and eighteen a couple of notes before we go into the pledge of allegiance we have our wonderful team from channel eight here taking a little extra video this evening four keys to the city so if you're hoping you'd be on the ten o'clock news you probably won't be but we may see you in an upcoming feature on channel eight so with that i'd ask if you could please stand for the pledge of allegiance remain standing for a moment of silent prayer and be nice if we could all just keep in our thoughts and prayers our law enforcement officers throughout the metro area especially in douglas county thank you please be seated get up in jotham place i'm happy to be here with you tonight to represent kaiser permanente and whoops sorry this is my first time all right we're pleased to be here because we believe then such as the colfax marathon are ways to help coloradans and city of lakewood employees and residents be healthy so for kaiser permanente events like this are a great investment in our region the colfax marathon gets coloradans healthy and it built economic vitality for businesses and communities along the route in addition to the colfax marathon kaiser permanente invests in communities where city of lakewood employees and residents live work and play for instance were one of the good and this is a friendly issued and it issue a challenge to other cities and counties to get everybody act and engaged in the marathon so thank you i always think year thirteen and the marathon was started by the cities of denver lakewood aurora because colfax is twenty six miles long and that was the original year when we ran point to point runners said oh that's not as much fun so we changed it up a little bit now we have thirty nine miles of courses going on sunday and that's a half marathon course and then we have the course coming out to lakewood which is the marathon the marathon relay and then the urban ten miler which starts at rem cad so it's been great fun we have now nineteen thousand runners so we went from four zero in the early years and have just grown radically a lot of those runners raising money for charity so every year we have about two hundred charities that use us to may raise funds and awareness and i'm happy to say over the last five years they've raised about two million dollars for themselves and they keep all the money they raised which is really fun so talking about that relay a little bit we have a whene largest relays in the country we have about one three hundred teams of that we have eight hundred that are corporate and government and they're out there running for bragging rights they're out there running for fun but at the end of the day they're running for money a little bit different with colfax you know we're colfax we love to be different and we love to be unique so we do that the same way with our race um instead of giving our money to the elite athletes that win the marathon or half marathon we give them to relay teams in the construction division or the health care accounting government employees you guys have won races before and give it money and when you receive the money you turn around and give it to charity so every year now we give over a hundred thousand dollars in prize money to charities via that these winning relay teams and there's about sixty awards so it's been really fun we have to tell you that this year we even have a division we started at two years ago called the public school teacher division and every year i got to say jeff co schools has some winning teams and this year i do believe that bear creek ka is in lakewood and they want money for their school and they win one thousand dollars when they win so it's great fun we're all about the money we're all about the fun and we're all about the charitable and the giving back to the communities so i'm here tonight really to thank lakewood for all the work that you guys have done over the years it's just been terrific i have a wonderful plaque this is actually the plaque with a medal inside but i call it your best desk to ever because you can play along the way but just to give you an idea of the things that lakewood does every year for us is just in terms of entertainment nina rock lee has just been terrific since day one with the marathon she entertains runners at rock lee music they have an exchange zone there where if you're in the relay remember high school you have to pass the baton you do it out by rock lee music and she's always been just terrific to work with we love running through the glens all the neighbors are out handing out oranges it's really wonderful and moore's neighborhood association and two creeks have been around since the beginning and provided things like water stations or candy which the runners love or other things along the cad because they allow us to start our urban ten miler race there we about thirteen hundred runners that start there which is terrific and i think you get to be on the mic that race morning entertaining all the runners so it's a it's a great sunday of races and then we appreciate everybody who runs the k on saturday that's just a great fun race and for those of you who say i want to train this year but i want to train more laid back that's our k bring your dog yeah you guys really the two of you right come on down these guys have been great we really for us for thirty nine miles of runners you know you stand at the start and finish in city park and to know that you've got runners out all over the cities and to know that in lakewood you know we've got them so well taken care of not only the police department but also with the volunteers it's trick terrific oh yeah come on over you had to come over w gets hardware but it's just absolutely wonderful and my favorite call i have to tell you for the last few years has been when one of these guys calls me at the end of the race and that said hey sergeant hoover here we're all good and it's just a wonderful feeling and it's wonderful the runners are so well protected so thank you so much you guys but you know you can't leave without a little bit of  right sunglasses you got to wear that that's great  the other group i'd love to thank is the west metro fire i think dean wall is here tonight correct well we'll save them a hat but i just want to say that as you run and you're a marathon runner as you were leaving denver and you're running into lakewood you'll see two huge ladder trucks one denver one lakewood with american flag hanging down and it's just absolutely spectacular when you're a runner to have that patriotic feel going on on the course but you know that takes west metro fire really getting out there that morning getting  truck you know working with denver and and the runners so appreciate that's that's terrific dean wall we love to thank he's been around for years and he's the one who brought four years volunteer of the firefighters to the finish line to hand out medals so again he's just been a terrific person and a terrific asset to the marathon over the years so i don't think he's been able to make it but know that he will get a hat sunglasses and the whole nine yards as well so thank you so much we hope to see you out there k is great full marathon any takers mike i don't know you but so it's your year right oh next year but thank you so much and thank you for really supporting all these runners as they raise money for charity and really strive to have health and fitness all right so  thank you to the marathon and as you heard kaiser permanente is a wonderful sponsor of this great event and the fun k is on saturday so i think all of council could do that and i guess we could try to do a real relay team this year from th we'll work on it but in all seriousness it is a great event when we are at the k fun run girls on the run was down there with all kinds of school aged girls learning independence and running and it was really cool to see all the effort and all the families out there and i'll tell you our police not only do they keep the runners safe and the pedestrians safe and the motorists but i had the opportunity to be with sergeant hoover when we got called to one of the motels during the run and saw some things i wish i'd never have seen in my life so not only are they making sure everybody's safe but they're continuing to make sure that the city of lakewood is safe all along our wonderful west colfax corridor which has a little bit of everything to offer so thank you again thanks for coming out and we'll see you in may all right thank you manager from arapahoe county i'm also a past president for the national institute of government purchasing and also now the president of the local chapter of the rocky mountain government or purchasing association the city of lakewood has received the two thousand seventeen agency certification award from the uniform universal public procurement council the award is an annual recognition for which qualifying agencies must apply every year for consideration the city's purchasing dedicated to maintaining the highest level of education and certification in the small agency category a hundred percent a qualifying purchasing staff must be certified by the upp cc to receive this award  there are only two agencies that have received this in colorado and it was a polk county was one several years ago and now the city of lakewood and so it is my honor that i would like to recognize the staff from purchasing great pleasure and honor did i give this presenters guys to you guys for your outstanding certification your efforts and education and the work you do for the city and making sure that everybody is safe because they really people don't transparent government that's really important to us and that's part of our values and ethics that we agree to when we receive our certifications so what i'd like to do now is introduce our staff here we have larry door the  join us tonight so once again it's very much an honor to receive this award and we thank you for your support i also i forgot to mention when we were talking about the relay vanessa surratt a is our employee representative on the colfax marathon board and helps keep the city lakewood in the loop and coordinate everything so thank you vanessa for your hard work i think she stepped out so before we go to public comment i'm gonna move things around a little bit there's been a lot of interest in the denver federal center and the colorado coalition for the homeless and miss hodson has invited mister john parr vince key from colorado coalition to come out tonight this will just be a quick update for the council for the community because it was not something that we had or we're able to get on the agenda we'll make sure that we have all the contact information given out tonight and then if this project proceeds we will have the coalition back to have questions a full blown study session and community engagement welcome thanks for coming out thank you mayor thank you city council members it's a pleasure to be able to present what we feel is a exciting opportunity for the city the county in our state i'm john parr vince key and for the past thirty two years i served as a president and ceo of the colorado coalition for the homeless the coalition is a nonprofit organization that provides integrated healthcare housing and employment and other support services to more than eighteen zero individuals and families each year throughout the state we've been working over the last thirty three years throughout the state and in conjunction with other agencies here in lakewood and jefferson county  directly providing services to families and individuals now the coalition applied to the us department of health and human services just on december nd to acquire the federal center station property this is the fifty nine acre parcel owned by the federal government managed by the general services administration where the gsa is located immediately north of the federal center rtd station and is a property that was the coalition filed legal action to overturn huds initial determination and succeeded in a term determining that the property was indeed suitable to assist the homeless in accordance with title five of the stewart b mckinney act now under title five federal properties that are surplus must be made available by lease or deed to organizations to assist the homeless as the first priority now a hud determines whether a surplus property is suitable to assist the homeless the department of health and human services reviews and approves applications from eligible organizations for a proposed uses to serve that homeless population now since the property is owned by the federal government and is a federal resource hhs has the sole authority to approve this application to use the property in accordance with title five have out reached a number of officials here in lakewood in jefferson county in order to get input on our proposal but these officials you all have no role in the actual decision to transfer the property as that as a federal matter but we want to keep you informed in what we're proposing now gsa and hhs have both determined that organizations can only apply to acquire the full fifty nine acres under title five and it will not accept applications for only a portion of the site title five also requires that the property be solely used to assist persons who are defined as homeless families and jules and children the coalition's application to acquire the property is currently under review by hhs they have asked for some clarifications and we will provide those additional information by the end of this week we are proposing a two phase use and redevelopment of the site in phase one will use the property to create a campus of emergency and transitional housing and services for homeless families individuals using temporary structures constructed or placed on the site by the coalition this will allow us to work with other human service agencies in the county and in the city to meet the emerg immediate needs of families and individuals here while completing the planning for the second phase of the development in phase two we will replace the temporary structures with newly constructed permanent buildings to be used as permanent supportive housing permanent affordable housing transitional housing and other supportive services for families and individuals who are homeless the area north of  avenue and up to sixth avenue we will be used as a solar energy collection farm to provide energy for the proposed uses during both phases of the project as well as providing job training for homeless to visit  individuals now during phase one we'll use a combination of manufactured housing such as fema trailers geodesic dome structures and larger insulated tent structures to provide emergency and transitional housing for homeless families and individuals additional temporary structures will be used to provide support services including counseling employment and vocational services and integrated health services now i've heard rumors that some folks think that we want to create a tent city on the site this is not accurate we are not proposing a cent tent city on the site we are proposing to use the number of temporary structures for emergency shelter transitional housing and support services but only families enrolled in the program will be able to reside on the site and referrals for the program will need to come from local human service agencies and through the metro wide one home coordinated intake an assessment system now the container housing structures will have individual bathrooms and showers there will be community bathrooms and showers for those residing in the emergency shelters and the coalition is committed to ensuring the safety and security of all program participants and to ensure that during that the site during phase one will be limited by fencing and access will be limited by security personnel now in phase two the pre proposed to construct five mixed use apartment buildings on the site to provide housing for up to six hundred units of housing for transitional and permanent supportive housing for families and individuals with community spaces and social services on the first levels these four story structures will be very similar to the apartment buildings that we have constructed in other parts of the met denver area including our most recently completed development at th in colorado boulevard in denver the renaissance in north colorado station we have developed more than sixteen or eighteen hundred units of housing in the metro denver area over the past twenty years including the renaissance at concord plaza development at th and kendall street here in lakewood we pride ourselves in developing quality housing for formerly fa homeless families and individuals and in helping those individuals become productive members of the community in devising i'm sorry in designing the properties to look like in operate like market rate housing now we've been working with agencies here in jefferson county and in lakewood to obtain input on the priority needs for the homeless population to help support this proposal we'll continue to work with these agencies to implement a successful the while helping address the increased homelessness here in the county we plan to give priority to jefferson county residents for the emergency and long term housing and services at the site we plan to conduct meetings with the general public here in lakewood as soon as hhs approves our application for the site and we will form an advisory committee of interested persons to work with us to provide ongoing input into the development we also hope to work in partnership with you all with the mayor with the city as a whole to make this a successful project we think that this is a unique opportunity to address the growing crisis of homelessness here in lakewood in in jefferson county according to the recent point in time count there are three hundred and ninety four individuals two hundred and forty four families that were counted as homeless on a single night in january of last year and we estimate that the actual number of people experiencing homelessness of the year is two and a half times that about so over ten over a thousand individuals in jefferson county indeed the colorado department of education estimates that there are two thousand seven hundred homeless children alone in the jefferson county school district as the housing market continues to become less affordable to low income families here throughout the state and particularly here in jefferson county and in lakewood the coalition is working to meet immediate and long term needs by helping these families and individuals by creating supportive housing integrated health care and employment for families  individuals including homeless veterans over the last three decades we believe that we have proved that providing affordable and supportive housing and health care helps our communities provide safe environments for children to learn for adults to receive medical treatment and for many individuals who have experienced trauma to receive much needed behavioral and mental health services such housing and services also reduce the unnecessary taxpayer costs