 Council Member Martin. Here. And Council Member D'Avo Ferry. Here. Mayor, you have a call. All right, great. Just a quick reminder. Anyone wishing to speak during public invited to be heard. We'll need to go ahead and watch the live stream of the meeting and then we'll throw up the instructions. That one right there. When the time comes, you'll need to dial that number. So all right, if we could take that off the screen, great. And then. Let's go ahead and start with the roll call on a pledge or a side pledge. Why don't we go with Polly? Could you lead us in the pledge tonight? There's a new, the mute section is in a new place. Um, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God. Indivisible. Justice. All right. All right. Let's go ahead. Motions direct the city manager to add agenda items to feature agendas. Anything. Dr. Waters. I don't want to add something. I just want to confirm. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We got from David Bell earlier today. He made reference to updating us during this meeting. I assume he's going to do that during the city manager's. Uh, report. Could we just confirm that? If not, I'm going to make a motion. No, correct. Um, because of the timing of getting an item on the agenda, he's going to update tonight and then we're going to bring another item back. Thank you. Go back to the old way. Um, because this is a very difficult time and also because we're changing our director of public safety. Um, I would like. To have a report on. By the police department on. What our public policy is on the use of force by the police force. I feel like we have a very good police force, but I think we have a very good police force. Um, I think that many, many people have been asking us for this. And I think we owe it to them. To, uh, have a report. In a fairly short amount of time by the police, just a short report on what our policy is on the use of force. Harold, let's just go ahead and put that on an agenda. Keep it the three to five minutes. I know that it's on our website, but. It'll be, it'll take more time right now to talk about it and discuss it. Then that it would actually get the report. So if we could do that, it's just mayor's prerogative. Okay, great. Anything else, everybody? All right, cool. Let's go on to public invited to be heard. Let's go ahead and wait to see who joins us. Are we going to get the city manager report after that? Uh, yeah, I'm looking, uh, that will be number four. On the agenda, special reports and presentations. COVID-19 update as well as the LHA. Unless you want to go now. I don't care. No, I'm good. I was used to the regular. I'm good. Let's go into their 60 seconds and we'll cut it off. Is anybody in the queue yet? Mayor, we have one person so far. Looks like we have another. So we'll give them another minute. Maybe. Peace to you too, Marsha Martin. Peace to you. I know what you were saying too. All right, let's go ahead and wrap it up. Let's go ahead and cut off the public invited to be heard list. And let's start with the first one. Shall we? Susan. Yes, mayor, one minute. I will start the timer. Mayor, we have looks like four guests. The first guest ending in five, three, two. I'm going to unmute you. If you could please state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes. I think that's me. Yes. This is. Okay. This is Jim Holland. I'm at. 1,400 3rd Avenue. And I'm. I'm calling about traffic situation in town. And I have spoken to probably over a hundred people. From 19th, 9th, Collier, down by the rec center, Spencer, Fordham, Mountain Dew, over 17th, South Park Parkway, Drake, over, over by the airport, Ross, Harvard, 3rd, Maine, you get the idea. And the noise in the speeding all night long. I'm not the only one. And that we're not asking for anything extraordinary. I think when I've talked to Tyler a couple of times, he sort of gives me the sense that he thinks I want to stop all traffic or something. We are just asking for some help to mitigate. The speeding and the noise. So like when we're in our backyard, we don't have to feel like we're on the speedway. It is really rough. It's really bad. And we keep coming to city council. You know, all these people, if you look on the next door app, it's a hot topic of conversation. And the theme there is there is speeding. There are these people who are making all this noise. They have gone to city council. They have called Tyler. They called the police and are pleased for help or falling on deaf ears. And I, I don't know if you can hear that going by right now. I don't think it's too much to ask. We have the people obey the law. And that we have some quiet in our own yards. Or in the middle of the night. So here we are. One question I have is I was looking at the traffic mitigation online. That is dated 2006. And I'm curious if that is still valid. I don't think it's been updated. We usually don't respond during public invited to be heard. That's why you're hearing silence. We listen, but it's so, but what we can do is we've got your name and contact information. Harold, can we shoot her an email with an answer? And I don't know if you're a computer, but we're getting a head nod. City manager. So do you want to share your email real quick? Mayor, perhaps it would be best if she emailed support. Okay. That would be fantastic. All right. Thank you. All right. Next. Guest 722 you're next. I'm going to unmute your line. If you could please state your name and your address for the record. You have three minutes. Go ahead. My name is Lynette McClain and I live on standpoint drive. I served on the count climate action task force. And I just wanted to request that a survey be sent to all of the participants in that task force so that we can give feedback. On the process and the results. And I just want to say a few things. First, I was disappointed to see the composition of the group included so many city staff members. And later I realized that the staff members were able to provide much necessary information about the budget, the programs, and the services that were already being provided. But the group group process, even though it was very pragmatic and functional, it was less than inspiration aspirational. And in spite of the COVID and the loss of several participants, I was able to identify the action items. I hope that the council will be able to identify action items. And measureable goals. That they will be able to track. I hope that the council will make, make climate change a priority. And they'll be able to identify those. Climate action priorities. And hold the city accountable to take action on this urgent issue. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next. All are your number ends in eight to zero. I'm going to unmute you. Hello, can you hear us? Yes. Okay. Please state your name for the record and your address. You have three minutes. Thank you. Hello again. My name is Catherine Baylog and I'm calling in for the fourth time about short term rentals in the city of Longmont. I live at 1920 spruce avenue. The house behind us is a short term rental property. This house. Overlooks our backyard. Their hot tub. Their decks. Everything in their backyard overlooks our property. Since early May, we have had different people or guests watching us and our children playing our backyard. Every week there are new people vacationing and watching us. This is a privacy and security issue. The last time I called in, I was like, oh, this is a hotel in our backyard. Hotels are not allowed by zoning laws to be in residential neighborhoods due to the inevitable disruptions of tourism. Why is it okay that we have this hotel in our backyard? Big cities all over the country have protected the residential neighborhoods from those short term rentals. And from what my neighbors and I have been dealing with all summer law. City council, can you please revisit the short term rental laws and consider banning short term rentals in residential neighborhoods. And in the long run, I'm going to talk about the long term rental laws and security and peace of mind back. Are you thinking about talking about this issue and. Please help us. Thank you. Our last caller, your number ends in one, one, nine. I'm going to unmute you. If you could please state your name. Hello. There you are. Can you. Can you hear us? Can you hear me? Mr. Mayor, I'm at seven, oh eight, Hayden court. Mr. Mayor and council members. When a group of us met to discuss asking the Longmont City Council. To adopt a resolution for the coming climate emergency. We had no idea how this would intersect with a worldwide pandemic. I realize that resources. And plain old attention span are both strained with the intersection. The first is that we as a society need to understand the cost of not acting. Much of the misery of the pandemic could have been averted with a swifter reaction from our government, starting with preparation for pandemics that was hopefully inadequate. While we could try to list blame, we should start by saying, what can we learn from this that will help us with the coming climate crisis? One good example I can list is Longmont working closely with Boulder County Health Department. This type of coordination at local levels will be needed and should be emulated. The second is to realize that the coming climate emergency will once again have health consequences. Our warming world will allow diseases previously only seen in the tropics to migrate to our area. Zika already proved that diseases can migrate. Just as this pandemic taught us that those at the front lines are most affected, people and places will once again not be equally affected. As you review the entirety of the report from the task force, please note that there are ideas to attempt to work on the cause, such as that scene and the renewable energy suggestions, as well as those ideas to work on solutions, such as those seen in the public health section. Also, there are ideas on how to make sure we don't leave some residents behind in the section completed by the Just Transition Task Force. I ask that you not put off implementation plans. I realize that there is currently a shortage of funds and also people power as we try to complete work through less effective means, such as Zoom meetings. However, a recent article in the Washington Post gives the alarming report of warming in the Arctic that is occurring several decades sooner than predicted. As someone said, the pandemic doesn't carefully are tired of it. The pandemic hasn't tired of us yet. The same is true of the climate emergency. It will come regardless of how broke we are and how tired we are from the pandemic. Just as COVID-19 is alarming us with its severity, climate change will be much worse if we don't act in a decisive manner. I urge you to spend some time deciding on priorities, cost, and what can or should perhaps come from state or federal resources. Please don't just put this on the shelf. Thank you. Thanks, Karen. Good timing there, by the way. All right. That will go ahead and conclude our first or our only public and by then be heard session tonight. Let's move on to special reports and presentations. Harold, COVID-19 update. All right, Mayor, Council, I'm going to go over some numbers with you all. Since that 10, everyone sort of wants to see where we are today. Can you all see my screen? Yes. I've got some issues with things moving around. Okay. So this is the most up to date. This is updated at four o'clock today in terms of where we are looking at the number of cases that were reported. Obviously, you can see the spike that Jeff was talking about the last time he was presenting to Council. This is the most recent number. This is 10 and this is 15. So you can see that trend in terms of what we're seeing with number of cases. When you slide down to the five-day rolling average percentage of COVID PCR tests with positive results, you can see that we came down and we were below that 4%. We moved up, moved up, and again, that's just based on the testing that's occurring, but we're still holding in that high 3% range in terms of the percentage of positive tests. This is when you're seeing the number of tests per day and that we're doing and then the light blue again is the number of positives that we're seeing in terms of the county. Again, improvement from where we were. Then you can see that this is important because you really look at the residents who in age range and you can still see this 20 to 29-year-old cohort with a fair amount that are positive. Again, the five-day average of the number of new cases and this is really what we want to see happening as we continue to move forward. Then this is based by a municipality per 100,000 population based on projections, but this is the one that I wanted to show you while we talked about this a little last time. As you can see, the major change in this graph is that Boulder has now surpassed Long La in terms of 550 cases versus 542. I think that's important because if you remember and it was three weeks ago, three to four weeks ago, somewhere in that range, we were double the number of cases that Boulder really had. This has been a significant change for the city of Boulder in terms of the caseload. Talking to Jeff associated with the cases, I know there's been some questions regarding protect our neighbor phase and when can we move into that section of it. The state has put some fairly significant requirements and the most significant is the data. You have to show 14 days of declining cases and as you can see from that, we're still working on that 14 days. You also have to have tracing capacity and you have to have the testing capacity. They're continuing to work through that. If you all saw Jeff's update that Marika sent to you all today, they're working on a dashboard that will actually show where we sit in terms of a county, in terms of moving in to protect our neighbor. One of the questions that I've had as I've talked to staff is well, can we do that as a community? The state did not set it up that way. The state set it up where it has to be a county and or a region with multiple counties moving forward to try to move in to protect our neighbor. As Jeff indicated, it's a number of folks within the county that have to sign off on it. OEM, Office of Emergency Management has to sign off on it. City councils and mayors have to sign off on it. County commissioners have to sign off on it. Department of Health and so they're really pushing for that broader decision making as a county and a region in order to move into the protect our neighbor phase. So that's really all I had to add there. I know that there were some questions on those issues that I wanted to touch on. At this point, I'm going to turn it on over to Sandy because she's been working on the motion that you all made in terms of the food tokens. And I wanted her to talk about how we plan on implementing that. Sandy? Thanks, Harold. Sandy Cedar Assistant City Manager, and I'm here to talk a little bit about the Strongmont voucher program that we have branded based on the same Strongmont language that we've been using for business assistance grants. So the way that we are going to work the program, we were able to contact the Chamber of Commerce who's going to help us with the administration of the program. And we also are working with Tinker Mill to be able to create $25 Strongmont tokens. We will mail those out with a letter with your signature that I think where I could send you early last week out to folks that are CARES recipients from the rebate program. Also folks that are working in the community farm share program as well as some of the kiddos from their families from the food distribution site from the youth center. So the 400 tokens are going to go a long way to be able to give some food to folks that are in need in Longmont. And then we also have 146 businesses that will be able to accept the tokens. So we're in the process of notifying them and sending out the tokens. We'll start the program in late July and run it through the end of October. A very cool story that I'd like to share with you is that because of our partnerships with the youth center and children, youth and families, we're going to work with some of those neighborhoods to be able to bring in eligible food trucks so that people won't have to necessarily go to one of the restaurants. They'll be able to have some of those restaurants come to them. So it's going to be a really nice program. I'm really excited to go ahead and implement it. Thanks, Harold. Any questions for Sandy? I don't see any. What else you got for us tonight, Harold? So I want to talk to you all. One of the things that we also talked about when this came up was the conversation on utility bills and we indicated the state had a program. We also had the CARES funding that you all were going to look at. And so we're really hitting the point on utility bills where we need to start working with folks and ensuring that they're contacting us. Excuse me. Today, we know that we probably have about 2.9 million in utility bills that are past due. What we were really waiting on in that process was trying to understand that legislation that the state passed in terms of the utility assistance program. We started getting that guidance late last week, early this week. So what the state's going to do is they're actually going to push that money into the LEAP program. And so individuals will have to go in into the LEAP program and get qualified. The interesting piece that we learned in this is that it's only going to be allowed to be utilized for electricity. It's not going to