 Good afternoon, Mr. Brennan, Mr. Rickamitt, Mr. McBowell, Mr. DeWall, Mr. Vine, Mr. Davis, Mayor Benjamin. I've been here since 9.30 a.m. all the way until 6.00 a.m. Lord, for the beauty of this day and for all you've done for us, for the ability to arise this morning with health and strength undergirding us, we ask for your blessings upon each of us as we gather around this table and in this conference room. Bless the city of ours. Be mindful of the needs that are there and yet sensitize us to those needs. We ask you to give your name. Getting started with city council discussion. Mr. Mayor, our first item is the adoption of a new city flag. Mr. Lee Snowbrook, Executive Director of Monterrey for Arts and Culture, and I'm sure there have been people who may want to comment a little bit on this. Oh yeah, let's talk to anyone who has time to discuss individually. Between now and the council meeting, Lee, I'm going to push you out of your comfort zone over there. All right? I have a comfort zone? I don't think I've ever done a comfort zone. I'm going to push you into your discomfort zone. All right? Let's do it. I want to make sure we've got a lot of council, we've got some consistency, some unanimity, some designs that haven't, at least none of them got as much of a majority of support. What I specifically want you to make sure you speak to is the design league and maybe some of the input they've given you. And I'm going to try to say vexological. Is that the right way? Yes. So principles, just making sure we're hearing what those principles are like. And they were all big boys and we're limited here. We don't mind having your frank input as to what we're going to do for making a decision for posterity. I think how every one of these things talks about the public. Yeah. I think it'd be important because... Rehash all the public input. Well, how the public input was brought in. There are some people who don't do what they do about the process, but there's been a long process. A very long process. So maybe I think of those, I think repetition is probably key to these types of big decisions. Maybe you should be able to understand the entire process from here. Thank you. Okay. And I will try and recap that from memory because I didn't bring enough notes on that. That was on the previous slide. Is this my copy? Yes. Okay. Very good. Okay. Look at this, at hand. Okay. So... Whether we kill it comes in really handy. That's what he's doing. Don't worry. He can dish it out too. He can be pretty good this morning. Fair enough. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to go through the designs that you all identified from the previous presentation. And we'll talk about the groups of designs for each one. And I'll kind of give you the best I can of... I want to be very objective if I can. And talk about, yes, the public input and the professional input, both the mixillologists and the design lead professionals that are involved in the process. As we discussed last time, you know, when we started on this process, we opened the call for public input and we received 544 designs. So I showed those last time in a quick video. We sent that off to the professional mixillologists and they identified a top 18 and then that became what was submitted to the public. The public provided input on all of this. And we received 7,000 entries and that's comments on each design. So the public provided their input on each design and a sort of number ranking. We didn't ask them to select one. We actually asked them to weigh in on all of these designs. So when I talk about the public input, I may not be talking about the public input directly on the designs you have in your packet, but similar styles. Because this second round of designs was provided by the designers of the top designs from the last process. So essentially their work was reviewed. Many of them, because they were on the top, utilized those designs and just re-tweaked them to meet the guidelines that you provided them. So I can sort of speak from the public input because of that. Because we do at least have their comments. We have their rankings. We know what they were sort of responding to, what they weren't responding to well. And I think that shows in here. And I tried to capture that and what I provided you in those notes. And I'm going to talk about it. So where we're at now, we are essentially, after you all discussed it, there were 14 designs that kind of rose the top from your recognitions. And I've listed on the document you have about who's preferred one, who listed that one as a preferred one. I do have my copy of Good Bad Flag, so I can refer to it at any point if you have questions. So we'll start off with, essentially, I've got the first three, which I think we can talk about as a group. So one, two, and three are all very similar. You can see that. They're all from the same designer, obviously. And essentially, this one was well received by the public professionals and the jury members. I think that what we do know, though, is that the public wasn't entirely keen on the use of a Crescent as a reference to Columbia. Even though it works well in the South Carolina flag in context with the Palmetto Tree, many people did not respond to it well when it sort of stood alone without the Palmetto Tree. So, typically, there was discussion, I know, among the jury about changing similar designs to this one to a star. And perhaps that could be discussed. But I think that overall, people like this design for the reference to the Three Rivers and the Wing, I do think there are issues with how this shape might be used off the flag and other instances and other references to the city because of the length of the lines and trying to get that balance right and get the weight of the lines right. And I think that still applies to this version, which sort of standardizes them all the way across, and this version, which has even more sort of difference in balance between all those lines. And simply, to be honest, I think, you know, lack some sort of reference to the capital city that might be worthwhile. But I do, I think most of the professionals would say that this doesn't meet the simplicity guidelines for, you know, good product, you know, some dust. Yeah, it's obviously very simple, two colors, three lines. And I think you get the wing for sure in that design. Okay, so then we'll go on to the next set here. And stop me if you have questions along the way, or I can just go back to that at the end. This one and this one were provided obviously by the same designer. And while I think this certainly means the simplicity criteria, one issue I think for this flag, and the shape is interesting, but I think that the problem is it's a white flag, and that can sometimes be hard to see on a pole. When this flag might be hanging limp, you're not going to recognize those three lines, and it could be hard to identify as a Columbia flag. Most flags in this design limp, you're not going to be able to see either. Well, I mean, I think there are certain elements, right? If you can capture some of the color, or some of the star or something like that, it will be pretty quickly recognizable. South Carolina flag, not always recognizable on a flag limp, but generally, in context, it will be. Lee, just out of curiosity, you spent a lot of time, something I brought up before that nobody really answered, is how come none of these designs incorporated the light blue color that seems to have been kind of, is it for the same reason? I mean, no, like, predominant, maybe a little bit in there, but not. That's when you first questioned that one. I think that there were some responses that came from that, people alluding back to it. Part of the problem is people don't really know our current flag well, and I think there's actually even a disagreement between whether it should be light blue or dark blue. The original design was dark blue. If you look back on all the documents of what was adopted by, over a hundred years ago, what was adopted, it was a dark blue field, and somewhere along the way, it changed the light blue, and not really an explanation why. So, there may not be that allegiance to that light blue. Light blue flags do fade, and I'll talk about that in some of the designs later. In the sun that can turn to white, and I've seen that, I saw one of our current flag on the front of the police department years ago when we first started this process. They were flying on it, just young faded, and it was pretty white. You lose that when it's a full light blue flag. In this whole process, to throw a kind of a monkey wrench, but what if we like the design like that, but change the colors? I think we've taken the tack of, we've got the designs submitted, but I'll talk a little bit about how we might work to make some alterations that could fit if you are really strongly preferring a certain design that we could adjust it. Most of these designers, I have a sense from them, they will be comfortable with some changes, depending upon as long as they don't lose the core concept of that design. But I think there are ways that we can make some slight tweaks to most of these to improve them as flags, and we can discuss that. So, go ahead. Yes, sir. If you would, go back to number one, please. The movement with the idea of the crescent, being like, what are the, let me ask you this, what were the subliminal messages? Or were there subliminal messages that you were looking at the crescent? I mean, I think that some portion of the general public may have seen the connection that some flags of the Islamic nations, particularly in Turkey, might have on their flag, but it's sort of irrelevant because we know for sure it is a crescent tied to the South Carolina flag, so it's odd that people are making that immediate connection. It's all like the red crescent, the sort of disorganization equivalent to the red cross. There were a few citations of that, but I don't think that was the predominant view. I think that just people maybe didn't make the connection to the South Carolina flag when it's a stand-alone crescent because often there's already the misnomer that that is a moon, and it is not a moon. It is from the shape of the gorgeant of the revolutionary soldiers that represented South Carolina. It's not necessarily a crescent moon. Was it a large percentage of those persons in that listening here in session that it would be a crescent moon? I don't know if I would say a large section, but I don't have the numbers to sort of quantify that. But I think that there was that sense that just as a stand-alone item, the crescent alone did not represent the capital. There were connections somehow. Number five, I think the only thing I know for sure about this one, one thing that would need to be addressed is there's a little complexity to that sign in terms of there actually two colors that we may not be able to see here, and some simplification of that, you might be able to see it in the printout depending on the quality of the printer. But there are some variants there that wouldn't work on a flag because of the same reasons it doesn't really work on the printout or on the screen right now. But overall meets the flag, pretty much all these designs meet the flag guidelines within range. Simplicity I think is the one that gets played once in a while, but the thing that was, I think the public responded to when this similar three-line pattern and sort of Chevron shape was used that it referenced the military for whatever that may mean. We are connected to the military, but that shape reminded people of a militaristic flag. So just to make note of that, I do think that also there is a good correlation of this designed to the Milwaukee flag, which is the people's flag of Milwaukee. I'm not sure if their council has adopted their flag, but it's in wide use. And it has a similar sign coming above three lines and a slightly different color pattern, but similar in shape of the design. Okay. So those were by another designer. We're now on the third designer's set. This was very similar to a design that was in the first round. And while I think certainly the Phoenix refers to Columbia, we rose from the ashes and such in the Columbia Phoenix paper, there was some concern by the public about referring back to that event, a negative event for the city on a flag that we hope will be facing future and represent us going forward. Also for reference, the city of Phoenix, their flag is, you may not be able to see it well, but it's purple with a Phoenix right in the middle of it. I think it's Phoenix University. Fair enough. The professionals really weighed in on this shape of this crescent of the star. I really like it. So the professional really certainly honed in on the idea of this crescent within the star because certainly that clearly on its own, without much interpretation really showcases Columbia as the capital of South Carolina. So they responded highly to that. That's the vexillologist. It is a complex shape fairly much in terms of getting the stars correct. Obviously tacking on wings makes it a little bit more complex. The lines on the edge probably need more contrast in this case because as you can see it's not very definitive on the screen here. So we want to help the contrast in terms of what gets put on the flag. Isn't it a chance to do it from there? Yeah, within reason. I mean, you know, there are exceptions to that rule. South Africa, the United States in some cases not every child draws out all the stars. But if they can get the general gist of the idea of a flag simplicity helps with that, yes. Obviously similar complex shape of the star of the wings, but one thing that was fairly told to me by Ted K who wrote the good flag, bad flag, wavy lines on flags are sort of irrelevant because flags are already waved. So any straight line on a flag is going to look wavy. So you don't need to have a wavy flag, a wavy line, because it's just adding to the mix of the wavy line. This one does try and tie into the current city flag by providing wavy justice on it. Obviously that then creates a fairly complex shape of the wings. And it does reference our current flag and the city seal, which you know, I think that one, this may be a judgment, but one thing that I think our current flag suffers from is its direct connection to the city government and not the people of the city and how it seems like, oh, that's just for the government that I'm not going to fly that because it references something above me. And we're, I think we are if I understand correctly, we're all looking for a flag that really represents us as Colombians, as people, so that they can fly it without referring to the government all the time. Similar, star, wings, blue field, light blue reference that councilman recommended referenced. Contrast issues perhaps between the wings themselves and the light blue. That's very air force looking perhaps. I would draw my support for number 10. If anyone else wants to feel the same profile of this shit, this one so it does meet the flag guidelines, obviously. There's probably not enough contrast between the yellow star and the white field and that would need to be addressed. Light blue at the bottom would fade quickly and sort of blend to the white in the middle. So we're now in this last section, they're three fairly different designs with differences between each of them. One thing I'll say about these designs I noticed at the state of the city that councilman was wearing a dress that had exactly the same color. I understand too, but I'm sure