 Thank you for coming this evening. I'm Cheryl Sprates and I'm the co-president of the Longmont branch of the American Association of University Women. Tonight I will be introducing our esteemed panel members. I think we're very fortunate to have a group like this assembled together. So I'm looking forward to all we can learn tonight. I'll introduce our, oh please hold your applause until the end of the whole presentation. And I also have cards here for anyone who's interested in asking a question. We'll have a little bit of time at the end but we can also get you an answer by email. So if you are interested in asking a question please raise your hand. The first person I'd like to introduce is Marsha Martin. She has represented Ward 2 of the Longmont City Council for six years. She holds a master's degree in computer science and enjoyed a 40-year career as a systems engineer before retiring in 2013 from the clean energy sector. She finds that serving on the city council is a natural continuation of her career. Her strongest interests now involve re-engineering cities as sustainable systems of distinct but interdependent components just as we are doing with the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. In both systems failure is not an option. Marsha, thank you Cheryl. Can everybody hear me okay? I don't have, I don't have houses on my face or anything. So I was asked to talk about Envision Longmont which is the City of Longmont's comprehensive multimodal and land use plan. And it was adopted by a former city council. I don't think there's anybody left from that city council in 2016. And then if you think about how a document like that gets written, that means that it was under construction in 2014 and 2015, which means that they were working from a flood-wracked destroyed city because of the flood of 2013. So they were looking instead of just an extension to the old plan, they needed repair, recovery and rebirth. And they saw it as a method of getting a fresh start and being created. So that was the intent of Envision Longmont. I should have been on this slide the whole time. So it's expected to live for 10 to 20 years except that this summer we will enter year nine. So it's been our guiding principles for a long time, maybe for longer than was reasonable. Because I'll talk about a number of things that have already changed, even though we didn't formally update the comprehensive plan. And also some things that really need to change in order to keep Longmont both livable and equitable and economically viable. Because for the city to work, all three of those have to remain true. So the comprehensive plan identified these policy elements and I'll let you read them while I yabber. Certainly the main elements of urban design and planning are here, with one notable exception. And I'm going to let you guess until the end of the presentation what the left out piece is because it's a really important one. It didn't seem important in 2016 and it really didn't seem that important in 2013. The bullets above are direct quotes from the front matter in Envision Longmont. It's in some ways a marketing document. What I, when I began learning it, I was puzzled that it doesn't seem to communicate a sense of urgency. It doesn't seem to have any impact analysis. It doesn't seem to, you know, just get into the process of how we're actually going to get this done. And I can only conclude that the community was shocked and that it was mostly a marketing document. And the biggest goal was to have a message of hope. And certainly that is true of Envision Longmont. It is a beautiful little book with great photos of Longmont in it. But, you know, it's hard to use it to get behind the city and push. So growth is one of the policy elements of policy and then growth that Envision Longmont looks at. And I think that at the time that that was done, you know, we had first come off with a great recession, then we come off a whole string of annexations. And really the real estate development market in those early years was the only commercial economic engine we had. So I think that those developers may have gotten away with some stuff. But they're still important to Longmont. What I think people are mistakenly doing now is that they are equating that kind of sprawly suburban development that happened between Main Street and the foothills as what growth means. And it doesn't, you know. And if you look at the needs under growth, you'll notice that population growth isn't in there. We don't have any particular aspirations for population growth. What we do have is we want housing for several sets of people. We want housing for children of residents that are either aging out of foster care or just reaching adulthoods put in their own families. And they want to have their own place to live and work, but they don't want to leave the town where they grew up. That's kind of a nice sentiment, isn't it? And that's how we're going to keep Longmont from being one way. We're going to keep Longmont from being an aging community. Families who are inadequately housed because the family has grown or because the family has not been able to upscale their residents from, you know, they bought or rented the cheapest starter thing they could find and they're outgrowing it. Those people need to be able to change housing to justice. Seniors need to be able to downsize. And it would be great if you could rotate housing among those groups except that downsizing is so expensive that you don't end up with any retirement fund out of doing it, which used to be the expectation that you downsize into something less costly and provide big houses for families at the same time. And we have a lot of people who have jobs in Longmont and these tend to be the lower wage earners in the tax region. But they have jobs in Longmont, good jobs in Longmont, but they have long commutes because those jobs are not good enough to live in Longmont and especially not to own property in