apply to wastewater and some of the other bill structures. As we were looking at this, one of the things that we feel like we can do in terms of tag teaming this is when we look at the CARES dollars that we received that you all voted on last week that we're going to get from DOLA is we will look at taking the LEAP program as a mechanism for us to bring the additional CARES dollars and I want to be clear. There's so many CARES programs now. We have the CARES program that you established in terms of the rebate program. Then we have the CARES dollars that we're receiving and they're the federal dollars are beaten channeled through DOLA. So if somebody needs utility assistance, they need to A, go into the LEAP program and get qualified. Or if they're in our existing CARES program, we'll start there. And then if they're not in the existing CARES program, but they get qualified in the LEAP program, we'll then look at the other CARES funding that we have in place. If they can't qualify for either one of those programs, we want to work with those individuals to set up some type of payment arrangement within our system. And then finally, I think the challenge that we have is that we're really nearing the point where we're going to have to start notifying folks to say we need you to do a couple of things. One, we need you to contact us if you haven't been paying your utility bills because we want to connect you into the LEAP program and we want to look at connecting you into the CARES program or using the LEAP to connect you into the other CARES program. At a certain point though, if they don't go into the LEAP and they don't go into the CARES program and they don't contact us to set up payment arrangements in which we do on a regular basis, probably in the September-ish timeframe, October after we have enough time to notify people, we're really probably going to have to start moving into our more traditional practices. So I think what we're telling you is there are a lot of programs out there or there are programs out there now that can assist people. We just need to really encourage people to go in and engage in those programs. And if nothing else works, we'll work with you on the payment arrangements. But if you don't do any of that, then we're really going to have to move to our more traditional processes. And I know you all talked about different options. We think there's money in play. It's really getting folks to come in and access those programs. Is there any questions about that? All right. Don't see any. Harold, anything else? Who? Councilmember Christensen? Pack. Oh, sorry. Councilmember Pack, way down there on the bottom of my screen. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Harold, I was going to ask what do we do? I'm sorry. How do we get this message out? Do you want us to go on social media to tell people about these programs, to go on next door, to use our email lists? Is there any way that as council people, we can help you get that message out? That's mine. Sorry, it's cutting in now. All right. So what we'll do is we'll work with our public information team and get you all information that you can share and what we need to communicate to people. We also, I want to take, as I mentioned to this, I talked to you all about this before, I want to take a more active role in reaching out to folks in order to establish that contact, that contact, so that we can really get individuals into the programs that they need to be into. Because one of the things that I'm really concerned about is we can't let individuals get themselves in a significant position where months down the road, we actually have more significant issues and it's almost impossible to get out of that situation. So while we have these programs available for people to get into, we need to get them into the programs, so we don't end up in November with people having significant utility bills in the thousands of dollars and it's almost impossible to recover from. So we're fortunate right now that we have these programs, we just need to get people to go into them. Exactly and I personally would like to help you get that message out. We will be in contact with all of you and getting you that information. We still have some work to do on some of the state programs. We have enough now that I wanted to talk to you all about it today to understand what was there. We still want to understand some of the details to make sure we're courting people into the correct locations with accurate information to make sure we know that. Okay, thank you. Councilor Christensen? Harold, I know Jeff isn't here tonight, but I was reading something very interesting a few days ago. I was thinking because I'm a woman, I'm thinking oh I bet all women are getting this at twice the rate of men. Well actually women and men are getting this at about this, I'm talking about COVID-19, are getting this at about the same rate that men are dying at twice the rate. And I'm wondering if, which is you know really appalling and a few weeks ago we took a look at the rate that Latinos in Boulder County are getting this at a much higher rate and yet the death rate is far far lower. And those are interesting statistics because you know if we don't gather these statistics and actually analyze them then we're not learning anything at all about how this works. I'm just wondering if Boulder County Health is paying attention to trying to determine why it is that Latinos fortunately, unfortunately are getting this at a much higher rate, but also are not dying at a dying at a lesser rate which is a very good thing, but men by and large are getting this are dying at a much higher rate than women. So I'm just thinking that this is something Boulder County Health should be checking into. So that is, it's interesting. So women do have a, I believe it's a couple of percentage points higher in terms of cases men do are higher on passing away when they get it. I think one of the things and we have kind of talked about this, so when we saw the growth in cases in Longmont, one of the things that we really knew was in many cases it was the result of multi-generational households. And so as we were looking at that, that was part of it, but one of the things that they've talked about and I think we need to really look at is also the age of the individuals that are getting diagnosed with case because one of the things we do know is that the younger the person, although that data is kind of changing now as they're seeing other things happening, but the younger the person, the more likely they are to have, you know, not have the same high-level issues that you have with COVID. And so what I would like to see as we're going through this is also the demographic breakdown by age in these categories to really see is it a product that we're seeing more younger people in these various categories being diagnosed with COVID, thus you're not seeing the death rate and the hospitalizations at the same level. And so because it's interesting, if you look at 15.5 percent, a new number of deaths in the Hispanic Latin X category, white non-Hispanics is 80.3. In terms of cases, 57.6 in the white non-Hispanic, it's 38.2 in Hispanic Latin X categories. If you remember, that's actually going down a little bit. And we think that's also a product of what we're seeing in terms of where the cases are coming from today in that you're seeing boulder really start elevating in terms of the number of cases. So I think those are all things we've got to look at and we've got to talk about. And I think the challenge is a novel virus. And so, you know, they're really seeing that interesting story was how people reacted this differently. There was a Tony Award or Tony nominated actor who was 41 years old that just passed away. And when you hear about it, they said his lungs look like he smoked for 50 years. And so they're also finding situations where young people have different issues associated with it. And if you start reading through it, you know, one of the things they're looking at is that is their immune system actually going on overdrive and creating other kind of problems with it, very similar to what somebody with EOS and Ophelia occurs when they overproduce white blood cells. So I think there's still a lot that folks are learning and we're going to continue working on the data. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm slowly becoming more and more educated in epidemiology as we go through this conversation. At this point, I'm going to turn it over to David because one of the things that council wanted and you all directed us to do this was a report on what's happening in our parks and open space. That direction was last Tuesday. We wanted to get the agenda out. So we wanted to put David into this spot, let him talk about what they're dealing with, what challenges we're facing and then get some information from you all and then we'll also then, if necessary, bring it back in a more comprehensive report when David and his group have some time to do it. They were also getting ready for the holiday, which they had a ton of work to prepare and get ready based on what we were seeing in our facilities. David, are you on? Yes. I'm here. Harold, we get a chance to really talk about how much time we had. So if you want to give me a quick little what you like to see us in, Scott and I can adjust pretty quickly. Just move with pace. Okay. I'll keep watching you and you can keep me moving. Mayor Bagley and council members, David Bell, director of Parks and Natural Resources. And again, as Harold mentioned, it has to come and kind of talk about what we're really doing to kind of make sure we're managing our natural resources in our parks during this pandemic. And I feel very fortunate right now that I'm going to be able to introduce Scott Severs, who is our first certified wildlife biologist for the city of Longmont, and he has been on for just over a year. And he's going to kind of kick this off with a little bit of overview of what he's been seeing out in the parks and kind of what the direct impacts have been to our wildlife. And there I'll kind of go into how we have been managing responses of what we're seeing from Scott and his group. Hey, good evening, everybody. I just wanted to give you a little primer on wildlife looking at both direct and indirect impacts. And I'll just jump right into this. Direct impacts can be things like flushing of wildlife through boat traffic, foot traffic or dogs. Direct impacts might be nest destruction. Or we've also had reports of people climbing on beaver lodges at Golden Ponds. Indirect impacts, that might be unauthorized trails like what we saw at Left Hand Park. Removal of vegetation that might indirectly impact wildlife and their habitat. Or off trail use again, like at Sandstone Ranch. So, you know, people are looking for outlets for outdoor activities during this pandemic. And of course, having all those visits on our properties can impact wildlife. So what are we doing? And so I'll talk about some of our current solutions that are in progress. One of our great projects that's been going on for multiple years since Jim Crick was hired as your natural resources specialist is monitoring raptors through volunteers and staff. And we have a great interplay in the natural resources team with the engineering team and projects that are going on on the city and making sure that our raptor nests aren't being impacted by city projects such as paving or a water project. And that's run successfully actually by a cadre of volunteers. And we've allowed them with the managers, the city manager's office permission to continue to monitor raptors during this period because they're socially distanced, they're in their cars, and they're giving us great information and feedback. And so far, all of our raptors are doing as expected quite well during this year. The biggest issue actually for the raptors wasn't people, it was the smart, the the Easter snow storm, which took out several nests. Another big part of our project is restoration of habitats through weed control and native planting. And that has been a big part of our project that's almost my daily project is removing weeds and making more room for native plants on our trail system. And my colleague Jim Crick this year said it's the best he's ever seen. And I would encourage you if you'd ever like to come with us, we'll take you on some of our trails and you can see the reduction of invasive weeds and the native plants coming back. And that's been quite amazing. We've also had several really good establishments of native vegetation in restoration areas. Long term studies of birds. We have a long term study of bird populations at Golden Ponds. And we have a long term study of birds at Pachel. And I intend, although you know the pandemic kind of got in the way, but we're going to try to add additional places where more city projects are planned like Union Reservoir and trying to think of the other, oh, the eastern extension of St. Vrain Creek Trail to the state park. So we want to look at those areas and get some good baseline data on those. And then finally this year with my colleague, Danielle Cassidy and Levine and David, we worked on a group of educational signs that are at McIntosh. They're going to get placed here within the next week or so on the importance of prairie habitats and prairie dogs to raptors. And those will be mostly established up on the north side. And so let me summarize by saying our challenges have been staffing levels this year, some unforeseen circumstances. And right now the open space staff is operating at about 50%. So that makes it hard because our mandate as stewards of our state mandate, as stewards of land as weed control, and we're doing a great job of that. But it's also made it difficult for us to implement all the wildlife projects this year. I had a whole agenda of those things and I've pushed back on them because I wanted to make sure that the things that we did have established were still in effect. And then just the other, the huge thing is just managing people on public lands in this time of a pandemic. It's difficult for us to manage that amount of people. But let me just summarize that wildlife is very resilient. We have now the buoys in place at McIntosh reservoir so that the birds can come back to their roots there. None of the species that might have been impacted by the amount of boating activity at McIntosh, for example, are species that are endangered. And so I guess that's kind of just a quick summary of the things that I've been working on and what I've noticed and what I can report to you. David? Yes. So thank you, Scott. And again, I just really wanted Scott to lead this off for the fact that I think that as you kind of hear my quick presentation here, wanting you to be assured and publicly assured that we have great staff on who is dedicated to watching, monitoring, and improving habitat in Longmont. One of the things I always go back to in this position is the fact that we have done such a great job since the established of Longmont and the Chicago Colony, even with our early parks. We have more than, we have 42 parks this time. We have over a dozen open space properties. We have 100 miles of trail. And I think during this time period, we saw how important those areas were to our community for people to get out. And when the governor did his first stay-at-home order, he left that door open for people to get out. And he obviously encouraged people to get out and enjoy the great outdoors in Colorado. And people really took that to heart. And I think that's what we're really seeing. I think what really has been the push on council is we've kind of worked with those calls that we've seen as people got out. We saw people that maybe had never even thought about paddleboarding. Now they've picked up a inflatable paddleboard and they're showing up at McIntosh. So we have that increased use of which we typically have the typical things you would see in our parks is dogs off leash and increased trash. But as we were doing that, we're also dealing with how do we keep our staff safe, how to keep the public safe, and we're dealing with some of those masking issues as well and how we implement those policies in our parks. So when we should have said, let's just shift resources over to helping deal with this increased use, we were being pulled in the direction of trying to deal with the pandemic pieces. And as we move forward with that, as you remember how we kind of gradually moved through this, it really was let's now open up tennis, pickleball, then it was skate parks and basketball and volleyball and all those took resources that would have been out looking at how we help educate the public in our parks and make sure they're they're following what I think are really good rules and regs to help us maintain what we have. So as we talk about those parks as open space and those trails and the wildlife that Scott mentioned, the city has also done a great job of working with the public with proud and their groups to come up with management plans and rules and regulations that really help protect those. The challenge is how do you educate that number of people coming to parks at a new time when they may not have that background and that history with our parks. So again, we felt the being spread thin and not be able to have that engagement in a time when public engagement was a challenge too. You need to be out talking to public and you'd be out signing with public, but we're putting signs up on how to social distance in an escape park. So