 Mayor Bagley here councilmember Christensen here councilmember Hidalgo-Fairing here councilmember Martin Here councilmember Peck here councilmember Rodriguez here Councilmember waters here here you have a quorum great Let's go ahead and first of all the chair like to mind the public anyone wish you to speak during the first call public invited to Be heard we'll need to watch the live stream of the meeting and then we'll put instructions those instructions up right there and Oops my screen disappeared. I was reading something there we go All right, so you'll need to watch if you want to speak during first call public invited to be heard we'll need to If you want to provide comment you're gonna go ahead and follow the instructions on the screen You're limited three minutes and then we don't have a timer it counts down some of deck counts down the search screen So I'll go ahead and do that Please as you start state your name and address for the record starting to Proceeding your comments, please. All right. Do we have an approval of the minutes of the May 19th, 2020 regular session? Actually, let's do the bro. Sorry. Let's do the pledge real quick because that's always such a On online, it's always such an adventure. So let's see who's gonna lead us this time Mayor pro tem have you let us in the pledge yet? Just when you were absent. Oh, okay. Let's do a counselor Peck Start us off. Okay. I pledge allegiance to the flag That's awesome. That's my favorite part of the WebEx meetings, by the way. All right, let's go ahead and now do we have an approval of minutes for May 20th, 2020 regular session? I'm gonna move approval the May 19th, 2020 regular session minutes second second. All right. I move to Councilman Martin seconded all in favor say aye All right. I'll oppose say nay All right, that passes unanimously All right. Do we have a motion for them approval of the minutes of May 26, 2020 regular session meeting? So move. All right. Councilmember Christensen moved it Councilmember Waters-Sutter seconded it. All in favor say aye. Aye. I'll oppose say nay. All right. Motion passes unanimously. Mayor Bagley before you ask for a motion on June 2nd. Yep I have an addition I'd like to make to those minutes. All right. What is it? Do that after the motion or before? Let's go ahead. I'll move June 2nd, 2020 regular session minutes. Do I have a second? Second. All right. I moved it. Councilmember Martin seconded it. Councilmember Waters, do you have an amendment? Well, I do. At the end of that meeting, I read a statement and I prefaced it with wanting to read it into the record and when the minutes came out, there's a reference to the statement, but not the statement. And unless there's an objection, I've sent to Don the written statement. I'd like for her to insert that in lieu of the language that's there in reference to comments I made on June 2nd. Is that a motion? It is. All right. I'll second that. Any debate or anybody care? All right. We've got a motion on the table for the approval of the June 2nd 2020 minutes regular session with the amended suggestions that Dr. Waters just provided. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. All right. The motion carries unanimously. All right. On to agenda revisions and submission of documents and motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items to future agendas. I was actually contacted. I'm not going to do it on my own, but if you guys want to, we will. I was asked by Shannon Fender of God, which is just one of the dispensers. I think it's native roots. Sorry. I know she's watching right now and she's wondering why they didn't get the name right. But anyway, so the idea is to have the city permit medical marijuana delivery at home. Is that something we want to take up in the future? Councilmember Peck. Thank you, ma'am. I think we've already discussed this and my memory is before the pandemic. I thought we were going to put it on a future agenda. And we were, we were, but that was my, that was my recollection as well, but we haven't done it yet. So are we all in agreement to put it on the Councilmember Martin? I just wanted to add to that. I think the reason that we didn't put it on a future agenda at that time was that the city attorney's office said that they could not predict when they would be able to get to it. So I would like it to be on a future agenda, but I just wanted to correct the record. Great. Just, I don't remember if we ever voted on it. I know we discussed it, but let's go. I moved that we put the issue of permitting marijuana, medical marijuana dispensaries in our city limits onto the agenda. So we might discuss the possibility of permitting them to deliver at home. Second. All right. I moved councilmember duggle faring. Seconded. Let's go ahead and vote on paper. Say aye. Yep. Sorry. No discussion. No, you can discuss. I just don't see any hands. Yes, Dr. Waters. You didn't put a time time on that. Correct. It's up to me with COVID with all these other things going on. It's for I just wanted to make certain that we were. Nope, it will be on this way. Freedom or latitude to the staff. All right. Yes. I mean, there's very, very, I mean, even though I could put it on the agenda and was going to, I just figured, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to get council input. So all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right. The motion carries unanimously. Anybody else council member waters. Thank you very vaguely. My reference to the June 2nd minutes. I think carries over into a direction I'd like to give the staff. I chatted with Don about about the minutes for January 2nd and what I, I thought I would see as having read something into the, into the record. I thought he was thinking I was doing that. And then in that conversation with Don discovered that or learned that sometime in the past, a previous council gave direction to Val, a Don's predecessor. And I put statements of council members into the, into the minutes, but to be more cryptic with those minutes. And I understand the reasons for that. And that whole get out of control and you know there's a lot of time required, unless the statement is provided in writing and then it's just a matter of doing a paste into the minutes. I'm a little concerned. I'm not pleased, I guess about having the option to without without this kind of activity, you know, correcting the minutes. A previous council to determine whether or not any of us could state something for the record, provide a written copy copy to Don. So she could just paste it in the minutes so she doesn't have to go through watching the tape, etc. And establish the record that way. It just seems to me that a council ought to be able to decide that for themselves, and any member of this council who wanted to make a statement for the record ought to be able to do that, and not have to amend the minutes or ask for permission to be on the record. So I'm going to move that we that we give direction to Don, that if council members have a statement to make and they provide a written copy to her. So she's not having to scroll through the tape. The statements for the record are inserted into the written record as minutes, as long as it's provided to Don and right. I'll second that. So anybody have any comments or can we vote. Councilor Christensen. I think that's a very good idea because we have nothing actually to prove anything that went on at City Council meeting except actions. And that was done to make it easier for the council to not have such a lengthy record. However, it means that in the future nobody really understands why council voted the way it did because nothing we've said really it's sort of summed up and nothing we have stated appears in the record and it's a very grave mistake for the future so I applaud this I think it's a very good idea provided we do provide the city clerk with the written a written copy so that the newspaper reporters can have it and also a digital copy so she can just cut and paste. Mayor you're muted. I know I know I know I know I was muted customer pack your hand was up first did you change your mind. You're muted to change my mind. All right counselor Martin. I just want to add that we now also have AI automated transcripts so we do probably this will be a good time to make the public aware of it. We actually do have a written transcript of the debate that council makes. So, it's good to know that we're being reminded I'm going to be a lot more careful when how I talk on these video chats because I'm not very careful. So, alright. Dr waters. Thanks. I, it sounds to me like this. This will be a yes from the council and I should probably keep my mouth shut and just accept the yes on motion. Yes, you should. You know, I just want to reinforce or maybe build on what I heard from council member Christians and that is, there are there have been times where in trying to get back to respond to constituents about what was said to try to get them a time stamp on the tape. Right and have them scroll through and have to go through the process of watching a video tape to hear what was actually said, depending on you know what the topic is seems to be a burden to put that you place on the residents. And at least for this one case to lift them in that burden so you can just point into the minutes I think is a service to the community as well as the opportunity for council members to be on the record so I'll be quiet and thank you yes if we go yes. All right, all in favor of committing council members who make record comments for the record on the record to submit a written copy of those to the city clerk to insert into the record. Say hi. Hi. Opposed say nay. All right, motion carries unanimously. Anybody else. All right, cool. Let's go on to the COVID-19 update and emergency items for consideration Harold time is yours. Mayor council I'm actually going to bring some others to the party tonight to go through this we're going to cover a few things. And to go first dance going to cover an update on the numbers that we've had from Boulder County. At our next meeting, Jeff say I can attended that meeting. It just had a number of commitments, and he's been coming to our meetings and I think he went to the first one Louisville tonight or second. Then we will go to Eugene to talk about orders we just had a another round of orders that Eugene's going to brief everyone on. And then Sandy's going to talk a little bit about fireworks because I know there's been some questions so then take it away. Okay. Susan has a presentation here so this is a presentation that was given by the public health epidemiologists. So I will do my very best epidemiologist impression here tonight. And there's a ton of slides here and a lot of them kind of say the same thing we will absolutely shoot this over to you guys so that you have it. So I'm going to go pretty quickly through this so Susan good luck and here we go. So the next one go down one please. This is a she can. Are you not seeing it. All I see is the is the header slide right now. Let's try that again. There you go. That's the one. So these are numbers ever. So this is, you know you've all seen these numbers before so we're at about 1000 cases ever. And then the big number there is the long term care facility cases and we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go. So these are our all time numbers. Please go down one Susan. And then this next slide and there's sorry. That's okay. There we go. There's a lot of them that look just like this so I just want to point out one of these boulder counties in the red. And this is a trend that happens to be case rates. And you'll notice that the trend is flattening out you know we've been talking about this flattening the curve thing for a long time. And the trend here is flattening but it's also really low compared to everybody else and this is a trend you'll see and all these little kind of grass that will flip through. But this is kind of a trend that you'll see. So Susan please go down one again. And so this this next slide is about long term care facilities. So the blue are cases that are not associated with long term care facilities. So you'll see on the far right there when we get into June, there aren't many what is that brown tan orange something that are long term care facilities. There's very few. So the message there is, for the most part, the outbreaks have been contained in long term care facilities. So that's good. So the cases that we're seeing are most, most often not associated with long term care facilities. And as you can see as you kind of look in the middle there all those big spikes are were associated with long term care. So that's a good news and that's pretty significant progress. Susan, could you go down three. One more. So this is kind of a summary of just one more please. Okay, so this is a big trend downward right so this is kind of the rolling average percentage of positive test results. So, even though testing the number of tests that they're doing is going up the percentage of positives are have trended down and basically flattened out. So again, that's also good news because it goes all the way back to about, what is that May 25 that that trend is pretty flat. And that's also kind of when things were starting to open up here. So this is a good trend for us again. So all still kind of good news things that we're seeing as we're leading into this summertime area where things really are opening up more and we're going to start seeing people out, you know, we see people Macintosh Lake all the time those kind of things that I'm sure we've talked about before. Down one more Susan. This number we've seen has been pretty steady the whole time to long months still has the highest number of positive or possible properties in Boulder County but overall, Boulder County is still pretty darn low comparable. Let's see. Let's go down three please Susan. One more please. One more please. So this this next this is an important one. This is something that we talked about and we're trying to figure out some action items associated with it this is the green bar is Boulder County population remember this is county this isn't city we haven't parsed it out to that level yet. The light blue is COVID-19 cases and the dark loose hospitalizations. So you can see on the far right there, the Hispanic Latin X percentages are significantly high. So 13% of the overall population and accounting for 45% nearly half the cases and 43% of hospitalizations that's significant. So what we're attempting to do this is data we're still trying to get from the county and parse it out to a city level to see how granular we can get so that we can start doing outreach bringing care to the community. It's something that we're trying to figure out what we can do to be more actionable, especially as we look to planning for the next if there is another spike what can we do to figure out action items to be more prepared so this is a pretty broad slide for us as we move forward. Let's see. Could you go down to please Susan. So this shows you even though, like we saw long monies kind of high in Boulder County, Boulder County as a whole is significantly lower in the hospitalization rates, compared to the rest of the state almost half. So that's, again, pretty solidly good news. This is this is Tim Waters, would you back and we ask questions. Could you go back to that previous slide. Yes. That one. Yeah, so I've got a little message box up in the legend where it's hard for me to tell the color coding here. Okay, so the dark blue. Yes, is I is what the dark blue is deaths. So that's the percentage of deaths. So I'm looking at the 80, 80.6% of the white non Hispanic. What is this telling me that column. So that's telling well as a whole the overall deaths have primarily been associated with long term care facilities. The population who have passed away 80% of them are white non Hispanic correct 14 and a half percent of the fatalities are Latinx. That's what I'm saying. Okay. All right. Very good. Thanks. Any other questions on that slide. Please feel free to interrupt at any time. I do have a question. Yes, I remember dog fairing. By the way, go ahead and speak up because when this is up, I can't call on anybody I just see me. So on when you are looking at collecting data on this, the other piece is, you know, look at the jobs to what what occupations are people of different ethnicities typically doing. So are they in jobs where there are where they have sick leave, or they having to come in is the expectation they're coming in and they're sick. Especially if we're looking at hourly wages, or, you know, like, and I don't want to give out any particular stores, but you know, you just any kind of store where you just go in like one of those big box stores, where you don't have benefits and you're the expectation is you come in, you do your hours so you know I guess looking at the holistically as well too. Those are this is Harold those are some questions that we're asking there's also a really. There's also another spreadsheet but it's on the county site and the state site that really looks at outbreak data. And so that's something else that I look at in terms of what's happening within the community. And Jeff mentioned this the last time that he was on. The only location that that we outside of older adult care facilities the only one that we had locally that was on the outbreak data was actually circle graph. And I can say that because that's a that's a public document. Yeah, that's another that's another piece of information that we look at. And I've asked that question to them because we also want to understand are we seeing it occur for someone may work in other locations but yet they're part of Boulder County so the numbers are going to be reported to us. And so those are some of the questions I've put it into Jeff and his group. Okay, okay and it wasn't their legislation that passed about sick. Yes, yes. That should hopefully help some of these cases as well. Thanks. So, I have a question as well. Sorry, Polly. So this, this makes me