right good evening i would like to call to order the lakewood city lakewood study session for january th twenty twenty one happy new year to everyone would also like to mention that we had a meeting prior to this start up thirty two pass a resolution which hires our new city attorney and we'd like to also give her a shout out and welcome miss allison mckinney brown will now be starting here in the next few weeks so we've been at it for a while already this should be fairly fairly quick want to make sure that those folks that want to participate in the study session is not general public study session format where you can be part of the session is one three four six two four eight seven seven nine nine webinar i d nine two zero three nine zero five zero five eric harrison hair we have a quorum great thank you i'd ask council to please mute your microphones until you are ready to speak and then we will start the presentation which is to the point that we're at so mister parker good evening good evening good to see all of you happy new year can you see my issues i don't know if everybody else is hearing that travis can i suggest if you have your cell phone near you can you put that away put it farther away from you there may be some interference let's see if that helps and if that site requirements combined with a requirement for two stories ben what has basically prevented a couple of applications for potential gas station commission right great thank you for that presentation and again i would like to just echo that if folks do want to revisit this whole presentation and is on lakewood speaks there is a think about eight or nine minute video where the community can can review this and so we'll certainly go into some questions i guess for me certainly understand the need on this corridor and i'd just be curious and we don't have to answer this now but as we move forward when you talk about changing this in the whole zone district are we seeing this throughout i know at one time there was one company that is looking or was looking to do eight or nine of these throughout the city so it might make sense in some areas but maybe not so concentrated and so that gets into maybe some of those justin's requirements and then i certainly especially as it applies to west colfax you know hearing from the community about their desires and needs and wants would make sense to me that the city would try to engage because we're certainly not getting what we want through the free market system but it's also a challenging time for the city to engage financially but maybe there's other tools that are available that could zoning code and that being a symptom it could spread to other major parts of the city and i think rezoning would be difficult if we do this had discussed conditional use permits which would give us a little more to say about what's sold inside the store for health reasons these things our necessities and  they are very convenient to all of us and i don't know what life would be without them but they do  y do provide a limited selection of food and some folks choose these as their grocery stores so a conditional use permit could address something like that and then there's  licensing as opposed to a special use which is a designation of its own and doesn't allow us to regulate i don't believe what goes on after the special as long as it stays with was in the original plan and have we looked at licensee licensing would give us a chance to include operation yeah i mean this is certainly the current market the band not so much fallout from the zoning code like it's a gas station has been allowed along cutbacks throughout our history it's just right now the market i haven't researched that further okay thank you thank you and if you would if you wouldn't mind after you speak to please lower your hand thank you and then also i  the presentation i think generally speaking it probably makes sense to have some sort of distance requirement probably across the city i think we ridge for example has something like that in addition to the sort of conditional use permanent but i mean i think having some sort of broader policy would probably help and also help solve the problem of having one on one side of the street maybe another one on the other side of the street because i think you're getting different markets for traffic flow i also it could potentially makes us to have similar type requirements for convenience stores that don't have gas stations and ones that have a gas pumps i don't think those policies necessarily should be the same they should probably be different but it might make sense to have having for both and they say that because i think it's more problematic and more the focus should be on the ones with gas pumps or pumps but there is a nutritional issue with just regular convenience stores too i think it's always worth exploring  or studying we're learning more about i don't it's a big issue that wouldn't be my main concern but you know when you have too many convenience stores similarly when you have too many dollar stores this was an issue in mississippi i know they did some regulation i think it was in jackson mississippi i believe because they had too many dollar stores and they couldn't get any regular grocery stores in the community because they were all getting basically priced out do i don't know how big o an issue that is maybe it's not really an issue here i don't know i'm happy be happy to learn more about it or exploring but i certainly want to hear from you and what you think best practices are what you're seeing in other communities i think te special use permit just straight out makes sense to take a look at that just because then you have some community input you know on each of these projects and people use permits are only effective when they're engaged citizenry in that particular area so there might be some parts of the community that are really active and they're going to push against these kind of things