it was a it was definitely a different challenge that we had as we saw that increase use. We saw the request from the public to make sure we're out dealing with the dogs off leash, the increase use in our in our natural areas. We also had issues such as people deciding it's time to jump off bridges, people deciding it was time to vandalize restrooms, increases in graffiti. So again, that spread got pulled even even further as we were trying to manage these areas. But the thing I'd like you to know is that as Scott under Dan Wolfer's direction, they were continually monitoring that wildlife population out there and giving me information. So when we got those trigger points, we felt that it was now time to engage staff to wear mask and do do projects and put them in close proximity. We could do that. So as Scott had mentioned, we got that point where I got a update from Scott that we needed to put the buoys out at McIntosh because of the impacts you've seen there. We went ahead and did that as well. While they're doing these things against Brett then I just really want to also say that I think we got creative in the fact that I just want to give I can't get enough credit to Jeff Reesner or Jeff Satter on how they stepped up to help us out because recreation staff at that point, they was not being utilized in the rec centers was out at McIntosh Lake talking to people they're on a union reservoir talking to people about social distancing our rules and rights. So we had a great repurposing of people. Jeff Satter and Mike Butler had extra duty officers up at Button Rock Reservoir for us to help with the increased demand up there and that increased demand was something that everyone in the county was seeing. I was working in Boulder County. They allowed us to put no parking signs up on some of our roads. Their communications group worked with PD to help the communication trail up there so we have better communication. So this was a huge community effort to try to deal with this increased use that I think is natural resource management. We're always trying to figure out how to get more people out how to engage in these areas but I think we always thought it happened not just one weekend where we had this kind of an increase but over time where we could develop programs to address that. So we really have been doing a lot of catch up but I think these these practices and stuff have been placed in the public being educated and Marika and her crew really helping us out with getting information out has done a great job because I spent the 4th of July up at Button Rock which when I first went up there the first couple weekends after the pandemic and the stay at home orders there was no way an emergency vehicle could have gotten down County Road 80. People are parked on both sides. This weekend people really I think start getting the message to look for other places. The town of Lions actually let us use their message board in town to let people know Button Rock Park the amount was full. So this weekend it really felt like a busy weekend but it was very manageable. So we're starting to see that dilution. I think part of the fact that we have opened up rec centers and pools and school beaches. You can get a reservation out Rocky Mountain National Park. Coming up soon you can walk down Main Street in our new public spaces area. So I think people are having some more opportunities to do other things besides just to go to our parks. However the piece that I really like to share is that I think myself and other land managers feel like this really is the new normal that family that bought the four paddle boards and they know about Macintosh now. They're going to be going back to Macintosh. That person showed a Button Rock to hike in flip flops and now it has hiking boots. They're going back to Button Rock. So I do think that we as an organization just need to recognize that we do need to provide the information, the education, the outreach to help people make good decisions but also that enforcement component when people decide they don't want to do that we can make sure we can hold people accountable too. So that's pretty easy piece for me to sit in front of Council on Herald and say that's really easy. We just had more resources and I think Scott mentioned them being short in the open space program. That's some health issues and again some of the seasonal hiring increases and stuff but those are things that everyone's dealing with. But the piece I would really pass on is I do think this is a very creative group. I think our community is amazing. They have stepped up in the past and they're again just like after the flood kind of chomping at the bit to see what they can do to get out and help and volunteer. So if you've been by the Rose Garden that Rose Garden would not look the way it does today if it wasn't for volunteers out there. Them doing things like volunteer ranger programs, education outreach, engaging the community that way, working with Marika and stuff. I think there's ways that we can address this increased use. Being creative but it does take resources and how we achieve that is it's going to take some work and Harold and I talked this you know scaling back in some areas to hit those areas that need work and at one point it really was that learning curve of how you address keeping staff safe and the public safe. Now we've kind of moved back from that. We've got that under control that sits back to looking at how our natural areas are doing and I think Dan and Scott and his group are doing great job continuing that monitoring so that we can do what I think my job really is to make sure that we provide access to our community knowing how important these areas are but that we pass it on in a way that the next generation has it as good or better shape than they have in the past. I think we really do have the right people here right now to do that. I think we all like every city employer right now feel like we don't have enough time to do everything we want to do as well as we want to do it but I think the staff has done a great job. I think the community has done a great job helping us reach out to deal with some of these these issues and again I think the collaboration between different work groups has been invaluable in how we were able to address this and come through this and as Scott said do we have social trails? Yes do we have people in areas they probably shouldn't have been according to management plan? Absolutely. Can we recover at this point? I think we can. I know we can and it's going to take work and I think like you heard Scott say everyone in these groups are willing to put their shoulder to the grindstone and make this happen. All right Harold. So thank you Mayor Backley. David I don't know if you wanted comments now or not. You're absolutely fine. Yep that's what I'd. Okay so I understand what you're saying and I agree we have an incredible staff and we don't have enough resources but we are still getting a lot of emails and complaints from residents about these areas that they are not being managed. So my question is how many park rangers do we actually have? So I'm sorry. Go ahead. Our park rangers right now we currently have up at Button Rock we would have one FTE but Jamie Friel has left the city and now those positions are being advertised up right now for Jamie's watershed manager position so that was one position. Harold has worked with me and we've really said that one of the reasons I think ever knows that there's just a lot of work up there. As you see running that watershed the city's primary water source is a huge job working with other agencies to deal with four or few plans that we were able to convert some of the temporary dollars over to making a second FTE so that's why it's taking a little longer because we will be advertising or we are advertising for a senior watershed ranger who will do a lot more the planning and those sort of projects out in the park as well and then having a watershed ranger for Button Rock so that'd be two positions there they're not filled right now but we are closing that on the 10th. At Union Reservoir John Brim is our our lead ranger out there our senior ranger and then he has two FTEs working out there so we really at this point have John Brim and his two rangers that really are our three FTEs that are really covering everything we were very fortunate in the fact that when Jamie left he had a season like he had trained for a year and Miles has Miles Churchill has done a great job of a Button Rock but it's really short so long term right now if I had everything filled I'd have two it's two of them Button Rock and I'd have three at Union as far as FTEs and just so you know that's why it's been such a great help having Rec and PD because if you think about how busy those two areas get in summertime they really do get locked into Union and Button Rock so everything in between becomes a challenge to cover during the summer months and right now it's it's really hard if you think about that if you've been by Dickens or if you've been by McIntosh on the weekends we could not do without the help of getting right now from PD and from our creation so um we don't know how long this uh COVID or if we're going to have a surge or what it is so my question is actually it's a suggestion have you it has the city staff thought about having citizens patrols to get out information about what our parks are and what the use is supposed to be and um just having contacts because basically we're saying we have three FTEs for how many parks and trails we have yeah program parks and does it two dozen open spaces and 100 miles trail that's not enough people for the use that we're getting and that and that's basically why I wanted to have a discussion about what what can we do at some point I know that we're what about the Rangers for the downtown area is that uh feasible to use any of them even though I understand they're being paid by LDDA it's a different uh so only 15 percent of the time is being paid by LDDA so they wouldn't this is this is one of the challenges too when Harold said you know what why are we short on some of these staffing pieces somewhere um really because of health issues and when we didn't know our budget we really tried scaling back in areas we weren't sure about what we needed so we did not feel those positions yet so those are still sitting out there LDDA um hazard dollars we have our dollars but again we we just are trying to be very cautious in how we spend those dollars this year um I just like to go back and just touch on how this this pandemic really has shifted things because again Harold is aware of the fact and they worked with me since um I've got here he knows my commitment to volunteer programs and you know Danielle Levine's job who is doing project management halftime and volunteer coordinator halftime we're looking to split those into a program that allow for a full-time volunteer coordinator and one of those top project really was doing a community ranger and and in a community interpretive program and their models are out there at Jefferson County Boulder County where people are out on the trail and some sort of identifying t-shirt where they can just talk to the public at that more than interpretive level and then once it have that enforcement piece and they they're easy say we can do but again when they put that shirt on they're representing the city so it really takes um training it takes a lot of work to make sure you get good people on the program um we have a great program with our handicap parking program and um we've worked with them on how we can set something up similar in our parks so those are kind of on track and I think as Scott mentioned some of the programs here on track they they got a little derailed this year but I think we're really trying to find that balance between right now how we're managing the public and how we're protecting those natural resources so I think it's a great idea and it's something that we we definitely have been thinking about. So is there any way we can up that timeline to get people in our parks if nothing else to hand out literature to educate them to remind them that it's uh not it's they're not to swim in some of these places they're not to and then if it doesn't work inform the police department or whatever that this group is not adhering to the rules. Councilmember Peck I would I would be cautious about that and here's the reason I don't have any I don't know if that analysis on from law enforcement or Jeff Redwin's on right now I think what I've seen in the community right now is people are being told what to do all the time every day from staying in your house and who you can communicate with and wearing a mask and the simple request to put your life vest on the simple request to put your dog on a leash is being met with huge disdain. The voluntary compliance that I was said I could have gotten you know a year ago just is not there people when I put the buoys out at McIntosh it was I really got to see again what my staff is going through as they're trying to educate people people the responses you cannot tell me what to do um leave me alone go away so it takes for me I'm used to that as my background but for a a resident to do that that's a very tough spot to be in and I don't want to set those individuals up for failure I need to take me to set them up for success and that does take time and I wish I had a fast fix for you but I again we think about this and discusses pretty much every Monday. David why do you think there is the disdain and is it uh is it more disdain now during this uh specific time that we're in? I'm trying to wrap my head around it as well. I definitely think it is I think I say that people are really saying there's a couple things I'm going to give you my um my personal view I think they're being told what to do where to go how to act how to how to distance where to stand what dot to stand on at the grocery store to put a mask on or not to put a mask on to go to this friend's house but friend's house I think that overload of being told what to do is is overwhelming and I also think there's a piece in there with all of this going on in our our world right now is my dog off release really a problem that's what I'm hearing and voices don't you really have something better to do than tell us that we can't stay cool in a public lake and you know a year ago it would have been a different conversation I think you could engage in and help explain why we have those rules and rights why that water isn't tested at Macintosh how does the health concern for them and um parents help that conversation too and what we're seeing now is when you talk to a younger person the parents jump right in to defend their kids on this and say it's a hot day out and they need to be cool I'm gonna I'm gonna hop in here I'm uh the uh we could we could uh this format's challenging enough as is and so I'm gonna I'm gonna call time out on this particular conversation um we could be here all night talking about thoughts feelings etc I'm going to call on you counselor dog offering but what we need to do is I will unmute you and I will call on people but we're just bouncing in and talking and so I don't want to be here till 11 o'clock we're gonna follow the agenda and and we'll go from there councilmember Susie dog offering you're up can I get control over the the mutes please Susan I'm not not you Susan Susie Susan Wollack thank you go ahead see the councilmember dog offering you're up yeah I don't I don't hear her so um in the meantime can we put up signage how something that we can have immediately so more signage around no swimming in these areas I mean lake macintosh I've taken my dog over there for years we don't go in the water but all I mean it's gross I I don't understand but anyways that's that's something totally different but to have designated areas around parking one thing I've noticed is that too many cars are parked far far away from the curb so when they're parked on both sides it's really narrow to get through so maybe so people are more cognizant if they have the signage in more visible places is that something we can address immediately Carol what do you think about that idea I think we can we can get signage out there quickly on those issues and work to inform people I would just be up front to what David said they may or may not go for the signage we literally gated the bridge and they were climbing around the gate and climbing on the structure so I think we can get signage out there and we can definitely I'm going to include Rob in terms of the parking in the distance that's easy for us to do all right great cast member waters you are in Susan again can I get power to unmute because we spend a lot of time thank you I'm unmuted I think no I just want to Susan if you're here I just if I can unmute as we go it would save us lots of time mayor I can't do that unfortunately that can only give you the co-host rights that you have I can ask them to unmute but really if they held down the space bar that that but no I'm not talking about I want the power just like a council I want to be able to run this meeting in it I don't want to be here till 11 o'clock tonight just having a chit chat session I want to call on people clearly they're gonna have motions or we're gonna be I can't unmute them either mayor as okay all right and we'll just keep doing it as is the best we can all right councilmember waters in the interest of of not getting into a kind of free free ranging conversation I will only make this comment and then I do