one minute to air one minute time to come out this evening before we get into the night topics i just want to mention that we are starting a little bit late city council had a study sara executive session that ran over a little bit and i wanted to reiterate to the community that no decisions were made or votes taken within the executive session and then will be made at this point either so no no decisions were made so i wanted to emphasize that ok and we will move into item number three which is a review of mayor and council compensation and i will invite down mister dolan director of human resources to give us a presentation and i will start with a just a little comment that this has nothing to do with the mayor or city council asking to have this discussion it is codified in our city code that this discussion must take place good evening evening thank you mayor thank you counsel again i have the privilege of being in front of you tonight to open the conversation and think of this as the starting point not the end point so i'd like to lay a little bit of groundwork for you compensation is always one of the favorite things of everybody to talk about so i will go quickly and efficiently if you have any questions feel free to ask me questions at the end in our municipal code as well as our city charter  there's a few requirements so as part of our municipal code chapter four point two six o o subsection d during the november prior to each mayoral election city council and the mayor we're required to review the compensation that is currently being levied for you this does not in any way shape or form require you to take any action at this point in time but we are required by municipal code to have this conversation and to start this  the municipal code also leads us to city charter which indicates well why do we do this city charter section two eleven i included the entire information up there i'm not going to read to you i'll highlight  the elements for you but for the most part it does highlight that any changes to city council or mayor's compensation has to be done through an ordinance and there's also a clause in there that suggests  strongly that the cut any conversation that happens happens prior to the election none no changes should there be any changes can be made effective to this council or this mayor so you cannot increase nor can you decrease your level of compensation that is set by charter so should there be any changes that are made or recommended and should the council the mayor vote implemented any changes that would actually go into effect for the next term again having the foresight to move it off of the currently seated elected officials to open the conversation back in may you guys requested the at the time a cic which is now the lakewood advisory commission to take a look at the level of the discussion of compensation in a much broader perspective and i'll highlight a few of it i've included the language that was given to to the lakewood advisory commission and i'll just highlight a few of those elements there you requested that they look for other cities that are of a like size population us for information regarding their compensation criteria what is it that it that makes up that decision or recommendation you wanted to have have them focus on council manager communities much like our organization in our community you wanted to make sure that there had some identification of responsibilities and responsibilities is one of those things where what what is an apple we're trying to define an apple so we can compare it to another apple boards commissioned reports what is it the nature of the work that it's being accomplished you asked that they look for formal reporting requirements is there some additional information that is required on a formal quarterly basis or on a manual or an annual basis along those lines and really one of the the biggest ones is whether or not the elected positions are considered full time or part time and this is something i'll highlight here as we look at some of the information and data that we've shared initially but that tends to be one of the the biggest decision points that you'll find looking at the survey data most of you are familiar our human resources department does survey studies every year so we tend to use the same process over and over we look at the metro area we look at our comparable benchmark cities and that usually stays focused roughly in our metro area in the  region rarely do we go outside of the region and look nationally it's not uncommon for us to do that when we have highly competitive positions but just just to kind of provide you some context for this survey we did stay within our standard operating procedure and look at organizations that are in our metro area a couple things i'd highlight for you in this spreadsheet up there there are three cities that have asterisks behind them those asterisks indicate that the mayor's are full time and in that case you'll also notice that two of the three colorado springs in the city and county of denver they are strong mayor form of government whereas  aurora although it's a full time mayor they do have a city manager form of government so just to highlight those differences and i raise those to you primarily because you'll see towards the bottom there's two averages in salary so as i look at the mayor's salary there's an average forty thousand seven ninety seven ninety six that incorporates the full time mayor's in there so just to give you some context that's where that number came from the second average you'll see there at fifteen thousand six eighty two and sixty seven cents or nothing if not specific that really we take those full time mayor's out so you get a better sense of a part time mayor two versus a full time so it gives you a better sense  by by ordinance our lakewood mayor makes thirty eight thousand eight hundred dollars if you look at the city council's side of the equation there are no asterisks so based on our information there are no full time city council members at this point in time across the region that doesn't mean that in any way shape or form that any of you are not working the hours or there's no judgement or value statement there so let me make sure you all hear that just because you're not the other cities aren't being compensated doesn't mean that all elected officials are putting in lots of hours i should have said that i upfront the average within the area within the community was eighteen thousand three hundred and two our lakewood council pays twelve thousand eight seventy three again point shortly thereafter in two thousand and three you started to see some increase in the mayoral the mayor's roll up to twenty four thousand two thousand and seven we had another increase to thirty  compensation to the current state of thirty eight thousand eight hundred we threw some information in there for those of you that are like me and you like numbers you get to see a little bit of a percent change as far as the justification as to why those occurred most likely based on what we've were able to glean from from history changes in complexity of the the role and quite honestly changes in the market is what largely led that change next steps really one of the things that it's most important is the conversation continuing the lakewood advisory commission has started this conversation and i know for a fact that they've had a number of conversations and deep conversations trying to again to best define how to compare an