she realized it. Which was very exciting that she was already wearing the potential city flag perhaps. Again with the dress and we've already just, I think, just one sort of caveat to this one. Great. I'm here to persuade. So, you know, I think there was a lot of discussion in the journey level and the professional level about having a sort of white bottom corner that gets a little lost in the mix on a gray sky or something that it'll make that flag look a strange shape, not a rectangular shape. And this one we have the star incorporated here I think the designer notes that you know, the six points are not to the state house as a symbol of resilience for the city. You know, I don't think any designer is going to be completely caught up in the number of star, the number of points on the star, so that's, you know, I think up for discussion. Certainly. Yeah as a symbol of resilience for the city. You know, traditional capital city star on a map is going to be five stars. But then I think there's also you could make a case that, you know, a six point star refers to cardinal directions perhaps or something like that. I guess that would be an eight. But similar shape, just in this one instance there's sort of the additional blue, lower blue corner and then the final one is this one, which I think there are a few issues with this, but I think overall there's a nice structure to this middle shape that I think could be applied in a lot of different instances. Traditionally the star would not be in the lower right-hand corner and I think there are fading issues between the sort of blue colors here that if it fades you might lose some context to that shape. I think there is an opportunity for, as we've sort of discussed all along with any of these, and I'm going to give you an example of how we might make minor tweaks with the designers input through the process to improve it. One suggestion would be I'm going to go to this one first. This was supposed to be the other one. So you'll see the connection to the one, but we've sort of just put in some contrasting lines to give that shape some definition and if it were to fade it would allow that shape to keep retaining shape and wouldn't blend. So this is sort of just a tweak of what was submitted to us with this contrast between the shape which I think already you'll sort of see there's distinction between three referencing and three rivers and this shape perhaps could stand alone. When reviewing your preferences there was someone suggested what if we flip it over and I think this is what happens when you flip it over and there's some interesting element here. This is much more of a wing reference I think and the star isn't much more traditional play it has the contrast to it. So just to show you I'm mostly just showing this as a suggestion that some of these could take in terms of if there are issues that I've brought up they could be improved if you were but with the designers input we'd certainly want to make sure we end. And I'll say in this instance just so we could display this we communicated with the designer on this. Is that the option that the design league thinks could do the best we could say? I do think so yes sir it was discussed in the design league before you know a bunch of room full of design professionals certainly had opinions about design out of these designs as I presented them mostly like I've just presented you this one was the top and then this suggested alteration came to the top for the design league board. Those would be navy blue lines between the quite the light blue and the dark blue. Yes sir. I do think it might be worth just a minor alteration to discuss how that shape closes itself out at the top right but that's minor I think the general idea is there that the shape would be the wing shape but I think that I can imagine that shape being used in a lot of instances on its own without the star or without the rectangular flag that that shape could become sort of more iconic for Columbia. It shows forward progression it shows a wing it shows the three ribs which is all the things we use that identify ourselves. And so the because of the navy blue lines if it fades it won't lose that. You know what I don't like that at all. Where should we page? What's the pattern? Are we about to call guess what's going on here? That's a bad word. I think we have to talk to each other to speak out loud and share some thoughts right now. Perfect. So you know I've been paid attention for this. Lee, thanks for all the hard work you've done for all the hard work. For a couple, two, three years it's been going on and if you saw my yard signs in my campaign you saw the blue and yellow. So I like the blue and yellow specifically like number three gives how it's the state flag with the gold from the corn for the tribute to the original flag the three rivers I love the three rivers get involved and then the wing rising up from the actually it's simple but I think it's very short so that's kind of my thought process to behind why I like number three. I like four and I like four if you change the colors to the yellow and gold because I think that really distincts the three rivers I think the write up if you read the write up in here that's what captures me too was the come together collective form of water shape the wing captures the diversity of Columbia the character and strength of Columbia stems from diverse groups coming together which is I think what we've all been working for for a long time and I think that really is a transition away from what some of the commendations are on the old flag so from a color standpoint you could change the colors and that would be a strong individual individual input I am I'm strongly about the revised version that we presented of 14 and also 7th and early 9th and 8th I will just mention as well I do feel that the narratives almost supplied almost all the flags with a good detection of a few outliers but we didn't have to but we wanted working around the wings like Senator Day's quote on the wings of Columbia of course the narratives between Brian, Ryman from Ashes and Meals there's a whole lot there and the wings that also contemplated the rivers and the fantastic I also like simplicity of the three but I like having some reference to the capital I wonder if it might be worthwhile I was going through well worthwhile maybe to just take on some of the ones that we don't want but it might be easy to eliminate some but if y'all can't do some of that Lee on number three could two things, number one could we put a star, a six-pointed star to represent a star that's on the state house I don't know if we're from the designer about that I would imagine since they submitted along the crossing then perhaps they'd be open to discussion about it and why they do that in the one previous it and I think it's the reason they're not doing it on that one is because they're using that sort of flared shape it's to get more of a wing it's to get more of a wing to have a half inch I'm like three so so obviously Mr. Vine you're okay if we remove number one Yes, I was going to say I was wrong Mr. Duvall Duvall, you put down two you want to take that one out, uh, the prevention? I will give up number two and support number three with a star Can we take out the huge support of the fact that they three stars here? We'll take the Romero, Jurassic one. That's like the five people's life in Milwaukee. That's five. That's number five. Remove that one from the tension. Five, six, seven. Five, six, seven. No. Which one do you want me to read on that? Seven. Seven. All right. Everyone's leaving seven, if you wish. Let's take six out. He's dead. Are you serious? Let's give you a move to sit. Let it out. All right. We're going to take out six, not seven. This is a more discussion. We're taking eight out. Is that correct, Mr. DeVon? Is that right, Mr. DeVon? Yeah, I'm proud of that. And we've done the people's fire, now we've done the fire. So we're taking out number nine. Fair. We still have the city seals. President, I need justice. All right. Mr. DeVon. I'm sorry. I was taking nine out. Yes. Yes. Take my number ten out. All right. Mr. Davis, would you say about eleven? Eleven real? Keep it up. Keep it up. All right. Got it. So eleven right now. Twelve, thirteen, and we're going to have versions of fourteen. We'll take out twelve and thirteen. We'll have the fair versions of fourteen. I'm still in the mix. So let's use those. Fourteen, three, four, seven. All right. That's right. I'm pointing at one as an alternate three. Is that right? One as an alternate three. Alternate four, eight. Four. Yes, I'm sorry. Seven. Yeah. Oh. That's right. The four. The color. The color. The color. The color. The blue and gold. On the. Maybe flag with the gold. I thought so. Like this? Like the weight? Yes. Like three of the weight? This is a. Descriptive. Don't force. Finally. Good. Good. Good. When arts meets the food process. Yeah. Yeah. Art is in the eye of the hold. Hey, art is in the eye of the beholden, so we all have a different way of looking at it. Art is a reminder. At that point, I said this later. Certainly, you know, you're trying to find a flag that will hold me on for many people for a long time. It will not come with me. Many people won't necessarily identify with this immediately. But as it's used and as it's displayed and as it's thought about, people will become more connected with it. It is not flags, they have to laugh a lot and they have to hold that meaning for a long time. So it's hard for people to immediately sort of take it on. Even really good design flags. I can imagine, you know, if we were sitting around the room trying to judge the American flag, we might have opinions about it being too complex or having too many lines or something like that. But we all use it in so many ways now because it's got such tradition to it. And it will take time to develop that tradition. I got to say, again in the interest of the process, I'm very proud of this process. Absolutely engaging and inclusive. It's been patient. Everyone's been. Because while some people might not even see this as being a major exercise as the 365 days of the year just kind of go on. It is something that speaks to the spirit of the city and then speaking to the ideas of inclusion and the growth of the city and how. We were not the city that we wanted to be then. But how we may not still be there, but we want to be there. And that we're pledging to work together, capitalizing on the riches and vitality of the rivers. Probably the fact that we are state capital. I just think it's a process that's been the type of process you want to see even though it's taking longer than you want. Thank you for the artists who share their views and design these and some of the others. Give us critical analysis and actually show them the ability to change the tradition for people like me and others. May have arrested the process and asked for more. And I just think it's been a process to be proud of. And now we've got to make some decisions. We're down to four or a variation of about four. And we have some more discussion around it right now. It's important to get it done. We'll have time to do now. And this evening we'll discuss it some more. Mr. Mayor Benjamin and the council are bringing in step number three alternate with the stars. So we've got three in support of that. We won't talk about later, right? Well, first of all, how are we going to vote on something that he doesn't have to change? I think it will be, I mean, you know, it's important, I think for the design, like the designer has a voice in the process and make sure that they feel comfortable because of, you know, the discussion about changes. I think we ought to just be able to run into something. That's as random as it might sound. I appreciate the offer. I think we're going to vote on three. I'm not sure how much I'm going to change it. I know it seems so simple. I think that's great. It's a little simplistic. And that might not make sense, but I think it is. Well, the star is a symbol of this capital city. Yeah, I was wondering about that. I mean, three doesn't stand out to me, but if the star or somehow doesn't make the capital city. Put a star in a prism. That would be too much. Put a star in a prism. Is that a tree? Does this remind you of the Manowocancus? It's the Marcusian. It's the Marcusian. That's an S.O. right here. It's not always beautiful, but it's hilarious. That's what it is. Okay. Continue to narrow down. And I know you said you wanted to keep seven, but going under the guideline seven is not really simplistic. It's real busy. Where are you going to draw that? It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. It's real busy. I feel that created. It's there. Oh God. It's been late. It's coming. I'm just not. The first one? Yeah, the third one? No, no. The second one. The third one. The later action. I was headed in that direction anyway. But the favors right now represent, I think, the initial intent of that was to come up with something that's one unique, different, and for the purpose of representing Columbia, or what we stand for. And I think you've noticed that my first selection then, coming up from the Phoenix, that's fine, but the only problem with that would be as you arrive, you still stand above what was there where you're coming from. And then the final selection really represents uniqueness and shows the evolution of design going back to reflect. I think right now, with the majority, things really represents them. Nothing is circular, which is traditional. It's all abstract to some extent. When I took our classes way back, I thought abstract was what do you think? I think we knew you were doing a real field survey. That's okay. We're crayons. Me too. My point is, and honestly, when you look at flags today around the world, it does not represent a lot of traditional shapes and figures, and this one doesn't. So I think it's saying a lot about us and wanting to come up with an original stamp that represents the entire city versus city government. What I would do, and I'd like to ask for further conversation, I'll pull number seven, but if you want to have some conversation with me, about three and seven. This is going to be a review of District 2. District 2 cannot get its own flag. We'll cut that conversation up very quickly. It's got its own flag. Thank you. Are we down to 14 being the ultimate one, 14? Yes. I can do that. That's the design. I can do that. Take it out away from the board. I'll read it again. Yeah. That's the opening. Yeah. I think that's consensus. That's the one that anyone has to look at right now. I'm not looking for that one. I'm going to have to be honest. I don't think it's great. So we're down to two. We have to go back to the designer to get a redesign of four. It would be worth having a conversation. I don't know if I could give a redesign from that. This is what I would do. No. Wait for stubbornness in the beginning. I would speak on some of the narrative. If we did 14, I liked their description there. But as I talked about three, three comes out in this panel. We provided that to all the designers in the second round as one of their references for why we were asking them for a being check. And so they may not have included in their description because they felt like they were already... But certainly I would... I'll just say history as we lay out. It's not a problem for people, it's a delay. It's kind of a look to the process. So our process is something that we should be doing. So... All right. So we're down... Three and a 14. If they're down, someone's four. I like four. I might be having one. You may be. I'm afraid we're going to make... We're going to make it the other way. I'm going to paint it on the dial away. Yeah. As we dial away... Do you mean to do an egg out of there? Do you mean to do an egg out of there? Do you mean to do an egg out of there? First birthday? I decided that you could put it on sport. Yeah, that's a good point. It came through into many... You're going to change the name to Street. All right. So with the asterisk that was to recognize the holdup number four... That's one note that's been pointed out that Councilman McDowell's socks have these coming in the bag. Oh yeah. You should make me a coffee for him. He'll take a seat. He'll make you a bar. Then do that with the socks that you're wearing. Thank you. I appreciate that. Three and a 14. Thank you. Yeah, we deal. We deal. I like 14. That's the second time I'm wearing it right now. So I'm going to see if I'm going to turn that out. Thank you. Thank you for taking it out. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to get my work done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There's only one person to ask for this. I'll still get you an answer. Mr. Mayor, I'm going to take a vote. Thank you. Oh, thank you, please. Our next item is the Colombian Conference of Plan Update. Several wonderful planning staff members here, Ms. Lee D. Ford, Planning and Development Services Conference of Planner, Mr. John Fellows, the Indian Development Services Planning Administrator, and Mr. John. Mr. D. Ford, Vice President. And Ms. Lee D. Ford, the King, Clary and the Associate. That way, all of the leads come speak to you. But hopefully, our team is contentious. But some of the things that will engage them, right? So thank you all for giving us the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. I'm going to try to be as fast as I can because we need to have that take-insulting so that we can speak in a little bit more about how to do transportation sections as well. So just to start off, you guys have seen the slide in variations over the course of the process. But just a reminder, public engagement has been critical throughout any process. We've really worked hard together in this. We think we have about 6,200 points of engagement. And that includes face-to-face online. And a lot of the mailers are not included in that number. But we've tested out a lot of new types of public engagement throughout this process. And we're excited about it and excited about the feedback we've received. I wanted to just briefly overview each of the nine elements of the comprehensive plan. So just wanted to give you a slide about each. And then we'll turn it over. So the population element is really the analytical background of the plan. So this looks at existing demographic trends and anticipated shifts in needs and desires. So it really helps us predict some of those needs going forward. The natural resources chapter also takes a look at existing conditions. And it makes recommendations for programs, policies, and partnerships that help us move forward some of those commitments that Council has made, like being ready for 100% clean renewable energy and being prepared for natural hazards. The economic development section looks at information about the workforce and our employers. And it also makes recommendations regarding the cities and regions' economic development efforts. The housing chapter, which Leanne King will talk about in further detail, does also include a market and policy analysis and a number of recommendations. And the transportation section, which John's and Guy is here to talk about today, also looks at trends and incorporates a lot of the Columbia recommendations and sets for the policy and infrastructure recommendations as well. The land use chapter, you guys are pretty familiar with. We've done a pretty substantial update to the land use chapter in 2018. So we carried a lot of that forward. But we also are making some recommendations to just some of the bigger land use maps in our handful of recommendations that are about other land use issues, such as greenway development. The community facilities chapter is a little bit of a catch-all. So this chapter really talks about not only our buildings, but how we operate as a city from the services and programs we provide and makes recommendations about those. And the cultural resources chapter, Leanne was here. Leanne was also involved on that. So the cultural resources chapter is that the partnership with Amplify, the Amplify process that y'all have been engaged on, taking forward some of those recommendations as well as some recommendations and existing conditions regarding Columbia's cultural identity and historic preservation of those sorts of things. And just a brief overview, hopefully y'all have had a chance to kind of dig into the plan as we've got it posted and we'll be coming back to you certainly in the near future. But the meat of the plan, and each of those elements are chapters within the plan. And the meat of those chapters is the recommendations of the plan. So each of the recommendations we identify the elements on the screen that you see before you. And a number of the recommendations that we've made, we've also tried to identify case studies for. So best practices for moving those implementations forward whether they're things that we're already doing in our community, that we can do on a larger scale or if they're things that we're doing in other communities. And then the priority investment chapter is a little bit different. This element summarizes all of the recommendations we've made throughout the planning process. And it does have one recommendation of a thing. And that recommendation is to come back to y'all with an annual report. So we really wanna make sure that we're reporting back to you on the successes and potentially the failures of the planning process so that we can continue to keep, you guys engage, continue to keep not just y'all, but the public engaged because we know that our planning processes are most successful when we really have those partnerships to bring these things forward. Just a brief overview of our next steps. We had some great public meetings in January. We have about 130 people over the course of four meetings which was great for us. Really good discussion throughout those public meetings. We're taking public comments on the draft plan through February 7th. So if you know anyone that's been itching to get their comments to us, just remind them that's this Friday. And the reason we're setting that timeline is we really wanna make sure that we can get those back out and edited and that draft out and edited to hit planning commission in March. Planning commission has been very involved in the process. We've talked to them about each of the chapters. We've reviewed all the drafts. We've been having ongoing discussions with them about the public feedback to receive back. And they are of course charged with making a recommendation to y'all on the adoption of the plan. At that point we would have to move that forward. Is there any areas of the city that you've got any less participation in the comments? Because I know you've had several around the city, but is there a particular area where you meet between now and Thursday? Thursday night is the last one? Friday? Yeah. But there's one Thursday night. Oh no, we don't have any meetings. It's Friday is the end for the comments. There are meetings. So are we getting encouraged that input from if there's a particular area that has not really been met at all? That's a great question. I mean, it's difficult with the physical meetings. Sometimes folks don't provide us with their, with their zip codes or what areas are from. These last four meetings we met kind of in quadrants throughout the city. And we saw good participation at each of those. Early on when we were doing some of our interactive online surveys, we did try and track that participation by zip code. We had pretty good, probably, participation throughout our best participation was in the 292.1 and 292.5 zip codes. But what we did is then we took that data as the surveys were still open and we used that to boost Facebook posts and the other areas and that sort of thing. So we had gotten a pretty good framework. I mean, I would say I was pleasantly surprised when we were at Richland Library South East all the way down there in Astoria where we were at Richland, St. Andrews, up right over the road. And we had 30 people show up to the meeting which is good for us. So I'd like to think that we've done a good job of that throughout this process, but that doesn't mean that, you know, we'll still probably have folks to say, oh, I haven't heard about this, but we could, we'd appreciate that though. Do we have a question for the second group that we have a milestone as we move forward with the approved plan eventually as to what we've done in the year two, year five, year stone road? Are we all gonna recommend that? Yeah, so that's part of the reporting and actually part of the priority investment element as well. So the priority investment element, what we've done is set forth kind of a short, medium, or long-term priority for each recommendation. So the short would be, we would do it within the first one to three years. Medium would be four to six, long would be seven to 10 plus. And the reason we've done that and we've kind of gotten folks feedback on that as well and we've also gotten feedback from different departments on that is that it'll give us an idea of kind of where we think our abilities are and our priorities are. We might of course see the shift. So when we talk about the annual reporting being important, we know that, you know, there may come an opportunity where there's grant funding that can move a priority forward or we might see a shifting funding stream that would slow a priority as well. So our goal is that we would give that to you in the priority investment section and they would also be reflected in each of the recommendations but then also that we know that those things may shift a little bit as we move forward. So just a reminder, the Amplify-Columbian process is also kind of reaching its culmination. So they will be scheduling a celebration of public meeting in the near future and then we'd like to bring that to you all as a final presentation as well. And just, I wanted to kind of close with one of the reasons that we've really tried to make this as accessible as possible and as full of public engagement as possible is we want Columbia to come to us to be a tool not just for you guys, not just for staff but also for the citizens. So we want folks to stay in the area. We want people to be able to help move it forward because we recognize that those partnerships that are going to be critical. We've also really tried to dovetail the process. We'll be envisioning all the other focus areas and vision statements. So we've really focused on how we can bring them back to help you all move forward the priorities you've set for the city. And we hope that that along with the annual reporting we provide you all with will be helpful in moving this forward. Now the identical areas that you all have already been in is 202, 305, one, 202, 201. We've been around throughout the city because it is the comprehensive plan but we, when we had the surveys back we had the highest participation in 202.01 and 202.05 and I can't figure the numbers but the second survey off the top of my head right now. But I want to say just because we had 400 people take a survey in one zip code it didn't mean that we only had two in the other. It was more like we had two to 300 in the other but those were kind of our punks. We had about 1800 folks take the second survey so it was pretty good participation for us. Procedural, so Friday's the cutoff of comments. Then what's the timeframe from there when you have those comments and we kind of get it draft because I was reading over it last night and there were several items in there that at the appropriate time I think we ought to talk about the wording of that would really enhance it I think to make it a better product. So I guess I'm trying to understand from your folks timeframe when the appropriate time is to provide you some of the input based on that. I would say now would be great. Or in the days to come I know for example when we met with you you provided some comments about showing that short term and like so we're incorporating that in the revisions but we would post those all at once in advance of planning commissions. So we ideally like to incorporate all of those comments before we post in advance of planning commission and what is that a day? March? It's March 2nd but logistic for us. So we send something right now on Monday to that? That would be cool. When I was just taking the document just right a couple of years on it like the little things we had this discussion the other day about economic development meeting you know we have a pretty good succession for the community that's not in there. I think it's those type of things that I think enhance the document that we all work on. Sure that would be great. And some of those things for example it's not in the main chapter because for someone like that that might be more of an interesting decision we could delve into it a little bit more deeply in the appendices for the existing conditions because we're trying to provide that connection towards that shot in the front end. So that would be great. Because once we have it we'll be working furiously to get those comments in and then we need to actually get them back to our traffic design team to be able to have them fill in the books so all my page numbers are right that sort of thing. Thank you so much. When did you leave? I think Monday would be lovely. Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday. You know and that's not to say we can't you know if something comes up and we ask that you do too but I think if it's something you can address now we'd rather address it now. Some of the comments we were working on something yesterday and getting comments from other professionals that were looking at hey if you're using this why not really use these enhancements that really reflect. So I think it's just a couple of spots. I noticed the last slide when I was reading through the comments. And we are probably the next question is have we gotten any comments from the public yet? We have so we've gotten a lot. Well I mean I guess just on the graph itself so we got a great feedback about the public meeting and you can actually see what they provided because we posted the little posters where they said they were thinking about it there but we also have gotten some comments in the interim like folks have sent emails and said you know it would be great to include this that sort of thing. So we're already starting to work in those comments we've received. So a lot of the comments are a little bit broader like you know we're really excited about this recommendation and we think this is great but we're getting a few that are a little bit more informative that we can tie in and stuff. Leah we'll share one comment I got that would be more than once is that a lot of times what we produce is more in governmental language and they said it's very easy to read it's very comprehensive so I think that we've done a good job in making sure that no matter who you are you can read it and that's just an understanding that it's not like what's going on. That's a good thing to hear. We don't always do a good job. And say our goal would be once it goes to the planning commission will come to y'all probably April 7th so that it's not at a regular zoning public hearing when you get to hear the full agenda right and then of course we hold public hearing through the first and second meeting. But that's really what I have to share with y'all today and just a thank you guys for your support and then I'd really like to be yet y'all kind of dig in with your questions with Leanne and Jonathan but also just in between now and then it will be helpful for us to return and talk about specific topics and we can do that as well because we're really just focusing on the housing transportation. I think we've done gentlemen's work. We really have. You have very intense, very structured, very inclusive and I appreciate it. Without further ado, I'll give you a word for the 30th of the day. Thanks. And my apologies, I don't have any two-mixes or waves or stars. Sure you do. But hopefully it will be informative and interesting. So again, my name is Leanne King. I'm a and so what I'm going to be sharing today is just the highlights of the housing market assessment was conducted at the beginning of this process that really helped us understand what's what are the conditions in this community relative to your local housing market and comparing that to the broader kind of metropolitan area as well. We couple that with a lot of engagement and Leanne has done a great job of highlighting that review on the housing side. The way we bottom into that was by meeting the stakeholder groups throughout the process between the mission. We met with them just two rounds, one to get their input initially about the issues and concerns and aspirations they have for the community and then to test those ideas once we kind of turn to digest and kind of think about those. So we, those form the guiding principles for the plan and really those market trends and guiding principles were then taken to develop the implementation recommendations between the break and plan. So I was happy to take questions as we work through this. Again, I'm going to hit the highlights on the housing market trends. There were three main takeaways that we wanted to kind of highlight for you today. And the first one is, and I should say we were looking at 2000 to 2016 data, ACS data. We did use some local market sales data as well as part of this assessment. So the three key takeaways are rental prices and home values are rising faster than incomes that's probably not new news to you. Second, there's an end that demand for a mix of housing types. And we've got some graphics to illustrate that. And finally, there's a gap in affordability for extremely low income renters and affordability to likely retain to decline based on some of the analysis that we've done here. These are not unique to the Columbia, are these? These are not. That's right. Well, these are definitely not unique to Columbia. I think the majority of communities that we work with then are dealing with these same issues. Well, I would say that you have to add in to us that because of the tax structure, the rental prices are continuing. Two years ago, it was three months worth of collection to cover the property tax. Three and a half months. So I think it has a direct effect for us here, a little more uniquely than others, but a lot of the aspects you are correct. But that does affect because we have 52% rentals in Columbia for us hiring on the ship, which is, you know, that we've been really pushing to try to get over that home. I think it serves to keep us thinking creatively. On how we can make this happen at the same time, it does not cost us a certain population as well as certain areas of the city, their ability to be as successful as others. In terms of amenities, in terms of fashion, in terms of that sort of thing. Other than that. These are fund balancing. Right, and we're making some of them. We don't want to make a mistake a lot of other cities that may be trying to get to this point. That's right. And I think that we are at a unique standpoint in two years in the other cities because I think you can kind of see and learn from a lot of other communities and what I've done and earned from your shortfalls. So I think that's an important point. And learn from the cities in a pressing way. I think the key point of this thing, part of from the compass is, yeah, they may not be unique to other cities, but there are other cities that are being very aggressive and innovative in addressing the needs. And that's where we really need to use that to guide our policy making. And some of the things that we need to consider. And there's some of those case studies included within the Big Red chapter that highlights some of the tools that we'll look at. So this compares, again, this is that same 1999 to 2016 time frame, but it shows those market trends, the first line being the median income and how there was a percentage of 38% over that time frame. When you compare that to the median rent and the median home values, they're not in alignment. So median rent rose 59% median home value. And those are kind of state-of-home values by how much was 67%. The median sales price is about equivalent, which you would somewhat expect to see given that people can only afford to buy so much housing, but the values of the rents all are actually increasing, increasingly, more so in terms during that time. Yeah, right. And the market where you had the increase of 67%, is some of that value, are you using the property tax as your basis for that number? Is some of that... Just because of the continuing assessments that are going on and stuff, is that part of that equation that you said what we're seeing? So that's likely some of that. It's actually based on the homeowner's value of their property. And so they're probably taking into account what they know they're being assessed for and that that's... The assessment's probably a good baseline. Right. And their relationship with their market value, somewhat of a judgment call. Sales price, you know, is only a certain sector that's actually on the market and being sold and so that only tells us so much, so it's helpful to augment that with the actual value of the property. Going back to the original point about rent and the impact of rent, the baseline out there is 99 and you go to 2016 and 2008, 2007 ahead, Act 388, which moved the... Well, the taxes substantially, I would say that if you took the tax impact by about 59%, you'd get closer, much closer to the median sale price of 35% and the median income of 38%. The state of the legislature, with Act 388, screwed up the rents. It's a great place to retire, it's a bad place to rent. And that's right. Looking at your housing stock and I think you mentioned a statistic of 52% with a probably a more current number, these are again based on 2016 data points. But the majority of the folks living in Union County that's living in Columbia are renters comparison to the MSI, which is the Metropolitan Statistical Area, the larger region that Columbia sits within, which is roughly about a third of that population are renters. And one thing I did want to mention is that when we looked at this, we looked at age cohorts because we know there's a student population here that are renting, they're not all owned homes. But what we found was that across the age cohorts, there was kind of a higher percentage of renters in comparison to the broader MSA. And in general, this is also no surprise, you have some amazing store properties within Columbia and on average, your housing stock's a little bit older than some of the surrounding areas that are more newly developed. When you look at the actual housing stock and how that breaks down, this top pie chart here shows you all the units within to get 42,255 units and about a little more than half of those are single family detached units. About a quarter are attached, fewer than 10 in a structure and slightly less than a quarter are attached 10 or more in a structure and more like an apartment building and a slice piece there for mobile homes. When you look at, compare that to who's living within those units, when you look at owner occupied units, about 91% of owner occupied units are single family detached with a little less than 10% divided up between the other categories. When you look at renters, again, 55% of folks living within the city are in this category. You see much more variety in terms of the types of housing that they're living in and the majority are not single family detached. They're one of the other attached products that you will find them living in. So you talked about rental trends and this is something that we looked at as well and that changed between 2000 and 2016. And I think that to your point, the state made some adjustments that have had a significant impact on rental rates within Columbia. When you look particularly at the low end, a less than 500, that changed, there were 43% of units, rental units in 2000 that were less than $500, fast forward to 2016 and you've got 13% of the rental units within that category. So that was a pretty significant difference and you can kind of see how the columns have changed over time in the various categories. Not quite as dramatic, but similar type of trend for home value, looking at the different values of homes. And again, looking at kind of the lower end, the less than $100,000 category, obviously we've been in kind of a booming time in terms of housing prices. Back in 2000, over 50% of your housing was less than $100,000 in terms of that home value. In 2016, we're looking at slightly less than a quarter of those units within that category. So there's a little bit of a mid-smash and again, this is not unique to Columbia. This is a common trend that we're seeing throughout the United States, particularly in kind of not great areas that people want to be living in. We've looked at market trends, actual sales data within the city of Columbia and the metro area to see what's being sold and this is for year 2018. No surprise, the vast majority of homes for the city that were on the market and sold were single-family detached homes. An interesting point when we looked at the data, we actually looked at the days on the market and what we found is that patio homes that you'll see highlighted there in that red boundary for both the city and for the metro area stayed on the market not as much time. There was some suggestion that maybe this is a product that more people wouldn't like to have and that there's interest in having a variety of products out there that may be unmet today. We also looked at affordability. So looking at, this is specific to renters, I'm looking at the various income ranges that renters fall within. What rent amount is affordable to those incomes and then how many units are rented within that affordability range and what we found was that there's a rental gap and this is one of those top three takeaways that I mentioned on that first slide that roughly folks earning less than $20,000 a year, there's kind of a gap in the properties that are available. I'm assuming that's a significant gap. Yeah, and it's 36% of the rental population is within that category. So it's, that's, I can't, but. We also, again starting with 2016 numbers did a forecast for 10 years ahead, no crystal ball, but I think good analysis based on trends of what we think we might be experiencing over the next several years in terms of affordability challenges, looking at both uner affordability and rental affordability. And similar to what you saw on the last slide, both for the rental and ownership, folks on the low end earning less than $35,000 a year, it's anticipated that percent of homes that are affordable to those household earning those incomes is likely going to decline over time. So we've got affordability challenge again, nothing but not unique in any respect to Columbia or the region, this is happening throughout the United States. So that's the data part. Is there a question? Two slides back. Full back. Next one. Yeah, full, yeah. Right there. Ask your question. When you look at demographic places in the city, the average rental, the average rental, I think I read somewhere, $800, $8.53. When we surveyed demographic, the region, the city, is that consistent with all parties included? So there's a map that's actually in the plan and in this housing market study that it just, it shows the average rental rates for difference, I believe it's census traffic, I can't remember the exact geography that we used for it, but it shows the spatial distribution of median rates for these different geographies that census provides and there are distinctions. So there are definitely places where the median rent is higher than in other places and that is mapped in the plan. So that is mapped? Yes, yes. All right, interesting to look at that. Yeah, so this. Is that included? Yeah, I believe that map is actually in the plan and it's also in this housing market study that's on the project website as well. So I'm sure we can get that for you again. Likewise, we also looked at the spatial distribution of housing values. Maps are slightly different. Those are by dots because they're in point of actually units and what their values are. Which brings up the question because we had some interesting conversations, I think we and I did about a year ago where people were complaining that their properties didn't want to assess. They were under-assessed. The value which has a, it's tough because it creates more tax but from the value standpoint and I'm curious if y'all ran across some discrepancies in assessed values as y'all were kind of looking at the raw of the picture. Well, we didn't. We didn't do a direct comparison with you. For one, the census data won't necessarily let us get to that level today, the one to one comparison. They kind of aggregate the data for our community's sake. But that's a challenge in looking at home value as it's based on that person's understanding of what their home's worth so. Especially in a market like this, sometimes it can be elevated beyond what it actually is. In some under. In some under. It depends on the assessment here. So if your house was assessed or you purchased your house during the recession, it's at that point and the assessment only happens every five years. So in a five year period, that can be quite an influx. So if you hit that assessment at a certain point, you're gonna be low or if you hit it high and then there's a dip, well then all of a sudden you're a high. So it has that five year window. It's a pretty big window based on a market changing. Yeah. So again, the guiding principles for the plan, we have five of them for this housing element or very much developed using the inputs that we received from the public, from the stakeholders, from the planning commission that we met with. And in terms of stakeholder groups, we met with a variety of different folks that are interested in housing and neighborhoods in the city. We met with housing advocates and developers, real estate interests, neighborhood, sort of preservation, interests, folks that are working on kind of transitional emergency housing. So a lot of different folks were kind of, were met with during this process to get their insights and concerns for the future of Columbia with respect to housing neighborhoods. And so we took all that information and we generated these five guiding principles and the element actually has