have a couple of questions I think the question about enforcement and and what does enforcement mean and how much of the solutions to what's happening with our parks the rest you know the the outcry regarding fireworks in in somebody even what we heard earlier tonight in terms of traffic uh I I think we need to take a step back and have a conversation as a as a leadership group and with the community or those who are willing to engage about which of the which of the challenges or or problems we're dealing with right now are going to be solved by somebody enforcing as opposed to us as a community accepting responsibility and with that thought I wanted David I would like just on the on the number of rangers you mentioned I didn't know Jamie's left you've got two up at Button Rock you've got three out at at the Union compare that to what numbers you had a year ago how many rangers did you have at this time a year ago and this time last year we really all your seasonal out so we would have had one less Button Rock would have still had the two because one would have been in temporary versus the April time is all we would have had the three at Union and then they have seasonals out at Union I think they probably have five and we are again we've had recreation help us out over there and then we would have the two community rangers so again we're spending about 15 percent of their time in the downtown area where Kimberly was paying for them and the rest of the time they were out on the Greenway and in those parts they're the ones that really could have been at the McIntosh they could have been at Dickens as far as where the funds came from from the open space and the general fund to or the conservation trust dollars to pay for the time in those parks and Jamie had a whole cadre of youth volunteers up at Button Rock yes he had the he had the youth core I guess so I just want to get clear in my head we are operating with an approximation right now of the capacity for enforcement that we had a year ago very close yes all right number one number two you sent us an email earlier today with some very disappointing information about vandalism we are you going to touch on that at all in this in your presentation I think as I kind of went through that just that I hit on in the fact that is as staff is really out there trying to make sure again our our goal always is to be able to talk to the public engage education valetary compliance and if they're out working on things as far as vandalism it's just pulling those resources in different areas where we're not having a chance to really deal with the the issues of protecting our natural resources well when we start before we start getting email messages from the community about about restrooms being closed at sandstone ranch yet you know at what were the other two at kanamoto park in a left hand park it might be willing to have some public disclosure of the number one the damage that was done the cost of of to date of vandalism in our parks this year I think the public got to know you're short-handed and we have we have folks for mindless reasons I think doing serious vandalism to part to restrooms that are going to be closed all in a while and what it's costing them what's costing the city in terms of real dollars and the public in terms of opportunity that the piece I'd answer back to that is again I think working with the public safety and outreach and then putting this on social media I think we're we're again trying to engage the community to help solve these problems too I hear Mike Butler a lot of time too that we can't fix ourselves we have to count the community too so between the rangers these partnerships with PD I agree with you that the community needs to know this they need to be aware of this and I think as we can let them know these are happening in areas that are close to them that they can help be those eyes and ears out there for us too well the number you gave us earlier today was over fifty seven thousand dollars in costs for vandalism as of today that did not include those three restrooms that was before those three restrooms yes a year ago the number was for a year was forty four thousand yeah and the year before that was an approximation of forty four thousand the public got to know right it in a time where we're stretched financially and we're stretched in terms of our capacity with people but there's a there's something else going on here that that is going to have an impact on the public and they're going to turn to you and to us for answers and a solution and it's going to be more enforcement here or more enforcement there with less capacity and having directed funds to try to mitigate what is uh an uh behavior that's hard to understand in terms of damaging amenities that are that we've created for the public I just think we ought to have more explicit conversations about about what's going on and and and invite the public into the solution that's part of what council member peck was suggesting and I get the I get the the security concerns and not putting volunteers in a position to experience what some of your staff has experienced and my understanding if you had your staff have people have have been spit on is that is that accurate I have not heard that okay well then maybe that was a rumor I'm glad to know that that's not that's not accurate if it's not but they're subjected to a response that that's unprecedented in terms of the reaction of the public and I think we need to all just take a step back and say look this is not who we want to be as a community we have to figure out how we're going to move forward with whatever the constraints are in ways that are are where there's more sanity and there's more compassion and there's more patience there's more acceptance and if we don't talk about it given trend lines hard to see how it's going to happen I'll stop all right great so again so let's uh Harold is there anything else that you'd like to share at this point as a staff to city council no I just think that I think the challenge is to to the point that that's been made we had three restrooms I'm severely damaged we're we're chasing folks all over and so when you when you look at that in terms of questions about all of the enforcement piece we are moving around this community we were using code enforcement to help code enforcement's now getting overwhelmed with calls because of just the volume of people that are at home and so many of these mechanisms are being overtaxed as we get clarity on the budget what I can say is it may allow us to pull the triggers on some of these positions that were funded out of some of these other funds and so we're going to be having you know that conversation so there may be the ability to bring a couple more but I don't want to give anyone the impression that's going to fix anything because the reality is we are chasing many many bad behaviors in many locations and unfortunately it's not just us as I talk to my colleagues it is virtually every city on the front range that's being challenged with these types of issues and if one closes something we see it move to another another city so we're actually talking collectively how we deal with these issues I just there's there's not a panacea to this one and the only solution is I think for people to really approach it and respect it but I want to be cautious on the volunteer idea and how you approach people even we're getting chastised so be careful all right so we're going to go ahead and conclude this section of the meeting we can if anybody else has any other questions I'd encourage you to contact staff directly offline council member back we'll go with you go ahead I am going to push back on your comment earlier this meeting when we passed the motion last week my motion was to have a special session to have this conversation so council could talk about it but it was amended by councilman councilwoman martin who had study session so what council I think you're getting it wrong council member peck I made the original motion and you substituted your motion well whatever but I to say that you don't want to discussion mayor bagley that goes against our motion we're here at a midnight to make sure that the residents hear what we are we are getting and where we and the and the feedback from staff and what our concerns are and I and I get that council member peck I'm just following the agenda I have no problem if it's on the agenda we can discuss things all day long but I'm just trying to my job is mayor and this particular is the chair meeting and I'm just trying to keep us on task that's it and right now we are on the COVID-19 update by the city manager that that is what is on the agenda and so I'm not I don't disagree with anything you said about putting this on a on an agenda study session to discuss what we voted on I'm just trying to get us through the agenda and in this particular case this format's difficult only because to follow robert's rules of order we are we are all beginning to have conversations with individual staff members and if all seven of us did that making three four five comments asking questions we are going to be here all night and there's a difference between doing the people's business which I'm all for doing and each of us just sharing our opinion so as I'm just trying to get us through the through the meeting so let's move on to long my housing authority update by city manager Harold do you want to give us that please we don't have an update on that okay great then let's go on to our study session items number a partners in energy and memorandum of understanding Susan do you want to go ahead and put the slide deck up on it right now great thank you thank you Mayor Bagley and council members I'm Susan Bartlett I'm a key account manager with one lot power and communications and tonight I want to update you and our partners and energy work with excel energy we introduced this to you last fall uh excel energy provides natural gas to much of the Longmont community partners and energy is an avenue for working together with another utility to reduce energy use in buildings in long time so I understand that many in the community are keen to move away from natural gas and our aim with the supper is just to make existing buildings as energy efficient as possible on all fronts right now as we make plans for the future next slide please so it's a backdrop just say that the climate challenge and working toward the city's goal of 100 renewable electric energy by 2030 is going to take a concerted effort on all of these integrated initiatives and the partners in energy work aligns specifically with the built environment efforts and then it focuses on commercial building energy efficiency as well as energy efficiency and low income homes in our community and incidentally it also supports the sustainability plan targets and recommendations from the climate action task force that you heard about last week from Lisa Knoblack and that you'll hear a little bit more about yet this evening so things did look considerably different in the fall when we presented this to you but our aim is to be nimble and flexible and to make progress where we can next slide please so here's where we are in the process which includes a pause from the end of March until now just given the COVID-19 implications and other priorities that council has had to deal with so we introduced the collaboration in October last year and from October to March we developed a work plan with excel energy and we intended to present that work plan and the outcomes to the sustainability advisory board and council in March but just given the cancellations and all the other priorities we're just now getting back on track so we'd like to get the green light to start working with excel energy on the activities that we identified in the plan and you know especially on some commercial energy benchmarking for other efforts um work plan efforts will take us through November of 2021 and that will give us some time to evaluate our progress at the end of 2021 and report back to the sustainability advisory board and to council at the end of the year next slide please so just as a recap because October was a lifetime ago um partners in energy it's it's an opportunity for us to have greater access to community wide natural gas data and also to some other excel energy resources to help us uh and to support energy efficiency in buildings so one is uh one community that's part of a growing cadre of northern colorado communities that are participating in partners in energy some of these other communities include Fort Collins, Ophaya, Erie, Superior, Lewisville so quite a number in Boulder County um Brentville, Brealy, Westminster, North Glen all of whom are looking to make progress on their own climate and sustainability goals and so this is a really strong a strong network for us to be a part of so that we can share best practices and innovations and also um share methods for increasing awareness around this important opportunity to reduce energy in buildings and so the first phase of partners in energy which started in October included excel energy sharing some aggregated natural gas data for Longmont and you can see this chart here it's just a single representation of some of the data that we received but it shows our community wide natural gas data broken out by commercial and residential customers over the past four years it also this phase included a facilitated planning process so that we could develop a plan specific to Longmont priorities and uh we completed that plan in March and so here we are today in July we're ready to implement the work plan and we've got some built-in flexibility especially given that we finished it up in March and so much has changed since then but there like I said there is some built-in flexibility given the continued implications of COVID-19 and the work plan is built on three strategies that are already underway at the city so definitely something specific to what what we would like to do in the city and these three strategies align really well with the climate action task force recommendations and in the work plan we've identified specific ways to collaborate with excel energy so that we really can have greater impact than we would have if we were working alone and we'll do that through continued data sharing and also taking advantage of some benchmarking expertise leveraging co-branding and marketing resources as well as outreach channels and that sort of thing these are just a couple of examples of some co-branded materials that partners in energy has helped other communities develop the one on the left is when they developed with the city of Fort Collins to encourage residential energy and water audits and then the one on the right is one they did with broom field to engage businesses and energy efficiency and these are good examples I think because they come from communities where there are multiple utilities and a shared customer base and kind of that shared objective of conservation efficiency next slide so as I mentioned there are three strategies that are detailed in the work plan the first one is commercial building benchmarking um we've seen working on a benchmarking demonstration project this year in fact my colleague Debbie Seidman presented to you in May about the benchmarking demonstration the goal here is to inform a broader program in the coming years and we want to identify benefits for businesses as well as those for our community in terms of having this kind of program and our work plan maps out how we can take advantage of excel energies experience working with other communities like Denver and Fort Collins they have their own benchmarking programs and we want to use some of that experience as well as the needs that we've identified ourselves to inform our own development make our program as navigable and successful as possible for participants so the collaboration that we built into the work plan will allow us to draw on excel energies engagement and outreach know-how it's also going to give us access to some benchmarking staff that understand portfolio manager and that's the free benchmarking platform that we're going to use and it will give us access to that staff to help our participants access and upload their natural gas data to the to the platform and then finally it's going to allow us to mobilize some excel energy benchmarking training expertise so things go as smoothly as possible for our commercial building owners you know there's going to be a learning curve there is with anything new and we just like to make that as smooth as possible and as Debbie mentioned back in May the targets that we have in the work plan and for 2020 are to benchmark nine of our municipal buildings as well as 10 plus other key commercial buildings and that will help us kind of test out our approach ultimately we want to have all commercial buildings in line that are greater than 20 000 square feet be benchmarking over the next few years with an overall goal of increased energy awareness and improve commercial building efficiency next slide please so our second strategy is a program that helps income qualified residents with high energy burdens helps them improve the efficiency and comfort of their homes helps them lower their utility bills and just create healthier living environments and this particular strategy makes me think about what Harold was talking about earlier in trying to provide some assistance for utility bills that are in arrears we would love to have customers receiving those services we would also