apple an apple the hr function has been supportive of that we provided them information throughout the process they also looked at some additional broader scopes across the country i'd like to tell you that based on their knowledge their information and our information we're really close as it relates to numbers anytime you look at national data versus regional data there's some differences primarily d to cost of living on the coasts is usually what we see and so just as a guiding principle know that what what the liquid advisory commission has been doing is consistent with what we would also do as it relates to compensation there is i am told there's a lakewood advisory commission executive team committee meeting this coming week still i'm under the understanding that they're going to continue to have  conversation as relates to this topic i would suspect that that once the executive committee comes to some agreement the rain they'll take it to the broader and committee i know the next count the next broad committee is scheduled for no what i'm recommending is that we continue to allow the lakewood advisory commission to continue their work they're very close and they've done some exceptional lifting heavy lifting already we're more than happy to assist in any way shape or form but i would i would i would personally recommend that we allow them to finish their work present a recommendation to mayor and council and then you guys can direct us on how you would like us to support the initiative going for so happy to answer any questions that you might have all right looks like there'll be a few i'll just start with a comment and i think it's fair to speak for everybody up here we certainly don't do it for the salary so i know that everybody here would do this for free and spends a lot of their time in and out i think the pay stubs used to say for a councilmember eighty hours is what the pay period was when it came about four hundred and twenty five an hour so what counsel was getting paid so it one more time thank you for the presentation one question that i would love to have liquid advisory commission maybe confirm for us is whatever recommendations they make would they be a the next term for us as we've got people that will probably be running for a second term so i'm assuming that increase would apply to their second term so if we would make that clear in their recommendations that would be wonderful oh the charter actually thank you for the presentation just a quick question i was under the impression there was another city that recently went to a strong mayor form of government and i'm thinking it was pueblo but i'm not sure are you aware of that  i'm not that pebble is typically not in our our focus or our study but i'm happy to search and learn a little bit more about this i'd like to offer i believe that's accurate and they have an election to tomorrow and i obviously this is my second term so i'm termed out so whatever we do here is not gonna affect me okay so that being said but what my question is is that if there is a pay raise and it goes into effect the following november you have counselors here that are in between their term would that also apply to them that the pay raise as i and i'll check with legal but as i understand it it wouldn't it would become effective with the beginning of the next term so you know it would cycle through so the the president counselors that are doing their four year term this pay raise would not apply to them i believe that's accurate yeah i'll double check but as i read it yeah i just want to verify to make  january st so if the new council is council members are sworn in that would begin the new term from that date forward everybody on council would be at that new pay rate up or down and can i add to that please when when you do get your presentation from the liquid advisory commission we will make sure that we've got all of those dates and when those take effect so we'll make sure to run that through legal to make sure that we're in accordance with the charter i just want to make sure and we have the the clarification and we put it out there for those who are running or those who want to continue moving forward okay thank you what i would what i would offer is after  a after the decisions made i usually put together a timeline of what's going to happen and when it's going to happen in a communication plan wrapped around that so we're communicating both internally and in to anybody any of the elected body so you'll get  detailed list of what that looks like okay thank you to clarification i thought denver city council was full time are you telling me they get paid nearly ninety two thousand dollars a year as part time workers i think they're full time they based on what we were given that information having worked there i would tell you that my understanding is that they're full time but based on the information that was shared with us in the survey i think there may have been some misinformation between the organization to us but i didn't feel comfortable presenting information that we believe i appreciate that just but having been there yeah i believe their full time okay thank you with full time staff um miss gulen and offices in district so i i'm eager to hear what the lakewood advisory commission has to say a question that i would be interested in learning about is if if an increase in raises increases the diversity on the board so if people are able to say pay for child care to be able to to serve if that changes the the group makeup so that we could get more diverse government leadership roles for the make up of those individuals to be pretty similar well i think there's a reason why it's pretty common for people in elected office to be either retired or to be supported by their spouse or to be maybe from a certain class segment of our society so i think a lot of that has to do with the way that we deal with the pay structure it's not easy for someone who needs a real income let's take care of kids etc to be able to spend their entire day doing these kind of activities and being compensated what a lifeguard or someone else would be paid so i'd love to hear more about elected that also has to apply to sitting as well so and i don't think there's anything under the charter i don't think there's anything we could do in passing an ordinance that would be contrary to that so we're pretty much i think in like i was just looking at the denver and the mayor of denver is precluded from having any other employment but the city councilors on who their annual salary certainly doesn't maybe require them to but it does say with certain limitations they are able to have other employment while serving so i would be curious to know how many of the do any of the other ones that we listed in ours do they preclude you from having on their employment like for lakewood we don't i have a full time job in addition to this so i would just like to be able to assess those numbers to see if any restrict employment in any ways thank you it's googling one other question just from the denver example where they are working full time but i guess you know i know that the difference between a strong mayor and a council manager form of government is as a full time coun tied to a strong mayor or is there no connection there it could any so could lakewood for example have a full time council or is that a charter change or is that what kind of okay anybody else all right we look forward to the liquid advisory commission i am and maybe that's