and then those other parts of the community maybe they're not as active but this is as much of could be as much of an issue in that part of the community so i don't solves it and so i think that's what the distance requirements for to help with some of that but i think it does help having more community engagement so at the very least you do get this and you're part community you have an opportunity to weigh i think that's my main thing but i think you know what we're trying to achieve and hopefully you can bring in yeah thank you mister labure and well while we're going through council these questions keep in mind te four that are on the left will probably probably we'd like to get consensus on on some direction to to continue this conversation that i would ask is if you've driven up and down colfax recently and i'm sure we all have we're starting to see an awful lot of places that are closed up and my question to you would be  something better than nothing i am not advocating all of this be approved i'm just saying we have to be really careful with what we craft here because of the fact that i think some empty for a really long time when starbucks was built there it really helped kind of give that whole corner a low shot in the arm and i would wonder if maybe  some of these i would probably support the idea of two story i'm curious though travis are there two story gas stations now that i haven't noticed if there are would you tell me where they are that i support that because colfax is still a pretty active quarter for transportation and i believe that it still needs some i'm not saying every corner needs to have a gas station on it please don't hear that but i'm not sure that i believe that getting rid of every gas station on colfax would be a goal here i could certainly support if we want to go with a two story requirement for new business  that means they're going to have to get a little bit more creative with what they do i could support that the other question i would have is on number for your question there could we use a time frame for future developments let's just and i'll use the word moratorium and that may not be the right word but i'll use that for the time being that we could implement a zoning change then for two years let's say that because i think part of what we're seeing is as a result of the code we've businesses that are extremely challenged right now et cetera et cetera and these look like good opportunities for a piece of property potentially if we waited two years from now to implement more gas stations along the way then there miht be the economy may have improved a bit and it wouldn't necessarily be the first choice so my question to you is if we do some sort of changing to the zoning can we put a timeframe to come back and look at that and say we're going to do this zoning change for two years or three years is that a possibility i don't see why not i mean you can certainly put in a rule with a sunset not not having a lawyer here  possible well if we could look at that that would be interesting to me to see just because i'm not sure you know with the economy as it is again i'd rather see something rather than nothing but i also don't want to put gas on every corner the next question that i would ask is and i really could support the idea of a maximum number of feet you know between businesses of the same type i e gas stations and gas stations with convenience stores i think we could easily do that i could support that because we've got that in other places and i could support so that's all i have for right now thank you all right mister harrison in just to your point councilors in ward one and myself have been lobbied very hard on a piece of property that would require two story and it is just not feasible for that use so it's kind chicken and egg it does sit there vacant but it's also keeping a potential use away from four others that are within i'd say half a mile so it's it's a real delicate balance and that's i think is the crux of this conversation there probably is there's seven eleven downtown that is two stories because denver does have or had this regulation in place but it's very few and far between and that leads me to ms johnson losers for me it really is a free market kind of issue a couple of others things however you know we are very much being lobbied that people need to ride their bikes need to walk need to take the light rail and of course the light rail is just two blocks off of col we've also have a tremendous amount of high density on the western how now two or three years ago there were a thousand new apartment units within two miles radius by the target the old target area and you know you're going to have to help me understand something it seems like an irony to me because it looks like a total of about thirteen potential there's already several you know that just seems strange when there's so much high density and  cars somehow i'm just not catching the point here a couple things and i'm very appreciative of the points that all of you brought up you really hit the nail on the head and a lot of ways i believe it is a city wide issue that anything that we do does need to affect the entire city mayor as you mentioned there is one business that wanted to have was projecting to have nine more of these gas convenience stations in lakewood i don't i'm not getting it why they think that we are such a good supporter of th i like the idea of distance requirements you're all very well aware right there within a half a block of each other i just don't understand that one of my concerns and what's been going on is that the restaurant like dinos i'm not sure what's going on perkins i know that there was interest in that side also becoming a gas station and these are locations that had established restaurants we are using in allowing and what's happening is that land is being taken up with convenient stations maybe at some point after the is a little bit more behind us some entrepreneurs