like to help customers kind of lower their bills over the long term so it's more of a manageable expense in 2019 the city supported 32 homes with program services we want to increase this level of support to more than 80 households over the next 16 months we'll probably need some additional funding we hope to get from Boulder County and some other sources but we think there's a lot of need and we would definitely like to step up our game here we're also realists and we're taking into consideration the complications of COVID-19 right now people don't want other people in their homes at the same time there are so many who are just having a hard time making ends meet so if we can provide some services to help reduce those utility costs and improve efficiency for someone we really want to do it and if we can't do it right now we want to plan for what's beyond COVID-19 so that we're ready to mobilize when that time comes and the way that we're going to work with Excel on this is just to better publicize the programs that we the program that we have available we want anybody that's eligible to know about this and benefit from the services and we can do that through co-branded outreach materials also being able to leverage some of Excel energy's outreach channels so that we're getting the information out to as many customers or participants as possible this third strategy builds on the inaugural success of one sustainable business program it started last year and it's a response to the city's sustainability plan and highlights actions to promote and burn mill stewardship social equity and economic vitality in the community it also supports your climate emergency resolution that challenges businesses to take action to combat climate change in 2019 there were 21 businesses that were certified in one of these three levels and our work plan targets are to inform and engage an additional 80 businesses beyond these 21 that are already participants and of those 80 we'd like to certify 50 of those businesses at one of these levels and we're also focusing on supporting minority on the frontline businesses and this is an effort that aligns well with climate action task force and the just transition plan objectives you'll hear a little bit more about those later this evening so the areas we want to collaborate here will include supporting um modifying results of business activities so you know what are the impacts when businesses take on additional projects or activities that allow them to become certified or developing sector specific education and outreach if we want to address restaurants because they've been particularly hard hit during the pandemic what are some things we can put together for them that are specific to their operations to help them reduce energy and water use in their business we're going to continue to leverage rebates we're going to develop some content for case studies so we can encourage more more businesses to participate next slide please so you'll note in your council packet that we have a letter of recommendation from the sustainability advisory board to move forward with this next phase of partners in energy and to get going on the activities in the work plan so what what i'm asking for this evening is for our council to show support for our strategies to give us some direction and give us the direction for lpc to sign a non-binding memorandum of understanding with excel energy to proceed with the strategies that we identified in the work plan um the the memorandum of understanding outlines collaboration through november of 2021 so that we can accomplish some of the things that we've identified there really are no additional cost impacts to the city as city staff and partners in energy staff are already in place to support these strategies and then at the end of 2021 we'd like to come back to council to hear our progress talk about where we are what we have left to do and what what we might want to take on next to expand these strategies that's all i had tonight all right great can we get the screen back and then we'll pick out questions from the council members we'll start with council member christensen then we'll go with council member martin um i would move that we um move this memorandum of understanding forward we discussed um uh this at the sustainability advisory board and while there are problems with um excel energy and all that this is they are um a good partner in getting us the data we need so that we know what we're doing and that's the point of this is to get a wide array of data so that we can understand what our energy needs are so i would move that we uh accept this uh the memorandum of understanding non-binding memorandum of understanding with excel do i have a second i'll second that um uh other than other than uh other than i see a council member martin i guess uh herald i guess finally question is is this coming back for a vote or is this is this just a resolution i don't know i i want is it coming back for a resolution do you need input now yes this will come back for a resolution for you all to vote on if you okay want us to do that okay so council member pat can we go ahead and wait to vote on that i'll check council member christensen can we wait to vote on that do you want to unmute yes sorry i have four ways to unmute myself um yes that's fine all right we'll go ahead and put that on the next regular session meeting then all right council member martin can you help her out susan all right there we go sometimes my spacebar unmutes me and sometimes it doesn't um so uh yeah i have a question uh uh i heard in the report that some data has been shared already who has that data and is it available to the public and it's available to the council um this is susan Bartlett again and moment power and communications has that data it is in the work plan and it is public data that's shareable so we can share that with council so how does the council get the data like tomorrow um i can just i can send you what's in the work plan and um i i guess i would ask what type of date what types of data you're interested in all of it everything that came from miss excel um we want to understand the energy usage by household and by business the businesses we understand have to be depersonalized but um and i don't actually care about having anything personalized but um i'd like to be able to tell one household from another herald one second susan so herald is it possible to get council member martin that information that we can get that information to the council we'll have to scrub it to make sure that there's no personal information that's in there but if it's open record we it's open record all right so can when when more or less when when can we expect that information i can i can send it tomorrow the data that we get from excel energy is not linked to customers it's aggregated to comply with privacy customer privacy rules and i'm in favor of that so i'm that's that's fine when you have an aggregated number does it say how many households that represents so essentially the data that we have is number of residential customers number of commercial industrial customers and then we have total use in each one of those sectors and then we have a grand total yeah okay that's not very much data but i'll take it so council member so we'll so council martin what what we'll get the information to council and then if you can look through it and then let me know if it needs to go on a future agenda we'll just do that that okay okay all right great if i may yeah um herald i was of the belief that this just required council support it did not require returning for a resolution which is similar to the phase one that we went through with pies so is can we confirm that so if the issue is that it doesn't require if it just needs your support then we need it but if it requires an action of the council then we need to bring it back out a regular agenda i'm not sure what the if the mo is an iga with other groups then we need to bring it back on the for an action i'm given if it's an mou it's going to be coming back i'm not sure i mean who's the agreement so the the agreement it's a non-binding memorandum of understanding with excel energy for phase one dave it came to council you all um agreed to support the effort dave hornbacher find that and then we proceeded so i'm standing was there was a similar process this time around so if david can sign it we just need direction from council to to move forward i will give her that clarity well then let's go ahead and vote on it now then we've got a motion on the table from councillor christensen which i seconded so we're all in favor of of supporting the partners in energy and memorandum of understanding and directing staff to move forward say aye aye opposed say nay all right the motion passes unanimously and if it does need to come back according to you jane just bring it back we'll vote on it again good stuff all right herald let's move on the presentation of the recommendations the climate action task force and education and outreach adaptation and resilience and land use please lisa yeah hey mayor bagley members of council and lisa nabot the sustainability program manager and in here again for the second round of review of climate action task force recommendations as well as the equity recommendations developed by the just transition plan committee um so then can you go ahead and what my position and you can go ahead and move it to the next slide great so just a quick reminder i know it was late last week um but we reviewed the recommendations in the building energy use renewable energy and transportation topic areas as well as a summary of community engagement activities and the recommendation regarding governance and tonight we'll be getting into the topic areas of adaptation and resilience education and outreach and land use and waste management as well as talking about equitable climate action and reviewing the equity recommendations developed by the just transition plan committee and then we'll discuss how council you all want to move forward now that the report is completed similar to last time i'll be presenting the climate action task force portion with members of the climate action task force on hand to answer questions if need be or add anything that i may have missed and then we'll have francy jaffee from sustainability as well as two members from the just transition plan committee garret chapel and eric pho that will be presenting the recommendation and one thing i just want to know before we get into the presentation is that what we're essentially going to be looking at is two separate sets of recommendations that have combined been combined into one report and one being the recommendations from the climate action task force which you can essentially look at as the what of how long one can go about addressing climate change and then the just transition plan committee's equity recommendations which can be viewed more as the how we would go about implementing climate action recommendations to ensure that the work is being done in an equitable way and that we're engaging the most people most impacted by climate change and really making sure that we're not leaving anyone behind and i think that'll become more clear as we as we get into the recommendations but i just want you to keep that in mind as we go through them and then when we get into the discussion for next steps okay you can move to the next slide so i'm going to just jump right into the topic area recommendations again like last time we have a lot of information to get through so please feel free to jump in if you have clarifying questions but otherwise you'd like to hold the session till the end next slide so the first topic area is adaptation and resilience and this section has three recommendations the first was which is focusing on addressing public health in a warming climate and this is looking at developing a coalition to identify issues and solutions for the impacts of a warming climate on public health particularly around things like heat waves severe weather events air quality issues and the detection surveillance and treatment of potential diseases with a focus specifically on needs of low-income households and those experiencing homelessness people that are at most risk of those impacts and the target is to have a plan within a year and a half or so or sooner depending on the timeline of the COVID pandemic the second recommendation focuses on preparing the rec the city for potential sustained drought conditions and impacts to water availability due to climate change by promoting and incentivizing water conservation measures such as zero escaping in the use of native vegetation and the goal would be to reduce citywide water usage by 35 to 40 percent by 2025 and i do want to note that it would require pretty extensive financial resources and likely a significant redesign of our parks and golf courses in order to meet this goal and further research and analysis would be necessary to understand the full fiscal impacts and identify a feasible path for implementation and the last recommendation focuses on launching a public education and outreach campaign that targets residents and commercial realtors to help inform them of the dangers of flooding and the value of investing in flood mitigation projects next slide please so in the education and outreach topic area our first recommendation is comprehensive workforce development and this program would focus on building upon already existing training opportunities to increase training and incentives in the public and private sectors to expand and improve long months climate action workforce and this really cuts across a number of the different recommendations to really get the work that we need to done while building jobs and income at the same time the program has three main goals first is offering career ladders stable employment and livable wage expanding the number of green energy professionals and building a diverse and inclusive workforce all of which are especially important right now moving into the COVID recovery process currently there's a pretty significant shortage of contractors in this field and a need for technicians engineers electricians and other relevant types of workers the next recommendation is to develop and deliver a climate lecture series to raise awareness of and foster discussion regarding the climate emergency the first series is actually already set to launch in the spring of 2021 and that was spearheaded by a climate action task force member Peter Wood which he received a grant through the CU Boulders Center for Humanities in the Arts to get that program going and that's a great opportunity for us to gauge the success of that initiative the next recommendation is similar but focused on creating similar and focusing on creating greater community awareness of and engagement in climate issues by developing and publishing a series of articles highlighting historically relevant stories coupled with current climate information in the article series would have both print and online versions as well as beat by wing wall next slide please the fourth recommendation focuses on leveraging the existing front range rising exhibit at the Longmont Museum to integrate the use of energy and climate issues in our area over time it's focused on elementary school students but is very accessible for all ages and there's a lot opportunity to include climate information into that and the last recommendation is developing a community sustainability liaison program which would identify and provide resources to trusted members of neighborhoods to serve as liaisons to educate folks in their neighborhoods on sustainability renewable energy and other relevant matters to address the climate emergency and this is a great opportunity to leverage our newly launched neighborhood programs that we've been developing in partnership with community services and help us build a network of liaisons and foster diverse participation in this program next slide please and the topic areas land use and waste management the first recommendation is developing and launching a program to promote incentivize and educate the public on local food production and address potential barriers and existing code that might hinder that so current zoning code allows for urban agriculture urban agriculture in all zones but doesn't allow for things like roadside farm stands and other things that might help promote the sale of resident ground produce this would also be looking at engaging the school district to incentivize students to participate in gardening and food production efforts and helping to establish local food co-ops for sale of resident ground produce as well the second recommendation is focusing on uh increasing commercial and residential composting by improving the ease and effectiveness of our existing curbside program through the right sizing of composting and yard waste bins establishing composting as an opt out rather than an opt-in service increasing education programs and requiring certain higher organic um content businesses to participate in composting and the goal is to increase the number of eligible households participating from the current 19 percent to 75 percent over the next five years and encourage purchase encourage composting in the commercial sector through incentives and regulations and the final recommendation in this area is pay for parking so establishing a pay to park requirement in the downtown area to encourage low carbon forms of transportation including public transit