part of their scope is not to work with council members but i was surprised that nobody had reached out to kind of find out what council members do or what the schedule looks like for mayor council so just one more thing can you find out where they were worth what we're getting now that's a loaded question every every other november every other november all right thank you all right i'll now open the public input part and again we'll have three minutes and this is geared towards the actual conversation so we welcome you to be a part of this discussion and ask any questions that you might have this isn't for or against conversation so with that mister ashe you're up first council as always thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening i first want to preface by saying my comments that i'm about to make our mine and mine alone i realized that we're on the very early stages of any discussion on this subject and we're a long way from any making any firm decisions so i would ask that you kind of look at my comments in a consider this type of format  a lot of my comments actually had to do with questions raised by council already so those that will hopefully cut down on the amount of time i speak but anyway my comments would be that even though you're you're going to at some point decide or not decide whether or not compensation should be increased or not and to mister ables question i don't know if you're worth what you're getting now either  comments don't reflect that either my comments have more to do with the fact that if let's just say for instance you should decide that mayor and council compensation should be increased and i think it's fair to assume that some of you who are up for re election next year are going to run again and we don't have any guarantee as to whether or not you will win re election or not but it's certainly quite possible my comments have to do with the fact that the way things are set up now is if you were for instance to vote for a city council or mayor increase in salary those of you who run for re election and are re elected would definitely benefit from the decision that you made and i understand it would take a change i guess in the city charter for that to happen but i am of the opinion that if you vote for an increase in salary for council or mayor it should not take effect until the people who are voting on that are out of office and it just does not does just something about it that just does not feel right to me we have politicians in washington who do it on a regular basis and they are not looked upon very positively when we do that i'd like to think that our city council and mayor take that into consideration because we hold our city representatives and very high esteem and i just don't think it would look good for you people to vote arrays in if it gets to that point and then be reelected and benefit from that raise and i think it's fair to assume that anybody who runs against you is not going to affect this is not going to forget the fact that you voted back up a little bit i don't want it to close this is small print for a reason our presentation from the advisory commission is not completed many of you know this is a long process to get through there we started our our civic awareness committee started our research we took it to the executive committee to see if we were on the right track and i have to say the comments from you folks tonight will help us bring this project to a close we do have a presentation for the executive committee wednesday night and then take it to and we've already taken it to the full commission one time to get their comments but your comments are helpful too so that we can make sure we're covering everything now this is small print because this is not ready for dissemination and margie will tell you that but these are all the cities that we have research we researched places all over the country because we wanted to look at illinois we wanted to look at california we wanted to look all over we looked at cities and we specifically found some with a similar population and a similar cost of living actually we looked at medium home median home price which is very reflective of cost of living we thought so we looked at these cities across the country and then we looked at a majority of the substantial colorado cities now one thing you mentioned was pueblo and we didn't look at pueblo because it's so small but i think we will add that now that you've mentioned it we will we will add pueblo to our list but you can see we've looked at how many counselors they had the average is seven four cities of our size the average is a mayor and seven city councilors i thought that was very interesting even now denver was discussed a lot in aurora and and colorado springs there sighs their landmass is so much greater than ours it's not just population its they have so much more area to cover at least three times the size of lakewood so there's a there's a huge difference now in looking at all this what we didn't come to you we looked at what you do because there's such a wide variety some of you have other jobs and this is a second job for you in that you you still work really hard at it sometimes just a little more efficiently some of you don't have another job you're retired maybe and you can spend time out talking to the people and then everyone can benefit from from that that relationship that you have with the people and that's helpful too but we also looked at do you receive city benefits that can increase the compensation a lot we all know the cost of health insurance so whether you're enjoying the city provided health insurance or not okay sorry it really is an an indication of additional compensation now in looking at what we have this is just a quick synopsis are you representing the the advisory commission tonight or no i'm just giving you a glimpse and taking yeah i can't pick and choose who gets three or four minutes i'm sorry then that's why i asked if you're representing the lake road advisory commission i'd give you some leeway but you weren't so and will you guys come back to us as voters and ask for another tax increase i would like to know an answer to that thank you you hit the easy button tonight no the answer's no we won't raise your taxes frank's maybe wants to decrease or pay bernie did you want to come forward okay all right anybody else okay thank you very much next up our next presentation is lakewood speaks a community engagement tool and we have our director of planning travis parker good evening presentation get a fun presentation tonight so i'm here to talk about some work that the planning commission has been doing and the new service that they've been using in in coordination with their public hearings i want to start by going back in time a little bit as some of you may know the planning commission has an annual retreat very similar to yours where we sit down for a day and talk about issues that the planning commission has had over the past year and what's coming up and a two and a half years at our two thousand and sixteen retreat a big chunk of our time was spent talking about increasing public participation and public input on planning commission cases we were seeing generally low attendance at planning commission meetings and and the discussion was how can we increase the opportunities to participate especially early in the process we hear a lot about cases after the fact right when the buildings are going up and when the when the approval or the denial is