think of another thing that we might look at it seems like the huge urban areas are also where the outbreaks are really high. One curiosity would be in our Latinx population, or just people color in general are the main are they mostly the people who are living in single family homes or apartment buildings with the, you know, the lack of medical care as well. And I would just be curious as to whether it is confined groups of people in a complex, just like the assisted living homes or the nursing homes. That's where the high outbreak is. So, much less than the, than the elderly who are living with family or in single family homes on their own. So, it would just be curious to me to see where that large outbreak is in our Latinx communities. And answer some of that so part of the questions of at least conversations and you know really what are we seeing, obviously senior care facilities. The other is multi generational households. And, and that's another piece that we're generally seen is where, where it's driving some of those case numbers so one individual gets sick there's no way to separate within the household and then the rest of the household ends up getting, infected. And so that is one thing that we do know, but it's the dance point this is, this is conversation. These are conversations that we're having in terms of really all cities are having in terms of managing alongside Boulder County health because we're all seen similar demographics in terms of this and so we're all trying to work collectively to see how we dig into it and, and really how we can work on a, you know, a different educational campaign and really know what we need to focus on if numbers should arise. Right. Any other questions on this one. I guess I was just, I read that I what I'm seeing here but so just to reiterate. So basically, long, so you have a quarter of our population is Hispanic. Yet, half of the new COVID cases are white and half Hispanic. So disproportionate. And the same thing, more or less with hospital visits. Right. But then you've got of the total deaths, 80% are white and, you know, 15% are Hispanic. Am I reading that right. That's correct. So what it looks like to me is that I don't know my question is, are Hispanic families better at getting treated and going to the hospital. They get tested for COVID. They get treatment. And last but not least, they survive. It's just me that they're doing the right thing. I don't know if it's so much an instance of Latino outbreak as it is going to the hospital and getting help, because they're surviving. I mean, at a disproportionate rate to those in our population. I think it's hard to tell by just these overall numbers, right. I mean, there's things that we don't know in here demographic data. We don't know what are the age breakdowns where you know those kind of things but I mean, you kind of encapsulated it but I think that's why I really want to part out some of this to be longer specific and see really what is kind of in there. I guess my only point is that in this whole COVID-19 outbreak, we take a little bit of data no matter what we want to see and everybody runs with it. I'm just pointing out that you can take numbers and data and extrapolate whatever you want. So, to be continued. Yeah, I think what we're saying is we need to dig in because we don't have enough data to really understand to figure out what we need to do and that's what we're partnering on. Right. Okay, let's see. All right, Susan, let's go down. I don't know. Let's try. Could I say something. Oh, of course, yes, sorry. Okay, so I think this is an interesting graph because, you know, this is a, this graph is about Boulder County, the number of Latino Latinx population in Boulder County is 13.8 and so the death rate. is wonderful because it's only slightly higher, although death rates never a good thing, but it looks to me like they are being the Latinx, the Latinx population is being more infected than the regular population, which I think is because of the things that Susie and Joan have said earlier, the jobs, they are more exposed. They tend to be more exposed because they tend to often have more service jobs because it's lower wage and all that and also, they don't have their own home so they tend to be in more crowded situations so as Brian said, this is actually a very positive thing to say how strong the Latinx population is, but I'm wondering if we can do something in to be sure that service jobs do have all the service jobs. I'm sure King Supers in places like that do have things posted but all the service jobs need to have explanations of health prevention, posted and also all the apartment houses where people might be living and daycare places where people might be. Yeah, I think I know Boulder County is making pretty significant attempts at education campaigns, and it's kind of their role to do a lot of that with the business community to the extent of which that's happening I don't know but I know that they've made pretty significant efforts in that. One more thing a lot of a lot of this information is digital and I was just reading the early childhood education thing and a lot of people from the Paso program are saying that they do not have access to computers so that's another problem that people don't have access to the information where they can go get help, what kind of protocol there is. Yeah, we need to think about how we can get better access for everybody, no matter what their income or their ethnic group. Let's keep let's keep going with presentation and let's let's I don't know how many other slides you have not to push it through but let's just try to let's don't take comments or questions till the end let's jot down our questions and comments, and we'll follow it up the end so we can get through it. All right, I will condense it into maybe three or four I'll go quick. Let's see Susan let's keep going down for a little bit here. Keep going. Go. Go. One more. So this is a, just a snapshot of all of the hospital resource data in the county. All of it's in the green area, we are really good on hospitalizations right now I think there's four or five people in the hospital across the county for coven related incidents right now. Okay Susan let's go down four or five more. And the one the one thing I want to point out on this slide if you can go back to that. You see two that are in the yellow. That's really more related to the increase in elected procedures and in other medical events that's coming in so when you saw this graph originally we were not doing any like they were not doing any elected procedures so they have full capacity. They're bringing on elected procedures. And so that is, is shifting the number but it, that's what it's related to. Yeah, that's normal business. Yeah. Susan go down do you see Google boom right there. So as, as we know Google tracks everything. So one of the things that the county has done is started to get location data from Google and this is one of the ways that they start to find figure out that percentage of social distancing thing. This is one of the variables they use. Now, this is certainly one data point for one section of the population but the interesting thing here is, and I'm sure that, you know, Dale has talked about this that compared to the baseline look at Boulder County's number on pre COVID and baseline is sort of pre COVID. So, up 110% of people using parks and open spaces, and the other stuff you know, retail recreation grocery transit stations workplaces basically that's telling us that people are generally staying home, at least 20% more than they pre COVID, you know the residential rates up 5% but that gigantic number in parks is telling us something to people are getting out into the open spaces outside but as a general kind of concept those retail grocery things are are down and there's a little tiny bit of data behind that also but it's, you know it's only somebody that has a cell phone and has a particular thing turned on that kind of thing but Okay, go down a couple Susan and one more. One more. So there's, there's four, there's four or five of these in here there's they've got a slide on suicidal ideation they've got one on suicide attempts they've got one on alcohol overdoses and opioids, and just a couple of messages on this data one is. It's interesting that they're starting to track this data related to COVID because it's something that we started to talk about to related to diversion programs right. This is something that we know is happening that, and you can see kind of on that lower right hand corner that green graph. Those chunks before that pretty solid that is before the stay at home order. The big dip the you is when the stay at home order happened. And they all look exactly like this. So what that's really telling us is when the stay at home order hit, people stayed inside like we asked them to they didn't start to seek care at the hospitals at their clinics, all those kinds of things they stayed home. And we knew this even on the ambulance transport side people stayed home until they got really really really sick. It's really starting to release public health has become aware and they're collecting data related to this that's showing us what we know anecdotally here that the issues that the social issues that we have the behavioral health issues that mental health the substance use have gotten worse because of this and now we have a little bit of tracking data the Boulder County public health is helping us with. Now again this is this is countywide. It's just one tiny data point is just hospitals, people that go to the hospital for this particular complaint. But you know there's Susan you can just scroll down you know four or five because so they can see that they're tracking these things. Keep going. I think the next one is keep going. So they all kind of look like this you'll see that you keep going. The next ones out and say there's that big you again they all kind of look the same. They've got a few of these and you can look through them at one when we send this to you and we can answer questions if you need to but they all kind of look the same. And then you go one word and one thing that we are definitely seeing locally is on the domestic violence side. The numbers aren't necessarily increasing pretty dramatically but the, the acuity is definitely going up in our victims advocates are responding to chunks and the things that they're going to are a little more significant than than they were before but that's kind of what I have there's a lot more this is a pretty rich data set in this presentation that they did so feel free to reach out if you have any questions about it but that's all I have for tonight. All right, great. Thank you. Glad to see that we continue to be on it. All right, let's go ahead and move on to the presentation of the city of Walmart comprehensive annual financial order. Okay. We got Eugene and Sandy. Thank you, Gene. The cold. Go ahead. Mayor and Council Eugene may city attorney. So Dan talked about some of the numbers at the county level I'm going to give you an update on some important announcement by Governor Polis at his press conference yesterday. We really started the press conference by congratulating and thanking the people of Colorado for doing such a great job on social distancing on masks on staying at home and really following the guidance and you know I'm happy I get to report on good news additional steps about further relaxations of restrictions on the economy and on social life. The governor really had two sort of categories one was more near term, some adjustments he's making under safer at home and in the vast great outdoors. And we expect to see those sort of toward the end of this week. And then he talked about the next phase which would be applicable at the end of June. Moving into July so I'll start with the safer at home changes and then talk about the next phase. So, we're actually very happy to see he put out draft guidance. So the public gets a chance to take a look at this stuff before it goes into effect, and to comment on it. Based on past practice, you know when the staff puts out draft guidance, they pretty much stick with it so you know we're pretty confident this is what we're going to see towards the end of the week via amended safer at home order. There's new draft guidance for outdoor and indoor larger venues, and very happy to see that instead of a one size fits all which was really a cap of 50 people which applies to gyms, for X facilities outdoor pools that was really sort of the state's maximum number that they want to see gather. Now they are looking at different tiers of sizes of venues. They have a cut off around 5600 feet square feet and then another one up at 11,000 square feet. And at the 5600 square feet outdoor facilities can move up to 125 people at the larger size up to 175 people. And so, you know the numbers are nice but I just think the sort of philosophical change where now we're starting to see tiered changes instead of a one size fits all is really great and of course these venues are going to have to implement strict precautions which by now we're getting pretty used to, you know six feet social distancing when you're in line, frequent hand washing, no buffet style foods. We're looking at opening up these venues to activities that are currently prohibited under the sixth amended safer at home, like receptions, concerts, fairs, those sorts of types of events so I think, you know social and economic activity is really going to benefit from this. The other draft guidance which would be a change to the current safer at home would be residential camps. So much follows the guidelines of current summer camps indoors cohorts of 10 outdoors cohorts of 25 campers and, you know, before they didn't want people staying overnight now, based upon our numbers, and the public health capacity and hospital capacity, you know the state is feeling about moving forward. So, the big news I thought was really the governor talking about the next phase the phase after safer at home, and he's calling this protect our neighbors. And it's really going to sort of shift the focus from statewide control to individual accountability and a reliance on strong local public health authorities. And so the basic concept is, if a county or region can demonstrate compliance with certain scientific criteria, then they will have a lot more freedom on what to do in terms of free opening. So the criteria are pretty similar to what I think we're seeing in the county variance process, low disease transmission levels, social distancing at 60% or above, hospital capacity to meet the needs of everyone as well as the need, the ability to meet a future surge if that were to happen. And then on the public health side, we keep hearing from Boulder County Public Health Jeff say act about testing and contact tracing and isolation. That's really going to be the new strategy to target actual outbreaks rather than have everybody stay at home. Let's just have those who test positive and those who come in contact with those people have them stay at home. And then the local public health agency needs to demonstrate strong enforcement and compliance capacity to make sure that people are following all the best guidance. And your reward if you can do this is really, I thought was quite surprising under protect our neighbors, all activities can occur at 50% pre pandemic capacities, maintaining social distancing, and no more than 500 people. They don't want mass gatherings but large gatherings, if your community can meet all these criteria would be permissible. Now, the governor said he's targeting the end of June to implement this next phase the one after safer at home. And there are details still to be worked out. We're not quite sure what the process is for a county to be authorized to enter into protect our neighbors phase. But I think the general message is very positive that the state of Colorado is doing a great job. And we are going to be able to, you know, take baby steps towards returning to a normal life pre pandemic. So that is really the update from what the governor had to say yesterday and, and we think of these as very positive and the lawyers love being able to take a look at this and draft form before it comes out. So we're able to advise the city on what sort of impacts this would have on municipal operations. All right, thanks Eugene Harold anybody else that you want to pull out Sandy, Sandy Cedar. I'm here with council Sandy Cedar assistant city manager. I'm here to give you a brief update on the fireworks that the Kiwanis have requested a use of public places permit around. So we asked them to go ahead and just go through our normal process for these kinds of events, although this is a no gathering event this time. So we put together a use of public places permit request. Our staff looked at it and gave a conditional approval, pending what was going on with Boulder County, Boulder County looked at it and decided that they felt that if there was no gathering and there was some additional conditions that the Kiwanis could hold the event. And so then it came back to the city to determine whether we could meet the conditions that were set out by Boulder County. So we have that information before with the list of what they've said essentially, you know the no gathering some of the things that you're hearing from Eugene, just ensuring that we're able to manage that from a public safety standpoint from a park standpoint, etc. Our staff met yesterday to talk through some of these issues and there's lots of details to work through so they're still in that process, but Harold wanted to take the opportunity tonight to get any feedback from the council. I think that the UOPP group, including Don Quintana who's the one that would have to issue the permit if it was approved. I really want Harold perspective on it. And of course he would like yours. So that's the update on where we are we're still trying to work through to make sure that we would be able to do things some of the planning is around