biking and walking there wouldn't need to be measures put in place to avoid disproportionate impacts on low income and mobility impaired residents and there's also an acknowledgement that this recommendation would probably likely need to be put on hold during the COVID pandemic due to the current impact on downtown businesses next slide please so with that I'm going to hand it over to Francie Jaffe and the just transition plan committee members to talk to you about equitable climate action thank you Lisa um mayor and city council I'm Francie Jaffe water conservation and sustainability specialist and in this section I will be focusing on how equity can be used as a lens and has been used as a lens to apply to climate action I will start with a kind of a history and overview of equity and then I'll be joined by two members of the just transition plan committee Eric Prieto and Garrett Chapel to walk through their recommendations I'd just like to give the city council and mayor heads up that these sides will mostly be bilingual so they're going to be a little bit more text heavy and I'll go into why that is later in the presentation next slide equity has been on the forefront of our community and a need to create a more equitable community the climate action task force when developing their recommendations work to select recommendations that had both a high climate impact and a high positive equity impact and the resolution stated that's important to engage communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change also known as frontline communities when developing climate action the importance of this is important for creating more impactful recommendations that impact all members of our community for example as the climate warms there are expected to be an increase in high heat days in Longmont this could be especially detrimental for those who both have an underlying metal condition and have do not have access to adequate cooling so to create a climate action strategies that also mitigate this potential health risk it's important to understand and address those barriers next slide part of how to do this is through a process called a just transition which is involves increasing inclusive engagement recommendations and practices for climate action community health as I highlighted in my previous example basic needs as if you're having trouble affording housing it could be hard to participate in climate action programs and jobs as highlighted by the climate action task force recommendation it's important to create equitable access to new green jobs next slide the just transition process has been guided by two city resolutions the first one was in 2018 to transition to 100 renewable energy which called for the city shall consider the needs of lower income accidents that kicked off the just transition plan process then more recently the climate emergency resolution stated that frontline communities must actively participate in the planning decision making and implementation of climate action which transition the focus the just transition process to from just the transition to 100 renewable energy to equitable climate action next slide so the logistics of how we've been working to do this is last summer we distributed a survey and 10 listening sessions to learn where we are today the results of that are included in the appendix of the report then more recently last fall we started working on developing policy and program recommendations that can be brought before city council and that's where the just transition plan committee comes in next slide so in this section I will begin with giving an overview of the just transition plan committee and then Garrett and Eric will join me later to share their recommendations and just to restate the climate action task force recommendations for more than what and these recommendations are more about how you can apply these how of how you can apply these recommendations and increase equity in the recommendation so they reach all members of the community next slide so as you've noticed these slides have become much more tax heavy and also in Spanish the reason we are doing this is because we practice language justice within the group we wanted participants at the group to be able to choose the language that they are most comfortable speaking and presenting in and we wanted to continue that practice for this presentation next slide just a quick overview of the group we had eight residents and three staff that are listed on this slide next and the group met for a total of eight millions similar to the climate action task force over a span of six months and their goal was to develop an equitable climate action definition using equity lens and advise the climate action task force so I'm now going to transition it over to the two just transition plan committee members I'm going to start with Eric Prieto and he's going to start with the actual climate action definition next okay I believe you're still am I mute we can hear you okay thank you everybody and hello this is um this is the definition we came out with an incident Spanish and English and let me read it in Spanish it's uh it's um action climatic equitativa plan uh programa local y cambio de hábitos que reducen la contaminación relacionada con el clima y refuerza la la capacidad de aptación en la comunidad sin producir daño apoyando a todas las comunidades en base a sus necesidades can we go to the next slide please um before we start um we we added the covid part in the presentation and we have to we would like to highlight that the Hispanic communities represent 13.8 of builder boulders county's population but right now we have 38.7 percent of cases and that has been our latest update so and we have to make sure to engage our communities so can we go to the next slide please uh right now we have uh the two broad categories the equity assessment the overarching equitable action recommendations can we go to the next slide please um this the this recommendation it's about um evaluating the essentially evaluating equity can we go can we go to the next slide um so we have uh in this section we are uh highlighting overarching equitable climate action recommendations and can we go to the next slide okay um the here have uh the marketing on the outreach and this is uh we have some of the examples of how to engage the community and now some of the examples would be um building non-profit partnerships or or creating creating a targeted outreach can we go to the next slide please and the data research it's about understanding the the community needs and um this this um well this the rest of the recommendations we have it explained by the ira chapel thank you very much thank you eric um can you get the next slide please so once we have access to the community wide data we will be able to identify potential barriers or issues as to why people may not be able to participate in the programs uh issues going all the way from citizenship status to potentially how would they be hindered if there was an emergency if they were engaging with this program um next slide we we do also want to take a moment to recognize that some workers in our community will be displaced by some of these actions specifically in the oil and gas industry so it's just further uh more of a priority to make sure that we develop some job training and workforce development that is very equitable and accessible to the full community next slide we need to understand how the community's health and safety will intersect with these programs uh a good example of this is trying to recognize that a lot of renters may not have full autonomy over how their living space is conducted or how the health and safety in their home is enacted because of uh situations with their landlords next slide and then another thing that would be an extra burden to two renters would be if the program is encouraging building upgrades or anything in that vein would the cost be eventually passed down from the landlords to the renters and would there be any extra burdens because of this uh obviously we don't want people having to choose between supporting these climate actions and trying to pay the rent next slide we would also like to recommend that actions should be taken not only on the large city level but on the micro level uh closer to the individual neighborhoods and communities to build that kind of personal resilience and that uh self-reliance within the coming crises next slide and then lastly something I know that uh has been brought up a few times is how how are we going to deal with this if there are potential budget shortfalls um how can we ensure that these programs still happen so it would be our recommendation that we do focus on probably the the people more at need uh in the lower income areas but then also potentially adopt a pay-as-you-go program or mimic something from an adopt a park or adopt a highway system that local businesses could partake in or even other affluent uh community members so this is the end of our recommendations um I would like to thank the the mayor and the council members for letting us speak and I will turn it over to Lisa Nelblok for for the discussion thank you all so much uh you can go to the next slide please so that concludes all of the recommendations brought forth by both the climate action task force and the just transition plan committee and now I want to take some time for discussion and get some direction from council on how you all want to move forward um next slide please oh sorry if we want to no just go just I was go ahead I was just going to say are you calling for questions now or do you have additional I see seven more slides yeah so I have I'll go through if there's if we want to take a moment to stop and if there's clarifying questions but I have a number of questions to get direction on count yeah let's go with that and then we'll we'll come back to the individual questions from council sounds good okay so first first of all as I mentioned last week we'll be taking the climate action task force recommendations to advisory boards in july in august and I'd like to know what type of information and feedback is most useful for you to come back from those boards and when would you like to see that information come back to you and I do want to note that the july meeting for crab was was cancelled so we won't be able to go to them until august so I want to make sure that that timing is taken into consideration so I'll put that question forth okay so let's go back can can I have the screen back please and so if you have so format and timing is what we're responding to briefly so if you'd like to provide your opinion on format and timing let's start with that councilmember christensen do you have an opinion on that let marcia speak first I'm just going to go through everybody on my screen so my question is do you have an opinion on that or no oh yes I have a lot of opinions that's why I'm letting marcia speak first okay okay councilmember martin thank you paulie I really appreciate that um the first thing is um that regardless of of um what the the boards say um I would like us to possibly accept now the just transition uh teams report because they um have described a way of approaching all of the projects recommended by the climate action task force rather than additional recommendations um were doing different things and so uh I think it would be good to um uh to just us as a council say yes we're gonna we're going to look at it this way we aren't going to leave people out we aren't going to leave people behind and we are going to consider social equity when we make changes um um so that's my first recommendation in terms of of format and what was the other one I want lisa timing okay so so timing I I think uh it is really important and um that we can look at the individual recommendations in time to assign a budgeting priority to some of the early items on it um and I've read all of these recommendations had input on most of them and uh what we've got is they have timelines that extend from between three and four years to 15 years um and they need to get they need to get started or at least plan for a plan level of starting uh in in the years that are the would belong on the city's comprehensive plan um so I would like to see all of the recommendations unless some end up being rejected placed on the city's comprehension comprehensive plan um in in so they don't get lost and and in time for the prioritized budgeting exercise for next year to include them um and so that really speaks to the format which means that they need to be by big recommendation on the comprehensive plan and um interim goals stretched out by year all right so is there anyone who has anything different or something to add to what council member martin just said council member christensen first of all I wanted to thank the climate action task force this is a really uh large detailed cohesive piece of work uh it's um I think it's an excellent piece of work despite the fact that I disagree with a great deal of it I do not disagree of course with the uh intent of it we must do something about climate action otherwise we won't be here um I have numerous problems with it and I would like us to I don't know whether any of these meetings have been open but I haven't been aware of when they take place I would like to attend some of these meetings and I'd like to be able to give some feedback in detail over this 200 page report close to 200 page report there are many many things I have profound disagreements with the most basic thing I have a disagreement with or a or a problem with say is the term frontline communities which I looked all over here to find the definition of that and I finally found it I think on page 21 it refers to low and middle income communities and it includes well anybody who'd be affected by it which is low and middle income communities the elderly the disabled people of color uh basically 80 of the town so I'm wondering how useful that terminology is let me just read you and I keep doing this but people keep ignoring me statistics from the American Community Survey and from um ARP and from the American Community Survey remember comes out every year and the U.S. Census comes out every 10 years the average the median per capita income in my zone my my zip code is $28,653 Longmont as a whole is about $6,000 more than that it's this is the median per capita income 34,440 I'm sure that there were some people on this task force committee who made something like that but it doesn't sound to me like they were um and the reason it's it's critical to talk about per capita income is that we perpetually get reports that give us uh Boulder County unbroken down Boulder County income which is you know is about 15 or 20,000 more per capita than Longmont so and then we talk about household income household income is really not what we need to be talking about because it's this is the demographics have changed only 20 percent of the population is a standard nuclear family now this has totally changed from the last over the last 50 years 28 percent of people are living alone and 48 percent of adults are single we need to be talking about per capita income that's the only meaningful way that we can understand this and by that per capita income almost everybody in the city about 80 of the people in the city would qualify as frontline communities so how is this a meaningful term for talking about equity we if the majority is elderly disabled low income to moderate income then breaking this out in terms of equity I mean obviously we need to be making sure that these things are not affecting people but they are going to affect most people in this town and we need to own up to that and we need to be thinking about what we're going to do for that so I don't want to accept the equity thing even though of course I am all for equity and inclusion for everyone but to me it's not it's not meaningful because you're talking about most of Longmont which is a low to moderate income town just like the United States by the way Longmont pretty much tracks uh income wise with the median income of the United States so we keep getting things from the labor bureau which are averages and their household income and the labor bureau is statistics from employers it has nothing to do with employees so we need to be using the right measurements and we need to be talking about the reality of this town so I would like us to be able to have more input on this before we just okay it I think there are numerous problems with some of these recommendations and I don't want to you know we don't have time to discuss these tonight so I would we don't you know we need a special session just for this we've had two sessions but mostly they've been the presentation which is good we need to do that but we need to be able to discuss it amongst ourselves thank you yeah I think that that there is a misunderstanding of the forest and trees uh sort in the way councilmember christensen is interpreting the intent of both the just transition committee's report and the way that the recommendations of the climate action task force are structured in every case both in terms of intent and in terms of specific recommendations um they're set up so that regardless of what percentile you are in in the community the these things have to be implemented in such a way that they do not make people without the agency to decide where they fall on the spectrum of investment in renewable energy are not harmed by the transition so that means if you're going to take natural