more language that describes specifically what we mean by each of these, but they are possible and vibrant neighborhoods that's something that we're trying to achieve. The enhancement and stabilization of underserved neighborhoods, protection of historical and cultural characteristics, affordable housing, the mix of housing and neighborhood choices. So those were really the five key things that kept rising to the top that we moved through this process. And so what I've got here is just a quick summary of the implementation recommendations under those five guiding principles that we've set out. So in terms of walkable and vibrant neighborhoods, there's a lot of overlapped with some of the stuff that you'll see in the land use element and the transportation element, the conference plan. It's the beauty of conference planning is all this stuff feeds into each other so you can decide exactly where to make up. But we wanted to call this out in this chapter because we thought it was important to think about a full and complete neighborhood and this idea that as your neighborhoods redevelop and revitalize over time, you wanna think about all the components that make a complete neighborhood, sidewalks, lighting, having access to parks, potentially trails, if they're meeting local services that are within a short community distance that they can use for daily needs, those types of things, schools, those make complete neighborhoods and so there's some recommendations in there for how to go about evaluating that over time and trying to encourage that as neighborhoods redevelop and change in the future. In terms of enhancement and stabilization of underserved neighborhoods, excuse me, we had a couple of recommendations. The first one was for departments within the city and agencies outside of the city that work to assist these underserved neighborhoods to be collaborating because there's some efficiencies and maybe some other opportunities to be having better coordination of different efforts. Secondly, ongoing neighborhood assistance, we've learned from watching what other communities have done with respect to how do we revitalize an underserved neighborhood without displacing the people that live there and it's a challenging thing to do and one of the best ways to go about achieving that is having ongoing neighborhood assistance and really creating a community dialogue within that neighborhood about what they want to be and how having those members of the community involved in that discussion is particularly challenging for renters who don't actually own the property that they are living within. So would you say one and two are kind of collective when we would be done together because you needed them? That's right, that's right. Yeah, creating some efficiency and some focus among all the different organizations that are working on these issues and then making sure that the community is part of that dialogue. Both folks that live there and the land owners that own the land and make decisions about changing the community. So that inevitably becomes a part of the narrative with community organizations and them collaborating there's been much conversation about gentrification and that sort of thing. Right. Gentrification as opposed to community development. Right. How do we get that word out to community organization? I'm sure all of us become a thunder with parade but how do you build with that emphasis within the community? Where it's not gentrification but community development. Right. I think to some degree, I don't think there's a silver bullet. Was not. Yeah, I think we've learned from other communities. I'm thinking that we've got a community here in Boston. It's a scatter. Yeah, California has some communities that have really dealt with this. I think that the more that you can foster a sense of stewardship and kind of, sense of place within that community. And I think stewardship is a good way to describe it that as a landowner, you are part of that community and you wanna be invested and involved with the people that live there as well and thinking about the future and how that change occurs. From a government standpoint, you want to be looking at the types of investments that are gonna help that community without pushing them out. And that's a delicate balance to make. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so I think that, like I said, the idea behind the ongoing neighborhood assistance is that you're continually looking and talking about this stuff and watching this trend start to occur so that if you do see people being displaced and if that is something that is starting to occur, how can you respond to it and making sure you're having a dialogue about that? I think that's really a key part of it. You sound right in being part of that and making sure that we keep people invested. I mean, we gotta have, it can't be all assistance from outside, it's gotta be assistance inside. Yeah, you gotta have skin in the game. And so helping people make sure they can leverage that. And you know, like anything, all it takes is one or two, three, and then it starts to spread and everybody comes together. I think those are some good points. Oh, same thing. I think it's gonna be incumbent upon us as a city to make sure that we do engage people who live within a certain area that may be just about to go to that process. Stakehold is mainly people who live within the area versus assistance from elsewhere that really doesn't have a history there. And that's where the conflict comes in. We as a city can, I think, go about this and not make the mistakes of the other cities in the area by honestly and truly engaging people who live in an area of investment from within, but at the same time, helping them to develop the tools to be creative and stabilize their own situation. And as a result of that, it doesn't matter how you move, everybody benefits. But it's not difficult to tell when people are not benefiting from what we're doing. We've done, in the city, we've been here the last several decades before we got here. What is intentional and not intentional has to really focus on making sure that the city is diverse. I mean, some of the programs that's the glory of the fact, the glory of the department and others that have worked on, has really helped us retain a number of those who otherwise would have left the city in that nice, normalized, and working-class community. This will require, I mean, the flow of capital and the standard of capital is strong. We're gonna do this sort of part at the same degree of intentionality to make sure we remain the city of all people. It's gonna take some systemic, I mean, we've done humans work as a city on terms of taxes, you know, it has it published in the same, but some of our system of jurisdictions just reality is reality. And we now account for less than 20% of the tax burden, but that larger tax burden plays into all these other issues in some creative ways. But it does require that intentionality have in the community as active as possible, helping shape what the city will look like for the next generation to, it requires that the different intentionality, Sam, and that inclusion. Yeah, I agree with you. Questions and great conversations. We're talking about thoughtfulness, just take it into account, but you know, I don't see that. I'll just continue this dialogue as we move through the process. This is, I can get through these, I just have to do three more slides so I can get through these pretty quickly. So protection of historical and cultural characteristics, there's also, again, the lane to cultural resources element that have a lot of focus, particularly on this, but we wanted to include this in the idea that supporting property maintenance is important to think about a historic stock of housing within Columbia. Affordable housing, we have several recommendations here, developer incentives, updating your affordable housing and locational standards. We actually looked at that as a part of this and thinking about, we had a team member that's worked with the federal government and looking at, and HUD, looking at those standards on a national level, made some recommendations there. Looking at public land and funding, are there opportunities to leverage some of the resources that you have available for affordable housing? There are other communities that are doing that. We have some case studies included in here. The housing challenge is not specific to Columbia. It's regional. You've got people that are moving out to the city every day going to work and coming home from work. And so, it's important to think about this kind of from the larger standpoint of the housing market that's kind of the regional perspective and their housing lay interest is a really good model of other communities that are starting to look to more so as a way to kind of share and leverage the resources of different localities and how they can kind of deal with this housing issue on a broader scale. And then transitional housing services are providing some opportunities for those that really have the most challenging housing situations within the community. Mix of housing and neighborhood choices, while it's similar to the issue of affordable housing, it's not necessarily the same thing. And what we're saying based on the data is that you probably need a little bit more variety in this community and there's some opportunity to incentivize multi-unit housing within the city. Also look for residential care uses and I mentioned complete neighborhoods earlier. So that is an important presentation. I'll write all these things. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, John. I'm going to apologize for not being the fourth lead to speak today. So you can call me a lead if you'd like to. But I'm going to briefly speak about transportation. And I'm going to sort of set the table for the existing conditions which helps to frame our recommendations and probably projects as we see moving forward. This is a snapshot in 2017 when we look at this. If you look across the board, you can see primarily here in Columbia we drive by ourselves. We don't take trains and we don't carpool. Although we do have a hyperpinsity for walking, a lot of that is within the city, which is associated not only with our city, but just the connectedness of the city here in the downtown grid that we have. So just the positive is you look across the board and you compare it to the city with Greenville and Carlson if they fall low below that 20% mark. Commuting patterns. You've got about 28,000 commuters who come into the city every day for jobs, whereas you export out 8,500. So you've got a lot of regional mobility occurring. Toe bread and chur generates an income, wouldn't you? Absolutely would. That's just less than count. That is just less than count. It's not considered to be a fair field, but they're very summed up. And having been one of those people who's been in this district regionally, you have people commute from North County as well. So there's a growing demand for that as I did that for almost two years before we were here. So a lot of patterns you're commuting here there's an attraction here, be it jobs or your location, whatever that might be, you're seeing this attraction's occurring. Unfortunately we're not seeing those stay here and that ties back to what the man was talking about the housing. Absolutely. All right. Okay. I got to focus on you guys. I don't understand street ownership. SCDOT is your primary owner. They are the fourth largest owner of streets in the United States. Yet they are one of the smallest states in the United States. They own about 55% of the streets here within the city of Columbia. They own about 41,000 lane models within the state of South Carolina. You also have a little bit of a split there between the city of Columbia, 25% and 19% with primarily the county and or private local streets in the University, which is which is an interesting model and it helps us frame some of the recommendations. And actually this, which is going to frame some of our recommendations in that safety. And if you've watched the trends here, you know, we had almost 1000 fatalities in South Carolina last year. You can see here as we look at the crashes across just the city of Columbia, you can see that the majority of those crashes are occurring on US primary routes, again, going back to the community patterns that you're seeing your 378s, your US ones, and then your South Carolina primary rounds and as roads that are feeding into those primary rounds. And then the interstates being a very, very small percent, even though they carry a huge amount of traffic coming in and out every day. You are at the Crossroads, South Carolina, a lot of people travel through here as well. Just me or they want to see a ramp up in the state newspaper recognition of crashes and traffic jams. I'm seeing a lot of it. I actually made the same comments. They're not just me, right? No, that's the headlines that get pushed out even through their internet forum and then what's because their answers are convenient from from Charlotte and Columbia. It's almost every morning. Yeah, it is almost every morning. And was 18 willers and all two. Yeah. It's a lot of factors that are feeding into that is primarily factors for the devil states in the United States with the number of fatalities. There's big push with that CDO T through targets, you get those down as well as you have to get to so you're going to see that push. And that theme is going to carry through this. But as we look at the overall crash, as you can see right here, this is the breakdown top crash, not necessarily locations, but corridors, you can see Garner scary road is the number one, followed by some of the interstates. I 7726 20. And then we start to dig down into the some of the local streets here. I'm having this under your primary causes. You don't have potholes and constructed. No, we're actually which is where you listen to some of those reports. So those people are dodging and trying to get over the patchwork and everything. One of the the land use or two nulling people for the categories that are provided from our folks. Unfortunately, road conditions is not what you do see some of that. That's not sure could be. Unfortunately, or unfortunately, it's not tied to SCDF team is responsible for that. But what you actually do see that does show up when you look at size wise, which is number three. Your top primary cause though is speeding. We love to drive fast here in South Carolina. And that is indicative of a couple things. One just a just the propensity of us to do that. But also the design is one ways to we'll dig into that a little bit. But the overall primary crashes is property damage only injury crashes takes up about another third of that and then fatalities there were 20 fatalities. All of those occurred within the city of Columbia does work within the Richmond County portion of the city. So one of the things I talked about the primary causes, the way to help curb that design. And so one of the things that we've worked at here is putting together a street priority matrix. You can see here we've got sniffer that just for the downtown. And this actually helps to provide guidance on where the design speech should be depending on the street types. You can see the street typology of here where there's major or carers minor collectors or local. This helps to frame how the street should be and accommodations there and some of the others that I don't have listed here, but you've got urban or