Longmont. So that's something that we need to change because if you think about what a tax community is on those people, you know, $10,000 a year on the car, maybe two hours a day, five days a week out of their lives. You can't count the cost of the time not spent with families and hobbies and just general relaxation, self-care. And the other side of that coin is that workers who have not studied that, suffered that stress are happier, more interested in their job and giving you the Longmont residents better service on that account. So it's really an important thing to have as many of Longmont's workers live here as possible. But that's not really growth, not like population growth because, you know, those people still drive in Longmont, they still may shop in Longmont and it would be better if they did. And, you know, they fill slots. They have employment slots in the city. So they're really already part of Longmont. And then, you know, we may have support our primary employers, you know, the big guys from left-hand brewery to Seagate who occasionally want to really hire from outside the area because they want to hire a specialist. And we've made that a difficult problem for them because it's hard for them to buy houses, almost everywhere in the United States. Housing is less expensive and easier to find than it is here. So that's going to be a trickle of people. It's not going to be a vast impact on the population of Longmont. I want everybody to understand that. Implementation strategies. You know, there's really only two big implementation strategies for squeezing 120% of the city into the same space that you had the original city. You can change your land use policies, which means squeezing more dwellings into the same place and stacking up your amenities so that the land is used, you know, the same footprint of land is used for multiple purposes. We're constrained by our open space policy. And you'll see in a future next slide that that ring of constraining open space is just about complete. So there's not really much opportunity to expand Longmont's footprint. We're in the process of annexing the things that are still annexable right now. So you change density and you have to find ways to put what's needed into the space you have. And what that does is it requires you to improve the design, the mobility design, the design that it takes to get people around your city. And one of the best things that you can do is make it possible and encourage people to drive less. Now, this is the United States. You can't outlaw automobiles. You can't take them away from people. You can't really tax them, except for things like sales taxes. But, you know, we don't have road taxes or anything much like that. And people who have driven all their lives and don't, trust me, they don't really imagine that there's any other way, a lot of them. But what we want to do is make the people who are open to changing their habits able to change their habits. Because you have to be really tough to buck the system and become, for example, a bike rider for your commute and everything. If the city isn't designed for cyclists, right now our city isn't designed by cyclists. And I will submit that, although we are adding to the multimodal network, is what it's called, a pace. We aren't doing it in such a way that gets all of the bike lanes well connected. So, you know, you're fine on a nice bike path and then all of a sudden you're taking your life in your hands to get to the next buffered bike lane in the city. So, we need transit corridors. What does that mean? We didn't explain it. I know, I didn't. Do I have any more minutes to it? I have a minute. Oh, boy. Okay, so... That means speed up. Yeah, it does mean speed up, actually. So, oh. Sorry. Well, now I lost half a minute just giggling. So, you know, we have to do these implementation strategies smart and we have to really think harder about what they mean to our community. This is the long line planning map in 2016. This is the one out of Envision Long Line. And so what you want to think about is you can see the green periphery, that that's the open space buffer, and you can see that there are very few ways to do it. And there's a line that... There's a blue line that's hard to see, which is the long line planning area, and that means long lines are going to have a hard time expanding out of that and probably shouldn't expand out of that. The yellow is all single-family zoning. And then the red areas of change are commercial areas where we can make major improvements with code and parking and land use and stuff like that. And then the peripheral red are also things that weren't hand-exged yet in 2016, and some of them still aren't. So, this is actually the slide that I wanted to spend most of my time on. And it shows, so if you put your speed readers on, it shows what it says in Envision in the left-hand column and what has changed since then or what needs to change since then. So, we've already made some changes in density, and the slides will be available to, at least mine will, if you ask. And, you know, we've allowed building on smaller parcels of land. We've allowed narrower streets. But we need that space for bike lanes. We've changed the parking rules. All of that stuff is really essential to, you know, squeezing 120 pounds of long fondant into a heating tank bag and making it work. That's making it work with good urban design. It can work, and it has to work because all of these things are needed for a robust economy that will continue into the future. And the one word that was not mentioned in Envision Long Lawn at all and everybody just needs to think about that is energy. Because the city didn't really have any serious energy policy in 2016, other than, you know, keeping the water clean and stuff like that. But now we do, and it's a big deal. And amazingly enough, it's one of the ways we regain space that we can repurpose it. So, I'll be around for questions. Oh, we can't be around for questions. Can we? People have cards and things that we can give them to you. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. Did you take my paper with me? Okay. Thanks, Marcia. I never quite understood Envision Long Lawn. I understand that better now. Thank you for that. It's been two years. Yeah, I'm sure. Our next panelist is Brian Dunmar. He's Executive Director of the Institute for the Built Environment, IDE, and Professor of Emeritus at CSU, who has taught courses in construction management, interior architecture, and sustainability. He holds degrees in architecture from the University of Michigan. Through IDE, he has guided project work for the National Park Service, cities, universities, housing authorities, and school districts. He is co-author of Wholeschool Sustainability and 147 Tips on Teaching Sustainability. His research and teaching about sustainable building has been honored by the Colorado Governor, communities, and businesses. Brian will help us understand the promise of design surettes and how surettes benefited the recent bond farm conceptual development. It's been floating on over. Thanks. Good evening, everyone. And Sarah and Cheryl, thanks for the invitation to be part of this. It's a pleasure to be back in Montmont. And you're doing some really good things in Montmont. And so it's nice to be able to see that evolution. So what I'm going to quickly talk about is this strange word called surette. And it's a word that architects have used for a couple centuries now. And it really, it's a French word. And as you can see, it means carts. So why am I talking about carts today? Well, architecture professors used that term at the Occult de Beau Arts in Paris. And now we have brought it across the pond and we use it often, both in architecture school and in community planning and architectural offices and others. So it really just means a community design workshop where everyone's voice matters. Early on it meant that the professor was going to give you 24 hours to get your design done and he or she was going to bring the cart and you're going to finish your work. So like that drawing there, the student jumped into the cart and finished their design work as the professor came along to grab it. But why are we talking about that and why does it matter? Well, surette is a good way to kick off a process, to bring everyone together and hear different points of view. And it does end up providing some really nice alignment and finding common ground. It helps to form collaboration, collaboration teams, and then to allow the best design ideas to come out. And it really ends up kind of like that. Here we are, all kind of networking and working together, even if we started different places. So I wanted to also just say that our institute at Colorado State has used the surette process since we were created 30 years ago. This is our 30th anniversary. And we've been helping communities in Colorado and other states and sometimes other countries using this process to help them advance both a building project or a development project or sometimes just an organizational change like strategic planning. So it's that idea of bringing people together. And we set out the goals early on so everybody knows where we're trying to go during this process. It might be four hours, it might be a whole day, it might be a few days. And then the bond farm project, we had one surette that was two days long and I think it needed to be to end up with some of the results that came on. So we set out the goals by buying common ground and understand what's coming next but what are other goals that the group believes in. And another really important thing is early on we set out the rules of engagement. And when we do this, this helps us all work together. Like I might have come into the room saying I have a certain purpose for being here and I'm going to make sure that my idea is brought out. But once I understand this and I start behaving as a group process it changes the atmospheric culture of the room to allow people to say okay this is a big project and we're working together and I can contribute to it rather than I can get my one point across. And so those rules of engagement really come out. And we often say let's have a good time. It's important work and let's have a good time. We smile while we're doing the work and I bet the work comes out better. And I show this because what happens a lot of times is we start a project and you get some ideas and then people want to say okay now we're done. But what I emphasize during my when I facilitate a shred is this grown zone and we can smile and laugh about it is the time that the ideas, the best ideas continue to come out. Some good ideas might have happened here but don't shortchange the process and we really want to get a great result. Let's go through that grown zone together. And again so many new ideas are brought out if you have the time and that's why we like those longer shred ideas. So we start out as a larger group and then we break into smaller sub-topic groups. And this is where everybody gets to be involved. You know sometimes if you're in a larger group you hold back, you know give out all your ideas you feel like everybody else is talking. But when we get into the smaller groups six to eight people that's when everybody has their voice and we can come out. And I always ask for table facilitators to make sure that everybody is being heard and no one is dominating the conversation. And that really helps the process move along as well. This is an example of during the bond farm the second day. So the actually we had we had three different major shreds during the bond farm process. We had what we call a visioning charrette. Let's get the big ideas out. Let's hear what the developer had in mind in the first place. Let's hear other visions for the project. And then we end with the design charrette. I want to say that the planning and zoning department and planning and