gas out of a community whether it is a block by block thing or whether it is a neighborhood by neighborhood thing or a new development thing for example then we have to find ways to implement subsidies for the people who can't afford to do it on their own plenty of people who can afford to do it on their own are already doing it on their own and we you know we we need to acknowledge and thank those people not disincentivize them from doing that because they are well to do um we you know we don't want to uh interpret equity that way um but rather make sure that when we make an absolute change we do it in such a way that people aren't worse off than they were before and I think if I mean maybe we need to take a uh a look at the recommendations of the Just Transition Committee and make sure that that's what it really means rather than looking at the terms that it introduces and if that's the case if everybody agrees with that then I will withdraw my motion that we just uh uh adopt that as a starting point but that's what it means to me and I think that the people who were here speaking about it would agree that that's what it means to them too Lisa maybe you can speak to that is is that what it means to you that when we make one of these changes we have to do it in such a way that people who don't have the agency to afford it themselves are not harmed are not worse off yeah absolutely and and I'll let Francie jump into if she has anything to add because she was much more deeply involved in the Just Transition Plan Committee but yeah so if you go back to their equitable climate action definition it's very much focused on making sure that there's no harm being done in in while while making progress on climate action and in the recommendations that they developed and that the equity lens tool that they developed that we utilized with a couple of the climate action task force recommendations we didn't have the time to run every single recommendation that the climate action task force came up with through that through that assessment that they developed was identifying who could potentially be impacted and in what way and if those are potential negative impacts what are the measures that can be put in place to mitigate those so that's yeah that's exactly exactly right Francie do you want to add anything to that this is Francie our conservation sustainability specialist no Lisa I I believe you covered and if you look at the recommendations a lot of the recommendations are phrased as questions and questions you should consider when implementing climate action so it again it's it's a lot like a lens that you can use to kind of reach to make sure that folks are not being harmed and that all are being benefited and I just want to quickly speak to the term frontline community so I know that that's probably a newer term it's a term that's pretty commonly used now in the world of sustainability and climate action particularly in this realm of climate justice and equity work and it's really trying to get at looking at those that are most impacted by climate change impacts as well as compounding factors so other systemic inequities that you know we've been seeing in terms of COVID and economic justice issues and all of those sorts of things so it's really those folks that are being most impacted really across the spectrum and as Garrett mentioned part of their recommendations are focusing on especially when we're looking at how do we prioritize recommendations if we have constrained budgets or whatever it might be to focus first on those folks with the most needs so although I recognize that that yeah I think that there's a large portion of the population that you could say is considered frontline communities I think what that says is that the impacts due to climate change are going to be vast across our community and that also speaks to the need for much greater community engagement to make sure that we are we are getting this right as we move into implementation all right let me just jump all right I'm just gonna jump so I still have the floor mayor I believe no I asked a question no I know I hold this hold on I get it okay so my question is before we go on there the the real question is I mean we are not going to solve climate climate change tonight and I did hear so the real question is there's there's two paths to go down accept it and let staff continue or have a special session where we get together and have this conversation and so my question is just raise a hands how many people here would want to have a special session to discuss this particular issue I see Polly and I see Joan how many do not want to have a special session to address this issue one two three four five five to two all right so what I would recommend is just knowing how people are feeling and thinking is we're going to call on Dr. Waters okay and then Marsha I'm going to come back to you and just go ahead and make a motion okay all right Dr. Waters uh well I was or you can make a motion Dr. Waters I wasn't going to make a motion I was responding I think I'm going to respond to the question about format and timeline I thought that's what we were asked we were all right so um I just so I just want to be clear uh first of all I want to like council member christians and thank the a lot of good people who did a lot of hard work and thoughtful work on this both on what we see left what last week and what we got tonight so uh go on everybody who made the commitment I know it was a lot of work to do under under challenging circumstances we got it we these are both interesting sets of recommendations last week we got um uh you know with organized by kind of sectors or uh uh not themes but um areas of of potential impact or remedy I guess I'm not certain what language you all apply to it uh I I didn't see I saw areas to be to of work and opportunities I didn't see uh anything that was a measurable goal that I recall I did see a template in the appendices for a smart goal my my assumption when we looked last Tuesday at this was that the next phase of work would be to take that template and actually develop goals with timelines and performance targets in response to that set of recommendations um tonight we saw recommendations that were were uh collections of activities um I was I was looking at that thinking are these supposed to be strategies to help accomplish what we saw last week I understand it's with an equity lens these are activities not strategies uh to ensure that what we do in those areas from electrifying everything to uh water conservation etc that we saw last week uh that those would be these would be the activities that would help us bring an equity lens as we set smart goals um help me with in terms of format if you want me to if you want my vote ultimately to support something I'm going to want to know that there are number one we're going to be able to measure and put timelines and budget numbers to to goals we're trying to accomplish and what we saw last week and that these are activities to help us accomplish those with an eye towards frontline communities and disproportionate impacts etc it how do I interpret I don't know if this I guess is the Lisa by the way I I think Marsha's idea ultimately seeing this reflected in that in the conference of plan is a good one that's where this ought to be codified eventually so we don't lose track of it but when we do it I'd like to know Lisa are we going to see measurable goals are you going to use that template and then I so you got you got my question yeah so that template was used and if you look I know it's a long document in the in the main body of the climate action task force itself it goes through each of those we call them topic areas so building energy use adaptation resilience etc and each of those recommendations has a smart goal that was developed along with it so the climate action task force did that work of doing the templates and they came up with those smart goals that to the best of their abilities depending on the recommendations themselves goals that were measurable that were time bound that were specific I'll go back and look I if that's the case I simply looked at the template I didn't pay enough attention to the to the specific smart goals in each of those topical areas so I'll go back and so I would like to just to speak to the way to read the recommendations if you think about as essentially we the the climate action task force took on the entire breadth of a transition to a zero carbon society in a a three month project so you were not going to get a breakdown of the individual milestones in the individual recommendations into a project management sort of measurable goals and it would not be reasonable to expect to read it that way the concept of of putting pins in the comprehensive plan will work this way what you have in those smart goals is our timelines with milestones a milestone might be the city should have two pilot projects for distributed energy resources taken from a list of possible technologically feasible projects okay so you put those on the comprehensive plan when they go onto the comprehensive plan the staff is going to work them and come back with project proposals and those project proposals will have in-depth measurable goals or we won't pass them and we won't fund them on the budget but you can't have the expectation that a 15-year beneficial electrification plan is going to have measurable goals at each milestone all you can expect in the smart goals is here are the milestones and we're going to drill down to the next level at the next step in the process and so what you should be looking at now if you want to say no we can't adopt this plan is are these at a gross level the wrong things to do should we not try to electrify our city and get rid of natural gas in 15 years should we not continue to push our generation and transmission electricity provider to make the transition to renewable energy you know that's the kind of thing that we're trying to do all right i've got i've got a suggestion is it we'll go to council member peck after this i guess is it possible to get the questions i mean there's seven of us many of us are opinionated and have different opinions um and and uh we literally could spend decades on this particular topic would it be possible to get the questions and then we can respond in email saying what we each think should be the format the timing and whatever else you need us to do because um it would be hard enough if we stick to the questions but we are going to invariably be be driven by by passion on this particular issue i think and get sidetracked is that an appropriate uh way to communicate our thoughts and feelings on this particular issue because like like i for example don't have a particular passion or opinion on format or timing i'd leave that up to staff but uh councilor christensen and councilor martin have different opinions on that etc and i'm just wondering if it would be better time better served to for those of us who who care to to to draft an email responding to your questions lisa would that work yeah and i can quickly run through the remainder of the slides that that have all those questions as part of them and then you know we can follow up at that at the end if there's any remaining questions that people want to ask as far as discussion let's let's do that and then also so go through the questions and then i'd ask could you send us an email after the meeting or in the morning with the questions prompting us to respond could you do that yes okay let's go through the questions and the councilmember pack before we do this your hand was up yes thank you mayor vacley i was going to respond to the timeline in format uh which was actually what we were you know to uh agree with with councilman waters that was what this discussion was going to be about and should it go to the uh boards the advisory boards and um i think it should go to the advisory boards i had a question about a lot of these timelines and um you know to uh to keep it at a reasonable um amount of time a discussion time i'm not going to go through all the timelines but there are many areas in this um that the task force is i put out there's many areas in this uh oh gosh it is late in this document that i would like input from the boards on and i would also like input as far as the format goes um how how soon can we get a report back from the individual staff members that are working on specific segments of this report and as part of the format and that that hasn't that timeline hasn't been established i would i would like to know um how fast we can get questions and i also want to know if uh how the council is going to measure the implementation of these recommendations what is our uh what is what is our goals what are our uh timelines for for all of this i i don't know i i just think there's too much information here just to pass it on first response i that's why i i wanted a a session to actually talk about it um um so i so i i wanted to go to the boards and for for their feedback um i i want something from staff who is going to be working on the different segments of this and what is their how soon can they get back to us is it going to be for for their report on how they're working on it are we going to meet the timeline that have been set up um so i don't think that i want to just pass it on first response here uh i i would like first of all to get the feedback from the boards so hopefully that made sense i'm very frustrated with it with this whole thing that we aren't really discussing it uh in depth and i do not want to just answer the questions by email because we don't hear what the other council people have to say um that gets to be breaks the sunshine law if we're if we're all just answering leases and i have no idea what anybody else is saying my my understanding is that these questions are process rather than substance and i'm not advocating we have a discussion i'm just trying to i mean this will go forever you know and so i'm just so given that five of us don't want to have a special session two of us do no i understand that yeah i'm just trying to look at how to how to get us to a point where we can have that discussion discussion so go ahead sorry you're still before i know um i i don't want to do it by email i want to hear what the rest of the counselors have to say so i'm against that idea all right that's remarkable i i still think that this is a a misinterpretation of what these recommendations are supposed to do there cannot possibly be staff members assigned to every recommendation it will take 15 years to assign staff members to some of these recommendations this is a road map it's not like saying um are we going to update our land use codes in 2022 based on some recommendation from europe you know this is not where you can staff it person by person and point by point this is are we going to make a commitment to energy management are we going to make a commitment to load shifting are we going to make a commitment um to reconditioning our soil so that uh it sequesters more carbon you know those are not things that anyone on the city staff with a couple of exceptions because they're interested in it can talk about now and that's not what i meant so you're misinterpreting me so um i would actually that was an interruption council member pat time out i'm going to i'm going to take the floor back now so the uh unless somebody really says mayor we're we're totally in disagreement i'm going to have lisa knob lock go through and give us the question so we can think about them um we're going to give staff our input based on the questions we'll send it via email and then we will have a discussion after staff gets the process questions answered and um let's just go with that see how it works because um i don't want people to get i mean we're all in the same team meaning we all want to address this particular topic and have it done as is as good as possible and so we just need to get these let's get staff these answers and then we can get ready for for putting our heads together to figure out how we can make it the best best process possible so lisa why don't you go ahead and just give us our throw out the slides and let's see what those questions are yeah mayor bagley and council members uh so the the first uh set of questions is focusing on what type of feedback and information do you want from the boards and what what timing do you want from that given that uh the the last four presentation will be august 10th uh next slide please the next question is on the the governance section so if you recall from last week's presentation again i i know it was late but as a reminder uh the climate action task force uh wanted some form of accountability or oversight in terms of implementation of the the climate action task force recommendations and they're recommending that that oversight uh be and progress reporting be incorporated into the scope of the sustainability advisory board uh with the formation of ad hoc technical committees as needed to support specific implementation of specific recommendations and then also incorporate climate action recommendations into the council work plan so the second set of questions is on the governance piece is are you up with that approach or do you have any other additional thoughts or questions in terms of addressing governance uh next slide uh frequency in format of reporting itself so i think this gets to um what i understood i think was council member peck's question around uh when staff can bring back reporting on progress of the different