might understand the value of an established restaurant site and maybe you would be looking at those i don't know  i do believe that we should have the same policy where both the gas antique convenience store charlie's idea of having a conditional use permit regarding i do like the special use permit because it goes to the planning commission if i'm not mistaken and then that gives you one more layer of accountability some more eyes to actually take a look at something and to see what the potential is for long term with things i think we have to be very cognizant that there are many there is a twenty forty plan out there to be honest with you i do not know what it shows what it looks like but we've got to be sensitive to what the neighbors are looking at what they want to live with they're paying property taxes close by and we cannot ignore their voices i do not go along with the two story personally there at quail and colfax there's a subway shop i wanted to repurposed wanted to decorate wanted to do whatever remodel and they couldn't or they didn't want to go into a two storey so you'll have to help me travis maybe it's been three years at that subways been vacant we have to be careful that we don't have the kind of restrictions in place there for some people they're just not going to be willing to go along with it and then we have as you notice karen there's a lot of vacancies up and down colfax right now i like the idea of having a sunset because anything that we d you know we need to understand that the marketplace is going to change after this pandemic what people want may change i do know that there is a very high interest in having restaurants return nice places where people can go and eat so that's again my concern about seeing that a land where restaurant are being taken up with this i guess for now that's all i have to say thank you great thank you i think you've answered quite a few of those questions right there one three five all right so i have corridor and i think that this food conversation is really is really important important especially when we're talking about the full facts area the only real question i have is it sounds like we are not yet seeing this in other parts of the city but we could or we're potentially likely is that fair everybody is looking at the same information and not you know they're not doing a market study that shows each of their other applications and so that's that's what happens those yellow ones either under construction or you know under review for that i think there were two of the yellow ones that are still early enough in the process that they could be i do think we should continue i think this is an important conversation  jones yes thank you i don't have a lot to add for that so i can basically just go through the to the questions i think that any new regulations should apply city w for some reason always been the first one i remember we're working very hard on the whole pawnshop issue when they started on colfax and then we had quite a few as a storage unit so i think what's ever probably may be moot point if we do citywide but if you notice it interesting there was only one star between share it in and i think almost to car which is on pierce and stores i understand that and i do absolutely i would personally like to see some regulations on that and not just gas stations but i do throw out caution because i have been in some of affordable housing that's very close to sheraton and those people do not have cars and the only place close to them now where they do do shopping unfortunately is at the seven eleven on colfax and  sheraton i think there's a lot of probably causes for that and a lot of different issues that we can look at just just remember that sometimes when we want to do things we just maybe think of one population and basically i'm in favor of distance required even though there's only one that's going on in certain areas if we don't do distance requirements we can't tell maybe what will happen wih that so that's it  yeah i'm having trouble with my screen where i can only see a certain thing so hopefully you all can see me i don't know i guess the first thing that pops to mind is with respect to business is along this cord or it was just the word loss a fair with respect to this particular issue which supports  free market letting market forces determine price and production competition of the market players dictates the market with the government acting only as a rate regulator so i don't know that just kind of pop to mind but would also pop to mind is how precious our time is on this council and i'm curious about an agenda item such as this when you have hundreds of businesses in our city that are failing right now and you have people like the owner  who is desperately reaching out to us repeatedly asking for help shoring up businesses i guess one of my questions is why are we spending an entire study session on how to restrict businesses why is it rather than how to shore up the ones that are failing because of bid so that's that's one question  invading our residential neighbor and we we don't want to discuss that kind of thing and so i have this sense that we have the culture of regulation in this city to help only the wealthy businesses like for instance developers could kind of do whatever they wanted until the voters voted on two hundred  but businesses in these lower income sections of the city are treated desperately so another example would be the lodging license issue so you my question and then well let's  see then my final question is is this corridor is zoned only for business or if these businesses are prevented from going in does some of this property potentially go to more development of residential type stuff or is it strictly and so i will just keep going i'm happy addressed the lodging license of your pleasure miss springsteen if you want to know the history of that there's there's a long history and it's has to do with over seventeen