zoning authority in Longmont was very wise during this project which had a contention to say let's have a sort of a middle charrette called a compatibility charrette. It was the first time I've been involved in that process and it was the right thing to do. It helped to bring more ideas together. Compatibility, hey let's be compatible. And it was compatibility between a new development and surrounding older neighborhoods. As I said we've been doing this process for 30 years and I had a student Catherine who was a graduate student. She had been on the volleyball team at CSU and that's a really successful volleyball program. And Catherine knows the importance of teamwork. So when she was asked to do a thesis she said I'm going to do it on the charrette process because that's all about creating teamwork. And so what she found during the process is that charrette's a lot more ideas to be generated. It actually speeds up the process. It sounds like it might take a while if I'm asking everyone to spend a day or two but it would be drawn out without the charrette process. So it adds up saving time and money and it really creates a nice project awareness. During Catherine's research she also found because she surveyed projects across the country and found that these were the ideas that came out as really important ideas. Like obtaining buy-in, certainly that's an important thing in the process. And then at the end of Catherine's research we did remember David Letterman. It's been a while. Well Catherine was a student a while ago. So these were the things that came out of Catherine's research. Remember you always did it from 10 to 1. But let's have many charrettes. Make sure your ego isn't part of this. Understand the local resources. Make sure everyone's participating. Make sure we have clear goals. Someone's got to be in charge of taking it from that time. So it's not just a fun event that had good ideas but it keeps it going. And then the facilitator must be versed in this process of planning and design. Make sure all the voices are there. If they're not there I sort of want to pause the thing and say we got to get more of those perspectives in there. And then let's have some fun. So those are the main things that came out of our process. And so to conclude I give a couple thoughts. One is when we finish the compatibility charrette for the Bond Farm Project the planning director for the city of Longmont said we should do this process for all or most of our projects. And so I was really pleased to hear the director of planning say that. And then when the planning the project was presented to planning and zoning and then again to city council. I don't know Marcia if you maybe heard the word charrette before and you knew about it but some of the people both in planning zoning and city council had not really used the word. And during the evenings and they were long evenings I kept score of how many times the word charrette was used and in both the planning zoning and city council it was over 60 times that people said charrette mostly came from city council and the planning zoning people and I think there was an acknowledgement that yeah this really helped the project go on. And so I want to encourage all of you to consider this process whether it's for a remodel of a home or a new building or renovation to a school in town or even something like a strategic plan for a business or for a neighborhood you never know the results of a charrette before you go in but I can say you will always know that it's synergistic. And another way to say that that I heard from someone wiser than me once I was no one of us is as smart as all of us. And I think that the charrette really brings that out. And I just want to as I leave I want to say who was involved in the bond farm charrette processes. Go ahead and raise your hand. So we have as you can see three of our four of our speakers and Dan and Sarah that's one of the reasons that we're here is because Sarah participated and then Katie is a student at Colorado State University she lives in Longmont and she helped to facilitate the process and then might nice to see you. Anyway that's all I have to say and let me know if there's questions along the way. Thank you Brian. Our next speaker is Drew Sorals. Drew is a seasoned interior designer specializing in creating sacred lifelong places that honor both body and soul with a strong emphasis on connecting interiors to the natural world. Drew's career has largely focused on residential and commercial design along with a few community driven projects. Drew's first neighborhood development involvement began serendipitously with the bond farm project located just a stone's throw from her home. Today Drew will share how the organic involvement and concern for her community has opened doors to numerous other opportunities. And you're all clapping. We are. Hi everybody and thanks for adding to my little bio there that was great. So thank you all for being here and speaking. I want to share my experiences in my involvement in the bond farm development and also as a way to encourage all of you women to get out there and be a part of your community and how this project has actually really opened doors up for me. So I am a Colorado native. I have lived in Longmont for about 28 years and my interior design firm has been in existence over 40 years and I pretty much just worked on residential and commercial design and kept my nose to the grindstone focusing on sustainability and it really wasn't until I heard about this bond farm project that I started getting really involved in my community. I knew a little bit about the bond farm and what was being developed before Mark Young started developing this property. It was being developed as a co-housing project and so I knew that one of our neighbors had invested in that project and a recent friend that I just met through Brian Charles Irvin also invested and Charles is a mortgage lender for focus on rural