uh topic areas and recommendations and that's really a question that i wanted to bring to you all so the resolution the climate emergency resolution it notes that quarterly reports will be brought to council uh after the initial report is completed so is that the frequency that makes sense for you all and in terms of formatting we already do provide quarterly reports on the implementation of the strategies within the sustainability plan and there are a number of recommendations from the climate action task force that are already in the sustainability plan that are just expansion of some of those strategies so we could very easily incorporate that into that existing reporting process and find a way to highlight specifically the climate action recommendations because i know right now it's just a big long spreadsheet and we can find a way that that pulls those out more um specifically or if you want a different reporting process uh next slide you can skip this side and then the next side i don't need to go into that right now and then one go to one more season great and then really the final um both this section is really first of all are there any recommendations that council doesn't want to support pursuing at all so that's one that's one piece and then the approach that that really we think makes the most sense in terms of the next phase of reporting or in next phase of implementation is to ideally complete a prioritization process of the recommendations through dialogue and interaction with the advisory boards as discussed as well as broader public through the broader public through the community engagement process so that's been spoken to a couple of times that there needs to be greater engagement before we really prioritize the recommendations and then do that further planning and analysis that needs done to understand more deeply the fiscal and community impacts of implementation and uh so so that's really the question of are you good with that being our next step uh and then the final question is is council supportive of staff continuing to work with the just transition plan committee through the implementation process so as you've seen tonight the just transition plan committee has really been invaluable on providing guidance and perspective to ensure that as we move through climate action it's done in an equitable way and we would like to continue that process so those those are the questions that I am putting forth to you all for direction all right so what I'm what I'm proposing then is email goes out we respond and then could you please uh condense those responses send them back to council and then we'll put them on a future agenda to address those issues where there is disagreement is anybody in opposition to that plan council member martin thank you mayor bagley um I think that that there is a problem with the idea that the projects in these recommendations are different in somehow and will remain different somehow from the other projects that the city takes on so you know once they are on the council work plan and the comprehensive plan um because those things are different right the the council work plan makes policy changes and starts initiatives but but when something is like build a a solar a community solar garden it's not a council work plan thing anymore it's a comprehensive plan thing just like widening the street is and so the idea that we would um leave all of these climate action task force recommendations separate from the city the regular processes that the city goes through um just doesn't make sense to me and it makes it sound like way more work than it really is because there's this some this idea of of keeping these things separate all of this time um you know so what what really needs to happen is yeah we need to have a final review after hearing from the boards that says um we think we need to pull this recommendation out or we think we need to pull this recommendation sooner in time than the task force recommended some things like that that's that's the purview of the advisory boards um but once things make it to the to the to the comprehensive plan then they're treated like any other city project and that's when they are sub subject to the process metrics that dr waters is talking about but not now this is policy and concept and so I think that we need to compress this whole project uh and look at it with um a different kind of the lens we need to uh for one thing we need we need to look at um uh the social equity lens that that's been explained and we just need to decide well you know that's going to be part of priority based budgeting here to for maybe we can't implement that change until 2021 or 2022 but that's our goal everything the city does should happen through the equity lens and it's going to matter a lot for some things and it's going to matter hardly at all for other things um but but we cannot just decide that everything from the climate action task force is a separate project that's going to be evaluated and staffed separately because it's special because the climate action task force came up with it most of these things are things that the city would have had to do anyway and we should treat them like that all right thank you council member martin so okay council member waters thanks very vaguely so i i just wanted lisa as i'm scrolling through last week's materials i see pages 40 through 83 where that that collection of uh of what were proposed as goals can be found so i i see it there um are you going to want reactions to those uh in in you just asked a series of questions one of them was what what are we going to support this there's that there's a ton there to digest i understand what council member martin just talked about that it's got to get folded into the comprehensive fund and treated like like every other recommendation uh one of the differences is that that not everything in the comprehensive plan had the same kind of urgency as a crisis uh as as these recommendations um the one other piece to this and i and maybe it's not for us to worry about because in the priority-based budgeting process is where it'll be handled um you know all those recommendations uh even as i'm scrolling through them wondering about which of the what's going to be the impact in terms of reducing carbon footprint uh at what cost over what period of time as a way to score kind of like we would be scoring these in the priority-based budgeting process um that's a whole different level of analysis as i look at these to think and i'm certain i don't have enough knowledge in many of them to be able to score them but somebody does uh so at some point in time that's going to be helpful as well in terms of ultimately blessing these or however we're going to handle them i'm certain there's not a recommendation here that it's not a good one uh you people put a lot of thought into this um i'm just trying to wrap my head around uh what's the action we take i guess it would be for me then the action we take after we hear from wards was some idea of how it gets folded into the comprehensive plan and at some point in time some understanding of how we're going to how we're going to score these recommendations based on their impact on the climate or reducing carbon at what cost and then we can see what kind of time frames we have in here all right so i'm going to okay so i'm going to actually uh ask a question and uh and that is of mayor pro tem rosa i see all these hands go we could do this all night and if you guys want to do that that's fine um but i'm going to probably bow out and say i'm getting the sniffles or something but mayor pro tem rodriguez um what uh what do you think we should do i proposed an idea um how do you what format do you think that we should follow going forward because i noticed there's a couple of us we're just silent here tonight and i want to know you are thinking what do you want what do you think we should do to resolve and answer the questions of staff tonight and what process do you think we should move going forward to most effectively and expeditiously tackle this topic uh thank you mayor bagley you know i kind of got the impression when i read the report as well that seemed to be very high level to me in the concepts that were presented and there was not the level of specificity that i think we need to quote unquote make the sausage with right now um i think there's still you know some more work as far as getting some more input is concerned but outside of that so in as far as what was originally asked i was fine with the schedule as far as when they were presenting to boards and then my answer to when would that be brought back to council you know and asap is kind of my answer to that as well not knowing exactly how long it will take to compile after the august 10th meeting um but going back to what i started with as far as it being kind of a high level thing it sounds to me like regardless of what we're doing it's going to have to be dug in at uh vast uh you know detail as far as incorporating it policy wise and that's going to take i'm assuming multiple chunks going forward as opposed to for instance thinking that we're going to approve this one report and then you know the machine's working uh on autopilot at that point so that's kind of where i stand as far as our motions you know as far as our our way forward our path to proceed with this and i don't mind the the email portion as long as with i believe you had you added that the council responses would be sent back to all the other council members i think that that is important as well same question to you council member redog fairy what what do you think moving forward what we need to do to be able to move forward expeditiously and effectively well you know i guess i really wanted to know if we um direct staff to proceed to the next phase but and so they're able to continue the work but then in the meantime we're getting the you know we can direct so you come back to us and give us a more detailed account of what is happening with specifics in regard to targets and goals and what yours what and timeline so then you come back to that and then we can make recommendations throughout the process is that something that's feasible so then we are not holding up the program but we can provide input throughout the process does that make sense herald and so that question ties into the same question i asked both mayor protem and council member redog fairy so please answer what please answer that can you do what council member redog fairy just said and the same question for you how do you want us to move forward so i think the i'm going to touch on a couple of things think of it as an inverse pyramid we're up here and this is pretty high level and so we need to take it to the boards and commissions to get their feedback and input and then that was lisa's first question here's the timeline on those dates we will consolidate that input and then we'll bring it back to the council to go here's what all the boards and commission said and i think the question was do you want to have another presentation or do you want that and an informational item so then we're going to update you on that piece once we we take care of that then lisa's next question is is that as we look to the future in terms of governance do you want that to sit with the sustainability advisory board give us the ability to have ad hoc technical committees or whatever the other piece what what was the third question incorporating the recommendations into the council work plan council work plan and comp plan so the answer is council could say today we want you to go to boards and commissions and we want you to bring that recommendation back and then we look at the next set of questions once we see that and we can bite it incrementally or you could say we just want to answer all of those now so i answered the question but that is what your one thing i'm excited about i'm not casserole family that answer your question you know it did i guess what i envisioned is that we were going to be discussing the overall you know looking at what the recommendations are if we are in alignment with if we are in agreement with what they've recommended let's move over to the next phase that's where i the board piece then they come together figured out and then they're presenting they're walking us through the process i guess that's what i was envisioning am i correct and that's that's one question in there okay yes and i have the slides so yeah i would like to see it in that format but i don't want to delay any progress in the plan by just having us all reconvene to discuss this at mass does that make i'm actually gonna make a motion i actually move that we rather than doing the email i'm actually gonna move that we actually asked the herald herald and lisa give us a proposal moving forward and then we can respond uh to their proposal because we've got seven people and i i don't see any of us coming to any type of agreement on and i really think that the staff is best qualified to actually give us at least a starting point councillor christensen suggest that i think what you suggested brian is a good idea i also was going to suggest that you know just for the opportunity to have some input that lisa send us those questions and that we respond to her and that way we can read them at our own leisure and we all have a chance to respond however lengthy we want to um but lisa if you send us if we do do that would you please send us the slides that you did because we don't have those um um yeah i just don't want to rubber stamp things and have them go forward i mean we have very specific recommendations like all parking downtown needs to be for pay uh people need to you know we have some very specific recommendations in this and um i wouldn't i just wanted to go to all the boards and the boards that were suggested so that they have their ability to input give us input and give the climate sustainability or the climate task force feedback to um that's why they're advisory boards um anyway um so i would suggest that we do both but i uh you know i have a lot of faith in herald and lisa of course right so so here's i'm going to redo my motion the motion is i move that we ask lisa to send us the questions we all have the opportunity to respond in whatever way we feel appropriate and that herald lisa and staff take those responses provide us with the proposal how to move forward at which point we'll put her on agenda and talk about ways that we do may or may not disagree or how to tweak it that is my motion do i have a second i'll second it if you let me talk i councillor martin i will let you talk thank you then i second it there's something that i think everybody's missing out on which is that the recommendations of the climate action task force are not a project they are recommendations for dozens of projects which are to be considered by this council and by the staff individually in the future as we proceed with turning this into a sustainable community turning longmont into a sustainable community but everybody is trying to treat this as though it's this huge gigantic unmanageable project and it isn't so once the boards have said you know i mean what the board's going to say they're going to say the same thing as the climate action task force they're going to say we like community solar gardens let's put that on the comp plan or they're going to say community solar gardens are going to be obsolete in two years we should pull that off and not do that one not put that on the list but that's the entire level at which these recommendations need to be considered and we don't need the kind of deep dive that seems to be we keep returning to because we'll take that deep dive when we come to it in the comprehensive plan and if that can't if we can't get our heads around that then i don't know how we're going to make any progress what i am i personally trying to get us there and so we've got a motion and we've got a second and let's go ahead and vote on it and get this thing moving all in favor say aye aye i'll oppose say may all right motion passes unanimously we're moving forward with our climate task force plan that's awesome all right let's go ahead and go with mayor and council comments mayor can i do something real quick absolutely herald i think one of the issues we want to be true to the work of the climate action committee did and what you've done is now we will frame it in what we were hearing today in terms of working through those pieces and and breaking it in into its functional chunks to help answer many of these questions let's just stay true to what the climate action committee's developed okay thank you herald all right mayor and council comments council member christensen uh the museum is open again yay so go to the museum and everybody try to be kinder to each other and try to keep the community in mind and do the right thing wear your mask wash your hands stop being so mean to each other it's really gotten quite ugly in the last few weeks so thanks amen to that one anybody else all right is any manager any remarks herald uh no remarks mayor council i did um send you an email if you'll make sure to check that out regarding me this week great we saw that okay at least some of us did all right uh Eugene are you in here there he is still here mayor no comments all right great well thank you very much guys and i will see you all later and we're actually do we have a motion to adjourn sorry can we just adjourn by consensus anyone opposed to a journey all right we're adjourned all right good night guys