taking place but how can we get more participation more input earlier in the process and and the cat the commission talked a lot about increasing the ability of people to participate especially those who are maybe unable to attend their week night hearings so those who work at night or those who have small children right those those who can't attend a seven zero p m meeting on a weeknight we talked about removing the constraints to participation we specifically focused on ways to use technology to make their hearings their public hearings more accessible to people and the planning commission tests us the staff with going out and finding or creating a solution to some of these issues or at least some ways to address them so with that guidance planning staff in two thousand and sixteen set out to search for existing solutions and we did not just a nationwide search we looked all over the world actually for ways that communities are engaging people and increasing the ability of people to participate in their public here and we found a few examples of communities that that have some you know ability to submit comments online with google forms or simple comment forms and we found some international examples in the uk of people that take their planning applications online allow people to view the materials but nobody and in all of our research was doing everything was was basically able to replicate the public hearing experience in an online format and so that's what we set out to do the next phase then once we'd looked at all of these examples from around the world was to talk to developers and see if there was someone that could help us build what we envision and what the planning commission had envisioned for their hearings and we talked to several developers and presented them with our budget of zero dollars and eventually we found a partner who worked with us to create the site that you know formed this public private partnership and work with us to create this site that the planning commission had that i'm gonna walk through with you tonight but the the basic premise is it creates the public hearing experience online and allows people that cannot attend the live public hearing meeting to participate in as full a for as possible in viewing all the presentations and reading all the materials asking questions and providing their testimony to the planning commission and it's a site that's that's optimized for all devices computers tablets iphones in fact later when i when i go through this site with you i'm going to encourage people in the room including you to to pull out your devices and follow along on your devices and and and look at the site on your ipad or your phone or what have you but first i want to talk about the planning commission's experience with the site and and how its how its resulted so i'm gonna give you we actually started the site  the participation online for each case is three to six times the participation in person that means we counted the number of people that attended each meeting of the planning commission and we counted the number of people that we can we can see who watches the presentations and the number of people who watch the presentations online was three to six times per case and overall in two thousand and eighteen the planning commission has that had a hundred and one people attend one of their meetings four hundred and eleven people have watched those same presentations online and we're seeing that each case had one to two times as many people comment online as commented in person i think we had one case where we had more people common in person than online the rest it was the other way around and and twenty eight people over this time period came up and gave oral comments to the planning commission during that same time period forty two people provided their comments on liquid  org so the results have been very positive and the planning commission's have been very very happy with the fact that they've been able to engage five times as many people through this site as as they would have without using the site at all so five hundred and twelve people participated this year in planning commission hearings versus a hundred and one who actually were able to attend some other interesting data this number has been going up this is the the way that people are accessing the site it's about two thirds people using it by desktop about a quarter people are using it on their phone and and eight percent of people are using ipads or tablets we're actually seeing those mobile and tablet numbers rising as we used as as the system goes on so those numbers have been getting larger over time this is one of i think the most fascinating pieces data about this system in the center the center pie graph you'll see the actual city population and all three of these gra measure just people late liquid people or participating people twenty five and up we don't measure people below twenty four because google doesn't give us that information online so we didn't count those people in person and we don't see a lot of that in the part but for people twenty five and up there the actual population of lake wa lake would for each of those segments is within a percentage up to or to the there are nearly identical segments of those populations between twenty five and thirty four thirty five and forty four etc yet when we counted our our in person participation at our planning commission meetings over twenty eighteen we saw that nearly eighty percent of our participants were fifty five and older twenty less than one in five or about one in five were under fifty five that doesn't come close to matching the actual demographics of the city we measured on the other hand our online participation and you can see the graphic is much closer to our actual city population we get a lot better representation in the twenty five to forty five year old range that that we just aren't able to to accommodate or to entice to come to the live public hearings and then the final piece of data i want to show with you share with you has to do a time of day so when we put these and i'm going to walk you through the site but when we put cases up on the website for the planning commission they're up for a period of two weeks so people have any time of day twenty four hours a day for two weeks to participate in the case and we measure when they come on and leave their comments and that's shown on this graph so over two week period and and this is for all of our cases through all of tw eighteen what we see is a big spike in comments in the late morning around eleven a m in the late afternoon around p m and in the late evening around nine p m interestingly enough in that in time period and in our cases we have not had a single comment in two thousand and eighteen between six p m and eight p m which happens to be when we hold our medians so the people's ability to participate doesn't necessarily match their opportunity to participate and that's one of the reasons that the planning commission has been very very pleased with the results of this site so i'm going to step back from the presentation now and encourage people to pull out their devices and follow along online and i'm gonna pull up the actual website and then secondly i'm gonna walk you through how the planning commission interacts with the site and how they use it and and and ultimately if city council opps to use it how you would would use the site so and excuse me i'm gonna go back to the main page when you come to lakewood