housing and health care and he was sort of coaching me along this way when he found out that I was really interested in making a difference in this project and basically he was agreeing with me that we need to find somebody to snag up this land and buy it from Mark because his concept plan was really pretty mercenary like just rows of townhomes with no character. So we actually looked for somewhere to buy the property and it was a dead end and so I asked him, Charles what are we going to do and he said the only way you're going to make a change in the direction of this development is to work with somebody like Brian who understands the process and can help the community understand the potential of this development. So my husband and I, he's in the audience Dan, joined the neighborhood, we had been part of the neighborhood group and we felt like it was a good idea to create a liaison between the neighbors and the developer Mark Young and Mark Young with his kind of tainted reputation it was really hard not to just lean into that bad reputation and see him as a criminal guy but we ended up having many meetings with him and Brian had a meeting with him and we decided that everybody has a good side and he was doing the best that he could in this development so we basically twisted his arm to engage in a charrette he wouldn't even pay for it but he agreed to do it with conditions and one of his conditions was I'm going to limit the amount of people that can come to this thing and want to get bombarded so then it's the day of the charrette and he's calling Brian Dunbar in the morning and he's saying Brian, why do I have to do this? and Brian is like Mark, it's okay we're in this together you know what your goals are it's for the greater good this is going to be fine and Mark showed up with spells and whistles at the charrette so the visionary charrette was, I think, very successful so we created a mutual ground for people to express their opinions and desires and how they wanted to see the neighborhood there were outside professionals invited that gave a different perspective to Mark's development team and one of the funniest things was I had sent out all the invitations I knew who was coming and there were four people showing up that I had no idea who they were and he's one of them and he's one of them and it ended up being I was like I got to just let this go and it ended up being a really good thing because they brought a different perspective which was pro-density and we had a lot of people that were anti-density and it kind of balanced out the group so after the charrette Dan and I my husband decided, you know I think we need to take a pretty neutral position here we decided not to be really for or against anything that was going on but more take a supported position continue the charrette's support the whole activity that's going on and let the outcome be the outcome so there was such opposition for this development and Mark Young presented his concept plan to Planning and Zoning and he didn't pass and Brian talked about how the Planning and Zoning was recommending that he define compatibility in a second charrette and that's exactly what we did and then had the third charrette that was the design charrette and voted on the winning concept plan which the architect was actually part of that team that came up with the winning concept plan and Mark presented that to the Planning and Zoning City Council and he introduced it as I like this concept plan better than what my architects came up with which was pretty remarkable so one of the things some of the things that we gained from that exercise is a variety of housing types instead of just rows of townhomes single family homes, duplexes townhomes more open space sensitivity to the scale and the design so that the design is more compatible with the existing neighborhood some opportunity for live work situation in the housing it ended up actually with less density which some of the neighbors really wanted walking paths, players for kids safe streets the opportunity for community gardens and we talked a lot about mature landscaping and meeting that so that the neighborhood could fit into the existing neighborhood the bond farm could fit into the existing neighborhood so Planning and Zoning passed City Council passed and it's not over so that was a big hurdle to get over and now Dan and I are part of Shekel's organization Launched Long Long Housing and we can join forces in supporting the development of this of this project for Mark Young and other projects too so we're not just two people doing this, we're in a bigger community in Launched Long Long Housing making these efforts so I can't wait to hear what Shekel has to say tonight so the beauty of all this is I am not a spring chicken and at my age most women would be thinking about retiring but for me I have flipped a coin and pretty much started a whole new slant on my career and a lot of that has opportunity has come about because of working for the first time with Brian Dunbar I've joined a membership with the United States Green Building Council I've gotten my lead, Green Associate Prudential I am working with Brian's Institute for the Built Environment in their Lifelong Communities and Lifelong Homes initiative which is so important it's basically guidelines and a certification process to teach developers architects and builders how to create communities that support aging in place so accessible and accessible dwelling parks and walking pathways in the neighborhood and also the health care service is coming to that neighborhood so super important to have like people thinking about I don't have to ever go to a nursing home and live in this community for the rest of my life so and one last little thing I want to give you for all the women, solid men you can go couple weeks ago I was at the United States Green Building Council sponsored event called Women in Green and we were all there to be to learn about what these