and would like to ask if you do have a cell phone please put it on silent and like to welcome those watching at a future date i'm gonna go a little bit out of order for a couple things before we get to the pledge of allegiance i want to mention a couple people because we always stand and kind of take a moment of silent prayer and in that i'd like to encourage us to remember to wonderful community members and that is miss betty proctor who passed away i think this morning or yesterday morning and was incredibly kind woman and did incredible things for those who most needed it in our community so let's remember her and then a very special person and we are honored because his son works for us at the city lakewood and we did a proclamation to honor mister rubin a valdez and so we have a proclamation but i want to just share with you a couple of really cool things about mister valdez and he was a lakewood resident who was born in trinidad colorado and thirty seven the youngest of nine dropped out of high school to support his family by working in the pueblos and a brick factory mister valdez moved to denver finished high school and obtained a bachelor's degree in political science from loreto heights while serving in the general assembly mister valdez was a member of the colorado house representative house minority leader and was the first hispanic speaker of the house mister valdez was a statesman a trailblazer a strong advocate for workers consumer protections and equity and education and the denver public schools honored mister valdez in two thousand and fifteen by naming the ruben valdez achievement campus at twenty six twenty six west  regional director of the united states department of transportation under the carter administration worked for governor richard lamb was the executive director of the department of social services and had a joint position as executive director of the department of labor valdez dedicated his life to serving our state in our country he fought for our shared values and worked tyler tirelessly to uplift all coloradans and his leadership has left a remarkable legacy on our state so i want to thank the valdez's who are here with us tonight what a wonderful man many of us got to know him and we are sending actually something i think with you to italy to honor and uncle as well so as we rise for the pledge of allegiance let's please remember these wonderful right well the clerk please read item for item for presentation headstart annual report all right mister barringer you're gonna come on down this is think one of council's favorite parts of the year is when we get  of council thank you for hosting us tonight it's a pleasure i get the honor of presenting to you the annual report from the two thousand and eighteen two thousand and nineteen school year as you'll see in the report it was another exceptional year and a lot of thanks to you and the staff for all they do to make sure that that happens each year as in years past you'll receive all the pertinent data this year i'm gonna do it in a way that tries to walk you through what it might be like to go through a year of head start with our students so it all starts in one of our with one of our three administrative staff when you either call or stop by the wilber rogers center you're provided a complete overview of the program requirements and how to go about getting enrolled in our program once your eligibility is determined appointment is scheduled with one of our family support workers or home visitors in order to complete the required paperwork throughout this ninety minute meeting the staff member will begin forming a relationship with you that will last the entire year in fact it's not uncommon for this relationship to last far beyond that first year as they gain trust of each other during this initial appointment you are also greeted by either our health and safety coordinator or our nutrition coordinator to have your height and weight measured as a baseline staff can use throughout the year to ensure proper physical development the health and safety coordinator will also work with your family so you have access to the health and dental care needed during your formative years additionally the nutrition coordinator will work with our food service provider to deliver breakfast lunch and snacks for you each and every day by the end of the year nearly forty thousand meals are provided to the children in our care and you probably ate about four hundred and twenty five of those meals when you arrive your first day you are greeted by a teaching team that consists of a lead teacher a co teacher and a classroom assistant your name will already be on a cubby so that you have a place to store your belongings your teachers will do everything they can to make you feel welcomed and at least one of the teachers will be fluent in spanish if that's your primary language you will learn in different ways such as large group time small groups and experiential learning all of which is tracked by teaching three checkpoints fall winter and spring looking at the chart you'll notice that your scores in each of the six domains are low in the fall but very high by the springs spring assessment view teachers will be assisted in the classroom from time to time by one of the three mental health therapists that make up our youth and family services team they will use the pyramid plus model to assist teachers and learning how to best handle difficult situations while providing parenting classes throughout the year they will also observe the classroom to get to know you and help teachers address emotional and behavioral challenges you or your peers might exhibit finally they will offer free short term counseling sessions to any of our program participants in need of a little extra support your peers are a diverse group from all over lakewood due to various circumstances some of your class eight mates will move during the year but new friends will join your class along the way all totaled there were there will be one hundred and fifty seven children enrolled throughout the two thousand and eighteen two thousand and nineteen school year your family background will be similar to your peers with some families having both parents in the house and others raised by a single parent sometimes other parental figures such as grandparents or older siblings play a key role in your development a handful of your friends will have a parent or guardian serving in the military to help protect our country in addition to your classroom activities you and your family will also have opportunity to participate numerous family engagement activities during the year your care provider can attend parenting classes on topics ranging from nutrition budgeting successfully transitioning to kindergarden housing options job training and so much more you also have the chance to participate in two social events meant to provide you with a sense of community and one of the highlights from the past year was when doctor deborah bergeron visited our head start program she's the national director of head start that was a great honor to have her in our class and as you can see she was very engaged with the children even brought her guitar and played him a song on the playground that was fun to see so that was a great honor and of course all of the above activities would not be made possible without a great deal of support behind the scenes the head start but advisory committee comprised of counselor abel franks and vincent and the head start policy council comprised of program parents or guardian provide governance oversight throughout through monthly meetings they helped staff by guiding policy discussions reviewing program expenditure reports and making decisions about the head start program as a whole the lakewood city council holds the legal and financial responsibility for the headstart program you are in including approving the application for headstart funding in the two thousand and eighteen nineteen school year the overall program budget was one million two hundred eighty three thousand and twenty six dollars of that a million ninety six thousand seven six hundred and sixty six was for headstart and one hundred and eighty six thousand two hundred sixty was for early headstart in addition to that funding we also are required to match one dollar of every federal of the federal funds that we receive with twenty percent of every dollar so that breaks out as follows you see the table there and we had a non federal match of three hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and sixty four for the school year bringing  total operating budget to almost one point six million those funding sources allow us to meet your needs and the needs of all of our program participants of course money alone isn't enough to provide a high quality education for the hundred and ten children in our program it takes a dedicated staff family involvement volunteers and community closing as a member of headstart you are known and valued our hope is that you and your family feel confident and prepared for the future and we hope to hear some similar quotes to those that are on the screen one of which i like the third one the goals that were set in the beginning has been met exceedingly and it's just amazing all the help when needed the concerns the applause and just the way i pick my daughter up all smiling and happy i'm glad that i picked this specific school and now for the the best part and we're gonna invite some of the headstart children up and their families they've got a little gift for you and just a way to say thank you for all your support throughout the school year and if anybody wants to take pictures with the little ones up here you're more than welcome these are members from our lasley head start location right near at lasley elementary school and special thanks to ceci and cathy and marika and paula for helping assist you that are wondering it's it's a notepad with a pencil and it says head start city of lakewood and if it's like last year's it's got pictures that the children have drawn on each page of the no and if anybody's interested in seeing the full report with all of the information presented it's available online at wwe would or get start and i'm happy to answer any questions you might have great well thank you so much we appreciate all that you do all that the teachers and volunteers and parents some incredible program and these are very very important people because they'll be leading our community here before too long so i'm going to turn it over to our chairwoman of the committee councillor vincent hi i just want to say thank you these this is the best committee to be assigned to it's it's wonderful and i think it's for those of you don't know i  think the most impressive thing is where these kids start out at the beginning of the year and then where they end up at the end of the year it's just phenomenal and then the people and the support and i think you opened it up if all right well thank you very much nice presentation again thank you all for coming here tonight alright so next up we have public comment this is the point in the meeting where the public is invited address the city council on items that did not appear on the agenda all comments should be directed the city council i ask that all in attendance observe the decorum of city council chambers and refrain from applause or audible support or discord of the speaker the time limit is three minutes i think there's a timer now and the lights will go green for two and a half yellow four thirty and at three minutes it'll go red and i'll politely try to wrap it up if you didn't have a chance to sign up and you wish to speak please stop by and see the clerk so we can make sure we get your information for any sorts of follow ups that we might have so first up i have growth formula is consumer price index plus local build we consumer goods have not been keeping up with some of the challenges we have in the county several years ago we were having a problem with attrition we had a lot of employees leaving the county we were not competitive in our wages and our health benefits we made a conscious decision to pay our employees a more competitive wage because we were losing people and share schrader and i just did attorney repeat where we'll talk about the challenges as a result of that and other  related to providing government services we've had to spend into our fund balance for the last several years in order to balance our budget our savings account has gone down to a point where we don't want to dip into our savings anymore the county does have sufficient funds to meet the recommendations to the gfg fo a the government finance officers association we are keeping twenty eight million dollars in our fund balance which is recommended we can't spend into it anymore to keep good financial position so we're asking the voters to consider allowing us to keep more of the funds were allowed to under our authorized mill levy currently the county has authorized twenty one mills approximately for its general fund for the last several years we have been collecting money we are only allowed to keep eighteen meals based upon the table formula so we we have been doing a rebate to the taxpayers now so you have been thinking i don't recall getting a rebate check from jefferson county well that's because we haven't sent rebate checks to be fiscally responsible we have been lowering the reduction from our base budget this year and though those cuts will affect operations and so we're asking the voters to consider what are you willing to allow the jefferson county to keep more of that authorized  a we have restrictions the property tax portion will sunset in seven years the first year will only keep the sixteen point one million dollars that the budget shortfall is but in future years we'll set the budget where we think it is appropriate but we understand that this is an impact to the taxpayers it will increase their property taxes by about not on average well four hundred and fifty for an average price house per month for the first year so we ask your support in one a thank  you good evening mayor good evening councillors thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly as the jefferson county sheriff i'm absolutely clear about what my role is and that's to keep people safe and i work daily at doing that i'm also absolutely clear about the proper role of government and that's to keep our community safe in the city of in the jefferson county jail forty percent of the people who are lodged there result from  arrests that initiate by a liquid police agent forty percent i've spoke to the council before about the challenges that we are going to have regarding the budget commissioner tires outlined some of that to you and the fact is is i'm going to have to reduce beds in the county jail to stay within budget guidelines and when i do that the jail population is going to have to reduce and it is logical to conclude that if forty percent of the people who are in the jail came from the city of lakewood the reductions in the population will result in forty percent of those people returning to the city of lakewood that's going to be achieved in two different ways one there's a chief judge order that permits me when there's overcrowding conditions to cut sentences in half i don't want to have to use it but i will have to use that for all range of crimes it does not the chief judge order does not distinguish the nature of the crime whether they're sends to jail is the only factor and at fifty percent of sentence we will have to conduct releases and when we do that we will only get half of where we need to go for two thousand and twenty and as i've outlined to counsel previously there are two nuts one at the beginning of two thousand and twenty and one in fourteen months at the beginning of two thousand and twenty one the other method is to refuse to accept people into the county jail so unless there is required by statute and advisement from a judge for a crime there will be policy that will be put in place and agents from the palais kwid police department will not be permitted to bring people into the county jail and i want to make sure there was a question that came up about the difference between violent crimes and non violent crimes violent crimes typically would require that advisement by a judge but non violent crimes would not necessarily but to be later a resolution that you vote yes when you do that you will be protecting your people you will be giving your police agents opportunity to do their job fully thank you for the opportunity  for the last few years we have seen the real life impact of the budget challenges that have faced the county and i'm seeing it now with respect to recruitment and retention of critical individuals on wednesday i've met with a young deputy district attorney and i spoke with her and it was a mixture of her being thrilled and terrified because i said you know what madeline congratulations you're being promoted to district court that means that she's going to start handling the most serious cases in my office felony cases but a look of terror came over her face thinking am i ready she said you know what pete today's a special day for me because it's my anniversary a year ago today i passed the bar so she's gone from being a brand new lawyer to working felony cases in one year not ideal unfortunately we have some strong leaders within the office or a bit gonna be able to coach and mentor her but by being faced with recruiting and retention issues as a result of the budget situation that i face i made a pledge of the citizens when i got elected that i was going to pay particular attention to our most vulnerable citizens the elderly our senior citizens and our children and i regret to say at this point that i've had to cut my elder abuse unit in half and i've had to reduce my crimes against children unit by forty