of emergency services including police courts emergency room hospital costs detox and other emergency service costs we believe the federal center property provides a once in a generation opportunity to create a new development to make lakewood a community where everyone has a safe place to call home in an opportunity to thrive we look forward to working with you and  mayor all of the city council members over the next few months in the next few years to make this as a successful project and we're glad to be partners with you thank you mister prince keifer those up here as well as those in the ski gave us a copy of the statement that he just made so the city clerk will distribute that tomb we'll make sure that's posted on the website tomorrow and also a five page  document just referring to what he just spoke of with pictures and again we'll make sure that this is posted each of you will have a hard copy and this will be posted again on the web site just fyi thank you next item is public comment  this is the point of meeting where the public is invited to address the city council on items that did not appear on the agenda all comments should be directed to the city council i ask that all in attendance observe the decorum of the city council chambers and refrain from applause or audible support or discord with the speaker everybody will have three minutes this little black box up here will be green for two and a half at two and a half it'll go yellow and when your time is up it'll go red and we'll politely try to move you on  i know there's some folks here who signed up to speak on item twenty seventeen seventeen we'll have a sec sec separate public hearing on that later on in the evening so first up on the roster is good evening evening how you guys doing good all right my name is cortland coffee i'm a young father resident business owner here in lakewood colorado i'm here today in regards to the campaign finance proposal being forwarded by councilman charlie abel mister abel has said that he wants to ensure fairness and transparency when it comes to how our local campaigns are financed and i want to say that i agree transparency and fairness are values that i share however i am concerned that those may not actually be the motivations behind councilman abel's proposal my fear is that these proposed solutions are actually veiled efforts to control and silence positions that mister abel and other members of council disagree with it's no secret that large sums of money from pacs and independent expenditure camp organizations were spent on both sides in the most recent lakewood election it's also clear that thousands of dollars were poured into organizations that helped fund the strategic growth initiative the sgi ballot proposal some of these organizations have public ties to members of council this flies in the face of the stated public position of councilman abel who's repeatedly stated on the record that he did not know where he stood on this issue take for example more than twenty thousand dollars that has been donated to the sgi effort from a nonprofit called lakewood neighborhood partnerships in our current rules where that money comes from doesn't have to be disclosed but i've recently discovered that the website for lakewood neighborhood partnerships is actually registered under councilman abel's name this becomes an interest link that potentially ties counselor able to both this anti growth initiative and by his own definition the flow of dark money into the campaign of this isn't lost on myself or anybody else i started leadership lakewood during this last election cycle to oppose these types of anti growth efforts in lakewood many of my peers believe that this half baked approach to growth proposed by the backers of the sgi are not only dangerous but a regressive way to deal with growth in our community proposals like sgi will eventually limit access to myself and families like myself to access attainable housing as well as hurt small businesses these businesses that are key part in our local economy in conjunction with leadership lake woods grassroot donors we did receive several large donations which enabled our group to spread our message these donors didn't control the message but the funds gave local residents a voice against unnamed funding sources that were backing the strategic growth initiative and the efforts to pass s the reality is that in many lakewood residents can't afford to fund these types of campaigns without the help of outside support especially when one side is made up of younger less resource members of the community like myself i'm a strong believer in transparency and fairness and campaign finance and i would love to be a part of creating a better system together let's be clear these funding tactics that we're addressing here are realities on both sides of these issues and i'd like to ensure that the changes in the process result in a fair and transparent process that reflects all views and positions and not those that you may just agree with and support  year old and my wife and a very busy schedule but i'm relatively newly located here in lakewood over the last couple years and it's my intention to become very very involved here so i planned to see you guys quite  regularly and i apologize that this may be the first time for some of you guys but i do follow things pretty closely and i will be here pretty consistently from here on out thank you sir mister mace you didn't think i'd be able to tell tried to trick me with the initials tonight come on down oh my goodness i have to mister young's but robert its robert young yes mere paul counsel i'm here tonight to support the nomination of councilwoman gutwein for  live in the same neighborhood as dana i've known her for many years i know of her record as a leader in our neighborhood and would like to suggest that that leadership role she plays in our neighborhood would carry over thank you how's that great i hope i don't have to repeat all that okay i want to give you some examples of what she's done in our neighborhood which is the southern gables neighborhood where we both live first of all i know she's been on the hoa board prior to her involvement in that organization the board was rather ineffective and she has had a leadership role i think she's been an officer in that which has changed the direction and the focus of the hoa and it's now become a very active  very supportive organization in our neighborhood another role that i'm very familiar with is the establishment of our neighborhood sustainable program i moved to southern gables a few years ago and before i moved even we were sending e mails back and forth about beginning to start the sustainable neighborhood in southern gables dana was the leader of that and it is now won many awards here in in lakewood we're now a mentor for several other neighborhoods that are interested in becoming a sustainable neighborhood and all of that is due to danis leadership and her enthusiasm in in lakewood and in the neighborhood and in what she does part of that is a neighborhood garden which was her idea from the very beginning since she's been on the council she's handed that off to others in our neighborhood but that again was her her idea in her role in getting it established i know in a national level she's been involved in a program called mom's for clean air she's been the colorado liaison for that organization which has supported clean air for our kids through mothers and that's a great way to get things done and finally i know she's been involved in something in our neighborhood called neighborhood night out i remember the first time we started that it was about two dozen people in a driveway and it's evolved into with her involvement in it into the last couple years we've had five or six hundred people at our local elementary school we've had twenty to twenty five exhibitors showing  what they can provide to our neighborhood so i just want to i want to close and i wish i could answer any questions you have but she has represented our neighborhood and i know she could represent the city equally well the council and the mayor in this role so i just am here this evening to support her nomination or  her whatever it is her recommendation the mayor's recommendation that she be approved for that role so i thank you for your time and again i wish i could answer any questions that you may have about this good evening welcome good evening good evening mister mayor and council my name is carrie tipper and as some of you may know i'm running for house district twenty eight but i come to you today as your constituent i come to you as a frustrated lakewood resident and i'm frustrated because the nomination for councillor gutwein was not ratified and first off one of the frustrations i have is that you heard from your city attorney that you procedure is authorized by your charter and yet i heard from some of you suddenly that you didn't believe the procedure was authorized by your charter this is frustrating to me and you can call me skeptical but i suspect that if the nomination had been for someone else perhaps for councillor roybal the nomination would have been ratified and that you would not have had a problem with the procedure perhaps until after you had a new mayor proton so this brings me to my second point i do believe it's well within your authority to change the procedures and perhaps it's a good idea and i absolutely you know leave that to you but the timing bothers me and i'm going to pick on my councillor in ward four councillor frank's you've repeatedly stated that you've opposed this procedure and to your credit i saw in the january two thousand and sixteen meeting that you raised opposition but shortly thereafter you ratified councillor johnson's nomination for mayor proton and then a year later you did the exact same thing ratifying councillor harrison's nomination so i ask you what has changed and i posit to all of you please just be straightforward be forthcoming with what your position is if you disagree with the mayor's nomination of council councillor gutwein then just say that and explain to me why and i would say that when you're explaining why please do better than generalizing about her as a young woman and who perhaps hasn't had the time or the experience to develop the skills and judgment that you deem necessary for the position and i would submit that as a as m young also discussed she does have the skills and the judgment he sort of stole my thunder on some of her community involvement but also just point to some of the things that have impressed me about councillor gutwein she has a degree in neuroscience and engineering in a former life she was a field engineer in charge of a crew in charge of explosive materials radioactive materials and she was in charge of their training and their well being and then she transitioned successfully to a different career working with and consulting with businesses and now she has her own small business and she has a family with two children and so she is exactly the type of leadership and person that we need in this position and i would suggest that good evening welcome good evening american evening council haven't done public speaking take your time just pull the microphone close please okay so i'm here today because i was wondering the  stance that you that the council may have on a colorado senate bill one hundred and fifty two which denies local municipalities to create their own broadband networks  i in the recent in the two thousand and seventeen voting nineteen different colorado cities voted to opt out of this bill that prevents municipalities to create their own networks one of the leading cities that are currently or that currently have their own munis municipal internet is longmont and they have been able to be very competitive with large internet service providers and create faster speeds to consumers and businesses personally i know very many people at my own office that would be able to or that would move to longmont personally just to have those kind of speeds and access and it would also help small business owners have their have the latest and greatest  latest and greatest speeds and availability so that they can thrive in growing online commerce i also have looked into other cities that are investigating privately owned networks like centennial and they are planning on providing services through ting and these services can be brought down for internet prices i know people that pay about one hundred and twenty dollars a month just for internet alone while people in longmont have signed up for services that are only sixty dollars a year and some of the highest speeds in the country if if if a municipal internet was brought to brought to lakewood i believe that many organizations would be interested in moving to  lakewood and developing their business here and that's pretty much so thank you very much for your time and it's great to be here yeah thank you for coming out mister jonas you are up and on your way back afterwards will you give the clerk your address for the record thank you welcome i thank you my name is david jonas i'm here tonight to express my caution on the ordinance that is encouraging any residential development over forty units to go to city council and with complete transparency i am a residential developer and it's it's really refreshing to be here with no agenda i am not active with any project in lakewood i have no pipeline in lakewood there is no pursuits that were actively going after but i've been fascinated watching lakewood i mean it's it's hard not to read with everything that's going on in your great city and it's my concerns not so much with the added input from the the city in the neighborhood in on the contrary i think every great project that includes the neighbors input you get a better project and if anything i think the radius around certain project should be extended to get more neighborhood input my fear is the campaign contributions that could come into a city council race if you put that much power into city council's hands with the process the way it is  currently and i should bifurcate zone by right vs rezoning i completely agree if you're going through a rezone you should go through city council you're asking for something but if you're zoned by right and you still have to go through city council to get your zoning by right if it's over forty units i think there's no other way that you're not going to see significant campaign finances come into the next political realm and you're gonna have significant vacuum by the residential community and that scares me a little bit and i know that's weird coming from a residential developer but i just wanted to come tonight and express my fear if that continues to move forward and i appreciate your time thank you very much thank you i say i've been a resident since one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine which actually makes lakewood the place i've lived longest in my life since i left the village i grew up in at seventeen to go to university since then i've had the opportunity to live in italy belgium spain amongst other countries lakewood is where we chose to live my husband and i bought our house here we have chosen to raise our family here i'm have been very very happy i'm here to address the city council's  take this opportunity to read the letters the editor that was published in the sentinel because it very coherent lee addressees saved my same concerns that's a letter to the editor i am writing to share my frustration concerning lakewood city council's failure to ratify mayor adam pottle selection for the position of mayor pro tem at a regular city council meeting of december force according to sac councils procedures manual and councilmember waichman prior to december th meeting frame disappointment is a battle between the establishment and the independence when it should really have been a vote choose the very best person to represent the city public functions in the absence of the mayor mister whitman's constant attempts to sow dissent and disharmony are destructive to any action to move our city forward and i am so tired of it if he had any positive contribution to make it would have appeared long ago it is it is clear that dana greene the mers nominee is a person highly qualified as outlined by mister young to fill the position tam she's intelligent and articulate and a would have represented our city well for the next year the mayor made a great choice in nominating her mister whiteman's attempt to make this routine matter a decisive divisive issue is too typical of his actions unfortunately city council's stooped stooped to his level at a and a routine action became a political event how disappointing that our city council had to face this kind of device miss for the coming term this letter was written by lorna fox but i fully agree with everything she says i would also like  has already shown through the um community action she's been involved it she's fulfilled that promise she has more to give there is no doubt about that so she has she has continued promise but it was quite frankly insulting thank you miss brenda branson following adopted processes and being open honest and transparent but these five councillors did not have followed their own adopted processes nor were they open honest or transparent on the night of this vote they changed the process and they didn't tell us why they pretended it was a process when it wasn't for the past two years councillor frank's able's they voted on four different council officers using the same process they didn't use last month they brought up no issues in the process then even if they were working on changing it why change it last month but following the same process they voted because you you i guess you said you didn't support her because you didn't like the process then several minutes later you voted yes for councillor abel's self nomination to be the council president president and yet it's the same process it's the same policies and procedures you voted no for her yes for him they were based on the same policies so apparently you don't really object to the policy so much you object to the what suits you politically as the person being nominated and you follow the party you follow the processes if it suits you politically and you don't follow it if it doesn't suit you politically it's well known that five of you are politically aligned and your stance happens to go with with them with with a particular ideology and political alignment and so was it really about process or was it about politics i thought i'm really disappointed and we've had a mayor pro tem every year for fifty years and all of a sudden we don't have one and it's not the even though for fifty years count on greater transparency honesty and at least follow the rules you our other david and you save me from having to pronounce your last name so thank you tonight having watched the december th city council meeting online i'm here tonight to express my disappointment and displeasure with the council's decision to reject the nomination of councilor gutwein as mayor pro tem of the city of l d