thousand calls for service i think throughout the years so a lot of issues but we'll keep going with questions and if the other council members want to tackle why are we doing this and those other questions raised i ask you please minimal then if we need we need to add more regulation later than than we can do that we can do pretty much what we want but i but i am not in favor of painting with a broad brush on this so i'm opposed to making anything city arthur is saying right now it's not a problem and i could be if it's the market dictates it but right now it's not so you they're all saying if it's not broke let's not fix it and so i would those are the ones i would be in favor of focusing i'm not a broad brush approach all the way up and down colfax somebody mentioned the cold facts vision and i got to tell you i don't know what that is and right now what the market is telling us is that they need more convenience stores and more gas stations that's what they're telling you i can assure you that these companies that are looking to put these convenience stores in are not doing it on a whim i can assure you that they've done their marketing research they know much better what's going on there than you do or i do or anybody else you bet they know what's going on there are spending millions and millions one of these you know for the fun of it so they're doing it because they're they they anticipate need and they've done their marketing and they know it's there so that's part of that that's the that's the free market that's what the corner i mean on on on that intersection every all four corners had a gas station and for they had for a number of years you know it's kind of nice because they were in gas wars about every consumer people that lived in the neighborhood eventually the market made change change and right now there's only one gas station on it on the corner the other three are gone and then there's one always not they're not they're going to meet the needs of the neighborhood i'm not sure we should be stuff like councilor johnson said i don't think we want to be or should be in the position of losers and i think it doesn't take much imagination to understand why there might be a need for certainly these these convenience stores or people that live in that area that don't have vehicles that are using bicycles and scooters and walking you know they may and they may not be able to go to safeway or or any of the major stores you know in convenience stores is gonna have to lock ride their bike  i don't think it takes much imagination to see that there there is that there is a need here with all the development and that has gone on on on west colfax so i would i would urge council to consider using a very minimal approach here just do it we absolutely absolutely have to do it see how works and if we have to come back and make more changes that's fine but let the marketplace run run its course here you know there's still lots of there's plenty of development left that needs to be done on colfax i mean we're talking about you know four or five different spots that are better being proposed here i mean there's still miles and miles there west colfax that that is open or redeveloped so i don't really see this as a i'm not sure this is a major issue in i would defer to some extent to our i'm really interested in their their thoughts as well that's all thank you thank you certainly i want to echo that too when we finish up with miss franks will start the order again and it looks like it's the ward i certainly wanted to also thank staff for the presentation and the information that they put online certainly i'm been listening to everything and i appreciate all the different perspectives i just wanted to add a couple comments and then i do have one question that i'd like to present to travis in if he's not if you're not prepared to answer tonight that's fine one is i want to talk about the fact that i hear a lot from word for constituents about diversity  businesses in areas that helping strengthen the economic engine in that area get a lot of feedback on how many auto parts stores we have very very close together and competing with one another and so i think that there's something to be said about encouraging or finding ways to facilitate diversity of business types that with any one business segment has a rough patch you know you have less of intensive impact so certainly from an economic engine standpoint diversity can be real helpful i also think that we we kind of need to be thoughtful about the fact  we say you know let the market forces take care of things well with regards to why high density housing you know i don't think that that was something that the community wanted just the market forces to to take control whether you w for it or against it so i think there's some arguments there that you know maybe having businesses that are more difficult to transition like a group like a gas station with all of its infrastructure may be a difficult  so i certainly think that there's some more discussion and i need to learn more about that from words one and two what those needs are but travis where my question came into is on question number four where it's talking about distance requirements and what i'm trying to understand is do we have areas similar to like a union where traffic patterns you turns in that type of thing are more problems attic and a strict distance requirement could in some areas of our city harm people from ingress and egress from a gas station where it makes a safety hazard and so i'm just trying to make sure we're really thoughtful that if we do put in a distance requirement that we're thoughtful about how our traffic engineers for certain properties that may cause traffic problems of people trying to get in and out of those in order to go to the one that's quote closest to them so if you're prepared to speak to that tonight great if not i just like more information on that that's a great question we haven't