percent i've had to take my prosecutor out of ralston house who was embedded at ralston house to assist with the forensic interviews of children who have been abused and subjected to sexual assaults i've lost four investigators that are so critical to be able to assist low law enforcement with their investigations and presentations of and seventeen my office filed about four thousand and fifty or thousand sixty felony cases in two thousand and eighteen we filed five thousand and two caseload is increasing my staff is decreasing and it's an increasing challenge to be able to recruit and retain individuals but it's not all doom and gloom you've got remarkable people working your behalf in the district attorney's office but i'd be remiss if i were not here today encouraging and asking you to support one a because they deserve it they deserve the resources to do the job the way in which this community expects the job to be done and i'd be remiss not to be here urging support of one a on behalf of the people of lakewood and the people of jefferson county thank you very much mister mayor thank you sir mister mace and i have matt bo jeff calm dispatch on the liquid side of things and i want to know one thing why is ninety nine nine percent of the would jeff calm part of dispatch why are we dealing with new dispatchers when the way it used to be lake that have their own dispatch okay and lakewood okay i'm wondering why it's taking the police department ten times longer to respond to calls and the fire department ten minutes longer when i've had station one five minutes away from me okay not even five minutes away from me for medical calls okay but the police department it's taking  forty five minutes to get to a warn call forty five minutes mayor this is crazy and i've spoken to several sergeants several people and they've said there's hiccups dispatch i'm asking liquid to please do a study session because this is very important to citizen safety and to agents safety thank you thank you sir okay thank you good evening right perfect good evening thank you for your time i think you'll be pleased to know that i'm the only one here tonight model rockets have been launched for thirty years in bear creek lake park it's been a safe lawful activity that has helped thousands of people around the metro area i represent an organization who volunteers to help people launch safely including school groups and enthusiasts now with no change to city ordinance we are told that model rockets are such a problem we can't exist anymore unless we successfully negotiate with people who can unofficially rewrite policy at will park staff has changed classification of model rockets to dangerous missiles change the multi use policy of our parks established a passive pursuits policy in our parks changed historical precedent of thirty years of use and not honoring a city designated launch area these are policy changes that are inappropriate for staff to be making the simplest long term solution is to add an ordinance that clearly states that model rocket use is permitted as it has been for thirty years at bear creek lake park otherwise you will need to add ordinances and new definitions for all these proposed changes for example our motorboats a passive pursuit baseball meets the classification of a dangerous missile so aria lymon ating little league in our parks policy change is the responsibility of the city council it may seem the easiest road is to tell us to negotiate policy with staff but can you imagine having to do a study session to define passive pursuit don't give away your right and the citizen's right to decide policy at one ordnance for model rockets so we don't have to add five ordinances for all of the staffs proposed changes thank you thank you next i have trish and you're gonna be speaking on behalf of jill and kelly charles and then after trish we have jean marie and then  park neighborhood association and i'm here speaking on behalf of the board of directors of the ok neighborhood i'm here with fellow board members jill bossard and kelly taylor and speaking time granted from members of the two creeks neighborhood organization i would like to start by thanking the city of lakewood for providing resources for residents to build community through neighborhood organizations specifically i would like to thank our city manager and cathy hodgson thank you and her staff of city planners particularly holly baum who has supported neighborhoods for years we appreciate them and holly will certainly be missed for those of you that do not know there are twenty six neighborhood associations registered with the city of lakewood these are not hoas the purpose of neighborhood associations is to build community the mission of the o'kane park neighborhood association is to enhance our sense of community and maintain a safe fun and friendly neighborhood i'm sure that other neighborhood associations fulfill similar missions through community meetings annual picnics national night out parties grant funding supporting local businesses and artists and neighborhood watch programs to name a few and all of this is done in an inclusive and non political way well with all of this in mind you can imagine how dismayed i was to receive a letter from save leg would save lakewood was the stamp on the return address and it was the only identifying information on this communication looking into it save lake what is a regice is registered with the city as an organization and formal council person dave wichman is the registered agent so i can only assume that this letter came from him or with his knowledge with no other information the letter reads come one come on to the intersection of west alameda and and one two nine zero zero west ohio avenue and turn onto west ohio come and see what your city government come and see your city government in action come and see how this city has allowed a developer to come into an established neighborhood and build approximately six or more foot walls and three and four stor multifamily buildings on top of them right in the middle of a residential area these structures will house hundreds of people and dramatically increase the vehicular traffic in this once peaceful neighborly environment of the green mountain townhouses and the single family homes on south al khair street located directly behind these monstrous buildings apparently it does not matter if the property values of the citizens are affected if the sun does not reach the homes of the people living on south oak elk here in ohio streets or if they're pleasant views are destroyed it does not matter that these neighborhoods will no longer be safe because the increased population will undoubtedly result in an increased crime the city must satisfy its own needs and those of the developer at the expense of its citizens come and see how your city government disrespects and disregards the wishes of its taxpaying citizens in favor of developers prior to the developer building these structures the citizens were very vocal and made it clear what they thought would fit into the area sadly they were ignored by lakewood city officials come and see how the city does not even endeavor to require developers to build structures consistent with the architecture and height of the existing homes in the area or even designated to fit nicely into the elections coming up in this note this november get to know the candidates talk to them go online and learn what their positions are attend abates if any before making up your mind and casting your vote post andor make copies and distribute this flyer to people in your community so that they too may be aware that long standing established peaceful neighborhoods are forever being changed in favor of urbanization i received this letter as the president of my neighborhood organization and i checked with other neighborhood leaders to see if they also received this and yes they did so this letter is insulting and an affront to everything that we worked so hard to accomplish with our neighborhood associations we are there to build a sense of community and not to use scare tactics and slanderous remarks to divide us and to imagine that this comes from a group that's led by a formal council person in a current neighborhood leader  registered as the representative award for coalition neighborhood association what is even more insulting as additional information about this group i took a look at the save lakewood facebook page and saw multiple posts directly attacking the mayor and using scare tactics that are focusing on crime one comment on a recent post suggests that a person of color should be publicly hanged although weeks have passed the save lakewood facebook page administrator has not deleted this racist comment about publicly lynching it is deplorable looking slightly deeper there's also a save our lakewood facebook page that posts identical information as the save lakewood facebook page this page in turn posts information identical to things seen on the lakewood polls org website which then in turn has information wording and graphics that are identical to items found in the lakewood watchdog it is unacceptable that these groups save lakewood save our lakewood lakewood polls and the lakewood watchdog are reaching out to neighborhood organizations to spread their divisive rhetoric i challenge all candidates for this november election to refuse to benefit either directly through campaign contributions from anyone associated with these groups or indirectly through endorsements on facebook websites or within the watchdog the scare tactics and divisive rhetoric has no place in lakewood and threatens the fabric of our inclusive community  marie carson ten fifteen j street two creeks neighborhood and that's what i have come to speak of i have come to the city of lakewood to make people aware of how the city council of the last sixteen years has developed my neighborhood we're an old neighborhood and we are usually single family dwellings with some apartment complexes not too big well currently in the last five six years we have had five hundred and eighty nine apartments moved into our neighborhood and some of those are four stories high they don't look like our neighborhood the old unique neighborhood that we are we have one hundred and eighty two condos which will be owner occupied and they are costing over four hundred thousand dollars and they are one two hundred square feet and they're twelve feet wide so there's five hundred and eighty nine apartments currently and there is more to come at th and harlan on the north and south side of the light rail i have it from a very good what i say reliable employee that those two spots are being rushed to be developed to be approved i should say through through the planning department so that they can start building before december happens and i find that highly inappropriate and what has happened to my neighborhood which has not not  encouraged community or been like my community i am very discouraged by what the two creek neighborhood organization continues to do to chew creaks i have been associated with them for twenty five years and wondered why why why why are these people who are on the two creeks neighborhood organization being so over the last twenty five years i've lived there twenty five years and they've been fond on and i can only guess that that makes them feel good i i don't know any other reason so i do have great concern that the city continues to mow down my neighborhood i just have to ask you are you concerned do you care do you have any empathy or have you no shame for how this neighborhood has been decimated by the plans of the city there's a lot more history to it but i don't have time to do that and i do would the new news is is that the citizens will have to pay for the inadequate water on the front range thank you thank you  good evening mayor and city council members uh my name is virginia wilkinson i think my address is on record and i'm back once again about the use of the bear creek shared path i live very close to this path and if walked skated and biked it for more than twenty seven years i think i have more than enough experience to address some serious issues along the path i've tried to get your attention about these issues for several years now although i think the first time i addressed this council i was warned that i was up against a large bike lobby a truer statement was probably never made but i did invite each and all of you to join me down on that path to see what happens on that trail none of you did i still fail to see why bikers are allowed to rule the bear creek trail so i decided to go with an open mind to collect data about what i witnessed  along the trail at several points from wodsworth to fox hollow golf course at different times of the day different days of the week between july th and september th i spoke with and listened to a whole lot of people nearly all of whom approach ask what i was doing at alley i said if they ask for more i was happy to answer i am here for your safety many had complaints i offered all the name and phone number of the mayor's office so that they could make their statements without any bias from me i have no idea how many followed up although i began to add interesting things to my account over the weeks i will give you only rough totals i tallied for thirty seven days and more than seventy hours i spoke with one hundred and seventy eight people for more than five minutes i counted two thousand eight hundred and sixty six pedestrians forty two hundred and thirty eight bikes a disappointing one hundred and eighty eight kids an eight hundred and seventy six dogs all but five were on a leash i was very impressed with the dog walkers i collected a lot more information and suggestions and comments from both bikers and walkers yes some of its unprintable i have a list of common complaints made by both too much for here and now my question is where is the plan for the safety of the kids the seniors and the handicapped along this trail they are people too i understand that the city of lakewood has recently received money to upgrade this trail  was told just this evening that adding a crusher finds trail next to the paved concrete trail it's all i know i certainly hope that this time it will give these kids seniors and handicap at least equal say in these plans will it be plowed as promptly in winter as the concrete will it's ice and potholes be dealt with in a timely manner will strollers wheeled walkers and wheelchairs and slower walking seniors be able to use it easily if they're forced onto the crush er finds trail my personal preference is up please thank you thank you is that bikers be relegated to using only it since speed limits are currently a joke that might keep their speed down thank you for even good evening council our recent campaign finance ordinance is intended for transparency and to keep big money out of our elections mister mayor your contribution reports oh excuse me but real estate and development money is showing up in our council and mayoral campaigns mister mayor your contribution reports read like a staff directory of development lobbying real estate and law firms have accepted donations from people who represent clients with issues coming before this council and a week ago independent expenditure committees were formed at the th hour in an apparent attempt to raise and spend special interest money with no public accountability until well after many people have returned completed ballots possibly representing votes that will be cast without full disclosure of the source of the candidates support in the spirit of our new campaign finance ordinance that is intended for transparency and to keep your big money out of our elections those of you candidates who are supported by these independent expenditure committees to have you visit up there tonight should disavow their message and demand that they immediately report all contributions and expenditures and fold up their circus tents and leave our city on a separate but related matter i am once again asking you to take action to honor the results of this summer's election we now have evidence as to what the formal procedure has always been for building permit application and evidence that several projects totaling several hundred residential units applied for their building permits without following this formal process on july th this council stated that the language regarding clarification was not ready for prime time and councillor skilling stated that a week or three weeks wouldn't make a difference but it has now been three months without this clarification showing up on an agenda and the delay is making a difference projects are starting to be granted building permits without required allocations and without required hearings and approval from you city council pinning your hopes on a change in council is as risky and unproductive as pinning hopes on a meritless lawsuit to deny us our right to vote and it is wrong to continue to deny the expressed demand of the voters of this great city of lakewood thank you thank you i'm here to talk about item thirteen tonight and it's states that city council request to restore definition regarding student living units two pieces of legislation were introduced and enacted by the lakewood municipal authority in two thousand and two and two thousand and three it clarified the question should colleges and universities be permitted to own and operate properties inside of residentially zoned classifications the introduced legislation was passed successfully and subsequently eight properties in violation divested from the residential zoning it was a win win solution that offered protection to the integrity of lake woods residential neighborhoods and it gave clarification to colorado christian university who went on to improve their own zoning establishing a plan development where they granted favorable tax status in two