just as previous commenters have mentioned despite the claims of certain members of council i was rather shocked at the at the obviously political nature of the vote itself as well as the discussion that led up to it while certain members of council may legitimately take issue with the nomination process the timing of councillor abel's motion strongly suggested to me that such concerns were not the the true reason for the rejection of this nomination as previous people have mentioned councilor abel councillor frank's you had to you've had two years on council to do something about this process and yet it was until councilor gute line was nominated that you chose to do anything about it to me this was very disappointing in addition i personally found certainly certain newly elected councillors appraisals of  councilor goo twines perceived lack of experience to be extremely disrespectful to her to mayor paul and especially to the residents of ward five who elected councillor do whine to represent us on council it's really nice to be told that our elect representatives somehow lacks the necessary experience to serve in a leadership position councillor gutwein has been representing us in ward five very effectively for the last two years i first met her when she was leader of the  southern gables sustainable neighborhood program and since that time i've found her to be a tireless advocate for all citizens of lakewood councillor goo wine has truly not beholden to any special interest unless you would consider the working families of would to be a special interest like me she's a parent of young children with a sincere commitment to make lakewood a safe and enjoyable place to live today it's truly a shame that members of council chose to deny all the residents of l the services of an intelligent and dedicated public official to serve as the city's mayor pro tem in the future i hope that you all will demonstrate more respect for the working families of ward five by treating our elective representative with the same good evening welcome thanks again i'm i'm actually here just to talk about a proposed study session regarding the forty unit piece of the strategic growth initiative oh always impossible to tell if you're close enough please from this location i'm in any event the reason i wanted to talk about that is because honestly i i respect the efforts to address people's concerns with growth i think that's critical and important obviously people are concerned with it but the forty unit proposal part of the strategic growth initiative is easily the most egregiously unfair and most detrimental part of the initiative and the main reason it's unfair is because of we have zoning for a reason zoning is so that property owners know what their rights are as soon as you create an arbitrary system by which their rights are decided later you're now taking away people's rights and you're creating an arbitrary system that is grossly unfair additionally the detrimental piece of it is you are putting at risk a whole range of housing from condos market rates affordable housing senior housing all because there are certain areas you don't want to develop to a density of higher than forty units which is totally acceptable but i think it should be done through zoning for two reasons one it becomes a more permanent thing people know what they have and you can begin to address the changes i know in ward four it's a big concern you can begin to address those changes that you see as a community you want to make but in a permanent fashion that doesn't feel arbitrary and whimsical and i understand councilman skilling i understand you want to get this stuff done quick and i think that's great but i think perhaps the way to do it is to some of the other efforts you're making which is to get to some of the zoning discussions more quickly so that's the reason i was here thank you for your time thank you the other mister young michael come on down dana was elected by my neighbors in ward five and she was supported by the man we elected as mayor music which i think i think support her selection expressed frustration here it appears to me not knowing all everything that's gone on here but it appears to me that recent dismissive comments about her qualifications  are less about i'm sorry the dismissive comments about her experience and judgment maybe less about her qualifications for mayor pro tem and more about attempts to wrest control some degree of control  i'm here tonight because i understand and heard some misleading and outright false information about councilman abel's involvement with lakewood neighborhood partnerships information that was distributed to city council by a political operative associated with the mayor and who collected and spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to buy three lakewood city council seats thankfully the voters rejected these candidates councillor abel was part of the lake wa neighborhood partnerships when it was first formed in tw fourteen however he resigned immediately upon his election to council in two thousand and fifteen this is a fact that charlie has publicly disclosed more than once during his role on council during his time with ellen p charlie donated many hours and spent his own money in our work helping neighbors and neighborhoods prior to becoming a city councilor in fact during councilor abel's time on the lnp board lmp did not have outside revenue nor did we even have a bank account hypocrisy because councillor abel for over twenty five years has fought for a level playing field in lakewood elections which have largely been dominated by special interest money and the recently ousted establishment many of whom support and donate to the accusers fat campaign checkbook charlie funded almost all of his own campaign and most all donation he did accept came from lakewood residents and lakewood businesses if anyone is a hypocrite it is the influence peddling author of this email and facebook attack on councillor abel's character we should all strive to be more like councillor abel who consistently demonstrates values of integrity professionalism and bringing us together thank you thank you anybody else all right i'll now close public comment thank you all mister mace shopping carts  calendered for march th to the gentleman about sb one hundred and fifty to the council this council i can't speak on behalf of but i think we've heard a lot from the community about municipal broadband and if that is something that is of great interest please reach out to your elected officials and that's something that we can have a conversation about but we have started to hear i think a lot more especially with the passage in fort collins about municipal broadband and thanks mayor paul well first and foremost i wanted to thank everybody that came out tonight and spoke on topics the passion that folks have for lakewood is so apparent and that's what we're here for we're here to hear everything but i did want to take a few minutes to make sure folks had a little bit of context about some of the discussion that was held tonight so to kind of take us back to that prior meeting i wanted to walk people through kind of the three separate votes and then just talk through a few aspects of that so councillor abel did have a motion that night to delay the selection of a mayor pro tem until after the council's policies and procedures manual was finalized and he also amended that to include the fact that we would extend the to current council officers beyond their current end date that way there would at least be that continuity for some folks who have kind of have said that maybe this came out of the blue i just want to be very clear but the very first council meeting i ever attended i brought with me a copy of the council's policies and procedures manual because i when i joined council didn't even know this document it existed it was nowhere on the website it was nowhere to be found and what i brought to that very first meeting was the fact that i felt the process was broken that councils policies and procedures manual i'm not sure how it made through the prior legal review but it was full of editorialized comment things like if you don't hear from your constituents assume you're doing a great job all kinds of things that made me very uncomfortable including when i started marrying up the language inside the policies and procedures and trying to trace that back to the charter and at that time i ran on a campaign of not only representative government but also dismantling any types of of power that conflicted with the charter so for those who maybe thought that maybe it was an out of the blue thing that was the very first meeting i ever attended as a newly elected councillor and so i did vote for that motion that council policies and procedures manual revision languished for a year and a half before we finally got a lot of traction with that so that's part of the issue and we were near the completion when we just didn't have enough a runway to finish that so i just wanted to lay a little bit of a foundation for that particular motion and why i supported them up next came the vote actually for the mayor pro tem and i have long been opposed to that process i don't like to ever be in a position where there's a selection and a ratification especially when it conflicts with the charter and so i did ask for the city staff to provide me with the prior council policies and procedures so we could see if this was a long term thing or whether it was relatively new and many of those in the audience and watching at home that know me know that i have been fighting kind of against maybe city power for some time when i fought for open space along with eight thousand citizens who signed a petition so when the mayor pro tem position came open and it was time to ratify that i did vote no in the prior elections where there was no one else running and frankly because i was in a minority position i did vote for the folks didn't have anything against those particular folks don't have anything against  the council president position that charlie abel was running for now keep in mind that was running for no one was running against him but that wasn't a nomination i have long been advocate of removing the council president from the manual and in fact the very diversion were working on has the council president removed so that vote was really a stopgap just tight us over until we got to the point where we would get the policies and procedures done we'd get a pro tem and then we'd have that background so i wanted to kind of i know that's a long way from a to z but it at least gives you some context there i think the other thing is that it's important to note is that i have looked for every opportunity to look for wherever power has been tried to be centralized and to look to decentralize that that's not for my benefit that's for the benefit of the whole council that's the benefit of her future councils i think the prior council when they adopted the council's policies and procedures they tried to hamstring future councils by telling them that there was a process they had to follow when i think each council should decide what process works best for them the other thing i just want to point out is that it's just important that i don't think it's effective when folks lobby one another in support or i think each piece of legislation should fly or not fly on its own merits that's how i vote i don't promise somebody if you give me this i'll give you that each piece of legislation that comes for me whether you like my vote or not is voted on as an individual piece of legislation so thanks i appreciate all the time for the lengthy comments there i appreciate it thanks else were able i just want to point out that i didn't vote both ways on the process i honor the process that we're putting in place it is charter friendly and charter compliant and i would remind folks that i voted against myself because i couldn't vote both ways on the same process so i still believe that the process doesn't leave council the choice and the the current process it has not been in place for the thirty five years folks seem to think it has been and it is i will anticipate the approval of the new policies and procedures manual and then another look at who becomes thank you so first of all i'm just i'm really humbled by all of you coming out and speaking tonight it's actually weird how uncomfortable it is for me to listen to that but i just really want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your night to be here and i hadn't asked for that on the evening of the vote because many of you you're working you have kids or other things to do on a monday night so i just really want to thank you for being here tonight and also to the many people who sent an email on my behalf in the the first part of the process so thank you means the world to me  and then also i just want to address my colleagues as well um so i'd like to ask for an increased level of honesty and transparency during the process moving forward as i mentioned the evening of the vote i reached out to every member of council and met with or spoke with on the phone with everyone except for councillor johnson who was out of town so thank you for that time first of all and thank you to those of you who you know voiced your support and some people mentioned that they were unsure of how they would vote and that's okay and i understand that the the reasons that they mentioned were  alignment with the mere political differences and on the one hand i understand that because it's it's challenging and we have different  opinions but on the other hand and i also didn't think that i would escape the the election and openly supporting some of my colleagues opponents without any backlash but but on the other hand i don't understand that's not the leadership that has been exhibited to me in lakewood and it's not the leadership that mayor paul exhibited after the mayor election when he after going head to head with one of his colleagues  mayor nominated councillor johnson to be mayor pro tem and we unanimously decided to support her and i had no qualms in doing that because even though we different in our political opinions i know that councillor johnson just as an example was was a lack by the people of lakewood and the people of liquid have different opinions on the issues and i respect that stance and so i was proud to be one of the members to unanimously support her and all the other council officers that we have nominated and ratified using the same policies and procedures over the last two years in which by the way those have been in effect for at least the last ten the number of people who told me that they were not going to vote on a mayor pro tem at all because they didn't support the rules that we had in effect was zero no one told me that they were going to not not vote at all or vote no because they didn't like the current rules to me that is it's not honest it's not transparent it's not good governance and i'd like to ask my colleagues moving forward that if we're going to have discussions about policy that we can be honest even if we disagree it gives us a chance to reach compromise to understand each other's positions and to ultimately get to solutions i'd also like to just briefly address councilor betas statement that i'm a young woman without the experience or leadership ability and  i think several people mention this but i feel that that is disrespectful not just to me but to the people who elected me and the people that i represent in lakewood they put their faith in me to stand up for them and and be their voice at th table and it is disrespectful to discount my voice because of my my age or my what you consider my experience so i was going to take a moment of personal privilege to highlight my background i'll be very brief because those of you already did this so i appreciate that but you know i have a double major that i earned in four years from vanderbilt university i earned a bachelor of science in engineering science and also in neuroscience while i was also working part time at the biology lab during the summer i was a waitress right here in lakewood and after that i got my first job as a field engineer for slumber shake where i was authorized to use explosives and nuclear sources i was the manager of a small team i spent many nights sleeping in the pickup truck in oil fields it was a difficult job to say the least  so after that when i decided i wanted to start a family moved colorado where my the rest of my family lives it was a down economy and i taught myself how to do web design and online marketing and worked for into it as a small business consultant when we did get pregnant and have kids i started my own business to help make ends meet from home and then you know the rest is history i started working in my community because the my background in science is what gives me the belief that we can be more efficient we can live more sustainably and it's the fact that i'm a mother that makes me believe we we have to and so that's why i'm here and and i talk about being a mom the most because it is to me the most important job that i have but that is not the extent of my experience finally i just want to oh and and just on a side note in my experience it's more effective as leader to challenge one another's ideas and not make personal attacks for whatever that's worth  i'd like to also just retract the statement that i said about being willing to sit through hour and a half long meetings and getting yelled at i did do that i will not do that again with my colleagues happy to sit down with anyone who is willing to have a respectful and professional conversation and in conclusion i'd just like to ask all of us you know we have different opinions this is frankly one of the smallest and most inconsequential decisions that we're going to make this year and and we face much bigger challenges in our community like growth issues so moving forward let's have the tough conversations and let's be honest with each  saying thank you to everybody that came out tonight on all the issues it is unfortunate what took place i think that's the first time in lake woods history we don't have a mayor pro tem contrary to what you may have heard it is compliant with our charter it's the way the charter reads or as chosen by city council that didn't happen that's unfortunate we don't have a mayor pro tem it's interesting when you go out to other communities and they see some of that dysfunction and it's kind of shocking to them but you know what our community's bigger than this we will prevail we'll go forward mayor pro tem or no mayor pro tem i'll just be right here in this seat every monday night so thank you all very much and i look forward to a fun two thousand and eighteen and great public comment tonight so will the clerk please read the consent agenda into the record the consent agenda consists of item seven through nine inclusive item seven resolution two thousand and eighteen one designating the public place for contains as you heard both resolutions and first reading ordinances resolutions are items of a routine nature