closing Dickens Farm Park for example, because it's a pretty sensitive brand new construction area and so we wouldn't have people to gather there and either injure the area or it's also pretty close to the fallout zone, as we are now talking about the fire training center at first and Martin, rather than the Boulder County Fairground. The Kiwanis have changed their contract only have super high flying fireworks so that there won't be low ones but really high ones so that people can see it from far distances. Public safety folks have worked out different ways to be able to patrol to ensure that there isn't too much gathering, of course, who knows how that will actually work. So that's what we wanted to consult with you all see if you had any thoughts that you wanted to share with Harold, as the team also brings together their operational plans for him to consider. But if we have any thoughts tonight, we've gotten the gotten kind of the habit of start talking, instead of talking, make a motion, meaning make a motion, or let's don't share our opinion, because opinions are great but make a motion or say nothing. Anybody want to make it with Dr waters. I'm going to move that we have the opportunity to provide the feedback that said he asked for. And that's, that's fine. That's fine. Do we have a second but my point is but feedback from count my point is feedback from counsel I just want to make sure that we don't get astray, meaning respect. I understand what you're trying to do. I don't think they asked for direction. They asked for input. So I can, my motion is I'd like to provide some feedback. I go go just go ahead, Dr. Just go ahead, just go ahead. I'm going to, I'm going to be I'm going to be the poor, I'm going to be the rainmaker, not rainmaker. I'm going to pour cold water on the idea, I guess. And listen, I love fourth of July. It's, it's like the great celebration of the year for for me and my family. That said, I mean I hope you have a great plan for keeping people out of Dickens Park, because we have seen what's happened as people are returning to nature. It's a fashion and I, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to attribute that to long mothers, but I will say this, we have we had grandparent grandparent duty today. And so we took our granddaughters to Dickens Park. And we didn't stay long. It is overwhelmed with people. And, and I'm probably the, maybe there's one other person out there, besides me with a mask on. I mean, it's everywhere. Social distancing is is a myth under that circumstance. And I honestly Sandy I don't see how you possibly keep when the sun goes down, how you're going to keep people out of Dickens Park unless you're going to put some force. This would not be a good use of our police department, shoulder to shoulder to keep people out of there. If we're the only community in the front range that's going to do a fire range or a firework show, which I think is likely. I mean people are going to come from everywhere. So I guess we're, you know, it would be helpful to know where would they park how we're how, what is the plan, because we're already getting incoming emails about this we're reading about it in the TC line. And honestly, obviously, the communities divided on it. You know, some people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread that we're going to do this. You know, the finances aside, the city is going to put a fair amount of money into policing that night, no matter what happens we do every year in a year where we could use those dollars and other places I just, I just wonder why we would be I mean I appreciate the, the Kiwanis Club and making the commitment. If for fire danger was a reason to not do this once upon a time a few years ago. I think we have plenty of reasons to say, we don't need to do this this year we can celebrate and all kinds of so that's my input. All right, hold on. So, that's input, but right now. So going back to my original point. So is that a motion to cancel the fireworks. I don't think they were asking. No, I'm not making a motion again. Before we're finished, I'd like to hear the input. Right. Right. So my only question is so right now, Sandy are, so I guess there's a, I'm trying to understand the different input and direction. Okay, because I'm trying to get it so that rather than seven of us are talking and just sharing our ideas that four of us come to some type of consensus. So my question is if you want input. I mean, are you looking to say, okay, we're good or you want us to cancel what are you looking for. I think recognizing, oh, sorry, Harold, go ahead. Go ahead, Sandy, and then I'll jump in. You know, recognizing that you are getting public input. We were just curious as to, you know, your thoughts on it, whether, you know, I think from Harold's point of view, he's going to get the operational plans from all the staff members. And so what we were looking at is, you know, regardless of whether it goes or doesn't go, you all are going to receive information and, you know, comments from residents. We're really just looking to find out what your thoughts are around it for him to consider as we look at the permit process. I should also mention that, at least so far, Greeley birthed and Frederick or Firestone will be holding fireworks. So to some extent we have a little less to worry about on the east but your point is well taken about people that will be coming in. We'd like to know your concern so that we can address them as part of the planning. Okay. Thank you, Mayor badly. You know, we just heard Eugene's report on policies protect our neighbors which is the next phase that will start in July. If how in the world. When he's saying you can have 500 people together outside, if I understood Eugene's report correctly, how in the world are you going to keep them out of Dickens Park, or anywhere. And I think that tempers will flare if we try to police that. And I'm not sure that's a good look for us right now. We're trying to ease into this opening up further. And this is like the big bang theory right here. And so, when you sent out those that email Sandy asking for our thoughts on this and you said reply only to me. Was that a curious as to what the other counselors thought. Did they think that we should have it at that point is that why the city went ahead and continue to investigate it, or I don't know what the other people plot on this council. So I'm really glad to hear their thoughts. We only sent that one email that was replied to you. That's my thought I don't see how you're going to keep people out. They're going to be drinking and partying because it's the fourth of July. And once we reopen in July. Once Paula says you can have bigger venues. I don't know. I don't, I don't see this going well. Thank you. So, I'm sorry, councilor Christensen. Well, I have to say I agree with councilman waters and I agree with council woman pack I really I love the fourth of July. I think we all love before the July it's. You know it's a wonderful time to get together with the family and it's the one time a year we don't have to do anything really. But it is also. a big opportunity for a lot of people to get drunk and shoot off things and you know, be kind of irresponsible. We spend a lot of money every year on the police policing this when people are driving all over town. That wouldn't necessarily be the case now but trying to police it when people are so frustrated. I mean I see both sides people are very frustrated they would like something to celebrate they would like to celebrate our country they was. But I really. I also don't think this is going to work out very well and I think this is a sacrifice that we could that this town could make for this year. Because we're in the middle of, of a pandemic, and we all understand that we're also in the middle of an economic crisis and even though it's hard to give up fourth of July, I think we should do that this year. Councilman Martin. If we couldn't have a citywide demonstration type event that doesn't involve gathering, like, you know, for a long time during stay at home we had howling at, at 8pm. And maybe we could promote the idea of people staying home or staying on their own blocks so it would be a gathering of fewer than 50 people. And we'd have Liberty bells and sparklers and things like that and, and, you know, have the Halloween block or Halloween, the independent stay block party and instead of something that causes centralization. I can't imagine even if the city gave away sparklers it wouldn't be any more expensive than those giant fireworks. Anybody else want to say anything. Alright, is that good enough input. I think we should have our fourth of July fireworks. It's outside. I continue to question based on the data that we're hearing why, why we continue as a society to limit our freedoms. It's just self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound we just stayed inside for two months. Half of this community isn't social distancing at all. And the others are still locked up. So, I don't want to debate it. I'm just saying my point is I think we should have the fireworks outside, stay six feet away from your neighbor, wear your mask, and let's celebrate the fourth. And Councilman Waters. If you don't want to debate it you probably shouldn't bring it up that way. Because that's what you've opened up now, right? If I was confident, I mean we've all seen the percentages. Mayor Bagley on the risks of infection when people, when everybody wears a mask, and we're all six feet at least apart. We also know we got way too many people not wearing a mask and ignore social distancing. So, I mean, we can we can say whatever we want to say about the data. I know you've, on several occasions I've heard you talk about an alleged pandemic. Seems to me that two over two million Americans infected and now 120,000 of them dead, 200,000 projected by the end of August. And some epidemiologists projecting 60 to 70% of our population infected. If things keep going the way they are, which would be 8, 1.8 to 2.1 million Americans dying. I mean, we all want to return to, nobody wants to squelch anybody's freedoms, but responsibility goes along with your rights, right? And once we can get that right, I'm going to be way more comfortable with bringing large groups together. But until we're clear that we have responsibilities to go with our rights, then somebody has to be an adult about public health and safety. And I think it's up to us to be the adults in that conversation. Right now I'm going to respond. I love you to death doc, but that's not what I said, right? I didn't say, hey, let's go ahead and have an attack and to refer to things I've said in the past and whatnot. All I'm saying is about fireworks. We're all going to be outside. So I don't appreciate, I mean, I've never said this alleged pandemic. My criticism has been the severity of our response. The economic conditions of this country and our community are self inflicted. That has been it. We have acted without the data and continue every single time we have this discussion to do action after action, wearing masks, pointing fingers and it's left versus right. It's a politicized situation. And all I'm saying is I think we should have the fireworks. That's all I said. So anyway, Council Member Martin, just for the record, no, no, no, no, Council Member Martin, no, no, you're out of order. You're out of order. You're out of order. Cut them off. You're out of order. Both of you are out of order. I have the floor. Yes, you do. Council Member Martin. Yeah. Okay. So I am not that I'm not concerned about people's lives, but I am also being beginning to be concerned that we are in a research crunch due to reduced revenue, both for our businesses and more importantly in this particular case for the staff that maintains this city. And I'm concerned about the environmental damage that a lot of people who aren't going to work are already inflicting on our sensitive areas like Macintosh Lake, which is turning into a wallow. And we can't police it. And now we have this beautiful, barely restored riparian quarter in the form of Dickens Farm Park. And those young plants are still in the fragile stage of their existence. And yet we're doing something that is going to invite people to go out and trample them. And we know. Marcy, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. I fell. How much? What did I say last? Or have I been muted the whole time? We have the plants. 10 seconds. Okay. Yeah. So we get the plants that will be will be trampled into the mud if if people go off and go tromping across Dickens Farm Park to get a better view of the of the fireworks. And it's just seems to me that there is something else we can do. Because the damage that the public will inflict on the areas that we have been working at the public's behest to restore and protect is starting to be incalculable and we don't have a lot of money to throw at fixing it again. Dr. Waters. Anybody else want to fight input? All right. So Harold sounds like there's been no motion but it sounds like we're not having fireworks. Is that what you're doing. So what I need to hear I needed to hear this because we're also hearing a lot of different conversations. And at the end of the day, you know what I also heard is concerns about gatherings and those types of issues. Frankly, we're having the same conversation internally, and I'm having to to sort through this issue. And so I wanted to hear what you all were hearing from your constituents in your community, as I take all of this information. I don't know today whether or not we can operationally do what we need to do to comply with the orders. I wanted to go through that but I needed something to hear. I needed to hear from you all in terms of what we were what your thoughts were and what you were hearing from your constituents. And I know it's a tough conversation. But that's why we were reaching out trying to get that information to make sure we were getting in from as many venues as we possibly can. Because I know whatever decision I'm going to make. And I needed that input into this conversation. That's where Martin. May I suggest as a pilot program you see if the staff can halt the damage to Mac and what Tosh Lake. All right, Harold did anything else from us. That's all I need. All right, sorry if I'm grumpy doc. So love you. I love you too, young man. Oh my fireworks. All right, let's go ahead with let's go on with the consent agenda. Do you want to read that for us Don. Sorry, may I believe we need to go to special reports, the presentation of the cat first. We can do the budget report first. Sure. This Jim golden chief financial officer. Can you hear me. Okay. All right so I wanted to just present this item. I want to introduce it first actually annually we present the comprehensive annual financial report along with the annual audit to you all. And at that time we do make a presentation on the award of their GFOA certificate of achievement for financial reporting for the prior year as Kafer. I just wanted to assure the council that the city did achieve that award once more. And I just wanted to assure the council that the financial report of the fiscal limitations would not do any presentation on that tonight but credit for that goes to the full accounting division led by accounting manager, Dan Hansen, lead accountants. Sammy Coulson and Susie McGinley and accountants, Kim Kluge, Carlin Gonzalez and Haley Burek. And I'm going to turn this over to the accounting manager, Dan Hansen, so she can summarize what's in her council communication, covering the CAFRA data. Hello council and mayor, Stan Hansen, accounting manager. I'd like to thank you all for supporting our operations and what we do this CAFRA this year through the circumstances was a little more challenging than normal, but we made it through. I'd like to give a special thank to Susie McGinley and Sammy Coulson, our lead accountants for all their hard work and the rest of our accounting team. The hard work they put into this CAFRA. As Tim said, the city didn't did engage Plant Moran to perform our audit of the financial statements. William Brickie and Timothy St. Andrew directed the audit and they will present the auditor comments and respond any questions from council. So just a couple of quick, quick highlights on where the city finished for the year. We finished with the total net position of $1.242 billion for the year, the governmental activities make up 508 million of that and the business type activities make up $734 million. That's an increase in that position of 56 million from 2018. You can see the financial highlights associated with the city's city's net position in the management discussion and analysis on page 30 of your CAFRA. For more relevant information pertaining to fund balances and changing that position of major governmental funds. They can be found on page 46 and 48 of the CAFRA. And if you look in your council communication on page three. The major enterprise funds net position and working capital can be found on page 54 through 55 of your CAFRA and on page five of your communication. And then total assets held in trust for our retirement benefits equal 146.4 million. And this information can be found on pages 217 through 218 of the CAFRA or on page four there's a summary in your council communication. So with that, I will introduce William Brickie and Timothy St. Andrew of Plant Moran to present auditor comments. Thank you. Okay, thank, thank you very much. Am I am I good here. Can everyone see me hear me. We sure can. Yep. Outstanding. Great. Thank you, Dan for the introduction. So I'm a little less formal than William and Timothy. So I'm Bill Brickie, the audit partner on your account and Tim is the audit manager. And as mentioned, we're here to talk about the audit for the year ended December 31 2019. So there really are three main deliverables related to your audit. There's the financial statements, which includes our opinion. And that's often referred to as the CAFRA or the comprehensive financial audit report. We also have