thousand and twelve the zoning rewrite words from the legislation enacted disappeared with no public record of intention to change the legislation yet according to our planning department this absence of words from the zoning code has left a murky confusion to the question should colleges and universities be permitted to operate properties inside of our residentially zoned classifications for the past three years various citizens have asked for the help of this council to acknowledge the neighborhood zoning legislation as it was intended we asked in multiple forms of communication that the created from the omission of words in the two thousand and twelve rewrite be addressed an ad hoc committee was formed and this issue was discussed during the july th meeting a study session was to be the next step that was three months ago and nothing has been scheduled i request today that a special study session be set up as soon as possible october the th which is next week looks to be a possibility prior to your regularly scheduled council meeting elections are upon us and a new council will be started seated soon will this council please step up and complete what was presented to you each of you in multiple communications in multiple and various ways for the over the past three years and completed and the nor is the last one that signed up so if anybody else wishes to speak please come and see the clerk good evening i'd like to first comment on jerry's statement and say i to encourage you to set up a special study session on october th if possible and the urgency in part is because of the delay of at least three years on this issue in clarifying the wording of the zoning ordinance we are back to square one the residents are back to where we can be kicked out and students or faculty placed in our home so i ask you this is the urgency and why we're pushing for a quick response now i'm going to shift gears transparency in elections was a key point stress during the campaign finance reform meetings i recently learned about ie sees i hadn't heard of them before the independent lakewood for a better environment to support support stain to gut wine the second lakewood neighbors for open space supports henry hollander the third protect lakewood parks and open space supports really reflect that sentiment because these icc's were registered on october th only one financial statement will be available for public scrutiny and this is a week before the election already filled out their ballots i feel the citizens of lakewood are tired of deceptive practices and special interests attempting to influence the outcome of the ballot box a lesson to be learned from the july special election is that more money doesn't guarantee a victory at the polls a quick way to educate ourselves is to click on liquid org and then proceed to campaign reports and forms we can ensure greater transparency by doing our homework and demanding that our leaders do the same thank you thank you anybody else all right i'll close public comment currently for december nd that's when it's scheduled between now and then i believe other than the th that is the first available study session november having almost no meetings at all i believe one and none of those are study sessions so december december nd was the first one that we could find a slot for it and so it has been scheduled as of i believe a week ago and that was my fault that that didn't get scheduled a little bit sooner i kind of let that fall  thank you just a couple of things so the veterans fair the seventh annual veterans fair was held on september th and i want to give you a few statistics about that particular event there were fifty four exhibitors and over three hundred veterans that participated we there were five i'm sorry fifty no cost flu shots were provided by the department of veterans affairs eastern colorado healthcare systems thirty seven no costs health screenings were provided by inner city health forty one no cost c tests were provided by liver connection colorado and most importantly over six hundred hamburgers and hotdogs were served at the cookout this it was a really successful event and i want to personally thank the staff leader who is cory peterson who you will hear from later and the dedicated staff teams for working so hard on this veterans event additionally saturday's was last weekend and we had in the over the two day attendance we had approximately fifteen zero people in attendance and that was one of the largest turnouts ever so congratulations to the very recently we opened the new th art exhibit at addenbrooke's on saturday to a pretty good sized crowd and it's very beautiful please make sure to go to adam brooke and experience that that'll that'll soul ok i think i mentioned this to you in an email but i want to say it publicly our human resource director jeff dolan has left the city and i have appointed corey peterson again who you'll meet in a little bit as the acting hr director and so far things are looking pretty good so thank you to corey for this heavy lift and last week you had a study session on crime in lakewood and we're committed to some communication outcomes as a result of your request so i'd like to go through those staff has been working diligently on some of these i want to report this out  so let's see so first of all there will be a reminder slash campaign to get people to report crimes such as shots fired so we're making a real effort to encourage people to please report when you hear these shots not just on next door but call the police department please so that we have record and we can look into it on our website there's a more prominent area that's a button on the front page titled on lake road org titled submit a non emergency police report so that'll be again in a more prominent place so that it's really easy if you hear shots or you suspect something please go to that site as long as this isn't an emergency always when there's an emergency always contact nine hundred in addition were we're now posting crime preventative tips and safety messages so the police department is posting this kind of information on next door starting with a scam alerts just last week john romero our fearless pio and the police department also plans to issue press releases highlighting crime prevention tips and we will cite those on the websites newsroom to appear on the front page of liquid org so all of this will create a higher profile so that people can be more engaged and can know how to stay safe and how to report these kinds events says staff is working at the at creating a magnetic refrigeration card with non emergency numbers and they did this pretty quickly there were it only gonna cost about two hundred to three hundred dollars so we thought that was a pretty small investment for a a pretty good little reminder that people can put on their refrigerators and finally we're creating handouts promoting neighborhood the neighborhood watch program including the registration form so those will be available to you that you can hand out at your ward meetings there's a lot going on in the city and in an effort to be brief i'll conclude there thank you thank you nice work great follow up and much appreciate item seven first public hearing ordinance oh two thousand and nineteen thirty eight adopting a revised budget for the year two thousand and nineteen for the city of lakewood colorado and further adopting the annual budget for the city for the fiscal year beginning on the first day of january two thousand and nineteen and ending on december thirty one two thousand and nineteen estimating the amount of money necessary to be raised by levying taxes for the year of two thousand and nineteen to defray the costs of municipal government of the city of lakewood colorado for the fiscal year beginning january one two thousand and twenty and ending december thirty one two thousand and twenty an estimating the amount of money to be derived from other revenue sources setting forth the appropriations for each fund thank you and i'll turn it over to our finance director here in a moment mister doar but i will remind and you might be in your presentation but this is unique in that we have two public hearings for the budget this will be the first well public comment and then we'll have a final one coming up that can be a little bit distracting and kicking this off well this is the th anniversary of the history of the city's incorporation and this is the fiftieth budget of the city of lakewood and it is no less interesting th all of the other budgets that have come before it and it councils study session in september i i gave an opportunity for us all to reflect on the history of the city and its finances and how things have changed and and how things probably will change  the next fifty years and i would invite anybody who's watching tonight who maybe is interested in the city's budget to look back on that study session and in september for more information in more details tonight i'll just be providing a very brief overview and just a little bit of new information for mayor and council and the audience tonight on year to date finances so i will keep my comments far more brief than the september study session but i will also give a little bit of an update and as the mayor pointed out this is a public hearing this is one of the few city ordinances that requires two public hearings because of the importance because of all of the resources and taxpayer funds that go into the budget the public will have a chance to speak after my powerpoint show and we will answer questions have discussion and hopefully move this budget forward for a publication and a second hearing later on this month and an adoption i'm joined tonight by all of my colleagues our our department heads across the city will be available to answer any questions you may have and we will go as far as w need to go with either questions here on site or in follow ups councils had its budget since early september since the first week of september so about six weeks that this has been posted on liquid org and we have an opportunity to get feedback from the public and bring those to the to the public domain tonight and two chambers for questions comments discussion amendment whatever the case may be so without further ado let me just give a little background on some of the more public events that have occurred first the city has a budget not at board not everybody might be aware of that and in fact the council budget not aboard met again tonight and discussed its regular business and planned for its future meetings the budget the financial results year to date and to receive the city's annual financial audit from an independent cpa firm so this budget was previewed for that board on august th i mentioned the september th study session which can be rewatched on liquid org and that of course provided many more details much more dynamic questions and answers and discussion and then tonight our first of two public hearings and next steps being the adoption and second public hearing on october th the idea of having the schedule spread across the three months in the public domain gives the public the opportunity to make comments and and give feedback but do know that the city's staff is working for months in advance of that to prepare the annual draft budget and you'll get a sense for that obviously if you even if you just read the city manager's budget message in the document you get a feel for that or if you flip through some of the pages online so in communicating the city's budget to the community you know a lot of the focus tends toward what's new in the budget what's new and exciting coming to the community how how should i see changes perhaps in the neighborhood or in the business area and which i i work and yet i've got to start with a few more details to get to that point so that you can know where does the money come from how is it spent and how are these decisions made and first two thirds of the city's income can be spent on the services that we all see every day and traveling throughout the community and and at the end of the day the city is really in three businesses obviously public safety which has been discussed and that's not just the police department but also our municipal courts and other activities that create public safety in the lakewood community of course we're in transportation and public works and all the roadways sidewalks  bike paths multi use paths all of the transportation activities snow plowing and all of those things and then our third major businesses obviously parks and recreation and all the open space the maintenance of the open space and operations and activities there and those are primarily in our general fund and that's where we're going to concentrate the discussion and and before we start talking about what's new we need to talk a little bit about where does the money come from and what is the  outlook for those funds and how much have we got to work with and the general fund you'll see the city of lakewood a little bit different than the county you heard about earlier a little bit different than state government and federal government the city's income and the way that we provide services is driven by sales tax this is the lion's share of the city's income and i want to make sure that the public has a really keen understanding of the sales tax and how it works and what they're paying for when you purchase something in lakewood either by receiving it at your home through delivery or by visiting one of our liquid businesses and you purchase something for every dollar spent as a seven and a half percent sales tax will be assessed and collected by whoever is selling you that particular good yet only three percent of the seven and a half percent sales tax is due to the city of lakewood the balance goes to these other agencies the state of colorado jefferson county and the regional transportation district and scientific and cultural facilities district so those agencies also share in the sales tax so hopefully this gives folks a much better idea of where's the money coming from first that provides for services second every property owner in lakewood is aware of their property tax bill we heard a little bit about it already tonight from some of our public comment of visitors for the average residents in lakewood about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars this is what a property tax bill would look like i've left off some of the special districts water sanitation etc because those vary across the different neighborhoods in lakewood but these four of the majors and as you can see the school district comprises the majority of the property tax bill second to the county the fire district and then you see the city at about five percent of the total bill so while it the city does collect property tax it's really the and which services are provided so in preparing the budget we want to forecast what's going on in property taxes sales taxes and what trends are occurring there and if you're interested in more detail about that i would i would guide anybody in the audience to go to the presentation on september th because shopping patterns are changing consumption is changing the types of things that we are all buying is evolving all the time we're purchasing things with our mobile phones we're having things delivered when we used to go to physical brick and mortar locations and that suggests a change in the consumer economy and in our in our behaviors in our consumption behaviors and that could drive revenues to the city and the way that we provide services so in preparing for the budget and forecasting what those where the money comes from and what those priorities are we first want to check out how are things information since the study session in mid september we closed the books and in the month of september and here are the here's the latest information sales tax revenues have increased about one point four eight percent or six hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and thirty seven dollars and that's that's a slower rate of growth in the city is experienced in many years prior so that's that's contributing to this conversation that we're having around consumer demographics and consumer behaviors property taxes we were expecting them to come in pretty much at a zero change from the prior year as you know property tax revenues are collected in arrears so today we're collecting the two thousand and eighteen property taxes  and the yet your property values are only reassessed by the county assessor every two years so we would anticipate to see growth in next year's budget and we're forecasting that but this year to date relatively  unchanged building use tax it has decreased forty seven percent we anticipated that and you'll recall in the first quarter of two thousand and eighteen there were large collections due to the hail storms that occurred in lakewood and not surprising they're all all three of these lyon items are right on pace with the budget that was presented in early september these these trends haven't changed really at all and yet it's worth confirming that in a revenue update last motor vehicle use tax we are once again seeing that motor vehicle use tax is going to have a record year for lakewood and it's it's in a lot of different areas it's used vehicles new vehicles and non traditional vehicles rvs watercraft a lot of different types of vehicles are making up this increase i do want to say that i recently have seen some of the data surrounding new vehicle sales and used vehicle sales i should say and that is that consumer financing in this particular segment of the economy is a bit concerning it's believed by many that the majority of this increase in sales is coming through additional household debt in other words people are borrowing more and more money all the time for new vehicles as opposed to having larger down payments or shorter payment