here thank you i just wanted it has to be real thoughtful about that while we were in that planning process for me just to kind of win because i know the mayors wanting to get some type of consensus i am leaning more into the looking for things that would apply city wide for me it just you know from a fairness standpoint and a predictability standpoint but certainly i'm going to be all ears open as the discussion continues to see where we may want to land and that's all i've got thanks so i did have counselors libya abel johnson vincent your hands were up and certainly would welcome any context that you could lend to some questions that were asked and as to why we're dealing with this or where things along those lines far i guess for me to go sorry about that sure well yeah i think the first thing i would just add is that i think the reason we're having this discussion  there's the reason we're here in the first place and i guess i would just add that you know i i i certainly understand the free market discussions and you know i'm always  sensitive to those type of discussions as well but at the same time you know we're trying to build that community here that i think that reflects really values that we all set out as members of this community and what's good for one particular business or or company is not necessarily conducive or necessarily in line with would better suit the members of our community whether it's our parking requirements which we may dangers to  up pretty well once said i agree with a lot of what she said i would support a citywide thing i think it just makes sense to have some sort of uniformity i think councilor franks mentioned a good point i think distance requirements is sort of just the low haging fruit i don't think it's perfect i think there might be other elements i want to throw in there but i think something the distance makes a lot of sense if you want to have an exception for things that are directly across the street to day traffic siuations sure i think that that's i've mentioned before i think something the realm of special use is probably helps with the community input element i think as far as what our community wants and forty plan how display it again it's a real catchy cover the two thousand and forty plan doesn't ask for more gas stations or convenience stores it wants something walkable something vibrant you know i'm not going to go walk down a street so i can walk past come and go gas station seven eleven gas station that's not attractive to me at all no are too much of anyone else area a lot of that effort was made because we had way too many used car lots over there but that was the purpose of the aspirate asian for for just to become a much more vibrant area the group  a lot of folks that are right there along the corridor are telling us what they want to see and think that community vision is what we should follow and i agree that this is going to pop up  spot as soon as we limit cold facts was where is going to start sprout forty plan are too we shouldn't be spot zone if we limit the area we change too greatly to severely it's spot zoning and we cannot do that  i think the distance component is very important as well and but in as long as we're doing something here let's accomplish as much good through the community as possible it is not good through the community and those people who can't drive to safeway or king supers it's not good for them to walk across the street to a conditional use permit and requiring it to go before a planning commission or council that we can in fact require healthy food to be so this enough to hit a lot of community needs to do a do something that will really change a number of fast for our community members who vincent who can kind of add some more kind of how we got here so thank you for that and just another plug in on the two thousand and forty plan it is on our web site under planning and all of our plans and it is spearheaded by the west co there are two other huge organizations that are involved mister abell named daniels and apple would but you also have either and two creeks so basically that whole whole corridor over there so i'm i see my pictures i don't see anybody's picture except the questions here oh there you go ok thank you mayor you brought up i for and  that's interesting the they are very struggling organization right now and i do not know at this time the state will remain viable which is really a sad thing i really appreciated what charlie said thank you charlie and jacob thank you jacob i would just like to reinforce that we can't ignore the public kindness and jacob you said it perfectly that we need to codify a plan that the community has had part of dealing with and their vision these folks are paying property taxes they have to live with this and they are very vested in this area again west colfax community association daniels well chester apple would two creeks people people have gotten their attention and they want to be part of this three reason partially why we're here was because there was so much angst by the community when they started realizing that so many gas and convenience stores were going in and we can't ignore what what the community is telling us  corridor and yet we are getting gas stations there is a mixed message there i don't get it frankly i appreciate mike that they've done a market analysis but travis also said that some of  don't know what the other hand is doing so to speak i guess that's it for me for right now thank you yeah i won't i won't say a great deal but i do want to point out that i believe that we had spent a lot of time last year looking at a lot of businesses and doing a lot of small business loans and trying to put out support there for the places like the dickies i think that was specifically mentioned i know up and down the corridor in and i'd be happy to talk to you counselor springsteen about  the motel hotel licensing please know that every hotel in every motel in the city has