members of the public will have an opportunity and moment to comment on any of the proposed resolutions first reading ordinance appear on the agenda only for the purpose of setting future public hearing dates and ordering the new paper publication of the proposed ordinance no public comments will be heard this evening on first reading ordinances the public will have the opportunity to comment on the proposed ordinance during the scheduled public hearing on the date set forth tonight by the council any council member may request an item on the consent agenda be removed for separate discussion an action under general business i don't see anybody wishing to do that so now i'll open the public hearing on the that any the rtd issue is an ordinance so that's just first reading tonight and we'll be back for second reading if you want to continue the conversation anybody else on the proposed resolution seeing none  close public comment and ask for a motion mayor paul i move for approval the council minutes order all ordinances introduced on first reading to be published in the denver post with public hearing set for the date included in the ordinance and for adoption of resolutions all of which are included in the consent agenda items introduced into the record by the city clerk second the motion in a second any discussion please right and the consent agenda passes eyes zero nays well the clerk please read item ten into the record item ten ordinance o two thousand seventeen seventeen authorizing the purchase of real property from the vernon f taylor junior revocable trust for open space park trail and municipal purposes including acceptance of a deed from the seller conveyance of a deed to jefferson county for purpose of imposing an open space revert clause acceptance of a deed from jefferson county and approving a supplemental appropriation for the two thousand and eighteen fiscal year from the capital improvement fund and the open space fund fantastic thank you this is a big deal i see our city manager she grins and she should be so we have a presentation and i'm gonna ask miss newlin to come on down good evening a big night for us very excited you know working on this for a while let's see if we can get the slides up so we are asking for your approval tonight of this ordinance in regard to the acquisition of the taylor property and the depiction that you see here is shows you the entire taylor estate property which is a hundred and twenty two acres it's adjacent to wodsworth boulevard and lines up our portion of it lines up at morrison road you can see the portion that we are hoping to acquire outlined in red it's just a little bit shy of fifty eight acres citizens of lakewood would be familiar with this property if they ever and most people do go north south on wodsworth between yale and morrison road and you have an opportunity to view this beautiful open space to the east along that that uh route i just wanted to give you a little bit of context for where the property is you can see that it's down in the closer than northeast i mean excuse me southeast corner of the city of lakewood and where it is in relationship to our other park properties it's about a ten minute probably a ten minute walk down to the green belt to the bear creek greenbelt to the south and west so it's very well located for people to get in and out of the property eventually i just wanted to show you a couple of photographs this one shows you the beautiful one of the beautiful views and the beautiful topography we also do know that there's quite a lot of wildlife on this space so it's it's a beautiful peaceful serene area that we hope to preserve well into the future what we hope to do is to keep the space as passive recreational open space the plan right now would be to eventually of course put a parking area in and then put in a restroom facility a couple of shade shelters and some benches in places where you can get really good views the funding that we are proposing to use is there from the capital improvement fund city funds one point two from the open space fund two million and then we will be going to great outdoors colorado asking for two point one and two jeffers we've gone to jefferson county open space for one point six and here's another beautiful shot looking more to the west the south west as you aware when we did our imagine lakewood plan we got a lot of input from folks about how important it is that we try to add to our inventory of park and open space will play into that as well but that's our hope at this point in time so with that we're very excited and i'm happy to answer any questions thank you i'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearings okay and we can come back to questions great thank you alright so public hearing i'm going to now open the public hearing again same rules three minutes two and a half green and then thirty seconds yellow after that red and i do have a request for some extra time from a homeowner's  representative representing many different groups so come on down ms brewer and we'll get you going welcome thank you happy new year chow love you you too mayor paul and all you council people thank you from so many people to have this property doing this i'm representing a group of people who live in  and needless to say everything that's happening at mister taylor's property the animals and whatever else yes we've seen all of that through so we are more than appreciative of this with all the growth everywhere now we do have a couple questions though maybe just to take into consideration we just heard now the timeline of two thousand and nineteen i see mister taylor's family right there so wondering now with all of the due diligence all of the appraisals and such if we're talking in a twenty nineteen timeline when will you guys expect to have all of that the surveying everything resolved just wondering and these are way out there questions or they were at a meeting and it to bring it to the table to say what are the appraisals are they working well looking at what might be in that contract is there a possibility if mister taylor's family at one point decides gee there's some other parcels we'll be able to work with would you have first right of refusal to purchase this property from city of lakewood would you have something with the water rights on this property would that be something that might be considered because it certainly is a pristine property i my children know what to it and i'm speaking for a lot of people i'm appreciative of this so a question though in the ordinance it indicates for the purpose of preserving the property is open space park and other municipal uses what are those other municipal uses that's a little frightening because of although the growths sometimes that happens you just don't know where that goes to it's so it's something that is of concern to us also regarding those you know those water rights is it possibility to put it in the contract i don't know how that all shakes out but that was brought up also at one of the meetings road is there any thought of anything on vassar avenue to have that because there is that lot goes through to that property will that be involved in this at all and also regarding that to you about traffic lights how will it affect the waze ruth morrison it will that be a four way situation or what are you thinking the people from green gables will they then need to leave their green gables area and exit out somewhere north on wodsworth or or somewhere on jewell to then flip around and come around just everybody was sitting around a table and talking and thinking and so that's what we're  presenting now in the northwest corner of mister taylor's property that fits it's it's right up against the southernmost end of green gables property there's a section in there that is not designated right now it was rumored and i'm saying rumored as maybe the developer purchasing part of a triangular section in there for an entrance into the southern part of green gables just wondering how that how that shakes out so i think that that's it where there's nothing new you guys have heard plenty times about the traffic situations so you know all of that but again a thank you so much for it a fabulous addition this is going to be for the city of lakewood we're thankful to all of you for all your work because it takes something to make this happen wouldn't be wonderful though if if the remainder of the taylor property could be designated as as open space one time again thank you all happy new year good evening welcome good evening mayor paul and city council my name is francesca toronado i'm a lakewood native and i just wanted to clump and voice my support for the acquisition of the fifty nine acres as parks and open space so i'm just thrilled to hear that the city is investing resources to preserve this parcel as open space for current and future generations to enjoy so i just wanted to voice my support evening good evening mister mayor members of council i just wanted very briefly as a longtime advocate of open space to add my applause to everything jeffco open space and the goko and i wish every success there this is a part of the city that can you use the preservation of open space words very quickly vanishing so i think all the other comments and areas have been met thank you thank you very much anybody else wish to comment seeing none i'll close the public hearing and before we get into questions i'll ask for a is and i think that we have some protections with goko and open space dollars and then the vassar avenue thank you we will how about if we tag team this a little bit kid i'll start with  there's no intent to have access off of vassar avenue that is a small lot the size of a regular residential lot that was owned has been owned by the taylor state for many years and that was an access to them for big equipment and actually can you point to it you can see that our intention is not to make that a major access whatsoever it would be more of an ancillary type access and the so that one's a real clear i'll ask it to speak a little bit about the language of municipal uses but remind you also that this would be deeded to us as open space and so there's a protection there when there's a d to the city as identified as open space it will take a vote of the people to make it anything different also there's a restriction or requirement i would say when we have funding by any of our partners so great outdoors colorado which are lottery proceeds we call those goko dollars those also have restrictions and also you can't sell or use the property for anything else once you utilize goko dollars and the same for jefferson county open space dollars so this property if if this passes will be protected with many lairs and it will be open space parks and open space for the very long future unless there's for some reason an election and the people decide to make that something else kitt would you like to answer the others the reason we put in municipal purposes because cdot has plans to widen wodsworth in the next couple of years and we need to make sure that we have enough right of way there along wodsworth so we left that in then up at the morris and in the morrison area here we need a little bit of area too for this widening because there there needs to be a sidewalk put in here as well so that's it's just a small amount those those parcels will be separated so that they're not part of the open space transfer so the deed gets transferred to open space and that's written in the ordinance it gets transferred to them and then they put on this reverter and then the deed gets transferred back to the city so that it is protected both by our city fourth on the intersection of wodsworth and morrison that will be the access point to this property and there will the right now was a three way signal and there will be a fourth added to that so it'll be a four purchase and sale agreement now that will include items such as water there are some other little areas that we need to have some agreements specific to so we're working on that now and we hope to have that finished in the next probably two to three weeks and then the site plan we do think we can probably work on the site plan in two thousand and nineteen and and then we'll be working on trying to get some funding after that to do the development the the due diligence that was referred to earlier is is being done now so all of the due diligence will be completed very shortly and then we'll be comfortable to move forward with a purchase and sale agreement right i want to go into council questions not comments at this time but questions councillor franks an appraisal completed in june oh it's already done yes okay so i noticed that the price is still flexible oh the reason for that was just because we hadn't completed the assessment of exactly what the property boundary was going to be so we left it plus or minus but we're almost positive now that we're just short of fifty eight acres okay so we still don't have a final price we we we will when we have the purchase and sale agreement finished in the next couple of weeks we'll be absolutely sure but the appraisal was seven million and we have a per square foot cost so that will just translate based on the acreage that answers my question you anybody else with questions all right we'll now go into comments councillor franks mayor paul first wanted to acknowledge the taylor family this is an absolutely amazing piece of property i'm a farm girl grew up out in rural area and i can just imagine your family experiences there must have been lovely so are so thankful to be getting this property as i campaigned what was so visceral to people was how much they loved their open space and that's how i came to office was fighting to save open space it's a space for the eyes to rest the legs to stretch and for our animals to roam so i couldn't be any more grateful to be getting this property and i will certainly be a yes vote for this i am also very happy to hear about all the layers of protection that this property gets based on the go code ollars and and deeding and all of that i want to let citizens know that not every piece of parkland that we have in the city is as protected as that so that's something that to work on in two thousand and eighteen is to make sure that every piece of parkland however it came to be at the city whether it was a you know designation of a of a school site that later was never utilized but want to make sure that we bring all those protections that way it then is put back in the voters hands for every piece of property if they later change their mind and they want to see something developed then it goes before a vote of the people so i'm very grateful to know this pristine piece is not going to be disrupted but we've got other parkland that we certainly want to bring that same level of protection to because folks come to live in lakewood for the vast amounts of open space that we have and some of our open space currently is least open space and so it's not all forever so we want to protect what we can because not every piece is a forever piece if it's a perk like with bear creek lake park that's all leased land so at some point there could be a different decision with that so very grateful for this piece very excited thanks to staff  all your hard work i know these types of things don't come together easily and so much appreciate everybody's efforts and so glad to be adding this to lakewood open space  said to the family it is a wonderful piece of property and a lot of other things could have been done with it we could have seen concrete and steel across this entire fifty eight acres and  appreciate that you decided instead that the city should have it and i well i appreciate folks thanking council and the mayor for this acquisition the star of the project is our city manager miss hudson who for years has been diligently pursuing any opportunity she could to leverage this property we can't say enough about her diligence in i just want to personally thank the taylor family and i appreciate your grace in doing this on a personal level i know it must be somewhat bittersweet thank you many people are gonna benefit for many years because of your kindness and generosity thank you mayor i'd like to also reiterate all the comments that have been made to the taylor family thank you for your working with the city i have described this property is one of the crown jewels of lakewood and i believe that's exactly what it is i think when people see get an opportunity to experience it and see what's there they're gonna be absolutely amazed and i think that is is one of those decisions that were made the efforts that were made by our city manager that will in years to come people will look back and go that was one of the smartest things they ever did and so thank you for working with our city mayor again to the taylor family thank you so much we appreciate this i've taken a short tour a few years ago and i stood at the the front of the entrance of the house and i just happen to take a look to actually to the east and i happen to see denver all the way across and it's a beautiful place it's so serene so quiet you can hear  the the birds chirp but yet you can you can just you can see in that particular area it's it's it's so beautiful that when you leave that area you get back into the city and you're like where did this come from and it's a real jewel and and you know it's it's an honor and thank you for allowing us to acquire this property thank you thank you very much i have a good friend who is very much into horses and she would tell you the thing that makes her the most excited about this piece of property is she can envision sitting on her horse or better yet galloping her horse across that property waving her hat and enjoying the day in lakewood so i just wanted to tell you thank you so much this was very generous and we really really appreciate it thank you so much gulen thank you well we just can't thank you enough on behalf of the citizens and but i think you really do deserve to hear that because we're gonna continue to hear that and it's really thanks to you  that we're gonna get to preserve this land for generations to come and it's just such an incredibly meaningful gift to the future of lakewood so i really just can't thank you enough for for this opportunity and to preserve this land the time that i did get to go up there and you know you you take a look at the when you come through the trees and you can see the mountains and you can see the city it's just absolutely breathtaking and yeah so i just thank you very much on behalf of all of liquid thanks y'all sir vincent i would like to thank you also because i didn't not want to say thank you and didn't want you to think i wasn't thanking you so thank you very much as it's so it's so nice to have something with that everybody's thrilled and happy about thank all right well i can speak for those who may not have been able to say thank you thank you but this is a big big deal and it's with great gratitude that i'm able to really thank you on behalf of our whole community i've had the opportunity to go to the property and