terms and things like this so this is an area for us to keep an eye on  a couple of stats that i saw that is that twenty five percent of new vehicle loans are six years or greater that's a change from the past when vehicle loans were five years or less in addition a third of vehicle loans now have additional debt from previously owned vehicles what that means is the trade in isn't necessarily paid off rather the trade in has money owed in fact it has money owed in excess of the value the trade in so as a fascinating bit of data on that and where the trends are going so on the one hand i think i think there are many buyers of new vehicles who have the income and the equity and the cash to do that because the vehicles are more and more dynamic yet there are a number number of folks buying these vehicles who are extending debt or taking on more debt so it's something for us to continue to watch but in the meantime this revenue is very strong total revenue has just decreased twenty nine thousand four hundred and seventy two dollars i have to put that the exact dollar because that's on nearly ninety million collected through september year to date so it's a it's a very small differential from one year to the next and is this is in keeping with what we're expecting in our current budget on the expense side since i'm already here year to date now i know i've been talking about where does the money come from but i just want to get these three bullet points in first total expenditures have increased four percent we anticipated that it's budgeted for primarily that is in our police expenditures four three three percent or one seven million and then last but not least i always am reporting on our number of vacancies for a couple of reasons one it impacts the service delivery to the community so we want to be checking on that i know that our our interim hr director is very focused on that he and i were just talking about it earlier today so it impacts the service delivery at the same time it impacts the finances because obviously that's a payroll cash item  that money is being saved due to those big see so we watch both sides of that equation as we as we do our business so as you can see there's a mix of results i think in these financial numbers and i think that as we look across liquid economy it's a next thing we do in forecasting as we look across the liquid economy we see a mix of activities first in the upper left you see this spring hill suites marriott that's open now at the colorado mills which means a couple of things first of all building construction use tax from all the construction materials that went into that huge investment for the owners that that contributed to the city's income yet also it's believed that it will drive a lot of foot traffic at the colorado mills which creates more economic activity greater number of jobs and and hopefully more sales tax revenue so that's one end of the spectrum on the other end of the spectrum and the on the right here you see at south wodsworth in the grant ranch neighborhood the former babies r us which is closed and that that doesn't feel good that's sort of the other end of the spectrum and this is a company that in total has liquidated it wasn't as though this location wasn't great or you know there's some other force at play but the company just struggled frankly to keep up with online sales as a competition and so no longer there but more reasons to feel optimistic you see manufacturing a warehouse space which is unusual really for the lakewood community this is this is pretty exceptional you see that this is at the sheraton and sixth  avenue corridor in this pictures now about five six weeks old somewhere in there and the construction march is on and i just love to see the progress of the construction work and activity going on here at this particular site so a mix of dollar on personnel so services we invest quite a lot which is why our city manager just described our our new interim hr director is so critical to the organization because we are a personnel driven organization in  fact if you look at the line items in our services and supplies budget that twenty five point four percent most of those services and supplies are things used by the personnel for example gasoline in our patrol cars that  patrol our communities the gasoline and diesel fuel in our snowplows that provide those services in the community so that is a backdrop now i'm going to get into the new stuff for two thousand and twenty first we have new  position our planning department sustainability planner and there has been much discussed about this in the past and so for more information obviously that's been available for a good period of time related to the sustainability plan in our police department we are adding our community action team sergeant and our technology sergeant our police chief dan mccaskey talked about this in greater detail at the council stud session so i won't belabor that but that is also new as are these two new positions in the police department homeless navigator and you know i appreciate that that could be a new concept for the community and i'll tell you the chief describes it best at the study session but i'll say that these are work or city employees that will work closely with our community action team in order to impact the issue of people without homes  lakewood community and so this is a this is a countywide coordinated program because we know that if enforcement or programming is strong in lakewood it just moves that population to wheatridge or if it's strong and wheatridge it just moves that population to lakewood and so on so it is a countywide coordinated effort in addition i want to talk just a little bit about police staffing and and i've talked about some of the new positions but i really want to talk about new investments and spending in this two thousand and twenty budget related to police staffing we have fifteen new police agents in field training as we speak and we are expecting them to be in the agent population in november so that'll be fifteen new agents into the community immediately beginning in november and that's a really exciting landmark and just goes with our police academies that are happening twice a year and those folks moving through the process bringing new police agents takes time and it takes a big investment both to attract interest from candidates to go through the whole application process background screening and then of course a police academy and then ultimately field training this is where agents are out with a field training officer on the job as it was so fifteen new agents and field training we also have twenty eight recruits in our police academy and i happen to be driving by there the other day there's really hardly anywhere to park in that at that space over there because the police academy is so active and busy we have twenty eight personnel there and they will become police agents next year so fifteen plus twenty eight i'll let you add this up and then in this budget this two thousand and twenty budget we are budgeting for twenty four recruits two academies we typically would do that in two academies not only so that the police department can handle that influx of numbers because twenty eight and our current academy is the largest police academy in the history of lakeland by a pretty good margin  as you would expect giving those new not given those new numbers coming on this budget has two thousand and nineteen spending in the police department increasing seven seven percent and ten four percent respectively now i mentioned in my earlier comments that the police department is tracking just a little bit below four percent year to date and that's because our current police academy you know they just went on the payroll in late july so those numbers will start to get reflected closer to this seven percent during the fourth quarter of two thousand and nineteen okay so we want to talk a little bit about that i will now just briefly cover what my colleagues chief mccaskey a public works director jay hutchison and community resources director kit nuland covered at our budget study session so i'd invite any of you in the audience curious about any one of these initiatives to check out the video from september th because you'll have a lot more detail and now i will also ask my colleagues for a little levity and allowing me to describe their very important projects that they will be leading for this community first in our police department and these are some new things we will be purchasing police officer police agent hazmat equipment and chief mccaskey described this related to the new frankly the new threats that are out there in the world in this day and age it will be purchasing that equipment our two thousand and twenty budget also we're gonna bring handheld metal detectors and a new x ray machine to our municipal court i'll show you a picture of that here in the in a minute and then it's time for another upgrade somewhat related to technology and that is related to the interview rooms that are in our police station as were interviewing crime suspects and so forth so the we can properly  catalogue all of the information gained this is a shot of our current lobby lobby metal detector and x ray machine it dates to last early last decade and it's it's outdated it it's quite expensive to repair when it can be repaired now i'll tell you if you've approached this entrance to the building it's it's very noticeable to me i would think to remove any guns or knives that i would be piece of equipment and we also have our information technology municipal courts workers in the facility and we need to keep them safe so this is a very very important replacement we will also be purchasing for our new recruits as described additional mobile data computers and we only just in the recent past have replaced mobile data data computers for our police agents and i want to just give a take a moment to describe those you know in the s we brought in mobile data computers and it was a great technology in that it was mobile in that it it was bo car but you could drive around in the car and undertake the policing activities now mobile data computer means something different it it comes out of the squad car and goes with the police police agent wherever she or he goes so they can do their report writing they can go into crime scene business home whatever the case may be and they can have a lot more flexibility and be more effective in the public  there was a shot of that of course in two thousand and nineteen the city the police department went live with a new record system and this is with niche technologies the city had been with the i leeds f since two thousand and three and it was time for an update there and the police department has accomplished that with a consortium of other cities yet it's time for the last event to occur which is a data conversion and that's to bring the historic records the historic activities over to the new system and this is the final step in that that entire process we have to comply with public records retention laws and you know all the crime records related to that we will also be bringing on new not replacement but we will be bringing on new technology for crime scene mapping and chief mccaskey described this as a digital tape measure it allows our crime scene investigators to use this digital technology that creates a d map of crime scenes which saves significant amount of time it increases accuracy so i know that the police department will be excited to bring aboard this new technology and then maybe on the other end of technology perhaps we will be purchasing in our for our police department volunteers a motorist assist vehicle this makes a big impact on safety because at the rush hour when there are accidents and the agent can't quite either respond or has higher priority calls or a number of accidents the motorist assist vehicle can  respond which saves police agent time quite frankly but perhaps most importantly creates a greater degree of safety at accidents and if you've seen a car accident and everybody has you know that can continue to be a dangerous situation for a number of minutes after the accident just due to you know the confusion and chaos and injury that can happen at those at those scenes we will also be  purchasing and implementing new argus cameras in the positions in a few positions across the city five of them and the new cameras will have three hundred and sixty degree technology which will help in solving crimes it will give a greater picture of crime scene areas and allow the police to be more effective there we're still going to retain our original cameras and redeploy them in different areas across the city so all of those are  either new or replacement activities and also a personnel update on the police department i want to talk a little bit about new projects happening in our public works department and i can't do this justice in a reasonable amount of time and i would invite everyone interested in activities to view mister hutchinson's pictures and comments at the study session and most interestingly one of my notes for his remarks was that while you won't see a picture or and this won't be described as a project the city's street resurfacing concrete repair approaches nearly ten million dollars a year and will absolutely dwarfed the combination of projects you're about to see and yet it's so critical and investment because it protects those streets from having to be completely replaced at some time in the near future at an exponential cost so the street resurfacing  program is just so critical to everything that we're doing in our public works department so first so i what you'll see here are really the sidewalk projects relative to public works and and let me just jump into them the first is related to first avenue at creighton middle school this is noteworthy because creighton is now adding sixth graders at its campus and so there's a there's a greater volume there and so hence even more importance but this was a major collaboration and accomplishment of a terrific grant the safe school safe routes to schools grant and was a collaboration between the school district of course public works the cycling community in lakewood the police department and jefferson county health to come together to complete this sidewalk adjacent to create in middle school and i think this also highlights the idea that each of these sidewalk projects you'll note do a few things they either address school safety or enhancing school safety they're in high traffic volume areas they're in high speed traffic areas and also offer connect from one sidewalk segment to the next which is the key here th avenue west of owens to nelson a quarter mile of additional sidewalk will create a full one mile segment length so filling in gaps i suppose is another way to describe it and also a similar theme here on high volume everybody knows there's a lot of vehicle activity on sheridan and the speed limit is is higher obviously given that it it is a state highway so you see the activity planned here there's been progress on sheridan but we still have some gaps  fill and then last but definitely not least is the pedestrian traffic occurring near lakewood high school and you can see that this is also a high volume though not high speed area but another one with gaps and this budget will allow for construction and progress for sidewalks in this area and you see a couple of shots where the schools have implemented and constructed some sidewalks and and then there are gaps and of course you see here this is i think this is well it's either pickup or drop off i can't tell which one that's occurring here and you can see the volume of traffic very adjacent to pedestrians so those are some of the things happening in public works and i will close with just a final a description of a new project that is being led by our community resources department again  this was described in great great detail and character by my colleague kit nuland and you can go look at her her words and catch updates on all of the projects happening in both public works the police department and community resources by looking at the study session but the major project happening there are the bear creek trail improvements and i think it was commented on earlier and public comments  interesting statistics and i think also some follow up opportunities for director nuland i'm sure she'll address those through the citizen response system so that everybody can see both the questions and the answers they were coming pretty rapidly  address those in the future but more than four hundred and fifty thousand people use bear creek green belt annually that's just the people we heard about the dogs to tonight and that was quite a number conflicts and accidents occur regularly i think we all heard that and and there were three very serious accidents that were reported by director nuland at the last meeting on the subject so the voters elected to allow one third of their table refund to go toward community resources type activities those funds are being allocated to this project it's also fits well with the two thousand and sixteen assessment and recommendations  and jeffco trails plan supports the project as well so it's a nice convergence of a lot of different opportunities so what are we doing out there seventeen zero feet of concrete trail  will be widened to different sections depending on what's available i think also noteworthy is this idea of sight lines if you've been up and down the trail i know many of you have and many in the audience have as well there are often times when you can't quite see around the corner and that can create some opportunities for bad things to happen and injuries so we will be addressing those and also a four foot wide crusher fin parallel trail will be occurring out at bear creek that will create some of the safety opportunities