women are doing in the world of sustainability with the government and fiber practices and it was also addressing some of the insecurities that women have in this field and so anyway long story short one of my favorite quotes that was given during that meeting is women stop thinking about how your words might impact everyone in the room and speak your mind openly thank you Drew I love all these different perspectives it's wonderful our next speaker is Doug Jones he and his family have long lived in old town long month formally trained as an architect at CU Boulder he now works for architects and other small businesses to help guide their way through information technology Doug sees the design process as a community investment and is always thinking about ways to bring about great designs good evening and thank you for having me thank you Cheryl and Sarah and all of you at AAUW I'm happy here to speak about my experience as one of Bonn Farm Neighbors group people can you hear me okay is that better okay thank you so I'm immensely proud of our neighborhood organization and caring that went into understanding and shaping the current iteration of what happened with the Bonn Farm I think we did a good job and the health of all these people over here we had some really good involvement some really good some really good conversations and understanding what's going on there having lived in the neighborhood for over 20 years I'm not just invested in my neighborhood in long month but it's my home who cares deeply about design I want to see any changes that happen there the good changes right so in a nutshell that's what brought our core group together is all these people wanting something better for our neighborhood and as Ju kind of alluded to in the beginning what we first saw was a little scary when we first saw that we were not impressed we were shocked that such a drastic change could be happening in our neighborhood we were rightly concerned what might end up in our backyard we felt uninformed about the process and about what could that possibly go there we didn't know anything we were typical neighbors we didn't want change we don't want more things happening that we don't understand in our neighborhood we wanted to protect our investments we wanted to do what we saw to look like a peaceful neighborhood that we thought into we understood long month was growing however and we needed to change and adapt to that really me this one house with a couple of people and a couple of cars we're going to turn into hundreds of houses with hundreds of people and 100 more cars you know that's daunting and an exciting prospect too and we didn't understand the development process or the planning process all that stuff we just had to kind of take in and say well what are we going to do so like every like minded group of people do we got our meds together we talked about it we researched it and we came up with some ideas and the first thing we did was we took a look at all the information that we had at hand so like the vision long month code precedence of other developments historical data there's the council the planning department and we just humble those people and those sources for information constantly and we learned as much as we possibly could the main document that we looked at was the vision long month because I was supposed to inform and guide us to that and we came to realize very quickly that vision long month is well it's a great one like Marcia said I think it's just that we are somewhat in agreement on some things that that document is it's a great picture book and it's a great vision it's kind of a wordy vision statement for long month but there's no design in it there's no game plan inside that document and that is what long month is severely lacking in Marcia alluded to that and that's where we I completely agree with her we we also helped Sharetz as Drew and Brian was very informative for our group our group was highly resistant to the Sharetz idea as much probably as Mark's group was there were some of us that were knew that that process could really mark me being an architect I was an old cart idea I was one of those kids on the cart during going through school we did that right and then what we did was each time the development came up in planning your council we were all there armed with our 5 minute speeches ready to just give them help right so that's that was my experience with this whole process and it was a really good experience but we were left to wonder kind of is all this really sinking in are we making a difference here are we actually doing what it is that we need to make this process change for example is the planning commission and city council actually reading all those emails that we sent to them are they reading and seeing all of the documents that we're sending into them it turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of pages of information and the poor planning commission they get that information about 4 or 5 days prior to the process so they have mere days to process all that information is this the best way that we can do to go about putting projects out there do we need to be sitting here debating and vision long month and the interpretation of that plan on every single project every time we come up there's a different group of people listening to you every single time do we have to sit there and debate where's the traffic we need in long month and this is kind of the point of my speech tonight we need to have a design in place at least some basics that say here's where we're going with long month we don't need to figure out where you know what the what the parking size looks like in long month we need to figure out a true multi-mobile plan for long month envision like 10 or 12 east west 10 or 12 more south bike lanes that people can use to get to and around long month why don't we plan that stop development or do anything have a suret process and plan all that out so that we