looking at the entire city as a whole, right? And so there could be large leaks that are caught by those big flow meters and our transmission zones, but might not catch all the little leaks around the city. And so that that is an important piece that, you know, this water accounting says is like, are we following with an industry standard? So that's why I was thinking, yeah, I have no idea what one month's system losses are for its water system. And it plays into, you know, infrastructure rehabilitation. So when we talk about older lines throughout the city, that's primarily where you're going to be seeing leaks. And so as we continue to replace old leaking infrastructure with new watertight PVC versus, you know, a corroded cast iron pipe, we're going to continue to see water losses go down over time. But it speaks to that importance of not only protecting public health, but reducing water loss right this is the reason we increase that work all the time. Sean, I should ask you, you were talking earlier, but when I was out there at the crew, obviously it was a small amount of leak that had slated, right? And I had to tear off the replacement. When you guys started thinking about replacing linear miles of infrastructure, it's not sleek, it's good. But what does that look like? Because I gotta imagine that that's, you know, it's expensive. So if you take a linear mile of cast iron pipe out, you get the plan for that near the capital cost. It's not going to be faster, you're going to have a lot more in old leaks, but that's just another million dollars a mile. Right. So what's, I mean, is we're talking about replacing vast portions of old infrastructure. That's 25 years land, 30 years land. I mean, it's not continuous. And right now we're trying to go through a permanentization process to find where we get the most benefit for a buck. As John indicated, PCM 30 soon we have a lot of options to do internal repairs. It's just not as cost effective. The methodologies that they have today to try and do internal repair, they're going to pass on the services and going through valves is difficult to start to stop a lot. Yes, that's right. But we're always looking for new technologies and kind of this. How am I going to anything? Go? I got myself unmuted. No, I'm good. Yeah. Thank you for the information. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, thank you. Okay. On number 10 review, make your product to us. And I have done this schedule. If you support me, use any comments. Maybe we want to see what we've got. I'm just reminded it was in there, but as as it has been in the past, it will be the fourth Monday in January, not the third Monday in January, because of the absurances. I did send out those calendars. Well, I was concerned to accept them because they had seeming weird ones that went out last year. I'm like, I just know they're old. She had three for me, one for January, one for February, one for the rest of the year. All right. I'll accept. If they come from Roger, don't accept that. I recognize that. Everybody's on their sleep. Any comments on item 12? Any comments at all?