that were described in in public comment and i think many of the the details of it were described by director nuland and then finally there will be enhanced signage and striping on the paved portion of the trail to keep folks traveling in the same direction and hopefully prevent injuries and conflicts out on the trail so with that mister mayor that conclude concludes my comments as i mentioned my colleagues are here tonight we're prepared to answer any questions but now is an opportunity for the public to speak on this two thousand and twenty budget and i look forward to that very much thank you great thank welcome back thank you this is just a quick clarifying question how much money in fuel does the city spin annually for the police department every year can somebody please give me that answer try to figure that out if we can't tonight we will some time  database out of the office but i'll be glad to report that through on the th and i i would say it's it's in excess of six figures but i couldn't give you any more detail than that thank you and there were some other questions i think that counsel had asked didn't know if you wanted to address those now yeah uh of course i would be happy to open up the floor to any and all questions but i did receive an email late this afternoon from paraphrase just correctly because i don't want to read them verbatim it will it'll take a little bit of time so i'll just look to you for that  sure well we're gonna take a shot at answering these for you i think i had just enough time to really kind of have a look at those and then talk to one of my colleagues who will address one of the questions so first if this is related to the city manager's budget message on page twenty six if anybody is interested the question is regarding the proposed spending for some personnel to occur  it's in the police in public safety category the city retained eight million one hundred fifty two thousand dollars that otherwise would have been refunded for tabor and a third of that is to be spent on police activities and there's some personnel reported here and generally the question is it appears that six hundred and sixty thousand would be spent on two navigator positions and two seven hundred and eighty four thousand dollars for two police sergeants and just to clarify that's what's being committed to those positions they will be funded for a number of years at least four years based on our projections from this source so for the sake of transparency and making it add up to the total amount retained under tabor we went ahead and put the full four years there as opposed to having it year by year it's it's essentially the amount committed to each of those initiatives and the actual numbers will vary a little bit based on when the positions are hired and you know if they become vacant at all during the four years and so forth so  the navigators will not be earning three hundred and thirty thousand dollars each rather that's how much is committed to the position over we think four years so i just want to address that and i think that covers  first question and a half there is a question as to the rationale for the choice it says it is essentially not wise in using money for salaried positions what's the rationale for the decision this is the proposed budget to be reviewed and approved by council of course but the recommendation is that the public expense expects enhanced public safety we have a way to do that with tabor funds yet the next question would be what about at the end of the four years and we'll have to solve that it's unknown if we will have additional  or next year or between now and two thousand and twenty five will of course be monitoring that but it allows time for that to become known and for that issue to be addressed but at the very least we can get these public safety workers into the budget and approved that's essentially the rationale for the recommendation the next a few questions relate to the city manager's memo on page twenty nine let me first describe that for anyone in the audience first it's a memo required under the two thousand and five budget policies resolution it essentially the the budget policy reads if revenues and expenditures are not equal then the city managers to submit a memo describing the use of reserves or the use of fund balance and i know we've had this conversation a couple of times in the last few budget s and i've explained it this way each year the city understands its appropriations typically four five six percent depending on the year and some years ago the council gave direction to the staff to the idea of let's use that savings let's not continue to be under spent when we have needs in the community we want to increase our police staffing and do other things so we would like to see a draft anticipates a savings or that authorizes appropriations greater than anticipated revenues with the idea that we will see a savings that was the direction from a few years ago took a year or so to implement and during two thousand and seventeen and two thousand and eighteen all of that occurred if you look at the audited results of the city you'll see that the actual savings has achieved a level where reserves have relatively stayed the same meaning revenues have equal the expenditures within a couple hundred thousand on a one hundred and twenty million dollar budget so that mission has been accomplished we anticipate that happening for two thousand and nineteen and for two thousand and twenty so with that the the specific question is really a question a question around how does this constitute a special circumstance  when effectively we're doing that from year to year how is that special it seems as though the special circumstances are we want to use the funds and the funds are available and i would tell you twenty budget that does just that it says we do have a special circumstance we want to provide these services to the community it is within policy two thousand and five resolution forty eight and  and the city manager describes that here the next question on about page twenty nine says that it anticipates the use of eleven six million dollars in reserves this year and that's different than the number in the original nineteen budget which was more like five million and so the question is instead of the six million we were told last year which would be offset by vacancy what's occurred there is that the amount retained from the tabor ad funds for two thousand and eighteen we're about six two million in the general fund and those monies are being transferred out to the newly created tabor fund so when you add the six million for the tabor fund and about five million in the operating overage those two add up to the eleven six million that's described here and if you have a look at the table find you can see that money being transferred in so that's the difference but it is a big number and it is a change so i'm glad to have the opportunity to  describe that so those first few are sort of taken care of in those first couple of pages and then the next few questions relate to you police department staffing and activities now i'm gonna just talk about some of the numbers and clarify a couple of things and also refer to my slides but i'll ask chief mccaskey to talk a little bit about the concept of management versus front line agents he'll do that here in a moment is correct and then the the policy question does this really make sense in light of the dramatic increase in population and the perception that our agents are stretched very thin on the street  while you don't see the fte increase what you do see are the recruit classes the recruit police academies and and if you did the math on my earlier slide which i've done here just in response we have fifteen agents and field training that are not seen or felt yet in the community we have twenty eight in the recruit academy at the moment and we're planning for twenty four recruits that's that's seventy seven altogether now some of the new recruits will obviously replace some folks who may retire so i'm not saying that we're gonna add seventy seven positions to the force but we're gonna add forty to fifty here within twelve months and that that's a big number and it's it's something that hasn't been done before so we're gonna digest those from an fte standpoint you don't necessarily see it but i can i could tell you all forty three of those first and last names of those folks that will be released onto the streets here as i say within within twelve months and then we will continue to report the police academies to occur in two thousand and twenty and what those what those numbers look  like so next let me just describe a couple of questions councillor betta that has related to the police department's staffing and the concept of management and so forth  thank you it's mentioned that two short term and long term goals for the police department which involve stemming the increase in crime and quality of life concerns that the city is experiencing chronic and growing crime patterns and trends yet no increase in ftes agents on the street again in spite of the difficulties we've had filling our a lot of positions shouldn't we be looking at adding more agents long term instead of what appears to be empty rhetoric i think i've addressed the concept of ftes versus what's happening in our recruit classes and our police academy but also asked chief mccaskey to talk a little bit about the staffing up and the number of agents and non sworn who complement the agents when he comes up here in just a moment and i think i'll just skip seven and go straight to number eight so that chief mccaskey can do that while we're on the subject it says it seems like an inordinately high number of sergeants compared to agents on the street commanders and other management and it seems we are top heavy why is this necessary in this department of college educated agents and i'll introduce chief dan mccaskey to address the combination of staffing  and the management versus agent ratio chief good evening chief thank you and good evening mayor and city council i just want to start with a few numbers first of all the police department we are authorized two hundred and eighty two sworn positions two hundred and thirty three of those are police agent positions currently with my attrition i have two hundred and sixteen police agent positions that they're fully functioning  add the fifteen from the academy that they're about to graduate at field training excuse me add another twenty eight that are in the academy that will graduate in december become a fully functional probably april  twenty and that gives me two hundred and fifty nine sworn agents and again i'm authorized two hundred and thirty three since i have been chief for three years now we have not been at authorized strength and probably the two maybe even three years under chief caleta we burn at we were not at authorized strength we struggled to hire police agents just like every law enforcement agency in the country struggles to hire law enforcement officers it's not a particularly good profession for people to go into based on the scrutiny based on the danger and the fact that you can lose your life in this profession so and with a strong economy  you know we have had difficulty hiring there's no secret about that i've said that all along but this is the first time since i've been chief that we're gonna get close or we will be over our authorized staffing levels and i know there's a and in my professional experience thirty five years in law enforcement i'm gonna stand by that and and argue that that is an appropriate amount we're not top heavy and here's the thing to consider we've hired probably and i don't have the exact number probably a hundred and twenty five agents over the last three to five years these are young men and women inexperienced that to sit there and think that they can go out on the street and not be supervised door have a sergeant supervised ten or twelve of these  men and women is not it's not a smart move on the police department it's a high liability profession we need the supervision you know that's what you'll find that you talk to any police professional in this country and they will tell you young  mistakes because of lack of experience we have a very young workforce college educated there's still police agents so so yeah i will i can i can argue that and and having been a sergeant having supervised young men and women in my career i've just sergeant for probably ten twelve years in this organization i supervise you know i was in my act and this is just sort of personal experience i was in my early s when i was promoted and i'm supervising young men and women who are twenty one twenty two years old so we have it we have a young workforce you have to supervise him you need that you need that or you have a liability so like you know is do i have a set figure of what that supervision level should be no but seven five employees per sergeant i think is probably is very reasonable so hopefully that addresses the that no i appreciate the question but it yes oh i appreciate you getting in this out this early and and again part of us just for our public so they understand our budget process in the scrutiny that we are putting on it to try and ask relevant questions so and i glad that we could address these i've just got a couple more that are really brief if i may mister mayor i'll i'll just get these done and we can address any other questions that come up it is asked on page one hundred and seventeen will see eleven two million budgeted for two thousand and nineteen for the community resources department where is the detail on this item first let me just describe what the two numbers are that make up the eleven million two hundred and seventeen five hundred and twenty two first it's the eight and a half million for the conservation fund or the open space acquisition so that's eight and a half million and that was from a eight five million two million seven one seven five twenty two that's the amount you saw on my slide earlier tonight for community resources which is for the bear creek greenbelt project so those funds will be appropriated to that's described on page twenty six of the budget book also now you might have a question about the eight five million and there's an appropriation there yes the recommendation is that council make an eight five million dollar appropriation for its convenience and i'll describe what that means should council decide to quire a property with its conservation fund by the way only council can make that choice  then it counselor to have a choice without the appropriation it would have to adopt a to meeting ordinance to set forth appropriations and the intent to acquire a real property and as you know with lead time and public let me just say a certain amount of time if council makes its appropriations and chooses to acquire our property it can do that via resolution and authorizing the acquisition of a certain property of a certain description of a certain type and that can be done in less time and oftentimes timings of the essence and when involved in negotiations and so forth so this is merely a convenience for council to have a quicker amount of time to potentially save money andor make an acquisition that it might not otherwise make so there aren't any properties tied to that but rather the whole eight five is appropriated so that council could very quickly buy a resolution that's the only way it can be done only council has the authority to make that acquisition and and it would be by a resolution in that case the next to last question is where are the funds budgeted for the development of the open space purchased in two thousand and eighteen for seven million dollars formerly referred to as the taylor property and that is on page four hundred and ninety two you can see that under community resources you'll see six hundred thousand dollars there and that's appropriated  director newland could describe the the the phase of the process and so forth i know that it is a complicated project and there will be a lot of community outreach going on related to that but  the funds are budgeted a page four hundred and ninety two you can have a look at that and then the last question is are we increasing the mill levy for the two thousand and nineteen revised budget over the original budget over previous year's mill levy if so how much is the increase or increases and this is a good point related to the ordinance that adopts the budget it also certifies the mill levy that must be  done each year under state law so that the county can properly assess the mill levy and collect the property taxes the county treasurer collects the taxes remits them to the city the assessor of course determines the amount of tax due an ordinance over the years you'll see that that hasn't been increased and and i know that cannot be done without a vote of the people that's that's fairly evident and that's not only in accordance with tabor but you should know that that's a part of the city charter  as well so with that mister mayor i think that addresses the email and written questions i think a question from the audience we handled that so there are any others we'll be back for another public hearing i appreciate that i don't see any right now but i also appreciate those questions and all those answers it's good for everybody to to get caught up and hear those so thank you i don't see any other questions or comments so i will ask for a motion to order the ordinance to be published in the denver post with second public hearing set for october twenty eight two thousand and nineteen second all right we have a motion second any more discussion please cast your vote passes eleven is zero nays thank you all very much and we'll be back for probably a much briefer presentation but in the meantime if there are any questions please get them to to the staff thank you next up