to be licensed it's not just the ones on colfax the ones on colfax aren't getting more attention because as you remember from what we saw last week or last year i guess technically many many of those places are bad i have a personal issue and one of the things that brought it to force for me was the high amounts of prostitution one issue but that has ramifications for all of this city and i think that's what we're doing now the restaurants restaurant some people's point and the shops they're not going to survive if all we have are gas stations  convenience stores and that's a lot of the concern it's not all a low income area they're up and down colfax but people want some diversity and there's not just been work done on gas stations there's been a lot of work done some of us are still trying to get some of us are still trying to get sidewalks and lighting in the area so people can walk back and forth to support a lot of the businesses that are there  so that's where i'm cut that's where i'm going we don't want to just one type business in any area i would think i don't think an area wants fourteen coffee shops on each corner two so  we need to look at the diversity and this is something that was brought forth because people were very passionate about up and down the or and it does not go into twenty four plan and i'd be happy to talk to anybody on council about that too because i'm a little mayor i just have one quick question for travis of the proposed and i guess i'll also say the ones that are currently building there are going to be built the matter this would not affect those but could we go back again on any the ones that are we saw the all the stars that were across there would this affect any of them at all or will it affect none of them  which means they're not you know that they've got no rights they've just got answers from staff on what's permitted now what the zoning is now what what their path is forward until they submit a formal application any most that could possibly be affected to us so what we're effectively talking about is preventing more coming in not necessarily affecting the ones that have already either applied and or are in process or thank you that's what i wanted to confirm thank you all right so let's go to the public input portion this is the opportunity to be a part of this conversation and and to give your input as to what we've presented or the different options that are here three minutes i will go ahead and get my timer going here sorry i'm a little you give us your name address or name and ward get your three minutes going i'll give you a thirty great good evening my name is jeff i'm sure by and i'm a resident of ward one i just want to thank all of you for entering into the third hour of your day so i appreciate that this topic is so important to our award and i've heard a lot about this in our community i appreciate the council taking your time as well  looking into that my question originally which has been answered a number of times is around the three that were clustered at kipling and colfax and whether there would be potential for us to you know there's all these comments about usng free market to you know to whatever result by if there's three in such close proximity how far along in that process can it be it sounds and very i just really want to reinforce i've heard from a number of p can see people's faces because we're doing some consensus building but tom i guess can you read the first question maybe how about that first question should you regulations for gas stations so i've heard what i've heard is city wide can i get some nods no i i just don't want to vote but i guess we could use use use the yeses yes this one wasn't super clear but i think it was to look at both of them and to put some more restrictions make maybe enhancements some more enhancements on convenience only you know as mentioned in food deserts and things like that or your hands up just saying you agree with that ok miss franks go ahead the only thing i want to clarify is i'm certainly still state where i'm learning about this and some kind of just giving my my general feel but once we get back a little bit more data points and we know maybe we get some legal opinions what we what can and can't be done so i think all that kind meshes in so when i'm giving my nod or my yes i just wanted to be clear that certainly need some of that background information to make sure we're being thoughtful and doing things that are going to align well with good legal practices and things that will help that community that our entire community meet their vision of really getting that economic diversity so i just want to clarify my nods are not that i'm in favor of that thing but more let's explore that direction a little bit more fair to say and so we're building off of the memo and then a presentation tonight to really start getting us narrowed down this is going to need more community conversations certainly going to need the planning commission and it will need our legal right we have a new city attorney coming on board so there may be things that she looks at and says oh no you can't do that or this is a good idea and i should know this sort of memorized our entire zoning code front to back but do we have a definition of convenience store are we using cities flying one when we say convenience store because that seems like a building that sells prepackaged goods as a convenience store so i guess to anyone that doesn't really require i don't think there is a definition of it but i guess to barb's point that's the kind of thing that we would have to understand more about is how you put how you define what we're talking about here it's not in our code as a thing that we're trying to regulate well now we're going to define the thing so we better start figuring out and maybe our new attorney has some thoughts on that what have you but i would agree with exactly what counsel would franks just said this is one of those examples