the single audit, which is our audit of your compliance with your federal grants. The city actually includes that in the back of the CAFRA, but it is actually a separate audit on compliance. And then finally, we have our end of audit letter to mayor and city council, which really is is a communication to you about the audit process itself. So attached to your agenda are many more items than that, but many of those items are really just components of those three main deliverables. So as mentioned earlier, this was our first year as your as your auditors and I'm sure as Dan and your team could tell you first year audits can be a challenge as we kind of learn about the city, your procedures, your internal controls, things like that. Obviously, on top of that, you know, COVID-19 kind of hit us and so we had to do a majority of our work remotely. And I really just wanted to thank, you know, Jim and Dan and their entire team for their efforts. I mean, it really was a monumental task to get through it just because of everything going on, you know, COVID kind of hit in the middle of our audit. And so really a great job from your entire team helping us complete the audit on time. So we appreciate all that. So when it comes to the deliverables, you know, we have covered all of these in great detail with management. And so our plan tonight was really just to go through the highlights but certainly if you have any questions or want us to get into more detail, we're absolutely happy to do that. So the first thing I want to I want to discuss is really our primary deliverable to you as your auditor is our opinion on your financial statements. So that's included in the CAFR page 27 through 29. And I believe is the fourth attachment in your packet. So the city did receive an unmodified audit opinion in the current year. And that basically means the financial statements are in compliance with all the rules and regulations. It's often referred to as a clean opinion or a clean audit report. So certainly what you want to receive and you did receive that unmodified opinion. The only I'll say unusual thing included in the opinion and it's at the top of the second page of our opinion is we do have an emphasis of matter paragraph in the current year. So so one item that we identified as part of the audit is there was a prior period adjustment booked in the in the CAFR related to the city's treatment of their previous retiree health care or OPEB trust fund. And we'll get into some of the details on that as we talk through our audit findings. So you'll notice that we just refer to that that restatement basically in our opinion and refer the reader to note 24. So that's something you don't don't always see. So I wanted to point that out. So with that what I want to do now is kind of have Tim go through some of our, our highlights and our actual audit reports and our audit findings. So I will turn it over to Tim. Okay, thank you, Bill. Good evening, Mayor and Council. So I will start and really spend most of the time on the end of audit letter that was included in the package. And as Bill mentioned, the purpose of this letter is really to structure our communication back to you as it pertains to the results of the audit. And so there are two sections to the letter section one would be the required communications that we have to have with city council and section two would be a few general recommendations that were identified during the audit. And so what I'll do is I'll walk you through the letter and just touch on some of the highlights. So I'm not sure if you have, if you have the letter in front of you or not, but I will refer to page numbers in the event that you do. And so I'll start at the bottom of page two. And there were a few new accounting standards that the city had to implement in 2019. So you can see gas be statement number 8384 and 90. Now fortunately for the city, the impact to the city was relatively minor so the implementation of these standards wasn't wasn't terribly complicated. On the top of page three, you'll see that there was a new standard gas be statement number 95. And now this was issued by gas be as a result of COVID. And essentially what that does is it delays some of the other standards that would have been implemented in 2019 and delays. Some of the new standards that will be implemented in future years so it gives some proof to local units of government. So page three, we speak of the accounting estimates with the most significant being the pension and retiree health care liabilities and expenses. And those are calculated by the city's actuary. And the second accounting estimate that we discussed is the estimated on build revenue in the city's utility related enterprise funds. So we evaluated the estimates we evaluated the key assumptions to conclude that they were recently stated. Moving down to the bottom of page three top of page four, we didn't have any significant difficulties in performing the audit, we didn't have any disagreements with management. We did have some uncorrected misstatements that were identified during the audit, and those would be summarized on pages six through eight in this letter. These are relatively minor items and so therefore we as part of the audit didn't require the city to record them in the financial statements but whenever we have, even if minor uncorrected misstatements we do have to share those with you. And on page five of the letter, which is section two. These will be the other recommendations that were identified. The first one relates to reconciliations as we are going through the audit. It was noted that there were certain receivable and payable balances that didn't have formal reconciliations or subsidiary ledgers that were available. Now we were able to perform the audit, we were able to do the testing through the general ledger and so there were no issues with the balances but we would recommend that the city to consider fine tuning those balances to help them validate that the balances are accurate and complete. And the second recommendation relates to the gas be 34 fund, and this would be our full accrual financial statements. There is a fair amount of work that is done manual work that's done to get those balances completed and to get those balances into the financial statements. The newer ERP system and certainly the transition to the new financial statement software, we would recommend that those balances all get input into the general ledger, which will make preparing those financial statements much easier for your accounting team. So before I move on to the findings any questions on the letter. Okay, seeing none okay. So the the second piece that I'd like to cover and you'll have to go all the way back to page 281 in the caffer but this would be the findings that were identified during the audit. And the first one relates to a couple of journal entries that we identified as part of our audit since part of the audit procedures that we're performing. I was like to say we're happy to help when we do identify any entries that need to be recorded. But but unfortunately we do have to communicate those two as a deficiency. And so about a decade ago the auditing standards set the bar really really low when it comes to these kind of things. And really from the auditing standards standpoint, the expectation is that when we come in as the auditors everything is ready everything is clean. There are zero adjustments. But in reality that's very uncommon, especially when you think through just the volume of transactions and the volume of activity that the city has mistakes are bound to happen. So, again, we're happy to help and identify those to make sure that the financial statements are complete and accurate. We just have to report to you that we did have a few adjustments that we identified. The second issue is Bill had commented on relates to the the OPEB fund retiree health care fund in previous caffers that fund would have been presented as an agency fund. And as we dug into it and worked with management, reviewed the funding sources, really coupled with the fact that that there isn't a formal trust set up for those funds. And we did conclude that that those OPEB balances should really be reported within the city's financial statements and not a separate agency fund and so that was the prior period adjustment that Bill alluded to that was really just moving that activity from an agency fund back into the city's financial statements. So with that we would be happy to cover answer any questions that you may have. All right, we don't see any questions but we just want to say thank you for your work council member waters. Yeah, just a question that maybe a comment on page 281. These I see the two findings with material weaknesses. What's that what was the test of materiality that you applied in this audit that would cause that one. I can see that I can see the numbers on the other one. Although it's a wash in church just an accounting function. What was the test of materiality on on that first material weakness on the first one. Yeah, I was going to say so when it so when it comes to our evaluation of these issues the one thing we have to look at is not only were the journal entries themselves material which is something we calculated internally but also could they have been material. And so when it comes to certain adjustments we evaluate, like what caused this balance to be wrong, and could it have been material so even if it wasn't could it have been so as Tim mentioned earlier the bars pretty low so unless it really is some sort of inconsequential transaction that could never be a big number, then you know otherwise we have to really consider whether it's a material weakness. So the comment is this, given the given the scope of work, and the accounting for which our business office or financial services department is responsible to find to get this audit report with with two material weaknesses, one of which may have been material or maybe not, depending on, you know, what happened and the other was kind of a journal entry look to me like, in terms of the retirement fund. I think it's pretty extraordinary. Having looked at other audits, and I want to say to Jim and his crew. Good on you. I'm what an awesome body of work to the results and in this kind of an audit in mind view. I was a lot better than my thank you. Anything else. All right, I'll still add. Thank you. Thanks. Alright, thank you. Thank you. All right, let's go ahead and move on to first call public invited to be actually we're a first call public invited to be heard how many people are in the queue. Do we have anybody yet. We go where we go ahead. We would need to display the screen and give the public time to call in the meeting. Let's take a five minute break while we do that. Anybody opposed. All right, let's do that. All right, if everybody can hear me let's start thinking about getting back. Mayor when you and the board are ready, we do have several guests looks like we have four callers at this time. And they are just coming you have a timer ready. Yeah. So let's go ahead and close off the room. And then I've got a timer and we'll get going. Okay callers I will identify you by the last three digits of your phone number. And mute you if you could please state your name and your address before you speak you will have three minutes. I'm going to unmute the first caller your number ends in 005. Go ahead. Yes. Hi. It's Anton Dwork 425 Longview Court Longmont Colorado. Thank you very much. I am a business owner. And property owner in downtown Longmont. I sent you all an email last week about some of my concerns about downtown Longmont. And I believe that at the end of June, we're going to see in downtown Longmont based on the financials. It frankly is pretty grim. And we're going to see a lot more closures permanent closures. Unless there is hope given by government action towards incentives programs that people decide you know I'm going to give it one more month I'm going to give it a few more weeks I'm going to give it this much more because I'm seeing the leadership from the city council. In my email I raised two things one of which I think is happening independent from you which is closing some lanes of Main Street, but to the extent she can support that. I encourage you to do so. It gives people pedestrians, the ability to walk down Main Street on that with the clothes lanes from second to six to browse to allow the restaurants to have more space to allow people to feel safe with their masks and they're distancing to be able to really enjoy and browse businesses and enjoy restaurants. The other thing I brought up in my email was the concept of making downtown a common common consumption area. And I've read the statute. I know that's a process. We're going to have to create an entertainment district there's going to have to be a board there's going to be a time period and zoning and things along those lines. And I've recognized now that's going to take some time. What I would ask from you is you have the ability to direct city staff to not do this when you have the time, but to do it now to start pushing, because all of you ran, I think all of you ran on a platform of a strong downtown. And if you continue to run on that and say that in these meetings it becomes a platitude if you don't back that up with some action. Push staff push city attorney's asses to get these ordinances in front of you at your next readings about the common consumption. Now, I recognize that's not good. That's going to take some time, but I have a solution for you that was created by our dear mutual friend Sean Lewis now the city manager at the city of Englewood. The city using the same emergency powers that I believe you granted Mr. Dominguez has lifted the open container rules in specific zones under specific rules in on South Broadway in Englewood. Mr. Mr. Dwork I'm going to have to cut you off that's three minutes a little over but we appreciate your point. All right, let's go ahead. Next caller. Mayor, your phone number ends in 637. I'm going to unmute you if you could please state your name and your address before you speak. Hi, my name is Pearl Spinhart. Thank you. My name is Pearl Spinhart me and I live at 1910 three seven. Good evening city council members I called in the last two meetings and I'm calling again about short term rental rules and regulations. Since I called in last week to Longmont residents have reached out with sympathetic concerns. One woman is a would be home buyer and is going to wait to invest in a home in Longmont until she can ensure that her neighbors will not be investment properties for short term rental. I also spoke to a homeowner on our street, who lives next to the new potential Airbnb. She is equally upset and frustrated and extremely surprised that this is a legal practice in our town. From what I understand these short term rental regulations were put into place about a year and a half ago. I urge you to revisit and reconsider how this is upsetting neighborhoods and homeowners in Longmont and change the short term rental guidelines. On your website you state that short term rentals should not create nuisances for the surrounding neighborhood. How do you plan to enforce this and guaranteed to residents that you won't let this happen. Thank you so much for your time. Let's go ahead and call the next one. Pretty please. Yes, of course. The next caller your phone number ends in 907. I'm going to unmute you if you could please state your name and your address before you speak you have three minutes. You're unmuted. Good evening council. This is John Creighton. I'm on 38th Pratt street and president high planes bank at 600 Kim Bar. I want to thank you all and the city for the support of the strong month fun that is providing critical dollars to many of our businesses. And I also would like to urge you all to support creative, if perhaps unusual ideas to help businesses in Longmont, including support for the road closure downtown from second to sixth, and potential for other things like lifting the open container law. As you know, the time is of the essence for every business in our community. Every day that a few extra dollars can be earned increases the odds that another business might make it through the other side of the situation that we're in right now. What makes downtown Longmont particularly fragile is that the high proportion of locally owned businesses. And as you know, very small locally owned businesses are often working at the margin in normal time. And when times like this happen, it really puts them on the edge. And as was stated earlier, we're seeing far too many businesses that are teetering on the brink of never opening again. So if we can be creative to support these businesses, it in part is about increasing their revenue, but it is also in part showing them our support for them and to increase their emotional energy to continue. This is not just a matter of sales tax or retaining jobs. We really are particularly in downtown fighting for the character of our community. Now, absolutely lane closures potentially lifting the open container rules may create some inconvenience. I think there's ways to address that like putting time limits on things for open containers, not after dark, and lane closures would be inconvenient for commuters. But many of our businesses have endured inconveniences beyond the margin. And so if we can step up and help them, I think it would go a great way in terms of moving our community forward for the long term. Appreciate what you all are doing and appreciate the time. All right, thank you, Mr. Graydon. All right, that's it for public invited to be heard, correct? No, Mayor, we have one more guest. All right, great, let's do it. Yes, your phone number ends in 820. You've been unmuted. Please state your name and your address before your three minutes. Hello, my name is Catherine Baylock and I live at 1920 Spruce Avenue. I'm calling in for the third time, asking city council to please change the short term rental laws in the city of Longmont. There is