is the consent agenda the consent agenda has been made to expedite council action it contains both resolutions and first reading ordinances resolutions are items of a routine nature members of the public will have an opportunity in a moment to comment on any of the proposed resolutions first reading ordinances appear on the agenda only for the purpose of setting future public hearing dates and ordering the newspaper publication of the proposal ordinance no public comments will be heard this evening on first reading ordinances the public will have the opportunity to comment on the the record consent agenda consists of items eight through eleven inclusive item eight resolution two thousand and nineteen forty two supporting a grant application for local parks and outdoor recreation grant from the state board of the great outdoors colorado goko trust fund for the completion of green mountain high school athletic improvements and authorizing the director of community resources to execute a grant agreement and intergovernmental agreement if approved item nine resolution two thousand and nineteen  west th avenue to allow construction and maintenance of pedestrian and bicycle plaza with seating steps walls and related appurtenances item ten ordinance oh two thousand and nineteen thirty nine concerning the refunding of a certain outstanding miss police an option agreement entered into for the purpose of financing public safety use and the expansion of the police academy to a regional training facility authorizing the execution and delivery by the city of a site lease between certain related documents ratifying action previously taken in connection therewith authorizing the supplemental budget appropriation of one million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in approving and providing other matters related thereto i eleven approving minutes of the city council meeting city council regular meeting may thirteen two thousand and nine teen thank you all now open the public hearing on the consent agenda with public comment the resolutions forty two and forty three nobody's signed up to speak seeing that i'll close public comment ask for a motion mayor powell on due for approval of the council minutes order all ordinances introduced on first reading to be published in the denver post with public hearings set for the date included in the ordinance and for adoption of resolutions all of which are included and a consent agenda items introduced into the record by the city clerk second motion second any abel there's on item ten concerning the refunding of a certain outstanding municipal lease that means funding again we're not getting a refund from it is that a correct reading of this a bigger pardon is that a correct reading of this that we let me let me address this stage the big picture and then of course we'll have many more details at a public hearing and so forth related to this  the expression refunding is really just an expanded version of what we more commonly say as a refinance so the city will just be refinancing an existing debt on a facility for lower interest rate we're hopefully doing free of those this month because the interest rates have been very very favorable so i think the question was will there be any refunding or refund no that one bank is paying off another bank just like with a home  loan at the end of the day it's the same term which is ten years to go it's a police facility fixed interest rate very straight for i wish it was more exciting actually i'm very excited about it's quite a drop in interest rate quite frankly but we're off alpine bank which the city has been paying ten years on this facility at about four and a half percent interest we'll be paying less than three so that's exciting and we'll save over one hundred thousand dollars in interest in the coming a ten year so i'm very excited about it we'll have many more details but you have one banks paying off the other our payments going down it's really that exciting yeah looking forward to it thank you right there's a motion second i just have one comment and it has to do with number forty two green mountain high school's been trying to get this accomplished i think since miss hudson was the director of community sources so a long time and hopefully they can get this through so very cool all right with that please cast your vote council the slide there so as you know this is a single slide summary of the proposed ordinance two thousand and nineteen thirty seven first read on september rd by my predecessor mister dol n this ordinance is to increase compensation for city council members as you also know under the city charter city council has an opportunity prior to this election to adjust their compensation  rate background is the annual compensation was last adjusted in two thousand and nineteen november third to be specific both the lakewood advisory commission and the human resources benefits team have looked at this done a survey of both national and local compensation rates and the proposed rate is within the error or the margin of error for being equal and equivalent based on the size of the city  the current rate is twelve thousand eight hundred and seventy three dollars per year plus benefits and the proposed rate per the ordinance is fifteen thousand four hundred and fifty six dollars per year plus benefits which if you do the math with ten people would be an overall change of about twenty five thousand eight hundred and thirty dollars per year to increase everybody if approved this increase would go into effect on the st of december for continuing members of city council and would be effective on the th of nope number four new members when they are sworn in to city council with that i will take questions but first i would like to introduce the incoming total rewards manager who will be taking ms nancy rody's place who will be retiring from the city after twenty seven years of service in december so we're fortunate to have a good handoff and so we have  nobody is going to have any benefit challenges since we were able to do that so i'll take my seat and if you have any questions feel free to address myself or miss gallagher great thank you very much we're gonna go ahead and open the public hearing even though nobody's indicated a wish to speak i'll close the public hearing are there any questions or comments i have a comment i certainly will be in support of this i think it's it's a good opportunity for council members and i  think actually when we were doing our research we were talking about the last time this had happened and we thought it was two thousand and thirteen or eleven but that was just for the mayor so council cot compensation actually goes oh there it is right there totally two thousand and nine but that's some time ago although is that two thousand and nine number accurate is that was that just for mayor you know nine thousand eleven was for mayor sir okay all right thank you so i will be supporting oh boy this sounds real exciting i can honestly talk about this just for the record i am termed out so i'll be leaving in november so i have an opportunity to speak about this and i'll just tell you  working here for council it's not just nine zero to five zero its day night mornings you give a lot for council and the more you get into the committee's the more you get into talking to the people it takes a lot of time and you know frankly my business did suffer a little bit but i was intent to go ahead and follow through for the eight years so i honestly can tell you this compensation of three thousand dollars isn't much but it sure does help especially what i would like to see is we get folks coming in and wanting to participate in government and when we raise the rates just a little bit i think people may think twice and say well let me try that so i'm going to be supporting it thank position here it puts us in a in a conflict of interest really to be voting on our own compensation and i consider a flaw in their system really it's really it is included in our  charter so unless we change the charter to a different method we have you know we have no choice and i would suggest that maybe in the coming year we take a look at some other way of doing this i think citizens commission similar to our you know advisory committee but a commission that was made up of citizens only who would come in make the decision on  compensation and that would be it without any any of us in council being involved in the decision i think that would be much cleaner it would be the decision by the people and they they should be the ones really deciding one whether we should get paid into whether we deserve a raise and so it but it puts us in an awful conflict and i know all my counselors must be feeling the same thing where i have to come down on this is that you know i haven't even been on council two years it'll be two years in november so i'm not even there two years yet for me to come in and vote myself a raise at this juncture just to me it's a breach of trust it's a matter of principle and i really can't feel that i can justify that to my to my constituents they didn't elect me to come in and give myself a raise they elected me to do a lot of other things the other thing i'd point out is you know decision which they the taxpayers graciously allowed us to do that but and said yes you can use our our table refunds but they said some very specific purposes for that and so and i that's not going to come out of tabor but but necessarily it's all part of the same you know the process in and for us to now short time later going and given ourselves a raise after we've what our hourly rate is and i think he's always high on that number so i think it's i don't think it's really that question i think and i don't want to get you know to either hyperbolic or symbolic or any of that but at a time when you know we had discussions about action center last year them having some issues we have a lot of debate up here when we wanted to do you know the hundred thousand we've heard now the one a discussion you know i think at some point we can just say it's it's three thousand dollars and i think at this i can see all the points so i i just don't know whether or not it makes sense at this point to raise it i appreciate counselor beaters comments about a citizen commission or something take it out of our hands it does seem strange for us to vote in a raise especially with everything else going on it seems a little strange to do that so officials this way there are some concerns about where our budgets going and expected declines in revenue and i am just not comfortable voting myself a raise or voting council raised with that lending in the future so i'll be voting against it but  have no no judgments on those who vote for it mayor when we originally talked about this one of the things that i think when you look at this second bullet that's shown here the last time annual compensation was adjusted was in two thousand and nine that was ten years ago we've had a whole different council since that point in time if you look at what the expenses were for the average council member in two thousand and nine compared to what it is today childcare it's more expensive gases well probably about the same but one of the things that i think we need to think about is we're not anyway if i when i vote to support this i'm not voting it for me i'm voting it potentially for that next ten years i don't when we're gonna do this again so it's not for me i will be supporting it for the rest and the future council members that we want to come on to this council if we don't make it financially feasible for people to be involved in council they won't be period and we need to be able to make it to where someone can be this is kind of a part time job as all of us know and we have to have some compensation for that or people won't want to run because as all of us have gotten those phone calls that are kind of hard to listen to there's you know we do this because we love our community and we want to do it but there's got to be we've got to sow some future seeds and that is i'd be supporting this c i see i think it was at that time and we don't do this for the money that's for sure i spend probably eight to twelve hours a day on council and partially because i'm a slow reader but the amount of gas going to different events that you're expected to attend different contributions to different things and to take it to fifteen zero four hundred and fifty six really does not seem overly generous to me i think it's you know at least it covers your expenses and if you can't financially at some point to offset what it costs to serve then the only people that you're going to attract to run are going to be folks that financially it's not a problem for them and i'm not sure that we don't eliminate some people you want to i well i just want to echo what some of my colleagues up here have said including councillor johnson and harrison and and roybal i think you all said it really well but you know this this whether we like it or  not this decision is supposed to be made by us as council and i think that it's our job to to look to the future and make sure that we do get rep you know a diverse group of representatives up here and i think that this small raise will help accomplish that and i've said this before but i believe every single one of you up here is worth every cent of that potential fifteen thousand dollars and you know just to reiterate what councilor harrison said this isn't about giving any of ourselves a raise it's about giving the next the next group a raise and certainly the voters will have their say if they don't like the decisions that we make up here so thank you i won't be supporting this call for the question okay so under general business we have a council request item counselor or johnson i think this was your request and i think councillor skilling had responded to part of this as well thank you council this item for consideration is to restore a definition regarding student living unit that to the zoning ordinance that was deleted in the in ward one they are a real asset to this community and i absolutely support the curriculum and the values that they have  having said that back into this there's a been a long road to get us here tonight and back in two thousand and three there was a group from the community they met with the city councillors the group from the community had an attorney ccu i believe had an attorney and they all came to a consensus regarding some some crankiness regarding residential issues and students they all the the attorneys felt that it was the right move to do and so council in two thousand and three added this to the zoning ordinance they did their research they're legal  due diligence they studied it they looked at what other communities did and it sort of mirrored what other communities have as well well then in tw the total zoning rewrite eliminated this definition i was not aware of it until the neighbors they're near cc you brought it to my attention it was never pointed out to coun was never redlined and when the neighbors went to the planning department they were told that it was not codified i'm not sure how that happened  and at that time ccu or during the two thousand and three when it was added cc you did divest from thirteen properties i it's unfortunate that it was deleted and i think we've got a bigger problem really that something was taken out of our ordinance without telling council i understand you're going to have a study session in december i think it would be appropriate actually to go forward and to put this in into the zoning ordinance even prior to that when something is deleted like this and there is no notification either of the community or of council this is one of the frustrations within the community that causes a lack of trust with us frankly and it was arbitrarily removed no it's no definition why  and it just needs to be added and i'd like to see us do that as soon as possible i'm not sure how it will change the dynamics but we're gonna have to just let the cards fall as they will and do what we should have not done in two thousand and twelve so i asked for your support of this thank you thank you believe when i spoke to him about it he said that staff determined it was no no longer needed because of other things in the zoning amendment a zoning ordinance a process what that boils down to is a decision was made administrative lee to remove something that was approved by city council as an elected body and i don't believe that that is proper so apparently also when this was taken out of the zoning ordinance there was no notice given to council that it had been eliminated the new the council that approved that zoning ordinance amen then did so without knowing this was being changed and i find that concerning so i believe it is up to us to restore the decision previous council if we want then to later remove it it needs to be done with the full notification to council of what we're taking out of the  document as it sets for council to know this had been removed they would have had to check to three hundred page documents page by page to see what was changed there was no redlining no which is a method of showing in one document on the same page what is changing in the ordinance that was not done in this case so i think we are just returning to the ordinance what was properly approved by council and removed without council's approval or knowledge so i'll be voting for this and i would encourage my colleagues to do so thank you mister libby r thank you mary obviously we have our study session that sounds like so we're gonna learn a little bit more about this but i just wanted to add i think it would be helpful just to have a sense of how other communities have dealt with this issue because i've heard a lot of different things about this particular subject but surely we're not inventing the will here there's