can figure out those basic core bones of the city and then build around that kind of thing because we're spending our precious 5 minutes playing sitting there going well do I talk about the parking space or do I talk about the fact that I want to have my kid go say to the school right so these are things that the city as marsha said we have we're coming up on what is it 9 years for envision long month every 10 to 20 years the city does this sure let's revisit envision long month let's enhance it and make it better and expand that vision but then let's take that next step and let's design something that the city can be proud of and move forward so that is my goal for this for this group of people to kind of get that bug under your bonnet and really go out there and find something to hang your hat on and push long month forward in that direction there's two reasons why that's really important we all kind of bounce back to bonn farm so the first one is that when bonn farm property was annexed in well in it let me back up just a little bit in the long month code it says that park space for for neighborhoods needs to be one acre for 200 single family homes so in the bonn farm area we're about 300 homes give or take lots of single family lots of multi-family things like that we're about at a three acre deficit of parks so when that when that property came in with its six acres three acres really should have come into the city as a park and that never happened they allowed 0.85 acres to do that had we a plan, a design that already said here's multimodal here's parks, here's the things that we adhere to we could have already had a park ready to be designed and accessed by the time that came in and that thing could be under development right now not having to wait for this development to pass and then wait another 10 years for it to be funded so that's one thing that we could could help the other thing is the annex of Francis Street down from Spruce Avenue it's that dirt road if you're not familiar with the area it was right up the Spruce Avenue going north, south going south down the road and that was annexed in because the property at the bottom of the street adjacent to Bonn Farm wanted to tag in an annex into the Bonn Farm when that happened the city chose to annex in Francis Street itself and that created an access point potential for Bonn Farm property so Mark has done all this work we've done all the charrette work everything's pushed through the city everybody's pretty much at a happy place for this and now we have a new piece of information coming in that takes the park that Mark put on the west side of the property and wants an annex through that so it takes that .85 paper park and it slices through it and now Mark has to change his design so again that's my point about let's get something together we have to have designs we just can't have visions visions are great we need to push through designs and that's just two areas and just one property that has now we don't know what's happening with the Bonn Farm put it up on the market right now it might not just don't know so that's my point thank you all for having me we've got lots of good people here to put all this into effect so that's the good news our last speaker is Shaquille DeLau he is the president of Launch Long Mine Housing a grassroots organization convincing the public of the power we have to make housing affordable and transportation options available. Shaquille is passionate about community service serving on the board of trustees of the Long Mines Community Foundation the City of Long Mines Police Review Board as an opinion writer for the Long Mines Observer from 2018 to 2020 and on the board of advisors of Long Mines Public Media until 2023 Shaquille sorry I needed a second I'm shorter than that good evening it's a pleasure and a privilege to be here tonight the organizers Sarah and Sheryl for inviting me and to extend this invitation to speak to you about my vision for the future I would like to ask you a simple question and convince you of its radical implications my goal is to leave you this evening to build determination and evenness for change why does Long Mines exist? humans have been building cities since before history was recorded their scope and scale has changed as we have changed but the concept of a city is one of humanity's greatest technologies on the scale of fire or the wheel humans are social creatures who rely on each other for survival we cooperate and we compete and through the relationships that we establish with each other we thrive the city is a social and relational technology it is the ecosystem that humans construct for themselves as a beaver builds a dam and ant builds a colony or a bird builds a nest the smallest cities may have just 10 people our largest cities have millions but as ecosystems they have many features in common cities provide safety from wild animals and the elements they provide venues for trade and opportunities to find mates there are places where we can gather food they provide communal support they raise our children and they improve our quality of life why do cities exist? the answer is simple cities are for people and if cities are for people then my simple but radical belief is that we should design them in ways that improve the lives of people the core insight of city as technology and ecosystem is no different than the other ecosystems of animals unique among animals in terms of the complexity of the ecosystem that we build for ourselves but our reliance on environment is the same all life relies on its environment the interconnected webs that make life work are mind bogglingly complex relying on cooperation between an unbelievable diversity of plants animals and structures that combine to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts these interconnected webs bring an adaptation of the passage of time when ecosystems are stressed from natural disaster or population growth or epochal