speak stud org it looks something like this you have a header that that offers you what the site is and then below this we have our list of cases and obviously city council is an app there what i've done is created a test meeting you don't actually have a meeting on november th but i've created a pretend meeting on november th for city council and put to pretend cases up there for you the planning commission doesn't have any live cases that are right now so i took the liberty of using the live site to create a meeting for you but you can see in the past you know we've got the october rd planning commission meeting and here are the cases that they had and and there these were both approved cases  what i'm gonna do tonight is walk through a test city council case and what it looks like for the public using it so if i remember the public interested in your pretend november th meeting and interested in in this first test case i come on here in view and before i go in i guess i should also show you the public has the opportunity to just show planning commission or council they could narrow it down and just show city council cases and shut off the planning commission cases or vice versa or they can show them  all and their organ as you as you can see they're organized by meeting so this all these november th are together all these october rd planning commissioner together and that's how it would continue to to show up on the site but as a member of the public i'm interested in this november  so i open this case and the first thing i see is the the title of the case in this case test page for the council but it could be rezoning for one hundred and twenty three main street right here this button takes me to the hearing data takes us to the lakewood org site where you can where you can look up more about the case this vicinity map takes us to our imaginary cases map so and this is from a from another random case that we had in planning commission but it shows you a pdf aerial of the property this is something our it department has added a location map if i click this button it takes me to the site on our  you can show the zoning or the and i've got this set to take us to to our building here or actually the the building across the plaza but clicking this button takes you to the site on our lakewood easy maps system next you'll see four different tabs i'm going to come back to those those stay with us as we scroll down the page so i'll come back to those but as you scroll down the page the next thing you come to is the applicant presentation and so if this were a land use case of  have an applicant that was that would be here at your meeting making a presentation so when that happens at the planning commission their presentation is pre recorded and two weeks before it's online not they don't have to come in line they generally do it as a powerpoint and they add audio over their powerpoint and so the presentation that they're going to make live to the planning commission is on line two weeks ahead people hit this button this is the applicant presentation for the test case on november th th hear the applicants presentation right underneath that is the staff presentation and same thing staff pre records their presentation it's the same thing that planning commission sees live but it's on the site two weeks beforehand so people have two weeks  to to watch the presentation and take in the information and then written materials the site plan click here and it pulls up a copy of the site plan for whatever this case is staff report they click here they see the staff report and they can read the staff report for the case all of this information is available and then underneath that we have the criteria that the planning committee is going to use to make their decision so i've got the rezoning criteria up here for a special use we put that criteria for a variance we put that criteria but the criteria that they would use if this were a rezoning case now the public can see along with the planning commission here are the criteria that they are going to use to make a decision in this case and before we get to at the bottom we have comments before we get to that i'm gonna whoops take you back up to these  you back up to these the public has the ability to ask staff a question so if they hit that button they can type their name their email and a message and this goes to city staff and it sends an email to a city staff who can then respond so the that and these are not the public comments these are hey i looked at the plan i'm trying to figure out where the parking is located and so before i make a comment i have some questions and then staff can respond to those questions similarly for land use cases where there's an applicant we haven't asked the applicant button this sent same forum sends an email to the applicant you can say why did you put the parking on the west side of the building and not the east side of the building get a question from the applicant it not only sends an email to the applicant but this blind copies staff on the question and the response so we can monitor what the questions are being asked and the applicants responsiveness to the questions so as a member the public once you have viewed the presentations read the material asks any questions you've got then you want to comment to city council or planning commission this is  you're your community city council and you hit this button here this pulls up this form which allows you to submit it or you know write your comment you're given a thousand words which equates to a little over three minutes of speaking you're allowed to you you put we ask for your full name your email address in your address it's the same information you're required to give here plus your email address and that gives us a chance to send a receipt to the people to say we've received your comments so let's go back to the main page and you can see we've already gotten a couple of comments mister parker thinks the site needs more llamas and this nice jane citizen has said she opposes the action  work that counsel and staff have done to make the information available to her meanwhile people have been submitting comments online i as the staff person get an email and i open my email and i see two comments one from i can approve the comment and then one from someone named me approve that comment will go back up here as a member of the public and refresh our screen and will see those comments appear down here so those comments come in there moderate base staff and there someone doesn't like the llamas one thing you'll notice this site tracks reso when the public puts their comment in they see how many planning commission members have read their comment and we actually sent an email to the planning commission so commenting is available until the night before the hearing the night before the hearing when comm encloses we send this site automatically sends an email to our planning commissioners say comments are closed go on and read your comments they do it if any of them forget at noon the next day noon the day of the hearing it sends another email to any that haven't read and says you you still have unread comments and so by the time we get to the hearing seven of seven of our commissioners have read their comments and that site said you know for people that go on and look at their comment to see if it's been read it shows that seven of seven commissioners have rather comment and now i'm going to show you how the commissioners use the site and how if