to see the house and unfortunately probably a lot of folks in lakewood haven't and it is incredible so rich with history mister taylor the stories that you have riding horses to colorado kadim ii and how you've seen and your families seen it change so much this is really cool and something that our community's gonna remember for years to come we celebrate our th anniversary next year and this is going to help jump start another fifty years of great preservation as we move forward and look to continue to expand our inventory and there's been many times i think where you've wanted to walk away or could have walked away and you haven't so thank you for hanging in and to kathy and your whole staff i mean you really put this together your parks and recs girl it's your background you know it and you knew that this was something that was going to be and important to our community for generations to come you too hung in and i imagine it wasn't always easy no and i think that you even got to meet mister taylor father as well which i know was a really cool experience for you so with that it's a great night to celebrate we look forward to a continued partnership and i think we'll be eternally grateful to you and your family and we will celebrate your legacy for what you've done for the city of lakewood so with that well i was gonna go ahead and take the vote and then invite him to come on up all right so we and we already have people voting and it's good so hold on hold on hold on all right so we have a motion in a second please cast your votes all right that passes eleven eyes zero nays so before i call mister taylor up i'm gonna mister ables wanted to speak i do i wanted to give y'all all of you thank you for giving us all something we can together agree on thank you very much that's the first unanimous vote we've had in a while all right and without further ado we have mister and misess taylor here with us this evening so please come on down  thank you i i don't think i've ever been publicly thanks so much in my life i'm delighted my wife is here to hear all this made my evening and certainly made my my day  i want to thank you mayor and the city council this is a big step for lakewood it's a big step for us i grew up in this property our family it's been in our family for sixty seven years there's from my point of view a huge emotional attachment to this property i'm sole trustee and my father's instructions are very clear that he wanted a light footprint didn't want it intensively developed and  i can't think of a better way to not have it developed than to do it as an open space and we did have has been pointed out tonight we did have other avenues open to us and some of them quite seductive and  we stayed the course and i'm very glad we did i love like wood this is where i grew up i spent much of my life here and it's an it's in good hands and i also want to say acknowledge from my point of view and we've had these discussions been going on well over a year intensively over a year but they even started before that we were considering this and i want to thank ross williams  we're collaborative and incredibly professional you've got a great team working for you which i think you know and you've stated tonight i want to leave you with with one last  thought we all have friends that live in south denver and some fancy houses in south denver cherry hills you know the area you know the people and almost invariably when i run into some of them they say well when it gets to bragging rights they always tell me they  best mountain views in denver and you now when you run into these people you can look them in the eye and can say no you don't the residents of lakewood do thank you to say thank you again all right that was fantastic very cool very cool so now we will move into general business where we have a few different topics to discuss and let me get to that on my copy here so we have a variety of council requests and before we go into that i'll turn it over to each council member who has made their requests i want to talk about a couple things keep in mind we have our retreat coming up on february th where we will be looking at  our goals for the next year and we also currently on our docket have a few different things i'm going to share with you what we have right now that we still need to have some sort of resolution or council action  on energy efficiency you saw that in the budget shopping carts we'll see on march th building code update the housing study noise issues development dialogue the union corridor plan the sign code the is where we are at so with that i will turn it over our first request is from councillor skilling on fee in lieu thank you mayor so just to keep this momentum of open space going and beautiful parkland this is one of the requests that we made i think you all had the october study session that we discussed this we i think it was agreed that this was at least the money part was significantly antiquated and so we know that needs to be updated i do note that we have the february th study session on this so i guess at this point that was the goal was to get some movement on it i've also submitted a draft ordinance so hopefully we're looking at that as we speak the ordinance wasn't anything significantly changed other than just making that seven hundred seven hundred dollars per unit up to fair market value and then eliminating any opt out for anything that's over fifteen acres so i was looking for in a lot of these different requests was just some kind of a timeline in which we can actually get some first reading on schedule and i know we just heard a long list  i think this is a priority as i do with all of my suggestions so i would be looking for as soon as possible so february th i guess i just looked for some guidance of how quickly that study session we've already done this is not a complicated issue as far as the writing part of it so maybe what shortly thereafter the next meeting or to get the first reading because because the fee in lieu conversation is actually a land use issue it'll go to the planning commission for the recommendation and then an approval by city council so if we have the study session on february th and give direction for a final ordinance that could then be within a couple weeks to planning commission certainly and then then that would have to do our posting so we'd have first reading second reading so it sounds like about thirty days from february th so we'd be middle of march do we have a meeting i will what i'll do is after this meeting talk to our planning director and schedule the planning commission meeting and then as then we'll post the city council meeting and do first and second readings so i don't have an exact date but i can make that available once we have that conversation perfect but it's not outrageous for me to say middle of march is doable what's at four weeks yeah i mean i don't december in our procedure with getting it in but it seems doable let's see we do have a how we have holidays i work holidays so do i however we may be in the dark hair yeah so what we'll do is go back work date and i'll bring that back and we'll post it and make sure people have that it's important for us to post in advance so that we mayor i'd like to see if we can get a written timeline to council on all these issues of when their projection date is going to be that would really help us out a lot yeah you bet so part of the retreat is for us to prioritize and build a dashboard which will then have all of our priorities and then we'll be able to weigh that against it'll be our work plan and when new requests come into play we'll be able to weigh that that'll have the timeline with updates so that's something that we're looking to get introduced next month going forward i think that's going to help us with our business quite a bit o i just want to say i'm really looking forward to that february th study session about this this is evaluating our developer fees including the park fee is something that i prioritize during the two thousand and sixteen retreat as well and it's been you know takes a process and having the discussions and part of the development dialogue to get here so i'm anxious to hear about all the different options that we talked about at the last study session on october th whether or not this exact language will be the the best way to maximize our dollars for park space and open space i guess we'll we'll find out but looking this one again i'll have to defer to myth miss hudson on that on one the study session when we can have a study session on this for the i maybe i'm misunderstanding this but the first level of this conversation is do you all want to have that study session so you're all going to vote on whether you want to have a study session talking about a limitation of forty units per for anything over forty units coming to city council so once you direct us to bring that to council if you direct us we'll come back to council with a study session and we'll have a date that was misunderstanding i didn't know that exactly how this process works so i'll give some background on it this is a proposal that i heard obviously through this last campaign as the city has grown and people have seen projects that are popping up all over town a lot of folks have been dismayed that either they didn't know it was happening or that they didn't appreciate the standards that were used the architectural standards or what have you in any event that's almost irrelevant because the analysis should be what things can we do to improve citizen input and incentivize developers to collaborate with the community and i think that this  conversation will do that because it will if developers know that they have to come before the citizens of lakewood they're going to give us the best product that they have that's what i believe and also that i think a lot of people i talked to believe that and that we will then also a public comment we've got a lot of big projects in this town that a lot of people never commented on didn't know we're happening which a lot of that you know me included that was my fault for being apathetic and i think this will be just one more thing that we can do as a city to make sure the projects are known to the public the best that we can provide so i think that it's something that we should look at i know that staff was very helpful  providing us they did great they were very responsive in working with me to get an idea of what kind of projects were even talking about over the past five years and believe it or not it's actually not that many projects that we're talking about so when people say oh this is gonna be really bureaucratic or we're gonna get bogged down or how can you do that you're only talking about you know two three four projects a year and so you know i don't think that's you know good thing about lakewood that we're not being so overrun we can actually take some time have public hearings on some of these projects so so there's a lot of comments on this councillor vincent yeah and i agree with you it's a hot topic but what i'd like to offer for consideration is that we wait until the planning commission comes back because i think what you're dressing i'm hoping that they will address because it is things like design guidelines heights of buildings building material notification to folks around enlarging that area so i'd kind of like to give them a chance to come back with some things for us to react to and then perhaps move  on if we need to because without just that forty limit there's a lot of other stuff that kind of goes in with it which you alluded to so i just like to wait on a little bit that's all our city councils in the past had more input on major development in the city and those would restore decisions to elected officials  i would like to see it be twenty or more units and i don't want to i don't want to know there are six or eight month process i think we need to go ahead and hit hit this for the study session and get busy again councils in this city and others historically these large projects i believe we in the past approved oh dps official development plans before these projects could get underway is that correct m cox official development plans are approved through the zoning process i'm talking about in the past before the subdivision ordinance has changed and the zoning ordinance was changed city council heard these kind of projects it was it at the o council's decisions on these matters and it will give the public a chance to come in and speak in public hearing give us ideas or  paul i too agree that we need to this is something that we need to address sooner rather than later we've been under a lot of pressure in ward four getting projects that folks are very concerned about increasing our traffic and certainly reducing quality of life in addition to what other councillors have said i do want to say that we do have other issues related to this like setbacks transition zones i'm now starting to receive pictures from people who are now getting right next to their single family single story house huge two and a half story cantilevered building we're literally taking folks to sunshine their ability to have a garden in their own backyard so i there's a lot of things that we'll need to address when we get to our annual planning and i know these are a lot it related there but i think this particular one falls in line with bringing some things back to coun we're all accountable to you when we come up for election or either doing the job you want us to do or not and certainly there's other folks out there deciding whether they want to run because they may have a different way they want to see govern but when i walk door to door and knocked thousands of doors overdevelopment encroachment and development that wasn't appropriate for neighborhoods was the number one topic so i just don't think that we can continue to kick this one can down the road i think we have to talk about it sooner rather than i would encourage the other councillors to come on board and let's have a study session on this and let's move this forward and get this done skilling i appreciate the boldness and your courage to take this forward i appreciate the spirit during this last election growth and development was ninety five percent of what i heard at the we have a tendency to keep putting things off for more and more studies more and more input it's time to go forward with this and i agree with the study session and i support this thank you harrison having served on planning commission in the past the one thing that i would say is that even though this might have i'm not saying that we shouldn't have a study session and discuss this there are so many parts and pieces to zoning ordinance says just as what barb was talking about setbacks and whatnot i'm concerned that if we do this one piece it might affect other pieces that are part of this disc and i'm i really do believe that we need to allow planning commission which is currently working on this to come back with their recommendations which this could be part of it but let's let them kind of do some of their they've already been involved in doing of which we task them to do i feel like if we pull this away from them this piece it's not really fair for what work they've already done so i would really like us to wait until we get their recommendation i'm not saying no to this i'm just saying it's a piece of a really complex part and i think we ought to give them a chance to be able to give their recommendations to us thank you for the record they will this will have to go to planning commission regardless yes i'm just saying it will have to go back to planning commission thank you yeah i agree with councillor frank's and skilling and roybal i think we need to make move this along we need to make it a priority it's you know i think times of the essence this is not a complicated this is not complicated at all what's being proposed here what's being asked it's not complex we just spent seven million dollars of our taxpayers money on a fairly complex transaction real estate transaction and that was i went to him start to finish as far as being considered by council in a matter of a few weeks so much more complex than this is and i see no reason why we can't move change at the owners request to the zoning of a property is a matter that would come to city council and one way to change the zoning in those days was to submit an official development plan for pd zoning so it was just it was like rezoning to a residential zone district commercial zone district and it did come to city council so if it was an otp it did come to city council yeah or or any other rezoning or any other rezoning okay thank you so i this is something that certainly our community has been talking about since the strategic growth initiatives proposal and i think that it's a very important  conversation that we have as a community because there are a lot of questions and i think it would be great for our community to get real factual answers to these questions i actually disagree and think this is will be a complex issue because i think it will impact impact our local economy and impact liquid in many different ways by adding a level of complexity to any proposal that's over forty units i want to know what the impacts will be for affordable and attainable housing in our community which is already a pressing issue for forty percent of our population and you know i i think that some of the things that were mentioned is the design standards architectural standards the feeling of our community  growing and i really wonder if this is going to be the best way to achieve those outcomes and what are the outcomes that we are trying to solve for councillor skilling mentioned incentivizing getting the best project possible and increasing communication with our community i think those are both great goals that i fully stand behind and i wonder if this is the best way is this the best practice in other communities to increase communication and get the best project possible so those are the kinds of questions i would like to get answered during a study session as a community and so that the community can also ask their questions so i certainly support exploring this option and getting getting facts thank you thank you yep so i absolutely support the study session i will say that this step is spending seven million dollars took actually three to four years not just a couple council meetings and this is complicated because there are takings involved as well and potential takings so we need to take it seriously i welcome the conversation and  in my ten years on council almost eleven i've never approved an individual project based on residential units never had anything come before me so i don't know where that changed or what that's being alluded to but that's why we need to have the facts out on the table and get a better understanding and i thought through the building dialog residential caps was part of what they were looking at i don't know if that's a hundred percent accurate i'm looking at johan but i thought that was something that they were actually looking at