where we need a little bit more input when we're trying to differentiate those t most complicated one and maybe this could be something that could be looked at from other communities that might find i mean it's similar to our tax code which taxes food for home consumption i was just going to try to add a short thing which is i think addressing the immediate issue of fuel pumping stations you know sooner than later makes more sense i think the other element element is interesting and you know the food desert thing is interesting and having healthier options and all that it's interesting i think that might be a much longer conversation that shouldn't detract from the other one so there me i would say focus focus on the mean choice market for example which is coming up in denver they're like the whole foods of convenience stores they're awesome you know they cook you a burger by a healthy vegan so you know that might be the sort of thing we don't want to block abel just quickly convenience stores this find in webster's dictionary and it is webster's is generally the source for court rulings so that might be a good place to start mister park it is a good point tonight ok so with that kind of zinger do you want to continue to focus on the actual gas use and see what could come about insularity with  convenience is that enough direction travis's yeah we we can bring something really i i appreciate councilor point we could bring something quickly on gas and then have a longer i also heard i think overwhelmingly from the group on distance to look distance i'm getting a lot of yeses ok so we got that and travis what does that leave us as to more i know there was a number five you had and then maybe four and five or anything else we did not have  full disclosure i was given travis a hard time about this all right well again thank you and we are all good there and  so council one quick thing if you could i know everybody who's been i think enjoying themselves and their families you could get your information into donna in the forms that  for that going forward so that would b helpful if we could have that by next monday the th and then we can get that to the facilitator and start to work that into our plan is there anything else in regards to time established yet but when the agenda goes out we'll make sure to have the time set too so you'll get more detail probably in the next week or so right and trying to balance all of your feedback as to how long you want it to be a long you don't want it to be but also realizing we have a lot of stuff to cover a lot of stuff from previous years and we're going to try to find the best opportunity will be in this format which isn't always amazing but vincent i just had a question so heather will not be reaching out to us individually for input this year we'll just send it to her and she'll send it back to us that's the plan right now ok we didn't hear anyone request thank you and then finally we've been trying to do this for a long time but during the year you know all of you are on all kinds of different committees and right now we have a legislative one that's start up we have a doctor called committee that just passed an amazing thing for us so i would like to go to committee reports during our study sessions and i remember correctly we used to do this a long time ago and then counsel reports are that the second regular meeting won so i want to really focus on your committee reports it's important for the community to hear what's going on and what you're doing and so i'd like to take the study session for reports to offer that if you have any updates on committees denver regional council governments and see dot's safe streets program we got awarded the largest award for their program of ten million dollars that's gonna come to helping make believe one of the most dangerous in the region so what that money is supposed to go towards helping with lighting and crosswalks and widening sidewalks and different things like that that will really benefit the col executive report i'll give a little more information a little more detail next week i plan to do that i thought jay's memo really was had a lot of detail but all i'll help that by doing it at this meeting so the public due to coleman so it's going to be an unusual session again this year a little different we're going to have to be nimble and flexible the way that we the way that we meet on friday the  legislation probably have a better idea of how far that i going but it looks like an interesting year again thank you thank you and you did adopt a policy statement is that correct did you do that already so if yes yes we did and i'd like to thank ben he took a look at there were some things that needed to be changed some common sense kinds of things we did have some discussion on it too yes it did pass and it's a good document it's guiding document frankly not only for us as a committee but also for our legislat they can see the way that we are viewing things and where our priorities are it's a good document thanks a homeowners emergency and so it was rather inconvenient for both of them and i'd like to thank them for going taken that extra step spend time with us we addressed a number of things including a cycle but we don't define election cycle so we have an election cycle definition ready and we finished all but a couple of things one thing that i would really like is to continue discussing before we bring this to coun is that there are certain certain roadblocks that shouldn't be in the way of running for office and one of them is a parent or a child with a dependent adult who have to hire someone to watch their charge and i would like to make that kind of care a legitimate campaign expenditure so hopefully we'll be back in session as the campaign finance committee for a very brief meeting and a week or two and then we'll bring it all council so i'll have any thoughts about any of those things please let us know thank you paul i just want to give