a short term rental property at 1883 Arapaho that borders our backyard. Every week there are new parties vacationing on that property. Sometimes there are two different rental parties in the same week. These people don't care about the neighbors. They're loud, smoke, cigarettes and pot, play loud music, day and night. My neighbors and I don't think it's fair that we literally have this hotel in our backyards. We don't know any of the people who occupy the house and feel this violates our privacy and safety. Zoning code laws keep hotels out of residential neighborhoods for a reason and they exist to accommodate the inevitable disruptions of tourism. Why don't these short term rentals, which are basically hotels, fall under these zoning restrictions? This short term rental house was just bought in March for $750,000. It is an investment property making the owner money while all of the neighbors pay the price of having a literal hotel bordering all of our properties in the middle of our quiet neighborhood. Short term renters have no stake in the community and therefore no reason to care about how the neighborhood around them suffers from their vacation activities. Here in Longmont, we currently have an affordable housing shortage, making it possible for wealthy investors to buy houses and turn them into short term rental properties makes the affordable housing shortage worse. It shrinks the longterm rental market and increases housing prices in our already extremely expensive housing market. As longterm residents get priced out of neighborhoods who remains, only those who already own a home and don't rent it out short term. Goodbye new families or basically anyone who can't afford to compete with vacationers' budgets. Cities all over the country are moving to more aggressively regulate short term rentals. Miami Beach rentals under six months and a day are banned in residential neighborhoods. In Los Angeles, short term rentals are illegal for less than 30 days in areas zoned as single family residential neighborhoods. In New York City, it is illegal to rent out an entire residence for less than 30 days. These big cities have protected their residential neighborhoods from what my neighbors and I have been experiencing since early May. Longmont City Council, please follow along with Miami Beach, Los Angeles, New York City and many other countries around the country to protect our residential neighborhoods and the people that are proud to live in this community. Please change the short term rental laws in the city of Longmont so we don't have to deal with new renters every week. Please consider some of the restrictions the cities in my examples have implemented such as banning short term rentals under six months in residential neighborhoods so we can have our privacy and quiet backyard communities back. Thank you. All right, thank you. All right, that concludes public, our first call public invited to be heard. Don, can you go ahead and read the consent agenda? Absolutely, Mayor. Item A is ordinance 2020-26, a bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities of the city of Longmont for the fiscal year beginning January 1st, 2020, public hearing and second reading scheduled for June 30th, 2020. 8B is ordinance 2020-27, a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the vacation of a five foot wide electrical utility easement within the Brussels subdivision conveyance flat filing one generally located east of mountain crest court south of Maxwell Avenue and west of High Plains Drive, public hearing and second reading scheduled for June 30th, 2020. 8C is resolution 2020-52, a resolution of the Longmont City Council directing the mayor to sign a warranty deed to combine two existing city parcels of the new B farm open space into a single parcel. 8D is resolution 2020-53, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and state board of land commissioners for the lease of state trust plans. 8E is resolution 2020-54, a resolution of the city council of the city of Longmont, Colorado declaring a statement of solidarity in response to the killing of George Floyd and the protests that have followed. And 8F is approve a letter to Colorado's congressional delegation regarding water infrastructure and affordability needs for the next stimulus package. No presentations on any of these, Mayor. Council Member Martin. I move the consent agenda. Second. All right. So Council Member, Council Member Pach. I'm glad you remembered my name. Oh, for the record, as a single bachelor, I'm trying to eat, run the meeting, take care of two dogs. I'm doing a fantastic job. But yes, Council Member Pach, my heart goes out to you, Brian. I would like to pull 8C. We'll go ahead. And if you don't mind, we'll just treat the motion as being everything but 8C. So the motion is passed the consent agenda, except for 8C. It's been seconded by somebody female. I didn't see that. I'll second. All right. It's been seconded by Council Member Christensen. Let's go ahead and vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. The motion carries. Let's go ahead and go on to readings or ordinances on second reading. So again, for any public wishing to speak on a public hearing item, please call in now. We're going to go ahead and throw that information up on the screen. And... Meaty. Sorry, we got dogs in City Council Chamber. That or else I'm killing small children. But they're really excited about something. Anyway, so ordinance 2020-25 or 9A on the agenda to bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities. The City of Longmont fiscal year beginning January 1, 2020. Does anyone have any comments? And I cannot see everybody, but let's go ahead and have discussion if there is any. Can you take the number down just for a second so I can see my fellow council members? Actually, just anybody have any comments? All right, let's go ahead and wait then. We're just going to take a two minute break, see if anybody pops in to have a public hearing. Considering I can only remember one person ever showing up and saying anything about the budget in nine years. I'm guessing nobody's going to call in, but let's give it time. And if everybody's curious, you're hearing a pit bull and a German shepherd, they look outside and every time a dog passes, they decide to say hi. Then they all run together out in the backyard and make sure that they bark. So my neighbors love me. Mayor, that's been two minutes and I do not see anyone in our waiting room. All right, do we have a vote for a motion? I move ordinance 2020-25. Second. All right, I made that motion and Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez seconded it. I'm all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Oh, say nay. All right, the motion carries unanimously. All right, let's go ahead and go on to the item removed from the consent agenda, 8C. Councilman Martin, I believe you took that off. I did, Mayor Brecht. Mayor Becht. I'm sorry, Councilman Becht. No problem. Actually, I just pulled this for a comment. I know that we discussed this, I think it was before the pandemic earlier in the year. And because of the way the council comm was written, I called Dan Wilford just to have a conversation about it because it did say that there would be the possibility of selling this property. So for the people who were up on open space, knowing that we don't sell open space property, I wanted to say to the public that if we did, it would probably be sold to affordable housing and the homes, there are two homes went on each lot that would be used for affordable housing in some capacity. So I just wanted to make that clear because I know there are a lot of people environmentalists out there watching our affordable housing and what we do with that space. So with that, I am going to move 2020-52. I'll second it. Second. All right, it's been moved by Councilmember Becht. I second it. There's no further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. All right, item 8C resolution, 2020-52 passes unanimously. All right, let's move on to general business. At this time, do we, I guess, do we need a motion? Yeah, I'll move that we recess the Longmont City Council convene as the Board of Directors of the Longmont General Improvement District, move one. Second. All right, it's been moved by myself. I'm seconded by Councilmember Christensen. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. All right, it passes unanimously. Do we have a motion regarding Resolution LGID 2020-02? Councilmember Martin, save in the day. I move Resolution LGID 2022. Is that right? Second. All right, that was moved by Councilmember Martin. It was seconded by Dr. Waters. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. All right, motion passes unanimously. But this time I move that we adjourn as the Longmont General Improvement District, number one, Board of Directors, and reconvene as the Longmont City Council. Second. All right, I made it. Councilmember Christensen seconded it, or I made the motion. Councilmember Christensen seconded it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. All right, it carries unanimously. All right, let's go ahead and go on to 11B, a presentation from our cultural brokers. Updating presentation. I hope that's Carmen. I like Carmen. Hey, it's Carmen! It is Carmen. Yay! Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for bringing us in to do this presentation. Council Leader Algoferri and wanted to get an update on cultural brokers. And so tonight, what we're gonna do is just give you a quick highlight on our cultural broker network, the capacity that we built from 2013 in regards to the flood, to the COVID and how our cultural brokers really are important bridges and have been doing a lot of work. So Susan, I believe, has got a PowerPoint for us. And we're really just gonna go through this PowerPoint and talk about how we've been working collectively to make sure that we're including all community members. Next slide, Susan. So first, I wanna cover resiliency a little bit. And again, this is all woven together. Resiliency is our ability to anticipate risk, limit impact and bounce forward rapidly by adapting and learning in the face of disruptive shocks and stressors. You can see where personal relationships, community led action, acknowledging diversity as an asset, understanding why inequities exist and how to implement equitable solutions and developing strengthening partnerships is key to that bridge. And the difference between the flood and COVID is that we went into a virtual world. And I think as was mentioned earlier, many of our families and especially in our Latino community were not connected at that level. So this is a really strong example of what it means to have cultural brokers that can reach out to people in different ways, especially when they're disconnected. Next slide, Susan. So cultural brokering, you've heard this term, you've seen that in our resiliency for all assessment that we did. And it's that act of bridging, linking or mediating between groups of persons of different cultural backgrounds for the purpose of reducing conflict or producing change. And you can imagine that during a crisis, there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of uncertainty and that can quickly evolve into conflict. We've been lucky that our cultural brokers, our community partners from a formal to an informal. We've built some capacity since 2013 to the present around formalizing a circle which is called Boulder County Summa. And we've got cultural brokers that are in a variety of sectors of our community and institutions. But I wanna make the point that cultural brokers are not just tied to race and ethnicity. If you think of cultural brokers, and sometimes it's layered, I'll use Veronica Garcia as an example. Veronica Garcia works at the senior center. So she's a cultural broker with seniors and then you layer that another skill is that she's a cultural broker with our Latino seniors. Think of folks that work with the disabled community or the GLBTQ communities. So cultural brokers are not just solely tied to race and ethnicity. Next slide, Susan. And I think that what's really important is that cultural brokers are really that bridge that can help with equity and it's that foundation to our work. So quickly, equity is a system of fairness that includes full and equal access to opportunities, powers and resources so that all people achieve their full potential and thrive. It's embedded as an organizational and community value. We must understand and see all our community members as assets, not with a deficit lens and a key to equity as a whole community. Understand who's most negatively affected by inequities and why. Understand the historical and systematic inequities that cause racial and social disparities. So that's been really important to the key work of cultural brokers because we're embedded in different layers of the community. We understand and see community members more from an asset base. And it was interesting that in the COVID report we talked about resiliency and maybe there's a resiliency amongst the Latino community. So next slide, Susan. In 2017, so after the flood, the state asked for us to do an assessment of resiliency. In 2017, the resiliency for all assessment identified five barriers. Resource information, discrimination and fear, language, communications, cultural sensitivity, outreach, engagement and education. So again, once again, those cultural brokers are key whether they're formal or informal. And then it's important to understand that as we started talking about cultural brokers and valuing cultural brokers, we were able to formalize that network of support not only for cultural brokers, but for the community. Susan, next slide. So where are we at now? Boulder County Cultural Broker Network. So we built capacity, not only from the resiliency for all, but we also did a study with the Knight Foundation for over a year on cultural brokers. And what does cultural brokers mean within the Latino community? That led us to developing the Mosaic Report with Boulder County and also developing Boulder County SUMA. And then what we did was formalizing this network. We had just had our first formalized training of cultural brokers, teaching them about institutions, how to navigate systems, understanding the equities. So that had just happened before COVID hit. COVID hits and quickly this group of folks says, we know our community is not as connected and there are many reasons like the barriers that you saw earlier. Access to information, whether that's digital or not being connected. And so what happened quickly is that through that network of formal and informal leaders, we identified three projects to take on. One was to develop and maintain a list of culturally competent resources for Boulder County Latinos and also our undocumented community. So we compiled a list of over 200 resources and then provided an orientation to all of our culture brokers. I sat in on a orientation with about 60 culture brokers throughout Boulder County explaining to them what these resources were, where they're at, what their clients need to do or their community members need to do to navigate and access successfully to these systems. The next one was developing accessible Spanish content. So it's not just the literal translation, does the message make sense? So initially when you saw social distancing and you saw these ads that had maybe skis between two people, well, I don't ski and a lot of other people maybe don't ski so it quite didn't make sense. So how do we make messaging around precautions and safety and access culturally relevant? And so we took that on also. These were some of them were volunteered, some were folks that were paid within their institutions. The third one that I'm very proud of is that we convene funders, family resource centers and Latino organizations to establish a fund for Latino immigrants that did not qualify for the federal funding stimulus. We assisted over 60 families within Boulder County giving them a small stimulus. So that meant fundraising, that mean a process of communication, a process of assessing who needed help the most and then distributing that funds to those families. So that was in Longmont, we had about 30 families that were assisted and then others in Lafayette and City of Boulder also. Next slide, Susan. I wanted to take a little bit of time just to review some of our equity efforts that we've done. And if you think about community and neighborhood resources used to be separated there was community relations. So community relations in 1980 was the first ombudsman between the police department and the Latino community. So in a way we've served as that cultural broker for quite some time. And then the city has a lengthy history of our commitment to equity and diversity efforts again, since 1980. In 2019, a group of team members including leadership and staff participated in the Urban Sustainability Equity Foundation training and then we formed the city equity team which I think was also very timely not only to COVID and to have that equity lens in the forefront as we're moving through and identifying how to help our community but also given the recent situations in regards to the killing of George Floyd and protests in our community. But I think more importantly is that we as an organization the City of Longmont has used and worked with cultural brokers. There's a small film called Resiliencia para Todos and you'll hear Harold say bring your cultural brokers in work with your cultural brokers and that has helped us whether that's been through Envision whether that's been focused on Longmont whether that's been Sam is to bring in the cultural brokers that are in the frontline dealing with inequities and working on equity so that we can bring the community's voice. One of the last ones that we did also was the early childhood education and I got to facilitate a focus group with the Spanish speaking and home day care providers. Those are the not just the skills but the opportunities to truly bring people forward