city council were to adopt it how you would use the site you'll see in the top right corner of our site we have a login and this is where our planning commissioners and our staff come to log into the site and for tonight's demonstration yet with the mayor's permission i'll log in as the mayor of lakewood sure i love pizza i have created a temporary password and you know get an you know good to create your honor but logging in as the mayor it takes me to the next agenda for the city council and so these are the two test cases that we've put for the november  agenda and i see that there have been four comments submitted for test case one and one comment for test case two and i haven't read any of them right and i'm gonna get to these i'll come back to staff responses when i click on this case now i as a council person or commissioner have the same information that the public does i can view the presentations i can read the materials i can see the criteria i can come down here and read the responses and now it's one let me show you something that's unique to the planning commission's page and the city council's if the city council adopt such a page is this staff responses the planning commission has the ability to ask staff questions also now the difference here is when the public does it that becomes a private back an email back and forth between the staff planner public ask a question staff planner emails back and that can go continue to go back and forth when the planning commission asks a question it's important to us that all of the planning commissioners have the benefit of a response so we don't initiate an email chain back and forth when the planning commission asks a question the staff person posts a response that is visible to all the planning commissioners when they log in not to the public it's it's available to the commissioners so the commissioners can say you know what why is the building purple and not red and the staff can post a response and say the building is purple for this reason the commission goes on and sees this so when they log into this thing it can show that there are staff responses and this is two council questions or two commission questions and here's how many i personally the person who logged in have not read yet right i think that exhausts our functionality of the site i'm sure there are other things i'm fre tell you but i'm happy to take questions or continue to walk through the site with you great well very nice presentation and you know hats off to you and your team and the city for taking this on it has been a priority and it's something that you're actually being recognized for  not only throughout the state but throughout the country so it's very cool and i thought what was really telling is when you see the pie diagram of participation and how it more mirrors the the residential makeup of the city of lakewood one quick question i have when dealing with quasi judicial action clearly this meets all the legal requirements it does the key is that anything that one commissioner sees all commissioners see right so anything that goes up on the site stays on the site comments right and and that's the same thing with responses right we don't respond to one commissioner we respond to all the commissioners and so basically a planning commission hearing is no longer a two hour event from to nine zero on a wednesday a planning commission hearing is now a two week event and so the whole thing the whole time that that's online is the hearing event and how do you deal with changes so if the applicant produces something and along the way there is a change or things are brought to their attention how do you that's a great question so what'll happen is you're right that the public has a chance to see the presentation of the applicant and the staff and then the public comments and that brings up issues right so one of the things that we've worked out over the the first year of using this with the planning commission  we tried different ways of how much the the presentation needs to stay the same online as as is in person and it's important that the public participating enema online have a very similar experience to those participating in persons so we require the same presentation to that's online to be done in person however at the end of the presentation applicants then take some time to respond to concerns that have been brought up over the past two weeks so they finish their presentation they say we things i do want to confirm is the pie charts when they reflect the larger use by younger folks the pie is representing people my age and roybal is age don't we don't get less comment from them the number of folks don't shrink it's just their percentage is not as great exactly but you're finding the same kind of input across the board from the older groups of citizens that now have most of the comment absolutely  and you say they blind carbon staff on some of those on which part of it the staff get blind carbon and is it proper to have a blind carbon shouldn't people know that this is going to the staff member as well we can certainly make it a regular copy yeah the the conversations between the applicant the questions of the applicant and the responses from the applicant are copied so that staff can monitor their responsiveness and monitor what issues are being raised in the responses we could certainly make it a regular carpet i think it would just be up front the are not made public and addresses when somebody gets up here to talk to us tonight they'll tell us where they live and what their names are and everybody that attends the meeting will know that is that going to be a function of this so it certainly can the way that planning commission has it set up is on the public side only the name is shown of the commenters the planning commissioners however see the name and the address if council decides to move forward with this we can set it up so anyway we want so that the address shows both public and commit and council or that it's like the planning commission does it i think is closest we can make this experience to the public hearing the better one of my big concerns is quasi judicial we can only consider information presented to us in public hearing according to our attorneys in public and quasi judicial matters is that right m is the two week period on effect if i could make a comment all the comments and and i do share some of your concerns thank you all the comments are available to all members of the public they're available to the applicant and they're available to all members of the commission or the city council so there's not an issue with ex parte contacts necessarily because all of those all those comments are available to everyone so nobody can make a  decision you know based on comments that other you know committee members commissioners council members don't hear and the public gets to hear that as well or read that that was your only form other questions is entire public get to see what submitted to us including the applicant the questions from a community member to the applicant which should usually be asked in a public hearing so that i mean we've considered that similar to emails that happen now so right now staff often gets email questions from the public and we answer those email questions those are outside of the public record the same as if people email the applicant and that's this that i mean that was the intention of this for the planning commission they don't make they don't email the applicant do they