a lot of communities that have universities and i'm sure they have this use issue in fort collins or red rocks or washington dc wherever do you i don't know i i just think it would be helpful to have some sort of  reference for you know how things are being determined paul i guess for me i need to understand certainly the the history you know is one piece but i need to understand what is our risk we had a woman share with us that she believes she's at some risk for a lease expiring and so she's at imminent risk and so that leaves me in a very uncomfortable position if i'm to take these facts as being true which i don't know if they are but if there was a agreement then came before of prior council and they put something in and then there the lack of either redlining or the lack of a summary statement and i don't know if those things are true i mean there's no way for me to know that sitting here what i do know is i don't feel comfortable leaving here tonight if i have a tenant who is at risk for a potential oversight or mistake that was made so i need clarity around that because i'm not comfortable leaving here until i provide some level of comfort that we know that we are not harming someone in the absence of good quality information yeah and that's tough to know without see i think those are two separate issues i don't think there's anything that has to do with student housing see ccu has not moved any students into these houses since this was brought forth so the goal is to try to work this out in an immutable fashion and the neighborhood really would really like to see action but i would say that i don't think the lease option is something that's dependent on this definition at this current ccu has worked with those tenants and redone those redone those leases and tried to be i think accommodating in that fashion so i think that might be two separate issues but again that's more information that we're going to need that i don't think we can answer here tonight hodson did you want to weigh in on that or yes so the study session was scheduled for december nd and  said it's really because we only have one regular meeting in november so it was our next option for a study session once that got scheduled i made a call to the  ccu asking them to be present for that study session so that they can be a part of that discussion i think that's really the best we can do in terms of lease conditions with the tenan agree with a mayor we haven't heard anything different and yeah so i think that'll be helpful and that'll help round out the conversation to have the representatives from  i also appreciate counselor the beers request to to better understand how other communities deal with this situation when there are universities and colleges in their community that that's real pertinent information and we can do that just by searching communities in our own state like golden next door to us and for collins and boulder so that's something that we can prepare and i think we've done some of that work but we can update just by way of background the july th development dialogue committee hearing hearing meeting that we had was maybe our most attended meeting that we've ever had and we have very well attended meetings and that was probably the most and it was also the most it was very civil but it was there was debate and and there was a lot of debate and a lot of issues that were brought out of that meeting the the minutes we anticipate in the next couple of weeks when we have the next development dialogue meeting which is at the end of october those meetings will be fought the minutes will be finalized and laura in planning has done a fantastic job of actually transcribing a lot of the back and forth i have no idea how she does that so well but she did a very good job of that and so that everyone can read the hours of public comment that we had including a lot of folks from ccu the administration was there their attorneys were there leaders from the neighborhood were there citizens were there half of this council was there but the other half wasn't and why that's important is because this issue is storied there's a lot of history and there's a lot of legal issues that go into this it's no secret that there is a there is a disagreement about whether it's legal to do the things that the neighborhood some of the neighborhood may want to see there are questions on both sides of that and those are the things that we need attorneys here we need the ccu folks here we need this council to hear the things that we heard as part of the committee and also that we've heard from community members in emails i think the study session on december nd i wouldn't schedule anything else necessarily on that day because i think as we saw in that committee meeting it will be well attended and there will be a lot of points of views expressed but it will give the new council and maybe it's all these same folks except for of course pete over here but we'll give everyone a chance to understand this issue one of the fears would be if we went forward right now the timing would would be as such that it i don't think it gives this issue enough of a chance to have the discussion the community input that it deserves and this is a hot topic i get it i saw that when we scheduled it i don't think planning commission took it up but we took it up and i'm glad i did i learned a lot that i didn't know and i heard a lot of different points of view and i appreciated every one that spoke whether it's mister baker and mister dreyfus who have very different points of view but they were very civil and you learn a lot just from reading the minutes and listening to those two gentlemen discuss the issues and also council that was there to also ask questions and participate in that and i want that for this f mayor i want to address the issue of the existing tenants and what their fate might be in the coming weeks and months and i think it needs to be understood that first of all i don't know how we can act tonight we've got a norden a law in place we're talking about changing the law in place a zoning law zoning ordinance and we have to go there's a process to do that it i don't know how legally we can sit here tonight and make that change without going through that process it's impossible and to do it legally so that's number one but even if we did even if we bent all the rules and said tonight we're gonna restore that provision here that there's no that does that's giving these folks that who are in  a in a position where there's their leases are up or coming up it's given them false hope that somehow they're gonna be renewed ccu has every right as the owner of the property to determine whe renew a lease or not and whether or not we pass this ordinance tonight or tomorrow or next month that's not going to make any difference now they may as well say well under the circumstances we'll keep you or we whatever but there's no legal requirement for ccu to renew any of these leases so i think to to give these people false hope by taking some kind of action tonight is really you know somewhat irresponsible and i just i mean i wish it was something we could do but this thing's been brewing a long time and you know councilor skilling's credit i mean our development dialogue committee agreed to take this thing up after had been bouncing around for quite some time and busy here we've got a lot of other things on our plate besides this i'm not saying this isn't important but you know this council has been pretty darn busy the last three months we were here two till midnight one o'clock many times taking care of the public's business so i think we've done you know the best we can and well you will continue to do that but i think it's given these people false hope if we they somehow think by taking this action that's going to force ccu to renew their leases i had those are two separate issues so that's all i've got to say proper for an administrative action to overrule an action a vote of city council the other thing we're missing here is that if we look at what fort collins does what boulder does and what golan does it's more or less irrelevant ccu is not a legal arm of the state colorado school of mines in golden is an arm of the state government color university of colorado in boulder is an arm of state government csu in fort collins is an arm of state government you so i would suggest if we look at other cities let's look at what colorado springs does with colorado college let's look at what other cities do with universities and colleges that are not part of the state system those are the only things that compare to ccu and lakewood and their relationship ccu is subject to our zoning ordinances ccu is a very good school and they're an asset to this community their students are very very good members of our community they don't set fire to couches on their porch only complain i've heard about the behavior of those students as they park in the wrong so do i so it is not about the students it's not about to school it is about the integrity of our zoning code and whether it can be changed on the whim i won't say well i'm on the decision of an administrator that a previous councils action is no longer valid that's the issue we're talking about tonight can can administration overrule what council has put in place without telling council hey we're changing this that's where we are and again es it has to do with the language in our zoning ordinance that was changed without council's knowledge thank you one more thing i'm not expecting to do anything tonight thank you that was going to be my question because if you were gonna ask me to do something tonight i was gonna say i cannot will not don't have the time i mean we've with there so many questions with this i think maybe i'm not even sure if a study session is where i think maybe after december nd maybe we can come back and talk about this but this is very complicated and i'm not willing to vote in support of it at this point i understand your concerns number one thank you all for the work you've done i've clearly just in the last few minutes heard about a lot of stuff obviously i wasn't at the meeting certainly never want to give somebody false hope but certainly have to ask the question of impact because we know that that was discussed in july and then the meeting just took extra time to get scheduled and so we know that there's spent the been a delay i think that it's also important for us to when we get to that study session you know because it sounds like obviously  rewrite was a pretty hefty lift and i don't know that everything was redlined i know it came out of a lot of other information but i think it's worthy to on the december nd to have all of those who are of us who are still on council to read those if we didn't attend that meeting get caught up so we don't have to maybe repeat asking a lot of questions that have already been asked and answered and then really be prepared to determine what the best path is from there so i'm perfectly fine with that and i appreciate cou we certainly don't want to put that out to the public we certainly want to respect everybody rights but this does sound more complicated and so i think the december nd session makes perfect sense councillor goodwin that was kind of what i was wondering is the essentially are we voting tonight to include this as part of the december nd discussion because or so i think this that time then i think it's appropriate to discuss it then and i like the idea of including ccu and having but we also need to understand that council was not notified and there is a bigger issue out there not only regarding this but if there are other things frankly that were taken out of the zoning ordinance i don't know and i'm a little concerned about that but i'm fine with keeping this on the agenda in december the second so long as it is taken up then thank you thank you i just want to say accounts are evils points happy to take a look at the process and you know how we got to this point i think that's something we should do and then i just want to clarify my comments previously whether it's csu whatever obviously we need to be comparing apples to apples so if it's d that we need to be taking a look at or whatever fine my point really is just the same which is in our committee meetings i asked if we could compare and take a look at what other communities have done so we're not reinventing the wheel and i think that would help be illustrative in this at this point surely lakewood colorado isn't the only place in the united states that's dealt with this issue so i assume there's some good court issues or whatever else out there that might be illustrative that help could help guide us and how we move forward cuz i know there's going to be at some point a conversation about what's the legality what's the you know all that other all the other elements that mister skilling already alluded alluded to earlier and that we heard in our committee hearing so or committee discussion thanks tim i guess i'm the lone voice in the wilderness but i don't want to wait until december nd to consider something that should never have occurred in the first place if it's possible there could be some harm done if we wait that long  i may be the only one up here that feels that way but i think we need to take care of it in the next week or two i certainly i i think the process if you were going to implement any sort of ordinance change we'd have to have that language produced and you'd have to have a first reading on the th so i i think there's been a lot set  and some folks have been working you know really hard on this the councillors in ward one i've been involved for for some time trying to work with the neighborhood and ccu and right when you think that we're close to some sort of an agreement we just haven't been able to get there so i understand and we all support the the concerns of the neighborhood and trying to get to the bottom of this get some relief and we're gonna need ccu also to continue to come to the table i think to find some reasonable  opportunities to move forward i do want to also echo though there's a lot being said that staff threw this out or this happened and i think there needs to be a true conversation as to what really happened and i don't feel comfortable just saying somehow staff pulled something out and council just you know went forward with it so i think there needs to be more of a background as to how we really got here what happened and i'm just not willing to stand here and say that somehow staff misled council and threw something out and there's all kinds of other areas that this could have happened mister cox just quickly mister mayor and first of all i don't know the circumstances that led to that language being bulled it was a long process and it was a long time ago so i'm not sure the answer to that but i was asked just recently to solicit a legal opinion on the what we consider the key legal issues  surrounding this whole dispute and i received that just this afternoon haven't even finished going through it's pretty comprehensive and addressed there's a couple of issues that have not been openly talked about but it's a an attorney client privilege memo to the city council and you'll be getting that tomorrow and it invites you to take a look at that and see how it affects your your view of the situation so i appreciate that and again i'll just echo that the neighbors want action and you know they deserve to see that opportunity and i think december second the person who brought this forward is amenable to that and i think that's doable mayor pro te why i had hoped he would be here tonight to help us clarify that i am not accusing i'm not saying that they did that with any mal intent i'm just saying that that is what mister howe had happened according mister parker i would be more than happy to have him explain that again to the entire council but i don't think there was any anything nefarious in that action all right so we have consensus then for december second okay thank you all right the next one probably should go real fast so so actually i submitted this and let me back up to some history here as to this next agenda item and we get these requests and certainly as mayor i get these requests all the time for all kinds of issues and even on our own issues we've never brought this to the attention of the city council whether it was d or the initiatives that we have on what what led me to this is twofold there's been a quite an interest in public safety quite a concern in public safety and we heard from three of our folks tonight two of our chief law enforcement officers who i think many of great respect for some of the issues pertaining to where the county is at secondly every mayor has come on board months ago to support one a every mayor  jefferson county and every community has taken this up and so i thought it was important for council not to weigh the merits of a tonight but to weigh the merit of moving this forward for a potential resolution however that would land up or down together as a community in many different fashions and i think it's at least is worthy of bringing this forward to say is this something our city council would like to join the other cities in the community in supporting and and you heard a little bit tonight from from our sheriff and from our district attorney and so that is my ask not to hash out the merits of a this evening but to ask if you'd like to see that go forward unresolved as the sheriff said we won't have the access we won't be able to put our miscreants in county jail and we certainly have no jail of our own to put them in so we put them back in on the streets when they probably need some some help and some correction so i will be supporting this because it's a matter of public safety and for all of if we bring this forward mister mayor next meeting would be a study session and then the following week would be another