and we heard testimony earlier tonight that this can be used in a way to help get what you want and maybe a better way to look at it is through zoning which makes better sense i think so we will go forth and ask city manager hudson to schedule this for a study session i think it's important that we have prior to this council submit their questions or their issues because i think this is going to be a big one so i'm looking for a way and maybe council can help me how we can have a more effective and efficient study session because there's gonna be a lot of questions involved so would it be possible thank you mayor would it be possible to bring in the building commission we had that big and i agree this is a big one so we have the joint meeting last time we can bring the commissioners here and have a joint session if they're working on it simultaneously more people working on it the better and if there's public comment questions or we have questions then we can collaborate with them and we don't have to do everything two and three times so if that's possible though i think that's a great question i know we are scheduled for a joint session coming up at the end of february early march potentially with the building dialog yes so may i answer sorry i was looking at you  tentatively for march twenty six the reason for the gap is we have holidays in holidays and other reasons for cancellations so again i'll need to talk to our plating director i'm trying to think how is the forty unit limit going to interact with the development dialogue and first hearing of the development dialogue so so forgive me i thought part of the request though was to deal with could have jumped in fifteen minutes ago forgive me we'll try to do this together first let's talk about the timeframe for the development dialogue and then how this particular proposal with a study session conversation may how that would fit and then the joint meeting with the planning commission thank you so planning commission has five study sessions scheduled on different topics they've they've held three of them the fourth one is this coming wednesday on parking and then the final one on july twenty our excuse me january th is the housing study session and where they'll be discussing things like residential caps after those five study sessions are wrapped up they want to have one wrap up study session among themselves to pull everything together that's either scheduled for february th or february th we're still working on that date the plan then was to come back for another joint study session with you all to discuss all these issues in late february early march again date a date to be determined so that was the neck that was the plan as it as it stands right now and it includes a discussion of housing not necessarily specifically your proposal councillor skilling but a discussion of housing and how to address these issues so with with our time frame with that and those issues i don't know how much overlap and i guess with the proposal if you feel comfortable having the conversation on a joint session then we can add that and we can do a request  o planning commission as they look at housing that this be something that they throw into their mix next week which so it's two weeks from this wins the two weeks housing discussion we have won't have conducted a lot of research on this specific proposal or the impacts thereof we've got a lot of research on the issues that planning commission has already directed us to to look into and council as far as we can we'll we'll try and add some research but before that meeting on the th for the planning commission so that they can have a discussion about your specific proposal i acceptable yeah i think that's fine again so that we're not doing double work i think that that would be something to throw into the mix i think it's different than resident caps this is more of if we're gonna have a giant project that's going to come up is that something the should approve i think it is but that's something that it's a little bit different than residential caps although i think also an important topic so if we could throw that in there as part of their research the concern would be if you have a joint stud session and this is now another thing that we're doing i mean you said five topics so we've got parking i mean i'm all four of those marathons that we go to one thirty in the morning but i mean that would be an incredibly long study session that would be the concern  so if we're gonna just stay on track with all of those five issues the planning commission is going to bring as part of the study session i think that's i hate to say it but a priority may be over my suggestion and  is putting that particular issue along with all of the other ones will actually be quite complicated and even confusing for folks so i think we need to give it ample time to have a real focus on that particular proposal so we'll have to we'll have to work on the schedule and figure out what comes first and what makes the best sense as really and then because we'll be looking for a joint session for those five tenants that travis spoke of but also maybe a joint session for just the forty unit cap to go to council so we'll look at that and put that to as and i'm gonna keep the homework assignment to plan though that they wear i guess the planning commission that they add that to their housing and then yeah we'd surely thereafter certainly not six months later but shortly thereafter especially with all the momentum i think we're gonna be building so right and i think that there are issues that we're talking that you will be hearing about that the planning commission is dealing with now that overlap greatly with this issue and i think it will help you to have that discussion that joint study session of the planning commission to hear things that there was proposing like a  committee to review design of buildings above a certain size so these things overlap but we need to figure out how to integrate it all right thank you for coming down for that thank you sorry i didn't see you councillor abel did you  just want to i'm going to mix a couple of metaphors here we have a full plate but as we're waiting a lot of waters rushing under that bridge so we don't want to fill up all our spaces before we get to the business thank you alright in the next agenda is councillor skilling night talk to us a little bit about your next one so the next proposal was background we have our neighbors to the south and west in morrison that are proposing the well perhaps going to be hearing about the disconnection request  for the red rocks ranch property which is close to four hundred acres of commercial and residential build out the proposal as i lass understood it from the landowner slash developer was to have a disconnection of that property from morrison and have it go into unincorporated jeff co that would be a problem as i see it for a number of reasons not the least of which is that that potentially violates the iga the intergovernmental agreement that we have with morrison which says that we as city and town will do everything in our power wow that's a little bit of hyperbole but that we will encourage unincorporated areas to actually annex into the city or town the corollary of that would be we should discourage a disconnection which would leave it up to the jeffco commissioners and jeffco itself so far i don't know a whole lot about morrison's thinking they do a lot in executive  session for whatever reason that's their negotiation with the landowner developer that's their prerogative but i think that we also have a prerogative and we owe it to our citizens that live down there and also this will have a major impact on our open spaces on bear creek lake park on hayden on a lot of things and i think that we need to have a say in the disconnection and i think we should say that we don't want the disconnection that it should stay in morrison and there's no good reason for it to in unincorporated so i want us as a city and i don't know the procedure behind this how we do it i know that mister parker's department i appreciated our response are outside referral which said that we have some issues with this and i think our ships kind of pass there i think i'd brought this request at the same time you all were doing that referral and i think if there's something that we can do as a council just to let our voices be heard if that helps in this process i'm for that i don't know if that's a resolution or if just me talking on this tape i don't know but i would like us to do something that we can let them know that we think this is an issue thank you for that and i would just say you know in the four public hearings  had on the rooney valley master plan i heard loud and clear that the community wanted that out of it they didn't want the annexation to be part of the rudy vallee master plan and so that was actually pulled so i am hesitant to tell another independent government what to do with their property in their land and i'm also don't feel comfortable doing a resolution after hearing so much public testimony that said pull that out it's a raw deal for lakewood we don't want that to be annexed into the city of lakewood abel in the case of i'd like to comment on i think this is a worthy idea i also would like us to address the outside referral angle it often amounts to a policy statement and counsel determines policy when it reaches that level i think we should determine the content of our outside referral that's why they asked us they asked for an outside referral it's not that we're telling them what to do we're taking them up on their invitation to express our opinion they invited it they asked for the referral and i think when it amounts to such important policy issues that referral should be fashioned by counsel thank you it was a good one mister parker could you tell us a little more about what the referral process is or whoever the best person is to answer that and what kind of information goes into that certainly so when we receive an outside referral our tradition is not to take a stance in pro or con on the merits of the request we do a technical review only we provide feedback on conform with our plans on street and road plans on a you know technical issues and traditionally we do not take a position for or against the proposal so therefore you're not making a policy statement we do our best to avoid that okay okay thank you and then i also want to  and say that you know during the rooney valley master plan one of my main concerns was that if we didn't come to reasonable agreement as a council and as a city  for the people who have property rights in the rooney valley that they would decide to disconnect and develop through jefferson county which i stated during our ward five meetings and i you know that was a major concern of mine because  in ward five we had we saw a very similar case with the green gables development where they developed through jefferson county and it has been a little bit of a frustrating process for our community because we don't have we don't have a say our as as the council or you know we have a say i have a say as a jefferson county resident in that process but not as a city councilor don't we don't get to vote on it and so that was my main concern during the rainy valley master plan which is was why i supported it and we heard loud and clear that the community did not want that property to develop through lakewood and so i'm i'm just a little bit confused about what what we're hoping to accomplish here s sorry just answer it's good ones question there i think it comes down to you can separate out the ideology of it and just say look we have an iga with morrison for reason and what they're doing potentially violates that iga certainly we don't have enough information from them to know at this point whether it will in fact whether it comes down to the water the sewer different issues in that iga so i just want mor know that look the project as we know it which is the disconnection into jeffco at this point very well could violate the iga which is what mister parker and his department as i recall from the referral that was their technical assessment as well and i agree that this is a completely separate issue from lakewood annexing it doesn't have anything to do with lakewood annexing the property it has to do with morrison disconnecting a property that's what has to do it so i'm not suggesting that we have an annexation conversation just one in which a technical one about the iga and whether or not their plans are going to violate that so with that said does m parker and the department's response meet that goal of what you just stated you just stated that they did say that that is a concern if it were possible again and i think they even said in my request i don't even know what the proper mechanism for this council would be whether it's i don't know it doesn't really fit in a box of a resolution or an ordinance and that's why i was kind of gonna make the request say and i leave it to you all to tell me what the proper way to do this is but as a political body making policy decisions i think that this impacts our policy the same policy that created the iga and got us to sign the iga as stakeholders in that agreement i think as this body can take a stance one way or another and that's the discussion that i would like to have is can this body not just mister parker's department but can we make a policy stance on this so certainly i mean the body if you know the majority of the body wants to make that stance now we also have other avenues available to find out more information and to see what happens we also have the ability to lobby our county commissioners from elected to elected as well as the moores and town board and and i i apologize i'm not i don't have the enough information to really know where they are at in the process go ahead and that's the part that scares me i don't either i look at their notes i don't have any way of so it's almost weird just kind of shouting into the wind and hoping that they hear  governmental agencies both the town of morrison and jefferson county and the purpose would be just to update us on what they know about activity in the valley at the same time we can update them with what we know about activity on the liquid side in the valley and maybe we can share and learn and then have more informed conversations with them as a result of a meeting  i think that's a great idea if they come and talk to us about things i hope that they don't say everything is attorney client say we can't talk about that but i would love to have that conversation with morrison there so  we'll go through the comments and if that's an acceptable path forward will shift to that as the proposal and see if there's consensus councillor libr how'd i do pretty good thanks yeah  certainly i agree with what cathy just said i would miss hot hot sun without the tea i would certainly like to to get an update and hear a lot more about whatever just get an update  that yes sir and so we've already expressed our concern via the iga too as a referral agency and that goes to as i go to the town board as i go to the county commission it goes to town staff ofuro requesting our comments on the proposal to disconnect we sent them back technical comments road related comment you know that there's annexation issues around morrison road  but the the substantive comment that we're talking about tonight is we called their attention to a provision in the iga that says that land that's served by water and  morris and water and sewer should be annexed into the city or the town and we asked them to respond we didn't say you're definitively out of out of compliance with it we just said here here's this statement in the iga please please let us know how you see it and and that was a month ago i don't know what's happened since then or what's happening internally you're talking about in addition issues regarding the  into morrison that's what i'm understanding you to say no not at all not at all the iga says that unincorporated land in the valley should be annexed to one or the other if it's to be served by morris and water and sewer they are talking about disconnecting a land that may or may not eventually be served by morrison water and sewer which would seem to present a conflict with that section of the i so we called their attention to that and that was our comment to them thank you also goodwin you're still on the board thank you so i guess the reason  i was bringing up the annexation into lakewood is it it may not be relevant to the reason it's relevant to this discussion is that the owners of that property in order to develop need to develop in one of our jurisdictions and so to them it i believe it would be relevant but the more important issue that i think you raised is that though the ultimate goal we have is to to make sure that we're all following th iga and so i wonder if it would just be a more productive process like you suggested i'll come to the table and ask for that we all continue to follow the iga rather than presume ahead of time that they're going to break or consensus that's the route that we will go yes okay it's our consensus all right so that's the route we will go so we'll need to get more information from morrison and maybe that's a joint meeting but also it would be nice to have whether it's formatted to the council an update of where they're at or what they're doing and then how they respond to the iga question  if possible i would recommend a meeting with the three agencies so town of morrison jefferson county and the city of lakewood and this may not fall on a monday yeah that i think that's a little heads  you in the meantime can we send some kind of a letter to them or ask them what's going on what's the update we don't need a novel back from them but just some kind of an update as to where they are in the process i know they have posting requirements but i don't want to have us collectively checking their website every day to find out when they post it would be nice if we send them a letter say hey can you just let us know what's going on and then also of course do the meeting  certainly happy to do that elected to elected but if you think staff to staff is a better option that's fine if you want to do it elected elected and we can follow up with from the staff sigh and just color so i'll draft senator with able as was mentioned earlier i would like to see a committee appointed one council person from each ward to review and improve our campaign finance ordinance one only need look at the money that came into west of the last election to understand that outside influences can have a lot more sway in these elections with the money they throw at it than an individual citizen in lakewood who has a limited amount of money they can contribute to aiding either  independent expenditure committee or something like that you can throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race and i just think there's a better way to handle it as mister kentner said earlier well the last twenty five or thirty years i've been trying to get a level playing field for