yet people ask us for applicant contact information yeah the more of this we can make public and available to all the public the more transparent it is in my opinion and i think every bit of it should be available to everyone out there something new i'm not comfortable with the things that are new but if it increases our public outreach let's you can't ask for better than that a two week public hearing i don't think that's ever been a standard anywhere in colorado before are you ready to do some legal homework and defend this when called upon by  citizens well i did speak to the city attorney today and i asked him a very similar question and made sure that it would be him and not me confident evidence on the record and unless a plaintiff could show that the decision was made in a way that did not  provide for a you know all parties to participate you know that was not transparent and that's pretty high that's a pretty high standard to hit the courts are upholding decisions even if there is some ex parte contact if if it if it doesn't influence the final decision so the way the way the courts are going and and the really incredible way this not to give a value judgment but all the comments are being made available and the transparency of this we're not really terribly concerned about it a lawsuit and how are you gonna feel when media starts reporting in the first three days of the two week public hearing  that might that might cause some consternation or confusion but do it thank you miss johnson thank you i appreciate your sure i appreciate your presentation and what your efforts are trying to achieve during our executive session the comment came up about korah reports and you mentioned putting this on our personal devices will you please talk a little bit about that and about how vulnerable it would make our private phones so you're only viewing it's a it's a website so you're all you're doing from your public your device is viewing i mean you can there's a pub member of the public you can add comments but the commission isn't adding comments on this side this is comments to the commission and then they have their deliberation at the live hearing so if council adopts this as council members you're just taking information in from the website and not putting in any information out there okay you gave a okay please put me down for thirty nine you got it okay the way that this is structured it looks to me like the city staff can have a great deal more work to do is this going to require more staffed in order to keep up with  this it hasn't so basically we do the same things we do now we just do them a little earlier in the process we create the same presentation as we do for the live hearing we just create at two weeks earlier  only new work for us is what you saw me do live there in approving those comments and that took me two seconds so we we have seen no additional staff time for the  system it looks like we're trying maybe i'm misinterpreting but we're trying to create another method to contact city council is that right well not necessarily to this is basically this is meant to offer the public hearing experience to those who can't show up right yeah people with young children people with night jobs or classes or other priorities that can't come here and talk to you directly this is meant to replicate that experience for them so that they can talk to you too right you know directly through that site because on a personal note i appreciate when people contact me with a personal note even though it's on my city ipad i i just don't want to see that replaced with this right yeah and this so far we're not talking about general comments we're talking about things to a kate we're talking about comment about a case so they'll go on there to look at a re one click that showed how many counselors had view to comment do you give the name of the counselor that has done it or just the numbers just the numbers okay and will certainly help  and also please just understand this the planning commission does deal with a lot of of course land use issues  and the way that i've heard it our population and lakewood is is really going up regarding the folks that live in apartment houses there is a different buy in to the community if you will with someone in an apartment house versus someone who actually owns property and is paying taxes and i would just like us to be sensitive to that as well thank you mayor paul well first beings that i actually design software and do software development i really have to just take my hat off to you guys it is simple  t certainly solves a need i came to council saying that transparency community engagement those were priorities for me so this certainly accomplishes that goal now that doesn't mean i don't already see some enhancement requests just so you know i designed software forever you know that's what i do so i wanted to understand when you talked about the software development and the partnership did someone agree to do this for us so they have the right to sell the product afterwards and so basically then we can help them buy my enhancement request build out a more feature rich product yeah the benefit that lakewood provided was helping them design it and test it yep and use it and yeah now they they are selling this product we're we're the first one in the country using it and it is being sold across the country now i've been a reference for multiple jurisdictions about this site already wonderful just like i said because i can see some real opportunities for some enhancements that i think would benefit not only our community but others that's a model that i'm seeing more often where folks are doing and i was on a call with a software developer o'day and gave him a new revenue stream that they could they could use so i'll keep all those enhancement requests that i've already seen to myself but i will communicate those a couple of things i wanted to talk about was authenticating the folks that are providing the feedback when when someone comes to forest we know you know who they are and there's a lot of technologies too to do some degree of that people can participate through like google accounts and other things that have already validated their their data so i wanted to understand did you guys investigate any of that so when i see let's say fifty emails in the inbox that need to be looked at that i have a way of understanding where they're from meaning if i've got a case that's on one two three main street and i can see forty six of the fifty comments are within walking distance of that i saw i have a high engagement from the immediate community versus if i have those that are from thirty miles away and just interested for another reason so did you look at any types of technologies that can interlace into this that can validate positional data for mapping we we did so and we looked a lot we looked at you know creating login and authenticating people our decision in starting this was to have barriers to entry so the public can just go on they don't have to login and memorize a password and create an account they can just go on a liquid speaks and view the information leave a comment and we tested it with that in mind on the planning commission's and we wanted to see you know we've been at it a year and a half and one of the things we've been watching for is are we getting bots leaving comments are we getting people putting wrong names or that and so far it doesn't appear to have been an issue at all because we do have the option to