climate change the strongest ecosystems are capable of changing to meet the needs of life within it ecosystems are always changing whether through the seasons or the constant cycle of life and death or birth and decomposition what happens when stress occurs is that change happens this is just a question of what type of change in the early 20th century humans undertook an experiment unlike any other in our entire recorded or unrecorded history industrialization changed the very nearly every aspect of human life and changed a couple of the ways that we had conceptualized cities we radically transformed the way that we thought about cities and changed the way that we designed and constructed the ecosystem that we live in many of these changes were for the good electricity fire safety and sanitation were worth the effort but one of the results of that experiment is that we created systems that arrested the ability of cities to change to our needs we stripped them of the diversity of form and function in the name of standardization we created rules for zoning and street widths and established places that were reserved only for cars for people we built entire subdivisions all at once with a monoculture of identical modular financializable homes and powerful HOAs to enforce petty design standards for those who can't or won't comply we grudgingly allowed tents under bridges with a constant threat of displacement through violence these are symptoms of the most ironic version of humanity's dereliction of responsibility to protect the environment for all life on earth if cities are ecosystems for humans then what we have built for ourselves is a factory farm is it any wonder that we are a society in distress our levels of physical activity are at an all-time low and so is our physical and mental health the surgeon general of the United States recently declared loneliness and epidemic we spent more time inside or in private spaces like our homes or in cars because other people seem far away the community groups that once defined American life are growing smaller and grayer and 20% of men report that they have zero friends our neighborhoods are structured for nuclear families and are so expensive that living near extended family is mostly for the rich or the crowded we commute long distances in single occupancy vehicles to a job where we spend one quarter of our working hours just to pay for the car that we use to get there our cities especially our best ones have become unaffordable for the very people who they should best serve we salted the earth requiring young people to flee the places that they were born or raised just so they can find somewhere they can afford to put down roots 41,000 people were killed by motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2023 if Boeing had killed 41,000 they would already be bankrupt so why do we allow our streets to be designed for slaughter at the hands of GM, Ford, Chrysler and Tesla everyone recognizes the moral abomination of living in a country where the leading cause of death of children is gun violence so what does it mean when our transportation system usually kills more children than guns our level of outrage should not depend on whether a child dies from malice or neglect our cities must change Longmont must change and we must act with the same sense of urgency that we wish we would have had 20 years ago Longmont should have lots of people from lots of different walks of life just as diversity brings strength to our prairie grassland it brings strength to a city that means anyone of any income should be able to find a home here those homes must be affordable they must come in a variety of shapes and sizes ranging from studio apartments with supportive services for those who need them to multi-generational homes with private and shared spaces for four families we will have to change laws we will have to build more homes it should be possible to live a full life in Longmont without owning a car, home, work play, school and groceries whether that's because of how much owning a car costs or because it's good for the environment or because cars are isolating every person should have access to nutritious food in their neighborhood within walking distance of their home we will need to build bike lanes and public transit systems and neighborhood grocery stores and coffee shops and veterinarians and parks we need to thoughtfully and deliberately integrate nature into our neighborhoods Longmont should support families on a beautiful spring day the air should be filled with a laughter of children playing in the street because their parents aren't worried about them getting hit by a car when those children grow up they should be able to afford a place to live so that they can raise a family and grow old in the same place their parents did before them finally, and perhaps most difficult of all we must change the culture we must challenge the notion that a better quality of life for someone new diminishes the quality of life for someone old we must challenge the notion that rigid engineering requirements are the best design guide for the places that we live we must challenge the notion that Longmont is the private property of anyone person or neighborhood or constituency that seeks to protect its own interests at the cost the rest of us must pay we inherited Longmont from those that came before us and we have a responsibility to those who will come after there is much work for us to do and it will take time but we have done hard things before Longmont is today a great place to live if you can afford it it got that way because the Longmonters of the past invested in the future having our own electricity utility, a green belt and next life, these things did not happen on their own their faith in us created the high quality of life that we deserve the people who can afford to live within city limits the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago the second best time is today