a quick update on the housing policy commission we finished kind of our illicit station work on short term rentals in late last year that information was all provided via our staff robert smith provided to staff and miss hudson put together a team of people who need to be engaged in that everyone from city clerk's office legal and all of those those folks and certainly code enforcement and so all that information is being reviewed they're kind of contrasting that to the earlier ordinance that had been provided to council and so that will be reviewed i'll help clarify any open points for them and the formats either gonna be going forward that comes back to the housing policy commission for maybe filling in some gaps then going to the council for a study session it's such a big topic and complex topic that we certainly want to get it in front of all of you so you have a chance to kind of review this study session format so more to come once read they're going to go back to the public housing policy commission and then to a study session or directly to a study session that  determined and i really do want to say that it's hard to know that robert has been exceedingly helpful very responsive appreciate that and certainly i know that your directors and others have a lot going on and so i appreciate them taking the time to pore through quite a lot of information and a topic that we know is quite complex i just want to give give thanks to staff as well and that's my report thank  okay i just wanted to give you a brief update we have our next budget and audit committee meeting on january twenty th at five thirty it'll be zone meeting all members of council will be invited to working on a a agenda we don't have that quite together yet but one of them will be to introduce our new member who is a gentleman by the name of mark marlin mcdaniel you'll be can meet mister mcdaniel but there's so much new processes that are going through i think one of the things that's been they said that has been good about this whole thing is since we've been meeting on since they'd been meeting on zoom the parents have had to  able to have a lot more input into this they've been able to meet what's coming up is the part i think that those of you who have been on the committee and those of you who are look forward to is the tremendous increase that happens for these people who are in head start as they go into kindergarden and how they're reading and math and english and second language everything just improved so much and they said it's been it's been great this year so we're chair of the committee the first one we have the attorney recruitment obviously that was a wild success we did very well and i'm sure we are all pleased with the results that committee the other committees the ongoing development dialog we just met december th our third meeting on districts and possible of reforms to our existing laws on districts in lakewood we did put together we had a pretty good consensus on a lot of recommendations that will be brought forward to the entire council at some point that will appear on the agenda and we will discuss those recommendations further with the whole body if anyone is more interested in specifics i do have those materials both mister hutchinson who did a fantastic job with his memoranda we have all the minutes from the meetings with folks along so all of that i think mister parker and his team laura and everyone that has helped us out in that committee again three meetings on that one topic we got into the weeds pretty far on some of this stuff sothat was challenging upcoming for us this year in the short term we have some eighty to discussion group home discussion and then inclusionary zoning will be a big topic as well and i know that in the in the near term those are the topics that are coming up and then i'm sure we will have more exciting ones discussions about whether this particular committee is just a great committee or the greatest committee  i'm sure we'll need to find a consensus on that all i have thank you all and so i've had the opportunity a lot of things that move fst and as you know today we move to orange which is really cool create a little bit of a firestorm for a lot of folks trying to figure out how to navigate so a big shout out to miss hobson the managers and the county manager they were working up until late new year's eve trying to figure out how to get the five star program going and so luckily they got a little bit more time and what this will do now is now that we're orange eventually it will allow businesses to operate at yellow there's still a lot of confusion in some of the directives which again has caused some consternation but that's how fast these things are flying and so the metro mayors continue to meet with the governor we'll have a call with him on thursday and we meet with the county folks and the managers on wednesdays for phone calls talking about all the different things that are going on so i can continue to keep you up to date on those did meet with the cml senator gray and representative winter they are trying to craft some transportation language for some transportation bills and try to utilize some of those dollars so that'll be interesting for our legislative committee to weigh in in regards to that there's also been some talk regarding some affordable housing and you can imagine a lot of different folks are lobbying us to say please let the legislature know that you know be careful on the regulation this year for businesses for hospitals any kind of new mandates are going to be quite challenging as people are coming out of that and trying to get through this and so that's kind of a quick quick update of what i've been up to and i think this went really well so i think you  it's cool to see all the hard work and i think the community might only see us on monday nights but they get to see this group's meeting a lot to do a lot of different things with happy new year and we will see you on