and connect them. And Susan, I think that's the last slide for me. So, I know I went through that very quickly and if anybody has any questions or thoughts I'd be glad to help. Council Pat, Councilman. Hold on, I'm just getting there. Councilman or Pat? Thank you. Carmen, thank you for that. I'm going to be a little, we have an honest conversation about this. I know that you say your cultural brokers for everyone but your whole presentation was about the Latino community. As a council member at large, I am concerned about all of the different cultures in our city. Do you have a cultural broker for the black, for our black residents? Because everything that you've said is specifically Spanish, Latinx. I just missed the word. It's all about those cultural brokers. So, I would like to see cultural brokers for our Asian community, for our black community to help them understand where they belong within the city. How are they able to get equity, et cetera? So, where are we going with this? Currently, if you look at the history of the Longhorn Multicultural Action Committee that started as a Latino strategic plan evolved into the Multicultural Action Committee. And if you look during the outreach on the census I developed a flyer in Chinese which I had to get Rita Lu's help to make sure that I was using the correct tax so that we could distribute. We do have folks for Rita Lu, Glenda Robinson, Madeleine Woodley, who have been our supporters and connecting us to Dr. King events. It's not just about the celebration, they have done a lot of education but they also are part of that weaving of problem solving. So it is not unusual that I will get a call from Betty Nunley who says we're experiencing a discrimination or there seems to be a fair housing issue. And the same happens within the Asian community. We have a large Hindu community. Yes, we do. Folks that contact us and contact us on that. Do we have room to do better? Do we need to invest more? I would say yes. And I'm glad you mentioned that because the people who are watching who happen to be part of those diverse cultural groups, they need to know that they are also part of these cultural brokers. And when the whole thing is just given about Latino and not that I think that that's not important, of course it is, but we need to make sure that all of these people and where they can go, who their cultural brokers are, who they can contact, people of their own culture just like the Hispanic community has you and many and Marta Marino and all kinds of different organizations that are Spanish. We need to market and share about all the other incredible ethnicities and groups that we have and where can they go to have somebody to advocate for them who is of their culture and understands that culture. So that's what I would like to see, a broader spectrum that includes everybody in this city who is diverse. So thank you. You're welcome. Council Member Nidogel-Ferring. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you very much for this presentation. I think it's really important to get this work out into the public. I think that with any strong institution or organization it is only made better when equity is at the heart of the conversation in setting policy and determining practices for the community. So I saw on the slide the city equity team, is that comprised of different individuals from the cultural broker team or were they trained under or do they work in conjunction with each other? Just tell me more about it. So city equity team and Harold actually might wanna talk a little bit about that. So all of the leadership team went through that, folks from different departments and divisions. Some are culture brokers in different ways. As Councilwoman Peck just mentioned, Wayne Tomek, who's our neighborhood resource person is a cultural broker to neighborhoods. And so we have a variety, but Harold, I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit more about the equity and where we landed right before COVID. Yeah, so when did we start this? We started this late in 2019, Carmen. Yeah. So several staff members brought this program to my attention about really how do we go through an equity training program. And when we started the conversation, I think it was literally about my leadership team and how do we bring this to the organization. Something that I like to do generally is not just limited to my leadership team. I wanna bring in a diverse group of individuals from throughout the organization at different levels, different departments so that we can have a more robust conversation because I think that helps us shift the needle a little bit more. And so we brought in my leadership team, which is the folks that generally report directly to me or one of the ACMs. And then we brought in this other group and we went through the six-part series from what is it, the Urban? Urban Sustainability Directors Network. Yeah, so that group. And we went through that process. And I think as we were all going through it, one of the things that we all said is, man, we're learning a lot. And we're learning how we need to rethink what we do and how we look at things. And it really evolved to the point of saying, we need to take this and we need to really work on bringing it out into the entire organization. And it was really an interesting conversation to Council Member Becks' point and the question. It wasn't just limited to race and ethnicity. You know, while those were things that were talked about in this, what we saw is the conversation shifting to the LGBTQ population and how we look at, you know, how we could potentially react to things there. It talked about gender. I mean, and we all started bringing in more than just any one component so we could take a holistic look. And that's when we then said, okay, we want people who were part of this first training to come together and form the equity team and then really look at how we can build a broader curriculum that we can then start including in our CLU program, which is the City of Longmont University, which is a broader training program that we provide to the entire organization and start having these conversations internally. Because we felt it was really important that we work on ourselves and really make sure we understand and we're living it before we start moving into other directions. And so we started that process and they were meeting and got slowed down a little bit because of COVID. But what's interesting is we also have the Employee Advisory Group. And that is a group that I work with on any number of issues. And before COVID, we came in and said, would you be interested in going through this program? Because once again, it's a really diverse group from throughout the organization. And I think they said yes, and then our world changed. What's interesting is, they are now trying to schedule a joint meeting with the Employee Advisory Group and our equity team. So we can talk about issues that we're dealing with as an organization as a result of the world that we're in today. And so those are the things that we're trying to do to really continue taking this and pushing it out throughout the organization. And what I will say unequivocally is, I will tell you as we were going through COVID response as we're talking about budget issues, anything that's part of our conversation these days. I have yet to be in a conversation where somebody doesn't bring that up as something that we have to have as part of our conversation. You'll hear me say this a lot, are we perfect? No. Do we forget about things at the time? Yes. But the good thing is, is people are comfortable in saying, let's not forget this. And then we have to make sure that we bring that, that that's included at the forefront of the conversation. I've had a conversation recently regarding some of our grant processes that we went through and how we look at that and had a really good conversation with outside partners on that. And it really is about the entire community and looking at every aspect of our community and keeping equity as a fundamental lens. And so I don't know if that's what you wanted me to talk about, Carmen, but it's an important part of what we do on a daily basis and where we want to be as an organization. So thank you, that did help and clarify. So I remember back at our retreat, so this was pre-COVID when I had talked about the idea. So we have the L-Mag. And so when we look at cultural diversity as a whole, several of the presentations that I had done, I did like an iceberg. So I've done an iceberg. There's the part that you can see, which would be the traditions, the food, things at very surface level and celebration of different languages, diversity, that piece. But then there's a whole underlining the part we don't see. And that's an individual's concept of justice, what they deem to be right or wrong or how they do that, how they interact with law enforcement, how they interact with teachers and other authority figures. And this is really where the work of equity and policy take place is when we're looking below the surface level of cultural diversity. And so the purpose of wanting to bring forward some kind of human relations commission or an equity council would be to have, and I think this would be a way to kind of combine the two efforts of looking at people who have been trained as cultural brokers from different parts of the community. So when I served on the CEA, the Colorado Education Association equity team, we were one, I was one of seven educators throughout the state of Colorado. So and we had all the races. We had a black member, a Hispanic, of all the different Asian Pacific Islander. So we had all the different representation there. And that's where we looked at our organizations, policies and practices, made recommendations. So really we need to have it. We would, if we really wanna address equity and look at the inequities, and I think COVID really brought that out, especially in the school district. When I only had three kids of all my class who had internet connection and I'm scrambling working, same thing with several buildings in our district, trying to get them hooked up to internet, trying to make sure they had a device, knowing how to access those resources. Because another piece is, and I have a slide of that in my presentation where I have an individual trying to look over a fence and they're standing on a pile of ladders. So this was a little different. So you can give an individual all kinds of resources but if they don't know how to access them appropriately, adequately, it doesn't matter. So it was, so a lot of my online learning experiences, I take my mask and I go sit outside their apartment outside their window or on their porch and walk them through. This is how you get on. And I'm talking to parents through the windows, trying to get them so they wouldn't get left behind. And there's gotta be a better way. And so let's start looking at our policy and practices and implicit bias, the assumption. One of the things that I talked to several colleagues about is they said, well, the kids secondary, they all have iPads. Well, if they don't have internet at home, they're not accessing those resources at home because they don't have the internet to use it. So I think if COVID taught us anything, it taught us the flaws and inequities in our system that we can work on to become better within our community and strengthen our organization as a whole. So I would kind of like to pursue that a little more and see how we can have, because I think there is a place for LMAC, but if we could have another committee that really focuses on our policy and practices and work with our organization on implicit bias and what that looks like. I mean, I think I still go to implicit bias training and I still check my biases even though I train on this topic because we all have biases. Something that really concerns me is when people say, oh, well, I took a training, I don't have implicit bias. That's the most concerning to me when I hear that comment. So I think it's really important that we continue in this work and bring this forward and work to connect and engage our community to be a part of this effort. And that's, so thank you very much for putting this together. I really appreciate it. And thank you for actually asking, Councilor Muridago-Fairing. Dr. Waters. Thanks, Mayor Maggley. Carmen could go to page six on the presentation. That's the definition of equity. Is that for you, is that the necessary and sufficient? What we see there, both necessary and sufficient. It's robust enough, it's clear enough. I'm not trying to, this is not a test. I'm just, and it's a question for me as I look at it. And it's just, and maybe I'm just not reading it the way it should be read. As I look at it, it's everything that's there should be there, but I see a real focus on opportunity kind of on inputs. And maybe the words achieve their full potential and value is the acknowledgement of outcomes or results of having made commitments to equity. I just wanted to kind of test that against your reading of it. Because it seems to me that equity, and I think we're gonna be in a serious, way more meaningful conversation about equity post-pandemic than we've ever been and should be, right? So the question for me is I've never thought equity being only access to opportunity. Some people, as Council Member Hidalgo Faring just mentioned, some people know how to optimize access to opportunity or resources differently than others do to achieve preferred life outcomes, better health, better economic, better family outcomes, whatever the measures are or the aspirations are. And so I'll be quiet and ask just for you to kind of engage with me about this definition. And then I have a very specific application of the definition to our practices in long month that I wanna ask for you to react to. So I would say that what we said and Council Member Hidalgo Faring just mentioned policies and procedures. And so if you look at the slide that says a system of fairness that includes full and equal access. So how that plays out, not only from decision making to policy and procedures has to be examined with kind of each word. What does it mean to have full? What does it mean to have equal? Access to opportunities, power and resources. So it's not just opportunities, it's also that power, it's also resources. So individuals can achieve their full potential as they would want, right? My full potential may be different than your full potential. And for a variety, it's very layered. I wish it was simple, but it is- There's nothing simple about this, I understand. Now, it is layered throughout that. And if we think about policy and procedure and how that plays out in delivery of service and goals, that's where it not only gets complicated but it provides us the opportunity to have a consciousness of equity that flows from the top to the bottom, from the bottom to the top. So let's drill down on one of our practices. Several of us had a chance just recently to get a reorientation to our priority-based budgeting process and the criteria that we use and how we score proposals. This is my third time through the budgeting process. So I've seen that criteria twice. And for the staff who are listening to this, I think it's a very sophisticated, thoughtful, well-developed approach. I'm not critical of approach. But it struck me in this orientation that we were going through on one of the scoring criteria in terms of rating from zero to four on proposals. Proposals that have an impact on 75% of our community are rated a four. If they have an impact on 50% of our population to 74%, they're rated a three. If they have an impact on, I think it was 15 or 25 to 50%, they got a two and less than zero to 25% got a one. And I looked at that and it struck me that a whole lot of proposals might have a zero to 25% impact on the general population, but a 75% impact or an impact on 75% of a targeted population. One of the populations for which we have cultural brokers among the subsets of our whole population that we've heard about tonight. And I hadn't thought about it until this new energy and attention to equity that we have baked in to our scoring of budget proposals, a way to evaluate them that does not reflect this conversation about equity. And I don't mean that to be a harsh criticism. I just think that, you know, we get there and maybe I don't understand the criteria. That's why I'm, by the way, it does relate to a comment. One of the last comments you made was we have to be thoughtful about how we invest, right? And the only way we invest is throughout, not the only way, financially, it's through our budget, right? We invest in other ways. We invest energy and attention and political capital and those kinds of things. But in terms of hard cash, it's through how we set priorities for our budget. But that exists for me as an example and I could be educated as to why I shouldn't think of it this way or see it that way. It just struck me that that could be a way to score proposals that can contribute to inequity in the, even in the context of the conversation about equity. I don't mean to put you on the spot. So I'll just say, and then I'm gonna let Harold jump in because I think that when we talk about budgets and a lot of folks who have been through other recessions know that what will happen, the first thing to go is diversity, inclusion, training, right? Assessments because it becomes very budgetary. And so the determinants of equity to be embedded in a budget would take some work. And I just sent Harold and Sandy a PowerPoint presentation on how to embed equity into the PBB. So kindly they got it. So I'm not sure if Harold has had time to really look at it. I will say that one of the things that we are now a member of GEAR, which is the government advancing racial equity. And they provide us a lot of tools. If you remember when we did the retreat we had a checklist on decision-making and how you look at decision-making and embed equity. So as Harold has said, we're not perfect but I think