the edge rural areas and then of course multimodal facilities are also important and all of these capture in what the priority mode should be for that street whether at this point it should be the buses that should be the pedestrians or bicyclists or it should be cars. This will help to define that you can see that for the travel way through the distance and other elements that are important like access management. If we look at if we go back to Garner's scary road access management will help a lot with crashes along that. So access management is a good question. Access management is looking at consolidation of driveways connectivity between giving people the option of going between or connecting side streets without getting back on three seventy eight, a small trail or pull out, make a right and make another left. We've done that a couple of ways. It just increases the safety. You're going to see some recommendations here before I get into the priorities in each of these fall under these themes. You can see up here this plan and implement and one of those that I think is a very fitting example of how to deal with the high level of crashes that are occurring within the city is developing street design manual. We showed portions of this with the street priority matrix. Again, the quickest way to do it is enforcement. The best way to do it is to design and changing how your streets interact. Combination for all modes, plastics, pastries, cars, patrolling the speed along there. You can go in and change your speed limit from 45 to 25. You're still going to imagine that percentile speed is going to be 50 miles per hour. If you don't change how it feels, you don't get that. But then also developing prioritization of projects by type and then adopting the official street typology that I showed on the previous for us, that's a challenge when we look at the places that we like to put above out to slow down traffic because a three-way stop doesn't work because somebody works there and nobody's there. They're in a highly traffic neighborhood, but we can't seem to get the highway department to work with us even if we're willing to pay it. So how do we get how do we do that in those areas? I mean, what are the folks doing in other areas that encourage better interagency workings? Because that's one of our struggles, especially at 55% of the road, we don't control correct. And what you're seeing a lot of agencies do is they are moving to ownership of the streets. I talked about South Carolina over 41,000 miles of streets. They're only streets that ship them. The only streets we can see is their primary function is the movement of cars along the interstate. And unfortunately, they got into business of owning neighborhood streets that they really shouldn't and they don't need patrol load or downtown streets where the blend with the idea is not necessarily to move cars, but also people. And they struggle with that because they're designed and doesn't have a chapter that says how do I deal with pedestrians? And so you have to find that balance. They're getting better. They're not great yet. They're still adopting new guidelines as we move forward. You're seeing Ash Joe, which is sort of the governing body for highway and transportation officials, they're adopting low speed urban guidelines. The advanced copy that I've seen through SCDOT is starting to show more areas for that. But in locations like a neighborhood, the best and quickest way we've seen is for streets for communities to take those streets back and control those streets. It's a financial burden to the city to do that. Are you seeing other municipalities do that? Yeah, in South Carolina, in South Carolina. We're actually at the tail end of negotiating. 55% coming back our way. I think you could have are you doing that? Do you want to do is what I will tell you, even if I'll say you wanted to take over, you know, an honor experience, which is pretty subred, they're not going to let you because it's US primary. But if they come through downtown, there's ways to work with us. That is a great, great job. They hands on 20,000 but also very granular. I mean, it is a process to take over the streets. One thing, especially if they're not providing that we need that portion of funding that they're calling it for that. But the other thing is that we have to have the ability to enforce it. We can't put an officer on every street, right? Because the reality is, is when we do enforcement in the neighborhood, see, tell me 80% of people who live in the neighborhood to get up getting tickets somewhere in there a lot. So speeds, speed cameras and things like that, that other communities utilize, we can't utilize. And so for for us, we need those options because we can't afford to put an officer on every corner. It's not possible. And you don't get long term compliance when you do it for you may get immediate drops that you have the time period that they're out there. But long term, people get back to their habits. That's why the state design is what actually solves the issue. So an example of design where the DFT has come to the table with us and our john and Trista and all are doing a great job of community outreach that we as a city are taking on it as a DFT project but no one wants to be ready. Because this is an example that's about the lower line. Very soon with the traffic calling, no lane reductions, but the lanes will be strong, I guess the lack of a better way to explain it. You're about to hear about a lot of outreach that we're going to try to do with that for community. Not with the comment I was going to make, to Thames point, yeah, DOT, but the other challenge is that the community when you do stuff that slows down traffic, i.e. bike lanes or, you know, traffic come in, you know, you get people not liking it. But that is how you do this for the time. And we've got to be committed to that long term, you know, benefit, even if there's some short term acts of people getting used to it. It was a perfect segue for a project that y'all probably don't hear about here pretty soon. But I think the outreach is very well done. And it's phased. So the bike lanes that the DOT came in that hey, we're going in with some sort of payment either way. Do you want to do shrink the road and put on, put the bike lanes on the side? That's a perfect example of partnership that accomplishes the goals. One of the other things was safety, targeting safety improvements for all modes, and then adopting safety standards to encourage traffic, where appropriate, and then adopting efficient zero clean, which is very important for the state of South Carolina to produce the overall county rate not only here, but across the state. And then partnerships, which can be better time here, but partnering with broader regional transportation projects, whether it's email rail, commuter rail throughout the state or larger projects such as here on this crossroads. And then target street ownership, we talked about that already. And then railroad project, which is which I can spend another hour talking about the importance of that and how that impacts the community overall mobility. But that is something that is important to the residents that live here. And we get quite a bit of that in our outreach with innovation and technology. We can't escape this. We are changing. We're evolving. And where we're going in the future, and everything's getting more and more connected and not driving car without your car talking back to you. And a completely different way than it used to be. You're already seeing signs of that. I'll applaud the city on their advancements and coordination with SCDOT and other providers as we already started to have small cell technology on a lot of our traffic signal poles here. But creating that connected signal system, which is partially under the way at this point right now. And then leveraging shared mobility options, which is something that a lot of communities struggle with. We're seeing ordinances pop up about scooters and things like that. But be open minded, look at the options, evaluate it in what makes the most sense for the community, and then plan for the impacts of technology because it's coming faster than we want to think it's going to be here. And then data. Again, in the transportation world, we love data. It helps us to prioritize projects. That is one of the things that I would stress the most is prioritization of transportation projects, which I'll mention a few here for minutes. And then a parking study. For the many years that I have lived here, we always hear about parking. There's not enough parking, there's too much parking, it's in the wrong place. Using data to define where that might be and how we can use that and better leverage that, not only from just a supply and demand, but also from a revenue source will be a recommendation for us. And then lead by example, designing larger scale projects. We heard a lot of the community talk about comprehensive plans, looking at how streets can be better utilizing the street. It's one of the largest public spaces that any city has. Streets should be great. They should be designed to accommodate all modes, though not just the singular mode. And then lastly, the build environment, looking at context and developing able to traffic control pilot project programs, whatever it might be, small things, there's things you can do with paid markings of things that you can do to drastically change with not a whole lot of money and SCDOT will partner with you on that. I mentioned this earlier, you guys in the city of Columbia are the crossroads of South Carolina, you've got three main interstates coming through here, which is really an interesting thing really for if you count 126. And so you are the crossroads so creating those gateways where there's a region where they're local, the signature places that identify where Columbia is and are in Columbia as a priority. We heard this in our outreach as well. And then some of the priority projects that we've got corridor enhancements we'll see again, short term midterm and long term we root each of these streets looking at priorities that we heard or those that we recommended pulling in from some other plans as well you can see here. Some of these are really complex. Some of these are not, but it's important for these corridor enhancements for these to be forward and this gives us a sort of a test if you will to see how well we can implement these. Corridor operation projects, we heard a lot about synchronized timings through here and improving traffic flow as well. Small safety projects, you can see an example over there in Harveston, Bounder Park Terrace are realigned in there. That small change right there would make a tremendous difference on how traffic would flow through that area, which is one of the most congested places that we see. And then lastly, intersection improvement projects, you know, one more after this, but targeted, some of these are already underway, some of these are moving forward, but a lot of these will make a huge impact on overall mobility, not just for the motor vehicle, but also for the pedestrian bicycles to one point. And then lastly, some of the other projects of rep and solidation, improving rail process, and then again, access management as it relates to the number of rail crossings, I think, why it's almost, and that's all that I have for today's question. Railroad safety zones, we don't use the word quiet because it makes railroads cry, so. Safety zones, safety zones, being said. My question, and this might be a leaked question, but I know when I read it, I saw something about sidewalks, but John, you never really talked about sidewalks. Where is that in the play and the far understanding where we are? That is a great question. And we've mentioned this as she was starting off and kind of giving an overview. This really builds upon the wallpipes on the plane. And so all those recommendations that were in that plan, which was much more exhaustive and thorough, filters directly into this plan. So we carry those recommendations in. Didn't get into detail on that, because we had spent a lot of time with that, but those do care completely. And we do have a recommendation in there about targeted maintenance for almost, so one of the things that we heard from the department, since we were talking to the public, is not just about creating new things, but making sure that we're doing that maintenance, whether it's roading maintenance or sidewalk maintenance, cycling maintenance, all of these things that make it important, thinking about how we're sitting inside that budget. Definitely make sure, even just the addition, because I know we can walk, but we have safer places to walk, and not having sidewalks. It's a very difficult situation we get around and get out of those single family, single urban cars. Yeah. We've met, I've learned a lot of things in terms of new developments. The engineering standard requires sidewalks instead of sidewalks and new developments. It's one of those existing neighborhoods that I'm not going to want to populate outside of it, but I'd like to know more about it. Are you going to promote very entire homes in terms of recommendations? How would you view that? That's actually a recommendation of the natural resources section is to look at a undergrounding plan, so looking at kind of that planning process for key corridors. So that's not part of transportation, which is a little bit... Like, Lance, it's really... I'm going to ask that question. It's hard. In the neighborhood of planning and presentation, there's new sidewalks coming along. Yeah, so it's looking at that. One of the things that we recommend is looking, that's some case studies in there about what other communities are doing, but some communities, like Greenville, for example, are just basically gearing their lines whenever there's new development. And that can be a little bit more difficult for us. Greenville's a little bit more compact, right? So we don't want to, we want to do it a little bit more strategically. So the recommendation is to look at a plan towards implementation, and it's like, are we going to do that regularly or in case I see you or what? Any part of that. Any other examples? Yeah, I think we're going to move on to the next one. My understanding is there is some negotiation with the proper leader. And in order to move forward with that, they have to face that negotiation because they have to purchase them right away. The negotiation is still there. They're having conversations, I believe. Okay, okay. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. For your information, there's plenty of questions in here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, sir. So, Mr. Mayor, my board was going to have you all transitioning into its end of session now, but if we can get to board 20, I think we'll be okay. So at this time, we're going to have Missy Coffman, our Director of Budget and Program Management to give a very brief overview as we're kicking off our fiscal year 2020-2021 budget workshops. And so this really is just what we normally do, get information of how we're proceeding with budget. And after that, because it's so related, I'm very envious to Robert Chambers with Financial and Utility Management Consultants. It's the Financial and Utility Management Consultant for Black and Beech Management Consulting LLC. And Robert is here to update you on the words who are rate study, which is also on your agenda tonight for approval. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. I know y'all have been anxiously awaiting with bated breath for the budget discussions. So, way no longer we are here, which we stay here, sir. Great discussions for all of them. Yeah, it is, it is a ongoing process. And of course, a lot of things you talked about today are also very future-future thinking. So we are looking forward to working through the F1 2021 budget with everyone. What we're talking about today is it really planning your details of any of these items. It's mostly just to give you an overview sort of where we are and what's to come and our schedule, so we're looking at it. So what we're talking a little bit about today, if you're getting a copy of the presentation, it may be loaded as well. Ms. Hamlin can put it for us on the... So part of what we're talking about are budget drivers and their discussion topics, things that we'll be bringing to account in more detail or the things that you or I read in more detail in the conversation about. So the budget capacity, the first item, what that's really getting to is where we are with regards to our budget capacity, mostly as it relates to the general fund, in regards to the... Is that on the report? It's on the rest of the report. Just in the web? I can't just comment on that. So the budget, as you recall, we do budget the general fund and it's reflective of a... We incorporate surplus as part of that budget and here's past, we try to lean ourselves from that budget using the budget surplus to balance the budget with. So we will of course start with the budget that with the same goal. However, between now and the time we pass the budget, that's exactly where we're going to start. The budget additions are those things that we talked about throughout the year, things that we've counseled on. Santa's talked about adding to the budget or would be things that you consider would be added. But also those things that are out of our control, for instance, state retirement is no increase coming up this year, 1%. We also have adjusted our healthcare costs in anticipation of the experience rate being upon to us now that we are going into our, this will be coming up our third year in the state health plan. Under revenue generations, some of those items are obviously underway, which you are aware of, the tax incentive study, where that's coming into play is as you consider the model ordinance and as we're looking at adopting model ordinance changes that is reflective of the elimination of the nonprofit exemption that we currently have. So they incorporate some of those items together. Fire hydra fee, you've already approved, those will be reflected in the budget, of course those revenues are applied toward ongoing expenses. Business license enhanced, that is also underway, the business license enhanced enforcement, that is underway so far, it's in good progress, good product, so I hope you know more of the commercial matters we've wanted to process as well. And then some negotiations with fees, the certain entities, some of that gets to some of the nonprofit organizations that we've discussed that are obviously sharing in the services that the city provides, however, are not contributing with regard to property taxes and that you've discussed in prior years in terms of distributing our tax base at the cost of our services across our tax base, this would be one method of question. Any questions? No, sir, they are down today, so just leave the building. Okay, okay. Yes, that's why he's back. No, they just didn't. Yeah, he came in and they weren't working, unfortunately, that's what it's done. So it's just streaming? It is not streaming. It's not making it available. Yeah, there's a note online why it's not streaming. Okay. But we'll make it available. It won't be ended that early. No, I didn't, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have. I think the bullets here on your revenue generation was really to kind of recap for you all a lot of good hard work that's been done on the last year, take a collection of things, the study, and then the study, I'm not sure on the time of the study as far as who will have some additional fee. But just for clarification, this is not just a tax exempt study. It's an overall tax of working in all the different components of what makes up our property tax so that we can change the tax we work at. Look at it, just to say we require participation from the school districts and the county. But I mean, commission a group to take a list of overall tax structure and I mean, I mean, overall tax structure is on the basis to work on phone. Well, yeah, but we got a crazy sense as we're involved. I'm talking about systemic responses to it, how are we going to deal with it as a region? Well, I think part of our purpose of doing this, Mr. Mayor, is that we have that so that we can truly look at it so that we can pull that group together and get responses because tax exempt properties are portion of it. But we also got these other agencies that are cap that are continuing to grow without any accountability or ability for us to slow down and passing referendums saying they're one price and then that price is a whole other ballgame. So I think it'd be good for us to have the data so we can do that but I agree with you. I think we did need to have that. Our challenge is I think that this one that tackled this, systemic challenge sooner rather than later, we led on it but I think there's always more we all need to be dealing with obviously, we represent with 17 cents in the dollar now. Yeah, what would that group look like? Counties will grow again. Yeah, obviously you want others involved too but there has to be a sense of urgency articulated by the public sector because at least that, yes, we've got to make sure we give the people's business and the resources to do it but because the DNA of our city is a capital city and we're hosting a university in Fort Jackson and everyone else and a significant number of non-profits even some non-profits, maybe profitable non-profits that we're just different than the rest of the state and you tag on at 388 on top of that and it just creates a cocktail that arrests development in a way in which we don't find desirable and adds to the significant issue of affordability for so many of our residents and the other way we're going to tackle this, we reduced our millage, I think much to the chagrin of some of our really talented public administrators here over the last several years but that's been us doing the risk we should do to recognize that our tax and policies are a whack but we represent, we did then and we even now represent I think that we were probably 22 cents on 20 cents and now we're representing 17 cents on a dollar that we're going to tag this in a volatile and comprehensive way. It's going to require some really affirmative steps by the county and the school districts which is one, one in which one too and I say that by casting any delay because reality is that the amount of resources it takes to educate the child is still the amount of resources it takes to educate a child and then because of our data and we have to press mill then you still have to have the resources to educate our babies and I'll stand behind it all day long but we've had some successes and some failures in the last two decades and ways in which we work together to try and cut that overall tax liability but something that requires a deep dive, we'll have the data but I think we've got enough data to at least start pushing discussion to see if we can build some consensus on if we get over the county some days but we've got a lot of dialogue that needs to happen there and there is a movement there. That's just important that we have it comprehensively because every facet plays into it and there's a lot of different ideas capping, pushing to do a referendum to cap the property tax so that you're forced to have to make changes and those are things that we're going to have to discuss down the road. So that's a perfect segue into the next section because I asked Missy and Jeff and those of Liz for you this effort that's been put into this discussion about the generation even with all that effort there's no silver bullet as of today going into this new next budget cycle and I agree the continued discussions maybe the negotiation of fees with the hospital system, others, the university we need to continue all of those efforts but we're still at the beginning of the new budget cycle where public safety, the cruising and retention plan is still not funded where our public works officials are working hard every day to deliver phenomenal services but we are in a budget year where I never tried to be almost me but I think the reality is there that without some other type of revenue generation that we haven't found, we will probably have to be discussing some additional options with you all because basic services delivery does not and will not, I hope, suffer under my watch so we've listed things that are just basic that we are seeing beginning to see signs of suffering with funding for loans, sidewalks, city facilities, water and sewer, mention of public safety, we're putting the retention technology there that has been presented to you, we want to fund that, fire facilities, we have several that the Archie Jenkins and his family have presented to you already and obviously we have a growing capital replacement program that needs there so Ms. Yamina, take over the discussions but I really need to kind of drive that point home and we'll be getting into that in a much deeper as the budget discussion is going to end because we're at that point. So. Thanks, so Ms. Wilson, we talk about this every year and I see the proposed schedule that Missy has here but would it be official if we start really looking at having these dedicated work sessions to talk through a lot of these issues and that you're sure and absolutely would love to. Yes, sir. That's the thing that I'm probably getting at is if we could talk through forensic some of the details because I think some of the issues there, I think there has to be a deep dive into those things. The other piece of that, you talked about revenue generating, we had that conversation some months ago. And that's something I think we need to really have that those options might impact our budget. I think that as an individual, there's something I'm saying and Mr. Wilson and we're looking at the data, what is going to be the response as we, as that data continues to come online or we want to negotiate some fees. The issue I think why Senator's not going to be so difficult is because we know the tools we need in our tool box that whether it's state law or whatever other reasons that we presented to the public safety agency is not legally defensible in the atmosphere in which we find ourselves right now. So that is why it is a little bit of a delay for us not just going to pull the trigger on some of these things. We know what we need to do. We research how maybe we can get it done but we can kind of come up to some of the great walls and times on which we can pull the trigger in. You know, if people can't find you when you got the data and we can show clearly the discrepancy there and even some, I mean look, there's some agencies in there that passed a referendum that said it was $13 for $100,000 and it's $60 for $100,000. There's no cap in there. And so those are the things that we got to be able to address which we got to have all the data and it shows it completely how your point of being unique by having the comparison data from other places in our state we can clearly show that and I think we're going to have to use that with the legislature too because we need them to give us the ability to address this issue unless they're willing to contribute to it again. Right. And then what we have that data bill also need to talk about this too having those sit-down meetings and talking with them you know, I know the school district has started doing that meeting with them and giving them the data regarding how for the cost to educate kids, you know, one of the things a lot of our legislators didn't know is that Rich Longwood was impacted because the students at Alvin S. Glenn and PJJ were actually in their numbers and they fixed that last year. So I think if we have an opportunity to show them some stuff we've talked to a lot of you individually and I know their business talked to them more in depth but having that data and then like he said, bring them to the table to help them come up with a solution. We shouldn't have to be figuring out all the solutions. They need to tell us these are the tools that, you know, we're willing to push forward in the past. And I think that's why when we have the data we can go to them. We've done a portion of it, you know, but then you got something that everybody can truly tangibly discuss. Right now it's a lot of theories and we have some patience but not all of it is factual. And I think this will help us really have that discussion. How do we work with each other? You know, I mean, school district are you leveraging all your dollars the best way? You know, we're helping you because we're helping you grow too. We have to do it together. And so I think all of that comes into play. I think you're absolutely right. The sooner we get it, the sooner we have the conversations and we start having it. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, no matter how much data you have, you're not going to be able to change the bottom line for the city of Columbia by July 1st. The things that you're talking about are not doable under present law. If you want to do things... That's what we're going to do for a little bit. No discussions. You've got to face the reality that we've got to make some hard decisions on things that we can do to attend that city because you've got five months before the 1st of July and if we want to take care of somebody strong we've got to think about things that are doable by this council. Well, that was my point, Howard. It's two-fold. We have our work sessions where we're around the table and we're actually making decisions because staff continues to bring us stuff. There are several things that we need to say, yes, let's pull the trick on this. That addresses the median, but long-term, that's only going to get us so far. So we've got to talk long-term about how do we address it. So it's two-fold. I'm not saying one versus the other, but we've got to do both. We've got to make decisions in the next five months to get the extra 300 million miles between the water and sewer and the general fund. This council can do. And we're all for having this discussion. So to this divine's point, let's see, the budget drivers and the themes are here for you all in the essence of time. We just tried to list something before you, but I think the real issue will be those workshops and how productive we make them in the sessions that we have. So what we could do is maybe bring back some, as far as I'm concerned, the next few work sessions will be day-to-day for budget. If there's some additional dates that we can get for new water that they work for, you want an opportunity to say that we'll throw those out and we'll get with this in Europe. Senator, you can give us some dates about our social schedule and, of course, the February and March. It's so, sorry. It's been a long, it's been a long time. And then some of your colleagues, whose social calendar may not be as long. Checkers in the morning, I know. I will try to be... I'm going to play this vote card right now. We'll try to be kind as to maybe add one in February to one in March and we'll share those dates with you. Okay. Yes ma'am. Yes. I know I'm high-ranking here. No, it was your budget, so this was actually, and this was great discussions with the faculty on that. Robert's so patient. He's always patient with us. The first one they put in. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll let you drive that forward. Oh, yeah. He's been doing it for a few years. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity another year to be here. The purpose of this presentation is just to initiate, slash kick off the rate study process this year. So, you know, in the interest of time, I won't rush through the presentation, but I'll hit a few key points within the presentation. Please stop me as I go if you have any questions that we go for. So the agenda is here. We're going to go through the purpose, kind of talk about what's driving and what we're trying to do, you know, give you a little overview of the approach we'll take and then speak about a few areas that we'll kind of hone in or focus on. The purpose is just to perform an independent study that will provide us with the ability to estimate the water and sewer's ability to fund operating and capital programs, understand what costs to serve your existing customers and thereafter determine how best to price those services. Are your existing rates appropriate? And if there are new rates or rates that we're looking at, how best to price those rates? So, from an industrial perspective, every utility tries to build a resilient water system for current and future generations that provides a high and acceptable level of service. So, in trying to do this, what are the issues that are affecting utilities currently? The number one issue is aging infrastructure, breaking pipe, for example. That's something that Colombia deals with. Can you answer something? Sure. Do you have a good idea of what number one is for us? Percentage. Just how, I mean, how old is that infrastructure? Yeah, what are we starting with? What are we building up of? I, okay, so I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly if the question is which one of these items would be the number one for Colombia. That's probably a good question. I'll say that from my data, that boy. But it's pretty, pretty typical across Argentina. Because we do this survey and we survey about 300, 400 utilities across the country that produces human resources. So you've seen some of them, yeah. Yes, sir. So the second issue is revenues. Are we generating sufficient revenues? What is the weather doing? What is conservation doing? The third issue is rates. Are we charging the rates through our customers on the standard value of the water we're providing and the services we're providing? Then you have costs, being resilient, information technology and age and your age and workforce. This is all consistent and this is that Colombia as a city is currently dealing with. So what have you done? So Colombia has implemented and continuously implemented a robust annual financial planning process that's tied to your budgeting process. We've identified best practices in executing this plan and aligned these best practices with our Colombia. So for example, you have defined performance standards and you track how resilient you are against those performance standards on an annual basis. On an annual basis, you complete that five to 10 year financial plan as a part of your budgeting process to understand where you are currently and where you are going forward and what you have to do, how agile you are to adjust to your requirements going forward, whether operating or capital. You perform cost of service analysis as a part of these studies to understand what it costs to serve your customers and then on an annual basis, you ensure that you're generating enough revenues to meet your requirements. So those four items are what we call best practices and you are currently doing these things. So what's driving your water and sewer utility? It's a traditional mix of, are we doing enough financial planning? Are we running a business that's fluid and do our customers and our stakeholders understand what we're doing? And the mix of this is what we're trying to achieve to run a sustainable utility, a sustainable business. What's driving the business? Maintaining revenue stability. Are you financially sufficient? Are you resilient as it relates to how you operate? Are you implementing your operating and capital program? Do you have the resources as it relates to people, processes, technology? Are you meeting your regulations as you should? How do you price the service you provide? And are you competitive? And these are things that are driving how you operate and these are things that the folks running the business, folks on the back wall and yourself here, constantly monitor as it relates to how you're performing. So, we honest on what's going on in the industry. We have a highlight of what we're doing. Now, how did we get here? Over the years, I've been here a few times and historically, thank you, really glad to be here as well. And historically when we show this diagram or this illustration, we had years where we didn't have increases and we had lots and you've taken the decision to look about structuring and implementing the necessary increases. So, as an entity over the last few years, there's been increases and I just commend you as an entity for taking some tough decisions. So, in addition to looking at rate increases, there are events that took place. And in looking at these events, you have desired outcomes associated with these events. So, for example, we're implementing an AMI program and how does that program, for example, affect your revenue? We want to achieve consistent implementation of our capital program. Are we doing that? Yes, we are. Well, how does the continued target of making sure we achieve the requirements associated with the PINU author 2020 program affect how we operate, all right? We're looking to build up the stormwater program which you all have started to do, you know, and staff is making sure that you consistently have the resources, whether it be for processes, technology, for example, to do this. And then, you know, one area is how do you practice your services, you know? You will be looking at your miscellaneous services, you know, you've looked at your expansion fees and there's also the discussion around large user fees and how do they impact your business. You know, all these things are, you know, competing interests that has a desired outcome that we have to understand and appreciate and incorporate, which we do, into the analysis that we complete here. Robert, do you show us our expansion fees and large user rates compared to other utilities? If we can, when we come back? Yeah. Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. So, not to go in detail as it relates to this diagram, this table, but this is just a quick synopsis of what we showed you last year. And, you know, upon getting the approval of the 2020 7.06, we forecasted that we'll have a potential increase of 9.15% in FY 2021, which is line five. And the goal, I got, you know, I got hit upside the head because of this one, but the goal is to see how we do against and if we can be better. And staff, you know, everybody has started to, you know, try to do everything we can to make sure that that number potentially comes in lower, but as we go through the process, we'll see. So, we just wanted to highlight that this is where we were last year, and this becomes a starting point in the baseline of how we go forward. Robert, is that mainly to get back to that coverage? That's our coverage, or is it because this year is the 1.286 that our current year will be? Yeah, so a part of it, yes, is to support coverage, but it's also to support your requirements as it relates to capital, operating, and just the program that you're running as an entity. Robert, have you ever taken a look at this and got wastewater out of it and just looked at it if we were just strictly in the water business? So, when you say we've ever looked at it, can you expound on what you mean exactly? Have you run a scenario, or have we engaged you to run a scenario with us being out of the way to water business? Formally? Formally after. Yeah. So, we've never been engaged to run a scenario, and I don't seem like I'm jumping around this. No, no, no. That's your question, okay. We've never been engaged to run a scenario to say what it would take to be out of the way to water business. So, you know, that's the first answer to your question. Yeah, I think probably two points of that would be is, what would it look like, number two, what would it look like if we were out of the waste or the business outside of the city limits where our biggest costs, our biggest expense, and our biggest infraction are all dealing with waste or not water. And it'd be interesting what that would do to our model would be, A, create more revenue, B, have more of an opportunity to maintain and have more of a robust system, and a lot more easier to maintain over this lifetime. I don't know, I mean just looking at the projections and the constant costs and this and that, just maybe worth looking at weighing out what's the benefit at first and the cost. So, that's something we didn't talk to style for both and you know, weekend. This is unusually quiet today. Yeah. I mean, so, okay, so since 2008 to FY20, since 2008 to FY20, you know, an average, we've looked at about a 4.7% to rate increase. That's an average there are years when we've had to look at significant rate increases and there's years over and this period of multiple years when there have been no rate increases. So that's, you know, generally around somewhere around or at the level of inflation. But one thing to try to understand as it relates to this number and I'm going to start about here is, you know, under our current rates, you've got to look at what tap water would cost on a per gallon basis. What tap water would cost on a per gallon basis. It would be about 0.004 cents, okay. So let's say now we took that number and we said, what would it cost on a daily basis for everything you just described, everything, all the infrastructure, everything you put in place, what would you water cost on a daily basis based on your current rate? It would be about 70, 76 cents, okay. On the other side, waste water, if we were to say, what would it cost on a daily basis, sorry, it would be about 140, okay. So then let's say we were to look at, you know, the cost of a gallon of bottled water would pay that dollar for it, okay. Paying that dollar for that gallon of bottled water would be about 263 times higher than what you currently pay today for water. Except we charge you to dispose that water too, so that when you add that in. Okay, maybe 70, 80, that type. We're going to charge you a storm water 80, 70, 80, 80. But it would still be higher, the point is, so in understanding the value of water, what do you get for it? You get the ability to turn on that pipe on an instantaneous basis whenever you want water. You get the ability to shower, to use a toilet, to wash your clothes, to have good drinking water whenever you turn on the pipe. You know, to wash your stuff, to cook, clean, you know, that's all the things you get for the water we're providing. So we kind of wanted to highlight that because it's really important in trying to, you know, illustrate the value of water and the value of what we've been doing, what it is. Okay. I would tell you Robert, I think most people recognize the value of our water system. I think when it comes to wastewater is where it becomes, because if you look at what we had to do for the EPA, we had 150 million in water, 600 million wastewater. And so I think that's where, you know, I think some of the angst comes from. So our study- You're trying to be the number one water. I know we're almost there. We're going to be number one. So our study approach is a three step approach where we identify what the size of the pie, what the requirement is, the cost of services, who generates that cost. And the third step is the rate design that says how do we rank the service. So we've highlighted some areas of focus that we will look on as we execute this project. From a financial planning perspective, we look at the integrity of the financial system through our financial metrics. We'll try to understand how we're doing as it relates to implementing our capital program. And we look at, you know, the water and wastewater utility, you know, what it means for you to be self-sufficient. Additionally, we look at what's the cost to provide the existing services you do. And what's the cost to provide services to potential large use customers that are under consideration, okay? And then in looking at your cost of service, what does it cost to provide your miscellaneous fees, your turn off fees, and other, you know, other general fees, you know, that you currently have, you know, is your, how does your expansion fee compare to other utilities? So it'll be coming back to you with all that information. And then on the rate design side, we'll just look at what's the price of the services, you know, you provide, and is the price and your current rates appropriate. You know, how do you, again, how do we intend to price that mega-user, a large user, you know, and how do you look at its impact on development, you know, do you look at essentially some type of a development fund? You know, if there are different things, you know, you can do as it relates to addressing this mega-user, a large user issue or opportunity that's currently on the table. So next steps. We're in the process of collecting data. We're going to the facilitating meeting with staff to go for the project schedule, deliverables, the data we require, and then we'll get going. Okay, that's it. Thank you all so very much. Thank you, Ron. Again, the annual rate study plan. And there were no questions, Ron. We did it no longer. Okay, well, you know, you see, Ron is part of the family. Yeah, he's used our... What's the plan? It's about three to four months and it's going to be in alignment with the project schedule, the approval of that. So we'll be coming back right to see in alignment with the project schedule. Thanks, Bob. All right. Four, 36. I think we need to go get it all done. If you all don't mind saying anything, you can put in the screen that will be helpful for the first couple of times. Ready? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's get it close to one. This is Matt. And I'd like to make a motion. We're going to executive session for receiving legal advice related to Matt. This was covered by attorney clown privilege pursuant to 30-dash-4-dash-78-2, Convention Center, of Receive of Legal Advice, pertaining to and pertaining to and claiming and threatening or potential claim pursuant to 30-dash-4-dash-78-2, LGA versus COC, State versus COC, Discussion of Negotiation of the District, to propose contractual arrangement pursuant to 30-dash-4-dash-78-2, Underwriters 2221 Devine Street, Municipal Conflicts, Expansion and Manifestability, to propose location or expansion of services to encourage location or expansion of industries or other business pursuant to 30-dash-4-dash-78-2, Park Street Project. It's a second. Is that a good question for a follow-up? Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. Rickerman? Aye. Mr. McDowell? Yes. Mr. Govall? Aye. Mr. Davis? Aye. Mr. Govall? Aye.