elections in the city of lakewood and i i think we need to continue to pursue that great i think that's a great idea i support it i supported the last round that we did with some updating one thing i would ask is would you be open to adding citizens cuz we got a lot of citizen feedback we have some smart citizens and i think he had to citizens attend that last session certainly i would like and they wouldn't we didn't the two citizens that attended i was one of them and i attended every session we didn't get a lot of input in it and i certainly would like to have input from community members which i would like the membership of the committee to be council just has it all as it has always been with our campaign finance and frankly we need to address also some issues in the fair campaign practices act which was other information that still stands alone in our ordinances including a probe the probe that the scheduling and timing of an steps  so we have conflicted conflicting regulations on our books if you look if you're going to do an initiative and you go look at the initiative ordinance and you get misled into thinking that those are the rules of apply it was actually superseded mister cox when we adopted the two thousand and twelve campaign finance ordinance was that the year but that was that was superseded when we added the campaign fair campaign practices act to that campaign finance ordinance so but it was never taken off the books so i think we need to coordinate that as well to when we as we're going through this as things come up that might vary from from what's on books in other places and our ordinance that we remove those as well so that we don't have confusing information out there certainly so a holistic approach so you wouldn't be open to adding citizen representatives cuz i heard folks who don't even agree with me brought up some really good points during the early did and that's why i would like to have their comments for us would not be part of the committee no okay council franks and so i just wanted a second what charlie was talking about as far as leveling the playing field i think that maybe if some citizens aren't aware that during this last campaign cycle what i found was really odd is as the money flowed in and people could fund kind of these large email campaigns what we discovered in one thread was the fact that somebody had bought a i guess a list of emails and decided to use those folks to send emails to council well i started responding to each one of those people basically saying hey tell me your thoughts let's dig a little bit deeper on this topic and started getting responses back where i don't even live in your state i don't know where this is coming from so i want people to know that the why this is so important is those dollars we're then buying basically email lists and then sending us fake emails where folks were like no i never sent that to you and i'm like well here's your email back to you i don't even live in your state wouldn't have a dog in that fight so these things are important so we make sure that anybody can run for office if you've got the desire and the heart and you want to get out and you want to talk to your neighbors and convince them that you've got the path forward we want to make sure that playing feels level where you have a chance it doesn't mean the money is gonna ever be equal i mean that's just not how these things work some people like myself my father had passed away and i used part of my inheritance to fund my own campaign but not everybody who maybe has those avenues but i did want folks to know that that's why we're kind of looking at all these different ways of how do you control the money so then we can make sure that that everybody who's running in a campaign has an equal chance because if they get out and talk to enough people they get an opportunity to then get a vote so i'm very would be very interested in this and would be very interested in being on the actual committee comes a good one thank you i i'm curious to learn more about the fake emails so about that offline um oh well great so i also um really agree that the you know campaign finance is an issue not just locally it's statewide and nationally an issue and i just to give another example the the petition for the strategic growth initiative had over fourteen thousand dollars worth of canvassing paid for in order to get that initiative on the ballot which is a significant amount of money and i'm not quite sure where that money came from but you know so it's definitely an important issue in it it raises questions as to motivations and and why where that money is coming from and and all of that stuff so definitely want to help create a level playing field like councilor frank said not not everyone is able to self fund so that's another issue i'd like to see brought into this discussion  and there are some cities that are doing some form of public funding which i think is very interesting and would like to be part of the discussion another thing just on the topic of level playing fields is we haven't ever finished our conversation about term limits and making sure that that's solidified because that certainly has a big impact in creating a level playing field and then councillor abel could you just explain why you don't want to have a citizen on that committee i'm trying to understand what we would lose by having sent us an input i didn't say i didn't want citizen input please don't change my words i actually i didn't want to have a citizen on the committee we have a council full of informed folks that i one council person from each ward can adequately represent it and i would wonder why folks who now of these folks were i do want to address your comment on public financing of campaigns it's an interesting concept boulder does it  i just cause boulder does it doesn't mean that we should do it however it is it is an interesting thought it does level the playing field take some of the variables out of it but it's not that i'm opposed to citizen input i can just see how agendas could interfere with a sterling product so i want i want citizen input i i more than anywhere as much as anyone on this council has encouraged outreach and citizen input so it is not that i want to ignore what our citizens have to say we need to get this taken care of time runs short we like i said earlier about another issue we have a full plate so i think in the interest of time and efficiency that the voting numbers be council members and we've reflect the mandate of the last of the voters in the election so i think that is the way we should go with it and but i certainly welcome and encourage citizen input thank you i think it you mentioned earlier that you had participated in the last campaign finance which i was not a member of council at the time but and felt like you didn't get to have much of a say so i think it would be great if we did have citizens as number of the council or as a member of this committee and again i do fully support looking into this and including all the options thank you mayor i i would echo the comments from councillor frank's having just been through a election myself i can tell you that the playing field is not level i can tell you that as a matter of fact the amount of funds that were expended in my campaign versus the my opponent was some there something in the neighborhood of seventy to about six zero that was the difference in the campaign that's not a level playing field so i that's just part of it but that's an important part of it so i agree that this you know and i'm also getting a lot of input from my constituents that they are concerned about that as well so i do i do agree and i think we need to take a good look at this thank you council roybal thank you  brought up a great point and i i agree with him i think we should get one councillor per every ward to be on this committee and to take that back to their constituents and get an update and what they would like to see bring it back to the entire body of council had have an open meeting here and have the discussion and hammer out all the details or the pros and the cons right here and i think that would be at public funds or matching dollars i think that'll be an important piece of a really serious about leveling the playing field i think it'd be difficult in my experience from campaigning if you weren't didn't have a certain level means because things add up pretty quick even things like filling up your gas tank to get around the neighborhood so it gets pretty expensive yeah i think you know our councilwoman got wine said in the mayor and i think it's important to make sure that we do have citizens input and i don't know what that looks like maybe that doesn't mean on the committee or maybe but maybe it's not just simply input from feedback that we're hearing in a neighborhood it's maybe there's some other third way out there i don't know what that looks like but whether that's soliciting more information sort of like we did what the planning with the some of the planning stuff we've  and that kind of stuff but yeah i want to make sure that we have ample citizens input on this particular issue in part because it's polarizing so i think that will help smooth some of that out i would think but thank you mayor you mentioned term limits in terms of leveling the playing field i'm sure that tim cox can provide you the copies of the documents that my attorney provided the city regarding some case law you vincent i would just like to say for this committee i think we should have as much depth and breadth i mean we've had people have been newly elected who had quite a bit of money and then i know i'm not a good data point but i you know had no money so i think if we can make sure on this committee we can probably identify maybe what works and what doesn't work and get input from all different angles so i'm hearing a consensus to move forward with should be interesting politics is tough it's it's an unfortunate game when you have to raise money and that's probably the worst part of it and it's the worst part having to call your friends and family and people to say hey i'm running for office you don't even live in lakewood want to give me fifty dollars but it's part of it and that's the unfortunate part and i think that you know we can always do better and i look you know be bold what can we do that's above and beyond what are new ways that people are doing it governor public financing is interesting and then you always have to remember there's you know federal laws that take place you know citizens united things like that that are kind of out of our hands but i look forward to the conversation and we will  work on that so send me an email if you're interested and if there are more than one per ward interested then we'll have to figure that out all right next we have c issue in our community we see stories about this pretty much daily now in the sentinel and the denver business journal we just had someone come and speak from the colorado coalition for the homeless about the need of  homeless services and the the main cause or one of the key causes is the rising cost of housing in the denver metro area and just on a personal note i had the chance to go and volunteer at the action center over the holidays and it was a incredibly moving experience but one thing that i noticed is you know a lot of the people that you i had the chance to serve you know over a hundred families that day and i don't regularly them at our council meetings a lot of these people are working two jobs they are struggling to make ends meet they're not gonna be able to join us at seven o'clock on a monday night at a council meeting and i think it's really important that we as elected officials make sure that all those voices are at the table and the decisions that we make are you know that those that the impacts are considered on all of our constituents not just the people who are able to come here on a monday night and so all that being said i really want to understand and of different things one is how are these growth initiatives and and anything that we do adopt in terms of what the planning commission puts forward how is that going to impact affordability in lakewood and i think it's really important that we take that into account so that's one piece and then the second piece is in our comprehensive plan one of the outlined goals is to incentivize building attainable housing and i know that there's a number of different ways that other communities are addressing this critical issue there's inclusionary zoning there's a you know requiring setting aside of fund and and having an additional fee and so i want to understand what the best practices are what other cities are doing  and what what innovative ways we can look out i know councillor franks has mentioned this a number of times about tiny homes i think that's a really interesting idea that would be that could potentially help with this issue so to that end i think it would be great if we could have metro west come back again we have some new members on council that way people can really understand what what the challenges that some of our community and you know just one one statistic is forty three point six of households in lakewood would income qualify for affordable housing that's almost half of our community so you know just to understand the needs in our community what best practices are and and what options we can do so i had said a study session but i think this is kind of similar to some of councilor skilling's proposals where this really he signed on to this and i want to give him a chance to address it i would just add that um this issue is near and dear to my heart not only because it's a really important issue in our ward and the city as a whole but and also the metro area and colorado it's a major issue that people are dealing with where they're not able to find a place to live which i think is troubling especially in the country that we live in and when i was knocking doors i met people who were formerly homeless who had told me that they really loved living in lakewood and they were happy after i was knocking on their door and they answer and we were talking for a little bit and i was asking what their concerns were and one person in particular really stuck out she was formerly homeless and she had gotten into some housing and she was concerned that what the price is going up that she was going to have to move out of lakewood and she was hoping that she'd be able to get in on some sort of voucher list before that happened and so that sticks with me a lot because i personally used to be homeless and i've slept in my car before with my mom sleeping next to me and so i think it's really important to make sure that people have a place to call home and councilwoman got wine brought this to me you know it's really important that for me that i understand this issue and how we can address it and so as soon as we can i hope that i can learn as much as possible about or somebody else's car when i couldn't afford a car getting through school on your own is a heck of a thing to try to do i i couldn't agree more that we need to find a way to make housing affordable and attainable no one's building affordable and attainable housing no one's encouraging them to do so i think that we could do such things as i mentioned in the legislative breakfast the other day when someone's putting in a high end market rate apartment complex have had two or three affordable units there are a number of creative ways that we could do this but we have to do this as the fellow from the coalition said there are two hundred and some odd homeless families in the city and when you see somebody out there sleeping on the street or ditch for the sleeping bag they probably have a day job but they cannot afford any shelter at all the figures we have on the homeless how many there are where they are what their accommodations are they're not reliable because you have to go out there first and find the homeless and there the way they survive is by evading detection  the families are the biggest my biggest concern but we also have something in the neighborhood of one thousand two hundred homeless students in jefferson county emancipated for whatever reasons so the need is there the need is not being met builders aren't addressing the issue i think governments aren't addressing the issue we need to put some measures that will require affordable housing one of the things about the initiative at most a lot of folks don't endorse is that it does require permits for affordable housing and city council would set the number of those whatever the i'm not saying that that's the answer but we need to find the answer and hopefully maybe not just one study session but a series of them denver's doing wonders with tiny houses in their own homeless shelters and  are in their homeless areas and i think that could be a solution there could be a number of solutions out there the city owns a couple of houses over on cody way cody court that used to be head start facilities and they're sitting there empty didn't empty and boarded up i think if we look at all the possibilities we can alleviate a significant portion of the problem we won't be able to get rid of it but i agree and i incur i applaud those councilwoman gutwein and councilman loeb your for bringing this to the forefront able still on my thunder oh my goodness well you know in ward three we have forty forty thousand dollars modular homes up to two five million dollar homes and they're in the same neighborhood we have balam our we have residential housing we have farming we have ranching so we have such a diverse neighborhood and in that neighborhood the question that i would ask and i always ask people what's the definition of affordable housing and the way i would look at it is i would say is affordable housing four hundred and fifty thousand dollars is it three hundred and fifty thousand is it two hundred and fifty thousand is it a hundred thousand and then when you go back to the developers and you ask them can you please build affordable housing for the folks that you know the average folks that could come in and and have a house for a reasonable price and again time is money for them and so in essence there has to be some kind of incentive for them to come in to build those affordable housing because the market right now is at an all time high they're building four hundred and fifty thousand dollar homes so when you say affordable housing and what bracket are you asking in the city to come in and build that's the number one question that we need to ask ourselves and that's the demand where is that demand  and and where we're at in ward three thank you wes metro housing solution they are moving forward they are helping us with our our housing needs especially on harlan and alameda they have two big complexes that are going up here and they should be done in a few months we're hoping and that'll help address some of those needs but that's just a drop in a bucket in the area and that subsidized housing so the question now becomes again where the city is landlocked we only have so much amount of of