we're at an opportune time to really look at those equity opportunities and begin to implement those. Do that assessment and implement. What is considered essential for one segment of the community may be non-essential viewed for the larger community. The idea of schools are not resourced the same, right? And should some schools have additional resources given again, the determinants of equity, right? So Harold, I don't know if you've had a chance to- So the answer to that question is yes. So the answer is yes. And I think to go back into that and I've had this conversation with some of you as we've moved through it, that's why we wanted our leadership team to go through this and we wanted others to bring equity to the forefront of the conversation. We've been in PVB and there's some other modules but that's what we now need to build into the process as we're moving forward so that it is more front and center when we're evaluating that. Well, I will tell you why I wanted, why I agreed to say we needed to move forward with this training is if you don't have it in the systems then you have to short circuit the systems where it becomes part of our conversations as we're looking at these things so we can build it into the system. And that is a lens to your point when we go through the budget process and we see the request, PVB is not the end all be all. It is a tool that we can utilize in the budget process our equity training is another tool that we can utilize in the budget process until we can continue moving forward to include that to where it is part of how we evaluate it in the PVB world and my commitment is we're gonna get there when we do this. Carmen won't let me get away from not getting there but the reality is we're gonna get there and those are the questions at least when we go into budget reviews those are things that we look at. You all have asked about, how is early childhood education going to fare when we're in the financial constraints that we're in? And for everything that Carmen just talked about that well it may not necessarily and it's actually probably gonna score high because of other things but let's say it didn't score high and it was in a level four just because it's in a level four doesn't mean that that's gonna be a recommendation that I'm necessarily going to bring to you all in a budget because you have to look at other things and you have to look at what's the impact of the community what's the impact of different segments of the community and I could argue just on that one piece that it's going to impact the economics in our community in many ways. It does no good if we can't have early childhood care providers not functioning because that prevents people from going to work and so those are the conversations that I have and I need to be held to when we're going to the budget and bringing recommendations to you all and frankly you need to hold me accountable for that as we're bringing recommendations to you and we're looking at those issues. But it goes deeper than even that to be honest. It goes in, we approve a budget for new parks. Are we equitably distributing new parks across the community? We give a budget where it's a number for street reconstruction. I mean, are we equitably distributing that throughout the community? Obviously condition of the streets and other things come into play but I will tell you when you look at some of the stuff that Garrett is talking about and what we're learning about other communities you can barely, very clearly in other places see where funds are unequitably distributed throughout a community and that's even a layer beyond PVB where we have to be cognizant as an organization in terms of this. It's, are we putting the resources in too and there's some programs that I have to look at in terms of carryover funds that we had that we were holding but are we putting the resources that we need to into NGLA so we can engage with a broader set of communities within our community and take it to another level? Those are things that we have to and we're obligated to look at for all sectors of our community that are even go into much more detail than PVB. So I gave you a really long answer to your question but the answer is we need to include it and we need to find a way to include it but not just at that level. I mean, it's got to go into our base evaluation when what we're looking at on a daily basis. Well, I appreciate the attention that you're bringing to the budgeting process because that's what plays out in really tangible ways. Right. That's very Christensen. Marcia, you're next, I promise. Okay, I'll try to be brief. It's the end of the night but another meaning of equity is building a share for yourself, building wealth from generation to generation. And that's really important for us to be thinking of. We do, Kathy Fedler and our affordable housing fund does do a lot of counseling because if generation after generation people have been denied the ability to build any wealth to hand over to their children. The average black household has a net worth of $17,000, the average white household has a net worth of 171,000, that's a huge gap. And it goes on and on and it gets worse and worse. And it's because for generate and it's with many, many different communities. For generations, we've had the banking, the real estate, the development community deny red line people and deny them the ability to buy homes that they could have bought but they were denied the right to even take out a loan based upon their cultural group, their race or their gender. And so that's another form of equity that we do do in this city. We try to counsel people. I know there are other terrific programs like Pi were, there's one I know just exclusively, my thing for Latinos, that if you save some money they put some money in and they mentor you all along. That's a terrific program because it's one thing to be treated fairly, but people are tough and they get by, but once you cannot even get your foot in the door because you are systematically denied the right to get a foot in the door to have any stake in your own life financially and to hand anything down to your kids, then you despair. I think this is huge in this country right now. People are in despair because they see this generation after generation people are murdered in the street, people are denied any kind of housing, they can't move anywhere. They can't get a stake in their own lives. And so equity goes beyond just talking about and making sure people have equal opportunities for being treated fairly, which of course everyone has a right to do. Everyone should be treated with respect. But I want us to also think about how systemic the denial of people having a way to raise wealth and a stake in their own life. Thomas Payne in, when he was writing about, I believe it was in common sense, proposed that every child in America get a stake that would be kind of the equivalent of about $20,000 now so that they could buy a home or they could start a business. You know, we've been talking about this for centuries, yet we don't have it and we have very, very different opportunities for everyone. We've all seen that thing where, you know, go one step forward if you have a father and a mother, go another step forward if you live in a house that you own, go another step and this is the way it builds up until you have all the people who are left behind and all the people who were half a mile ahead of them. That's partly due to wealth and wealth inequity. But I thank you for what you're doing, Carmen. And I, it's really valuable to have us attack this, these problems that are just entrenched in America, no way at them from all kinds of different directions. That's what it's gonna take. I'm going to watch more of them. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. This is just a suggestion that I have been thinking about because of the strange times that we're living in, Carmen. And I thought that you're, the way you waited the services that you're putting together and the waiting of your examples, for example, was really appropriate. I mean, it was a profile of Longmont, except that I've been thinking about emergencies and Longmont has a significant number of people if you gather them all together that are sort of micro minorities in my neighborhood. There's one family that has one English speaker and the rest of the family speaks Hungarian, I think, maybe or let's call it Hungarian, I don't, I'm sorry, guys. I don't know, because I only talked to granddad, okay? But when we have, I was talking to Marta Lochimine actually who was telling me about the work she did post flood in terms of getting the monolingual Spanish people speakers to talk about the access problems that they had during the flood, you know, well, during the flood and it took two years afterwards to get it together to figure out what kind of emergency procedures were missing for people who couldn't talk to anybody. And I have been thinking about, you know, we now have health emergencies that are happening and it made me think about the tele translation services that hospitals have so that if there's somebody that can't talk to anybody in the whole hospital they can find a translator on the phone. And I wonder if part of the city's equity repertory shouldn't be some kind of a widespread connectivity resource for those people in microemergencies. So, you know, like the family at the other end of my street, if it was grandpa who got sick and he's the only English speaker, then how does anybody who's not in the hospital in isolation access any services? And I know that can't be your top priority right now until maybe it is because all of a sudden there's a family that can't talk to anybody and they can't go into the hospital and use that translation service. So, yeah, I'm just wondering if it could be added to the list. So, we do have language line, which is the same tele piece and they also now have video services to at least to get at that. I think the answer to that question is it's also, and Carmen can jump in after this, it's also understanding what's in the community and where we need to be more robust to the broader, again, to point you all made, how are we making our services more accessible and more robust to get at some of those issues that you just brought up? But on the interim, we do have something where if we needed it, we could do it, I think is how do we more widely integrate it with what we do on a daily basis? Well, really, and just having people having the helpers know about it, because I wouldn't have known to ask. So, that's a kind of a load off my mind because I live in that kind of a neighborhood, but yeah, I'm glad I'm really happy to know that that's there. That's a great start. So, I'll just add that all of our work around being able to have a strong foundation to be bilingual, bicultural is to enable us to move to being multilingual and multicultural. One of the things that we assessed after the flood was that there was an emergency preparedness guide in only one language, English. New York has emergency preparedness guides in 27 languages. We now have it in two languages. When we went out to the community, I was approached by folks in the mountain community, in the Nepalese community, and what we did is we used some of those lessons learned and we began to work to empower so that they had a seat at the table and they also had a voice. And within those communities, we've identified different folks that are leaders within those communities so that we can begin to really equitably build our capacity to be a multilingual, multicultural community. And I know we've mentioned ELMAC as kind of the top of the iceberg in the celebrations, but along those lines, we have done some things like immigrant integration dialogues. We have done SAM. And it might seem like the larger community is the Latino community, but it is never without providing a seat at the table for other communities that might even be a smaller minority. So as you know, one of the things that I was able to work on is to work with the Native American community. And I've worked with the Native American community for many, many years on different issues of inequities. And I am not a tribal member, but because of this position, it allows us and it pushes us to be cross-cultural, to be that bridge that is accessible, but is also working to empower people so that they can take that seat at the table. They can have their voice and hopefully that's where we're going. We can only do better, right, Harold? Exactly. Thank you, Carmen. Councilor Peck? Carmen, thank you very much for just stating this. That was my point about when we're talking about cultural brokers for long month that I wanted your information about what are we, where do we go for all these cultures and what, and we are working with all the cultures so that that is what our residents are hearing, that they're all included in what we're doing for each one. So thank you very much. I'm glad this conversation brought us to that point. All right, I just want to also say, Carmen, you guys do great work without the cultural brokers and our ombudsman, so to speak, it just, you guys do great. So I've seen you in action on all kinds of things and I would like you to have you. Thank you very much. So, anything else? Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring? So when you referenced Sam, could you say what the acronym stands for? Let me see if I get this right, because Karen's listening. Supporting Action for Mental Health? Yes, yes. I did, but our public probably doesn't know that. Yes. Let me know outreach for that when it's infancy stages. So yes, I wanted to make sure people knew. Thank you. And so everyone knows when we were, when we went to the All-American City work, that was one of the programs we profiled in terms of that activity and we were recognized for is really taking it into other communities. And just so you all know, this is obviously important to all of this, but I want to personally thank Carmen because Carmen knows that, and everybody knows that if Carmen needs me, Carmen calls me and we're having a conversation. But what I want to really thank Carmen for and her whole team, Carmen, Susan, Wayne, the rest of the cultural brokers is, they also let me use them as a soundboard as I'm thinking through things. And I did that the other day. I sent an email out and I called Carmen and said, did I get this right? I mean, was I conveying the message that I needed to convey? And I think having the ability to have that candid conversation and where she can be directly honest with me and anyone else is important to an organization as you're taking steps in terms of social equity and moving forward. And to know to your point about implicit biases, we have them, I've been through training, I need more training because it never goes away. But giving people the ability to say, it's okay to call me on that is an important first step. Thank you, Carmen. You're awesome. All right, just I saw a hand clapping. So that's good. All right, let's go on to last but not least, I got a phone call from Council Member Peck a few weeks ago and her concern was downtown businesses. And she threw out the idea that maybe we set aside council contingency funds to maybe give away some gift cards and whatnot to Longmont families, not all of them, of course, first come, first serve, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 bucks or so, that they would then be allowed to take to the restaurants to generate just some local downtown traffic. That is what 11C is doing on the agenda. Council Member Peck, do you wanna mention some things there? I do, thank you. First of all, thank you Mayor Bagley for putting this on the agenda. I meant to make a motion last week and totally forgot, but you and I had discussed $10,000 rather than five, which would give 250 vouchers or credits, credit cards or whatever you wanna call it to be given out to the public to use in Longmont restaurants. I personally don't care what part of the city they take them to, downtown's great, but we have incredible restaurants. Rosario's is a wonderful restaurant and it's not downtown. So the reason I thought about this is that we do need to help our businesses, but we also need to open up to the public and let them know that council supports them going to our local businesses. Rather than giving any money to the business, I would rather have the residents actually spend the money in the restaurant of their choice. I don't think that that's too much money actually to give. It also tells our residents that we understand where they are, how hard this has been and that we would like to support both them and the restaurants. So I don't know how it would be run if it would be people would, maybe through the chamber, maybe through LDDA, but I would let, I hate to put any more work on the staff, but that is just my thought on how we can be more open to the public, let them know we care and that we really want our restaurants specifically to open up and that we all support each other. So that was my thought. So did you make a motion? But I would like to clarify with you first, Mayor Bagley, that we had talked about $10,000 and it does say 5,000 in the... We can, let's be honest, I don't remember. 10,000, I probably told Harold 5,000 and just figured we could change it. But if we did, I mean, even with... It would be 250 with 10,000. Yeah, each family at 20 at five or 40 at 10 or if we had 10,000 divided by 250, that's $40 each for 40 families. But too much, too little. Anybody have any thoughts? Why don't you make a motion, Joan? And then just make a motion. I'll second whatever you say, then let's go ahead and... Okay, I move that we authorize council to take $10,000 out of the... I mean, authorize staff to take $10,000 out of the council contingency fund for vouchers to our residents to support Longmont restaurants. I'll second that. All right, let's just talk about it quick. Council Member Christensen. Actually, you know what? I'm sorry, let's do it. Mayor Pro Tem, he hasn't said anything today. Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I do agree with Council Member Peck that this should be open to any locally owned or operated restaurant, not just within the downtown district. And I think that probably the easiest way, I don't know if it's the easiest way for them necessarily, but I think they have some of the resources to at least help facilitate it would be the Chamber of Commerce. And so maybe some sort of partnership there as far as I don't think $10,000 is too much in this case, considering how much money is still left over in the contingency fund. And so with those thoughts in mind, I will be supportive. Council Member Christensen. I'm very supportive of this. I do think that as Councilman Rodriguez said, this needs to be locally owned restaurants because chain stores do have a lot more wiggle room, even though some of them are also, of course, hurting, but we're just, all we can do is long month. I do think that it should be $25 that will induce people to come if you, and it will get it out to more people. And so, if I had $25 and the total bill was $40, I would be happy to pay that. It's not supposed to be like a free mail for everybody. It's supposed to be to help the business. It's not to necessarily help people who also, of course, need help too. So I think it should be sort of $25 and 250 of them for $10,000. And the Community Foundation could also oversee this. So that's my suggestion. All right, that would be $6,250, but I assume that you'd want, do you want $25 and more than $250, or do you want $250 and give them the full vouchers? You said $25. Well, $10,000 and vouchers of $25 are any local restaurant, locally owned restaurant. And all right, Councilor Martin, you want to say something? Yes, I did. I just want to make sure I don't have any problem with a stimulus for downtown. I feel like we, well, or a stimulus for Longmont, I have concern that, two concerns. One is this would put the Council Contingency Fund at $20,000. I don't really have an idea of what Council Contingency Funds have been used for when it was really necessary to scrape the barrel and put a patch on something that was really hurting. Maybe Harold can come up with a couple of incidents. If Jim's on the line, Jim or Teresa, they may have to help me. The one thing that I think we used it for during my tenure was emergency spraying because of West Nile. We may have used it for some flood recovery work. You know, if I could just jump in, the 30,000 is what's from the original appropriation. The ordinance on first reading tonight, the carryover ordinance is bringing over the leftover balance from last year. So your concern about it being down to 20 is actually not the case. It's going to be higher. I don't, I'm looking for it right now. That's what I was trying to find. I think we're adding 50 or 60,000 back in. So I think you're going to have a significant amount in there anyhow. I don't know the answer to the question of what uses we've had though. We'd have to check some records. So I remember it another. So you augmented a contract to El Comet there with your council contingency. I remember that one. Yeah. And Jim's right. I was worried that we were getting too low for it to be effective if we had a serious problem that needed to be solved with that fund. So if it's going back up, I'm much less worried about the balance remaining in the fund. I do have a little bit of worry about the distribution of these vouchers or gift cards or whatever they are. Especially if the chamber of commerce distributes them, are they going to go to wealthy people? Are they going to, could we distribute them through Sandy's rebate program, for example? It seems like that would be a much better way to give families a boost and do something memorable for them. And the other thing that I would at least want to look at is can we all kind of take a survey and see who's doing their social distancing really well and use those restaurants? Because I don't want to put anybody in jeopardy. That's where Christensen. So I can, because I've been on here a long time like you, Brian, I can tell you. We've helped El Cometay out at least three times with contingency funds. We have helped out the sister cities program several times to help send kids just places. We have also used that fund to help the program that we had, and I still hope we have with the Arapaho people. I think we used some during the flood because this is when, you know, this is what you have a contingency fund for. It's an emergency. If this is not an emergency, I don't know what is. So yeah, I don't want to see all this go to people's wealthy buddies because that's not, that'll help the business, but it won't really help equally shared with people who could use, you would like to go out to dinner, but they can't really afford it. But if they had an extra $25, they could afford it. So, but yeah, historically, we have used those contingency funds for things that were kind of special projects that just went off. They come up and they seem like it's a worthy cause. It's our own little worthy cause fund from city council. All right. Anybody else? All right, there's a motion on the table that we set aside $10,000 for the city council contingency fund for city staff. Sorry, that's the dog going in the background. The $10,000 for a county council contingency fund. For city staff to use for restaurant vouchers throughout all of Longmont, not just downtown. Correct, John? Yeah. And then are we going to accept some of my council members who didn't have an amendment to basically say $25? I thought that was the original. Okay, then the motion. $25. Either way, we'll put the $10,000, $25 vouchers to be distributed, first come, first serve to people to use in restaurants. Council member Martin? Yeah, I don't think I would vote for it if it's a first come, first serve distribution. I would much rather do something that adds to the equity quotient like distributing it through the rebate program. Councilman Martin, would you like to make an amendment to the motion? Yes, I propose that in addition to what council member Peck proposed that we have assistant city manager, Seder, come up with a good mechanism for distributing these through her rebate fund, like taking the bottom 250 families or something like that. Sandy's over there nodding. Thank you, Sandy. I didn't want to do something horrible to you, but it sounds like that's feasible. So that's my proposal. Will you accept that council member Peck? Yes, thank you. All right, it's still seconded. Let's go ahead and vote on the motion. Harold, do you need clarification on this? Sorry, Harold. I think Aaron raised his hand. Do you like Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez? Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I just wanted to clarify that my comment about the Chamber of Commerce was for facilitation with actually involving the businesses for the voucher or whatever, as they'll have the largest network for businesses to be involved with, not for the distribution. So just a clarification. Thank you. I think as long as we have the leeway to work with partners that we need to, to facilitate it under the guidelines that you all have talked about, I think we're good. Don't forget the Latino Chamber as well. Right. Okay. I call the question. Ryan, you are, you're muted. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion carries unanimously. Good job, council member Peck. Ryan, I mean, Mayor Bagley, would you mind as a point of personal? Just say whatever you want. Go ahead. We're talking about the council contingency fund and I did talk to Harold today. And I think he talked to some others of you about some of our residents who are a bite behind on their city bills, utility bills, et cetera. And we were trying to figure out how, without turning off their utilities, to get them to come to the table to make that good. They haven't been paying for three or four months on their bills and how do we work that? So I put out the suggestion, and I would like you to think about it, this isn't a motion, that we make interest-free loans to some of the residents who have not been able to pay during this pandemic from March through the end of June, that we give an interest-free loan that we pay through the contingency fund, we pay those bills for them and they would have to pay us back. I don't think we should give this away or allow them to continue to not pay their utility bills, but it is just a thought on how we can move forward, help staff, help the residents, let them know that we understand how horrible this is at this point in time, but we do need those utilities paid. We need the taxes on them, we need everything for our city to come back as well. We're a business. So I just want you to think about that and I don't know what the total amount would be and maybe Harold can do some research for us and see how many people we're talking about, what the total amount would be and then next week, maybe we can make a motion or at least put it on the agenda to discuss. Yeah, and if I can jump in a slight adjustment to this too is also some other funding coming in from state and feds that we're trying to understand as well. And so I think part of what we're gonna look at some other options. So that's some other pieces that came into play too. So basically be a bridge loan for interest free bridge loan to the point that Councilwoman Martin was making is that this contingency fund is for emergencies and we are going to be rebuilding for at least a year if not two and longer. So anything that we can help, if we help residents, we help ourselves. We help the city as well. So I just, I'm just putting that out there trying to help staff figure out how we're going to work through this. If we can get enough grants or federal funds or state funds, then we won't have to even think about another revenue source, but that is one that we as Council can help with. So thank you for listening. All right, well, let's go on a final call public invited to be heard. Can we throw up the screen and wait two minutes? Yes, Mayor, one minute. Anybody? Yes, Mayor, we do have one. All right, let's go ahead and leave it open and then let's just start, okay? So let's go ahead, three minutes. State your name and address for the record please. Hello, this is Eramine Nomir, 524 Flickr Avenue 80501. Thank you so much for the opportunity to call in. I was kind of shocked that it worked and I'm excited. But really the reason I am calling is I am representing a group or groups throughout the county that have led a lot of demonstrations, a lot of marches and protests, no riots yet, that's fantastic. And I've heard a lot of conversations so far in terms of committees or groups that may be formed to get, I guess, to come together and start having some critical discussions that we may not have elevated before in the past. I'm wondering what's the best way to work with this community? Had some great conversations with the chief, please have connected with Hadaad over at the school district and still looking to connect with a few other players as well as facilitators and the like. I'm wondering two things, really. How do I get more engaged with what you guys have going on? How do I ensure that the voices that need to be heard? And I'm not talking from people with PhDs, but from us local, everyday people are really the ones that are leading the discussion from youth and where it's a little bit more listening, a little bit less of here's what we think the answer or the solution is. And then lastly, actually, those are the two critical ones. That's that, thank you. All right, thank you. Is there anybody else to thank you? No mayor. All right, that concludes final call public invited to be heard. Let's move on to mayor and council comments. Council member Martin. Thank you, mayor Bagley. I am just wanting to send a thank you to the Longmont Downtown Development Authority. I think everyone knows that we have a number of groups now in a protesting the death of George Floyd and the epidemic of police brutality and inequitable application of the law in this country. They're doing it at sixth and main where Longmont has been holding vigil for years now about inequities of various sorts. And a number of people who have been out there have expressed some fear because in other places in other contexts, people who opposed this particular cause have been attacking by doing things like driving cars into the crowd. I don't know if in Longmont, those fears are likely to be realized, but we do get a lot of people rolling cold as they drive past that vigil. So maybe it's not very far fetched after all. And the LDDA has undertaken to put out a new big concrete flower pot, a giant one that you couldn't drive through or around on the north side of the sixth and main plaza so that where the people are standing would not be as accessible to somebody who is trying to do, you know, vehicular terrorism. And I thought that was very commendable that they would get, take a request like that and just say, sure, we can do that. And I hope they can get it in for this weekend, but I'm afraid it's gonna take until next week to get it in place. So thank you, guys. Councilor Waters. Thanks, Mayor McGregor. I just wanna say that we have a chance to thank Carol on a regular basis in our conversations with him and in these meetings, but there's a whole bunch of other staff members on this call and a couple of thousand others who aren't on this call. And, you know, everybody, it seems to me who comes to work for the city does it for one reason and one reason only and that is to serve in the areas of which they have particular expertise or interest. And I can't imagine a time, I mean, it's never an easy duty. I can't imagine a more difficult or challenging time than right now. And I don't know what kind of input or feedback the staff's getting. I can imagine the kind of feedback that our natural resources folks are getting who are having to make hard decisions that are gonna inflame probably half the community. And they're gonna make those decisions because they care deeply about health and safety. They're making decisions that nobody wants to make. They dedicate their lives to creating facilities that welcome the public. They joy, they take great joy in creating amenities that people flock to because they're so attractive and so much fun. And they have to take a position to say you can't or to put up fences or whatever is contrary to what they've created. And yet it's what they're called to do right now. So I can imagine what a whiplash experience it is. We're reading enough incoming emails on all sides of an issue to know how harsh the feedback can be. But I just wanna say to the staff, thanks. We need you now. We need your best. We need you to rise to the challenge more than ever. And it's probably a time across the country, in every city in this country where the call to duty is more discouraging now probably than it's been. I hope that's not true here. But I just wanna say I admire the fact that you've all risen to the challenge. We need you to keep rising to the challenge. We've got, it's an A team that's out there every day. The more I interact with our city staff the more impressed I am. And I appreciate your work. I know the vast majority of the community does as well. And I wanna say, you know, keep getting up and bring in your A game and know how much we appreciate. Thanks. Councilman Martin, are you clapping or did you raise your hand? Okay. Anybody else? All right. Not if I'm grumpy. Dr. Waters wanna apologize again. Didn't mean to get in a shot and match with you. I didn't wanna get in a shot and match with you either. The really, what it comes down to is I don't wanna debate COVID-19 anymore. That's what it was. So I apologize. That's really what I was saying. We can go debate that another time. Yeah, yeah, it's serious. We'll take precautions, but we'll, I just didn't wanna debate it anymore. So yeah, no, just Harold, thanks for everything you do. If nobody else has anything from here and council comments, do you have anything? No, I just, I want to thank the entire team, the thousands that we have. You know, never before have they had the volume of things that they're dealing with, the challenges they're dealing with, dealing, you know, things that we never thought we would be engaged in, for example, the housing authority. And I say this to them as much as I can, but on my Friday conversations. It's every person in the organization that inspires me to come in and do the best that I can, because they're simply amazing. And their hearts are in the right place and they wanna do the best that they can for the community. And the one thing I would say is it's a we, and it's a we as an organization, and it's a we as a community, and only together can we move through this and be patient with our folks. Because to the point that council member water said, we don't wanna close swim beaches, we don't wanna close bridges, we don't wanna do all of these things. But at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is make the best decision that we can for the health, safety, and welfare of this community. And we don't enjoy it, but just be patient with our folks because this challenge is beyond what I would say now, anything that the flood presented it to us. And it's gonna be with us a lot longer. Their hearts are in the right place and they wanna do what's best for the community. And I'm extremely fortunate to work with a team from top to bottom, left to right, as the organization that inspires me daily. And I thank them for doing that. And I thank you all for recognizing that. It's an amazing group here. No more comments. Eugene, I'm sorry, Mr. May. No comments, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. May. All right, if nobody else has anything, do we have a motion to adjourn? I will move that we adjourn. Second. All right, it was seconded by Dr. Waters. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. All right, it's unanimous. All right, see you guys later, bye. Good night.