meeting so we would be actually if if we agreed to bring it dropped now if this council would be willing to muck this out tonight and make a decision because of because of the fact that people are voting as we speak i mean you can i'm sorry i was shaking my head but i don't think protocol wise we can do that tonight i don't think we have a finalized resolution that would be address us and our needs and i don't think legally because it has not been posted that we could do that as well and just to nail that down a little bit further i just pulled up the the ordinance section that talks about what exceptions there are for elected officials and public officials to engage in  commentary on ballot questions and what it says pertinent to this discussion is that there are limits right on the ability of council members and others to use public resources to advocate for a ballot question well what he goes on to say in the ordinance is nothing in this ordinance shall be read to prohibit and it continues on to say a council board whatever is the governing body of a particular jurisdiction from passing a resolution in support or opposition through the normal channels the page has aband but it's through the normal channels and then it goes on to say even promoting the resolution after adoption can only be done through ordinary customary means you can't take out billboard spaces the example i like to use saying here's the resolution that we adopted so process is important in order to take advantage of the exception that's in the law i understand thank you thank you ditto councillor abel and to mayor paul i think that when we have our county sheriff and our district attorney in here speaking about the dire consequences  you know public safety is i think one of our community's most important issues and i believe all of us up here also really fine you know community safety is  most important thing so i agree i think that especially when you look at the numbers and that were forty percent of the people in the jail are initiated in linkwood i believe it's our responsibility to join with the other cities in jefferson county and move this forward and hopefully pass the resolution and support thank you thank you well it's terribly concerning that the county is in this position and i am very sorry for where they are finding themselves it's difficult for everybody and certainly it affects us but the issue before us too it is not their beds but if we are going to support we've got people in our community that are very strong yes and we have people in our community that are very strong know our community is divided i hate to see us get involved  yet another situation that is going to divide us i think it is absolutely appropriate for all of you up here to weigh in on this individually what whatever you'd like but for us as a body politic it is inappropriate for us to set the precedent of getting involved in county politics and we certainly do have a role in this that role is education that role is to encourage people to vote that role is to inform people to make sure that you understand what you're voting on that is a totally appropriate for us  and you know the uncomfortable elephant in the room is that there was an endorsement made by the sheriff and i have had numerous people come to me that has the potential appearance and perception whether it's true or not of a quid pro quo for us to go down this road to me we are causing ourself problems we need to divisive and that's why it's on the ballot so that the people can decide for themselves what they want to do with their tax money do they want to allow the county to keep it or not that's their decision and for the life of me i don't understand why we've got these public officials here i'm sorry with all due respect i don't know what they're doing here tonight lobbying us we're not the ones going to make the decision they should be out there lobbying the taxpayers and the voters those are the people making the decision not this coun secondly i think that it we have no business getting involved in county business or school board business or anybody else's business we got everything we can do to handle lakewood business that's what we're elected for that's our job that's our job description and i think it's totally inappropriate for us to be getting involved in somebody else's business just like i think it's inappropriate and i don't appreciate it when the county and they have done it  interferes in our business and they start telling us how they think and our taxpayers or our people how they think they ought to vote on our business i resent that i think it's improper for them to do that and i don't think it's any more appropriate for us to do it and let me just put another thing let's put the shoe on the other foot it's always fun to put the shoe on the other foot think about it so how would the county feel in the county officials feel if this body decided to pass a resolution opposing one how would they feel about it then i guarantee you they'd be screaming hey that's a totally improper foul you have no business interfering in county business that's what they'd be saying and so it's either a good for the goose and it's good for the gander we have no business getting involved in in that business it's a matter of principle the voters don't need our help they're certainly smart enough to figure it out for themselves they don't need us telling them how to vote and i think it's the height of arrogance for this council to think that it's our responsibility to tell them how to vote and that's what we're doing if we get into this this a resolution we're being asked the tips of scales one way or the other and and we have no business doing that  also i just don't think endorsements mean anything why are we if we do this it's going to be very latest counselor or harrison point out it's gonna be very late in the process and it's gonna be meaningless for us to do to go through all this  you know what i call brain damage about political capital and everything else is dealing with this issue you know alienating our you know many of our residents who are opposed to this going through all that and it's going to be meaningless because it's going to end up at the end of the very end of the election cycle anyway so for all those reasons i'm gonna urge my councilors won't now let's put this to bed right now and let's let the voters let's let our constituents and our voters decide for themselves what they want to do on one a regardless of which side of one a year on let the voters decide that's why it's at an election that's all i've got you well i agree with councilor betta and councillor johnson and i'll just say ditto and make it short and sweet thank you thank you tough spot because you know in some respects jeff chose our vendor for providing the jail space so we're in a very strange position it's our vendors telling us if you don't approve this you're gonna lose out on these beds and that puts us in a in an awkward position doesn't change my original feeling that that's not the role of this body to be endorsing it one way or another but it does give me concerns i'm not particularly fond of that vendor and the head of that vendor you know coming here and telling us this is all the bad stuff that's going to happen i haven't heard about if there's any other cuts that they can make in the department's it just goes straight to the scariest thing that anyone can imagine and that doesn't sit too well but again but these are all personal things this isn't something that the body is gonna set up here and debate that we're gonna look through jeff coes budget i mean i pulled it up today and was looking through there two thousand and nineteen budget we can debate that there's six pages on the sheriff stuff but i don't think that's our role so i'm just going back to five hundred and eighty five b and if my memories wrong on that then i stand corrected but i thought we've already had this discussion and we came down on the side of we're not going to get involved in that regardless of whether we individually support it okay you know and certainly that's why i said i don't take this lightly to bring this forward and and it's not it's not a personality thing it's not a politic thing it's not a scare factor you have to the most respected law enforcement folks in all the state of colorado coming here not to scare you but to tell you the reality and when this council is here talking about crime and concerned about crime and they're saying we will close down jail beds i take them at their word that they'll close down jail beds and to think that it has to do with some sort of endorsement is pretty disrespectful to those elected officials who are here we have every opportunity to go before that body we have gone before that body and i'm sorry if you don't know the county's budget you live in the county and they're a vendor because they have to be the vendor they are by that's what they provide they provide jail for all the municipalities so you know i it's a tough one and i think when things get tough you gotta find leaders and you have to be able to talk about these tough issues with the community and there are other communities that are much different than ours much more to the left much more to the right that saw important enough to take a look and say this means real dollars to our community this means real impacts to our public safety and whether or not people listen to us or not i think it's important that we have a tradition of working together throughout the county and recognizing that what happens in jeffco affects the city of lakewood and vice versa we're dealing of time but i still think it's important and it's worthwhile for a larger conversation mayor pro tem all i agree with you about the need for the jail space and feel kind of like my arms being twisted for this i do not agree that people who were not of the same thoughts that i have are disrespectful i think we're adding by using those words we add more divisiveness to an already controversial subject and for about the second or third time tonight  heard someone in leadership up here say that we're just not doing the right thing and we're not being good people if we don't go along with the issue at hand so my objection is the i think my point was that somehow there was a quid pro quo and i was coming back because of an endorsement amazingly proud of ward for their good question askers they're looking deep at the information i absolutely agree with councillor skilling our ward doesn't need us to tell them how to vote sometimes they need us to help connect them to information we've reached out for information we want answers on certain questions decision points and and budget things and i think it is a very personal decision but i as i did with a and b agreed with the council that i do not think it's our because we should not be taking a council position individuals can certainly do that and sign on i saw they have a web page where they're amassing the list of names it is a very long list of names for those interested i just don't believe it's our role i think our role is to help educate people to help connect them to the information that they need to deepen the conversation that way when the decision is made people feel confident that they made it based on the facts of the matter and how they feel about their own personal finances so i appreciate all the passion but i don't see the point of moving this forward i think it is a decision that our community needs to make certainly with our support where we can connect them to that information so i won't be supportive of moving this forward not because i certainly don't care about safety we all care about safety i think that goes without question but certainly there's other budgetary ways to get to certain things so they may have to make some different choices if it is something that doesn't pass and if it does pass then the community will have spoken so i think that's an important thing that we all just need to respect is that we agreed to stay out of other ones because we wanted our community to make a decision and we can individually encourage those decisions if we choose thank you and i would just echo that's what the resolution does it puts out that information that you just stated as to what it does so you know i get a sense that it could go forward but it'd be divisive and so i'm not gonna take it forward any further i think it would it look worse if there was divisive on something this important so i will withdraw that request and i think it i do think it's unfortunate because i think that this is something again that we've never taken a look at but we've also never been councillor frank's i'll be quick i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came out for our shred day and for the clean up day we know it was amazingly popular which meant that some folks maybe waited in line longer than they had expected to but please know that that staff is is looking at all of that looking at the attendance looking at how that was routed we know it was very popular we certainly appreciate all of you and certainly look forward to the next event that were able to host we just know that you so appreciate the service we saw good things where people were like i was able to take in x amount of boxes to get shred or i was able to take a tv and a monitor so we know we served a lot of people and certainly will work to always do better for future events thank you very much so johnson thank you may paul i just want to tell you openly that i honestly respect and appreciate what you just did thank you i know it was hard and i appreciate it thank you especially since it would have been a division for us i would also just like to ask miss hudson i'm not sure what's going on with the rocket folks i would be happy to sit down with you and with them and see if we can't have some kind of meaningful conversation i've met with some of the parents they're good people they're trying to get their kids to have this keep going i'd love to sit down with you if that's possible sure i'm happy to do that and staff is still working on that and we've given them a one year extension to allow for that work and those conversations to be had i actually personally heard from a representative of the  rocket club a group that really appreciated that so we're going back to the table and in fact result we've also heard from the corps of engineers so it's it hasn't died it we're still working to find a good resolution thank you and also backing up your your comment about the veterans fair and it sounded like you had four or five hundred people i just would like to again say that that idea was actually initiated by councillor roy ball and scott hefty i don't know seven eight years ago it started at the community center it has really grown pete was in the service what twenty four years twenty one years twenty one years and he is passionate about his veterans his buddies his brothers and he does a lot to make sure that they are taking care of you personally being there this year as well and we had again we had three hundred veterans who attended just one quick comment mayor thank you for acknowledging my good friend ruben valdez he was a giant in the community he was way ahead of his time he was a mentor of mine believe it or not we didn't always agree on things but we did have lots of discussions about leadership and what that's about and not only that we played poker regularly and i will tell you he was one heck of a poker player and he could run a bluff better than anybody i ever met an informal setting for that proclamation however the family had requested it and the services are coming up so we kind of rushed that we weren't able to notice that out but we do have a formal proclamation if anybody's interested and that will be presented to his family and then we'll keep you posted on the betty proctor and again i she has a i think it's called the betty proctor fund which benefits the action center and just a giant and and really worked worked hard for her whole life to  help those folks in need i want to mention that we had a beautiful art installation that was opened addenbrooke's and a local artist named colin parsons designed that and it really is stunning and it's very unique and very different and if you have a chance go check it out it really talks about reflections of where we are it's built at the the old fireplace so it has a historical piece and then these kind of doors that you can move through to look at where we're going so that was the th anniversary piece miss hudson thank you to you and your staff for putting that all together and i think there was a lot of community involvement in picking that but it's really cool the riot fest was a great great event as always four hundred and forty west arts and then i had the opportunity outside to meet with joseph ness who is also known as scrapper joe who's a gentleman who lived on the streets for many years and then in his car and now had purchased a motorhome and is one of our residents who's living on a thin quail certainly some sympathetic of where this body had to come from on that issue and very understanding and i know that we are gonna really work with some of those folks who are living in those motor homes to see what we can do but he also had some really good ideas for council and for our staff as to what we can help do and maybe how we can find better ways to make sure that our homeless who may have a motor home can still be able to live in the community so i will share that with you but i did want to say for a gentleman who potentially is going to be pushed out his willingness to sit down and understand where the community was coming from was really appreciated so that is all i have ballots are out so make sure that you get those in i think we have five drop locations as well as the mail and we will adjourn and if there's nothing else from  well thank you oh good evening