undeveloped land to develop it how are we going to develop that that's the question that we need to ask oursel skilling i think some of what i was talking about earlier with some of the other projects and having specific whether it be joint meetings or having some specifics the metro west presentation is fine it was great but i think we're beyond that at this point i don't need a presentation to tell me that need more attainable housing or affordable housing i don't need any more of that what i need is somebody whether it's an edc person or somebody to come in and say okay you want to to do it here's how you do it here's a specific actual specifics here's examples of how other people have done it here's what we can do within the law we've had this constant battle between you've got conservationists such as myself that don't want to see development on land that i like the open space but we have other parts of the city that are craving somebody please come in here and develop this land we've had a shopping center sitting empty whatever it is this would be great  as pete was alluding to this would be fantastic to have some kind of affordable housing metrowest whoever it is we need to figure out how we would do that how do you incentivize people to come in and do an infill project and i don't know but i know that we do talk a lot about it and we get a lot of studies about it but now i think it's time to move it forward and i'm probably again pie in the sky but if there's some way to actually get specifics how do you do it here's the plan and whether you guys like it or you don't like it or it's a good idea or a bad idea at least here's the specific ways here's some funding mechanisms whatever it is i just think if we're gonna do a study session which we have to do at this point we really need to do it and talk about it let's just get the right people in here line up a bunch of experts and come in and talk about it and to that point that's exactly what the housing study was coming back with and unfortunately it's been pushed and pushed and pushed because of other items of interest to council but that is exactly what the housing study the last part is to come back with policy recommendations that's right and you know there are a lot of different ways that you can do it boulder has been subsidizing and a high extent as well as city and county denver there is a formula if you remember metro west was here councilor roy ball and talked about the formula for what affordable is it's thirty percent and it goes from there so that formula is in place we are aware that and so it's just a matter of what in only to say on march th we plan to have part of the conclusion of the housing study and that includes the policy implementation strategy so these will tie together very nicely with those recommendations as it relates to housing so my recommendation is to wait until march th and we'll tie these this recommendation of the affordable attainable housing into  housing study conversation that works for me jacob what do you think i'm sorry counselor  i well yeah i did want to say something part of the discussion when we talk about the affordable housing is gonna be where it's located in the city now ok so we can see where that's based out and where the new stout are going to come back with the magical answer of how we solved this problem and i appreciate your input i think you are welcome sir all right anything else on there general business councillor johnson thank you mayor i had turned into policy recommendation to council recommendations one we're acting on the shopping carts the other was for us to at least have some kind of presentation regarding the impacts and options for the city now that the arapahoe house is closed and i don't want to see that fall between the cracks tonight because of the cutoff when it was submitted it wasn't put in in time for this it was going to be on the january nd but in the meantime we can get council an update on the ordinance that we passed for funding as well as maybe a a little white paper about how that's going it's going to be a permanent ask year to year for funding on our apple house and we can get that out and then we can have that discussion on the nd it's two matters clarification i submitted the both  the very same time certainly and they didn't meet the cutoff for the packets which is i think two weeks before okay anything else it's all right miss hobson executive or me yes i'll make this brief  okay first of all it's so excited that we will have the vernon taylor property in our possession so i personally want to thank you for that decision it's very meaningful and it reflects a lot of work also  we have our count annual planning sessions scheduled for february th two thousand and eighteen it'll be down at the heritage center in the orchard room the same location that it's been held i think the last couple of years  i had the privilege to meet with councilor harrison and councillor skilling and we went through and made some modifications and put together rough outline and i wanted just to express this to you now let you know briefly what the plan is we will hire the facilitator that we've used the last couple of years and that is heather bergman she seemed very competent i've gotten great response from all of you  and one of the real advantages to miss bergman is the fact that she submits she submits overviews of what happened at the retreat so all of us have that and it so that's that's a real nice advantage to what she does we will have one presentation from an outside individual and he is phd a professor at csu his name is martin car sasson and he's a professor of the communication studies department of csu in fort collins he's also the founder and director of the csu center for public deliberation and he's the current chair of the board of directors of the national coalition for dialogue and deliberation i've had the opportunity to hear him speak at the cml conference maybe some of you attended as well very interesting he specializes in what he calls don't let this scare you but  specializes in what he calls wicked problems which are problems at communities all over all over the world are dealing with where there aren't easy answers and people have to give and take and he has kind of a new method for and it's very scientific for dealing with some real complicated complex issues in a community he'll speak i think for about an hour and a half and then i'll do a presentation which gives us an update on all of the work we've done all the work that's still on the table that needs to be done in terms of topics and agenda items and that'll set the stage nicely for the afternoon we'll start a conversation about all of your priorities for two thousand and eighteen and that'll will bring that to consensus and do some prioritizing and then we'll be our hope is that the product of this particular planning session will be a strategic plan that really outlines our priorities for moving forward in two thousand  eighteen so i'm really looking forward to that so we have less kind of chaos and topics that come and go and things that take priority over others and will have just a real solid plan that every time a new issue comes up you all decide where does that fit in the plan that we have in place you work in an email from the mayor that'll give you some homework so one of those pieces of homework is rather than have our state  er take time at the retreat to do a presentation we've asked that individual to make that presentation in written form so what part of your homework is to to read that put that down report that they provide so that you can be updated on who's living in lakewood and what are some of the trends that we're seeing as it relates to our our constituents we will also provide you the summary and priorities from the two thousand seventeen retreat will redistribute those to you so that you can kind of get acclimated remind yourselves and finally we will ask you to put together your priorities for two thousand and eighteen  and and what's important to you and what do you want to see accomplished so how does that sound if if you have any questions or concerns like to make any additions or modifications you're more than welcome to talk to publicly that the liquid police department sent several representatives to deputy sheriff parishes funeral and our police department did a lot of work with a procession and also with the color guard activities so that the folks closer to the douglas county and the castle rock police could spend more time with a family and with each other and more in the in the heart of the activities and our men and women of our police department do that with great pride and it is never easy ever for in the family and the law enforcement family across our state to have something like this happened so they did it with heavy hearts but certainly with pride to be a part of the memorial service so i just wanted to let you know that and to recognize these men and women night at rinsed the evening at six thirty we'll have the what may be the last workshop session in our quest for a new policies and procedures manual which will  hopefully alleviate a lot of discord so i would like to invite invite the public to attend again keep an eye on us in our deliberations i discussion about how fees are charged how developers pay fees how those are created and we had fifty five people show  up the ending was a little bit exciting and for those who attended you'll know what i'm talking about all as well and i'm not going to say any more than that those people who attended and would know what i'm talking about  and it was fantastic they had an amazing turnout the kids were out of their minds probably because they had three recesses that day but they were i mean that was that was something that was i was really happy that they invited us to be there that pta is very aggressive but in the best possible way that you can say that because they you can tell that they care and you can see the results i mean that was they can come and give us some lessons because that was zero to sixty you know getting nothing to that playground in a short amount of time so they they should be commended for that all of the parents and the pta there should be commended  and i was saving this for the end and i'm gonna also thank kathy hudson for the taylor property but i was going to do it after everybody so that's i and the reason that i was gonna say that is because i knew comment just briefly on just some of the stuff i mentioned earlier about affordable housing i just want to clarify that when i say affordable housing not only do i mean the official definition of affordable housing but i also just mean people with average incomes being able to just buy a home so i just want to clarify that point because if i were buying my home today i don't know if i could buy it but i got a five six years ago it's doubled in price so i just want to clarify that just so people know that i'm also talking about just extra and i had to clarify this i've typed it outside to remember extraordinary people not average people extraordinary people with average incomes i want to make sure they can buy a home so also i just want to mention real fast the lights are once again illuminated on the lakewood welcome signs as you come into colfax and sheridan and so i just want to thank everybody who made that happen the mayor the counselor vincent our city manager and i'm sure well i know there's a lot of other people involved with that and frankly i don't want to i'm not gonna think myself because i literally had nothing to do with it and even though i i could take i could jokingly take credit for it but i'm not gonna do that so thank you to those who did make that happen so thanks and the taylor property i should mention yes that's amazing thing one of the big things i was an advocate for is open space and parks and this sort of adds this adds to our  just great things about lakewood so just i'm excited about that too and then our neighborhood creek sign near th and sheridan was refinished i'm happy to see that our city manager for helping with that i wish i could show all of you a photo right now because it's really really nice looking my expectations were exceeded so thank you so yeah and if i would also encourage the residents if you see issues like that like the sign that was defaced on near th and sheridan i would recommend you go to lakewood org or forward slash request lakewood that way we can keep track of these issues and address them keep the community looking nice also i would just mention sections of concrete park paths will be replaced in the coming weeks no kane park i'm excited about that i think that's a good rehabilitation project that i hope our residents know cane park will enjoy and those who visit the park finally winter is seemingly never arriving it's probably a good time to start thinking about spring coming around the corner and with that i just want to remind people that denver urban gardens which serves the metro denver area that includes like what has a distribution with our community and allowing them to ask questions about you know how does infrastructure get built with a new development and then how does that cost get shared for our tree or arterial streets and all kinds of things that it was just a really great opportunity for our community to come and get answers to questions so really thank him for the time that he took to be there and then just wanted to add a little bit to karen's kind of mystery that we unfortunately had a constituent who had a health issue and we called west metro who came to the to the rescue and thank you councillor harrison for reaching out and he is embarrassed that i missed that earlier in our wave of thank yous but i want to say it again anyway because this is one of the greatest things for our city and that will probably happen and for sure in the eighth year eight years and i'm gonna be around taking some things into her granted there but anyway the point is is that it's just absolutely amazing and it wouldn't have happened without you and our incredible staff so thank you on behalf of ward five frank's i just wanted to remind everybody of our upcoming meeting this saturday january the th at green mountain presbyterian church from nine thirty to eleven zero this particular meeting we have a guest speaker mister steven bell the chief operating officer with jeffco public schools along with amanda stevens who's one of their board members up for the school they're going to be talking about a presentation on development and the impacts of development on the school system and then they'll take some questions and that will roughly be about half of our meeting and then the second half we will have for an open forum so definitely want to invite to all to come out we would appreciate your attendance and that means anybody from any ward the other thing i wanted to mention to folks is i really appreciate those folks that reached out to me and let me know about the light being out at the corner of joule and wright street just so folks know that turned out to be a very difficult problem to troubleshoot in and an issue to repair so it took a long time and just wanted to let city staff know that in the future if we can require more visible sign we had multiple near misses and some that could have led to fatalities pedestrians where folks would just i guess not understand that if it's a dark intersection stop they just blew on through that and we had several people who walk a jog and who were driving in the area who definitely could have been seriously injured and we started out with some very small blinky signs and so i think in the future for those kinds of intersections if we can increase from day one make that a larger presence i think that'll just add some safety to the whole equation but we appreciate everything that everybody did do we saw repeatedly three or four times folks who are out working on it so thank you information forward i thought it was very good and everybody got a chance to express their opinions and and it was a good interaction i'm also glad to know that i was not the only female working on an oil field multiple oil fields we will have to talk it's an interesting thing yeah councillor johnson thank you kathy i too would like to thank you for the time and effort and  thought that went into the taylor property it will be your legacy because it will be with us forever really thank you and i'd also like to the mayor he came toward one this last saturday and gave gave everybody a short update on the denver federal center very appreciated thank you i know you're busy and also i'd like to thank our police department dutch smith trespass we had a record turnout of what about seventy i believe and i think that people when they saw the agenda that's why they came so very appreciative of that thank you councillor johnson thank you for having me appreciate that and you did he had a heck of a turnout is very cool so we have now started into where our committee assignments are done so hopefully as your committee start to meet i'd love to have you come back and and they will be the ones tasked with going through state legislation and working with our state representatives as their session kicks off tomorrow which is always a little bit sketchy for everybody in the state of colorado when the state legislature is in session and our two main things at the city level are unfunded mandates as well as home rule are both things that we protect so we look forward to more updates as those happen in any other committees that you may be serving on congratulations to dennison elementary for their second blue ribbon school award they were awarded it for the two thousand and seventeen year and councilmember gutwein and i got to go out to their celebration that was really cool so has agreed to be the severe weather shelter warming site for our homeless so on nights when it gets below i want to say thirty eight degrees or there's precipitation in the forecast that site will be open from five thirty to seven thirty p m and that's where the homeless will go they're pre screened but they'll go they'll have some coffee hot chocolate and then a van comes and picks them up and takes them to local churches where they spend the night so it's been a challenge for us to find a warming site and thank you so much for the elk for stepping up they need forty two volunteers they have thirty right now so please if you know anybody who's interested you can has kind of fostered and and guided the action center into a whole new era their program services their self shopping self selection and she always brought a great sense of compassion as her previous experience of living on the edge and and not having you know not knowing where their next meal was growing up she's going to albuquerque to run a food bank the roadrunner food bank and we wish her all of the best and she will be a tough one to replace but she's been a great partner to the city of lakewood in all of jefferson county and last but certainly not least i would like to thank agent hipwell who's trying to stay awake back there just kidding thank you for hanging out with