do what you're saying and provide for a login or authentication or that sort of thing it just you know we we wanted err on the side of ease ease of entry for anybody to be able to use it but we can certainly go back that direction if we see the need i just wanted counsel to have that in mind that we won't always know where though it's different when you can look the person you know in the eye and there's there's something to be said for that it doesn't mean you get overly cautious but it would be something that i would want to have data analysis on and eventually have those names being bumped up against like voter registration or that type of thing just maybe on a periodic basis just to make sure it gives us all a level of comfort that what we're hearing is in indeed good information i did want to comment that i think some of the extreme benefits are that we can reduce the number of repeat questions by the time these things triangulate through all of us we've all asked the same question fifteen times and so i think that there's some benefit to the community to seeing what others are concerned about then to expand on those so what i like about this two week period is it gives really that thought process for expanding impact analysis and for people to say oh i see that concern but now that makes me think about a concern i wouldn't have even thought about so i love the longer period for some of these things given that many of these decisions are life impacting for a lot of people so the other thing i think it the problem that it solves is for me as when we're in the middle of like a quasi judicial case i have to turn off email and text because that's an input stream that i have to shut off and so some people are not always comfortable with that because when i'm up here in a non quasi judicial capacity i can keep those avenues of communication open so it's another way to not shut down the public i wanted to reiterate councillor abel's point on i don't think you should ever be bc saying it should be sent that this is being copied to such and such for the purposes of and i think that's the right way to frame that the purposes of we are monitoring responsiveness and quality of responses and if you frame it that way then no one minds if their information is ending up in a different spot but it's uncomfortable the bcc for me so i wanted to also i think that the log in at the top can be confusing because you could be thinking you need to log in as the public and so again let's we need to be clear about who's logging in and what they're doing and again i'll keep all the other enhancement points to myself and communicate those the other thing is i think it's important that you don't really know how many eyes were viewing that so i think it's another important thing with all the web tv that people have now you may have thought there was one pair of eyes watching at home you may have had a whole family sitting there may have had children who are watching a process so i think that sometimes if you can we can maybe and this will be an enhancement request to find a way to say number of eyes how many folks we got there and those age range that they're comfortable reporting we may find that we're starting to grow up civic minded kids who are watching this process in another way so there's all these social benefits that come with that as well and i'll get off my soapbox but this is a fun part of its what i do for a living so thanks there's good wine i can tell you that there are two six and eight year old who do watch some of these meetings and are growing up with the civic mind so it does happen i love this this is so great i love that you looked at global examples that's exciting to me i love that we're paving the way and that other people are looking at adopting what we're doing the increased engagement i think those results just are the most important of all reaching we actually just had a question about this in our word meeting about how can we get more well base more young people to our meetings and you know i think because they this was someone who was older i i don't want to offend anyone is what i'm saying anyway and they they just really think that it's important to have the next generation of leaders getting engaged and getting involved and seeing these results is just really exciting to me i would love to do this for the quasi judicial judicial cases but also over time i can see us using this on other council issues as well what else did i want to comment on i think that i think that eventually at some point being able to verify but it's a you know a real person and maybe their address not necessarily making the address public but just having them be verified i think would be a good thing oh and i i think that this is a great way to start on these on these particular cases also because one of the biggest frustrations i hear from the community when we're dealing with the closeted judicial case is that they can't ask us questions but now there's this really easy way where they can ask either staff or they can ask the applicant and so i think it's going to make that process a lot more open and accessible to people so great job thank you okay so we still have a few more lights on mister skilling i was going to ask about when i made the incendiary comments about my of favoring of all parkas over llamas how you deemed approval of the what parameters you used to approve an email but then i found at the bottom you have a comment policy and is that is that b roll or did we actually is that because i know this is kind of a beta testing so is this going to be our policy then that matches po that was  designed with communication staff to match policy in other areas so who is it that will will be kaitlyn or somebody like that that actually reviews them to make sure that and the only one that i would say maybe where it gets a little as that which i think we could all agree we don't want but where it gets a little tricky is concepts deemed to be offensive or demonstrably false so the demonstrable i mean i don't know how you necessarily police that but i understand what you're getting at i suppose it would have to do with something like the comment is hey i saw they just built a giant wall today and that should be turned it you know whatever it is but of course there was no wall actually built maybe that's what you're getting  i guess a and i think the the standard practice will be to err on the side of putting everything up there we haven't had any reason to reject any comments for any reason so far and then what about committees can we use quit thank you i think you answered this question this is a test site and i understand that and then if this is successful then the application can be broadened for more specific council items so we've we've tested it for a year and a half it's la it's been live for a year and a half and planning commission and it's ready if if if council gives us the word to go we'll do a workshop to train and we can have this up in a couple  it's ready to go and thank you for that clarification i was we have to approve it and say that we want it and then after that if we like it we could do some of our own committee meetings oftentimes people want to make comments to council on other things i'm thinking of the tobacco licensing the dhoklas bikes if they could comment directly on things like that yes and and another thing that we've examined it's not built yet but we could build in the future is is general comment you know at a meeting you have general comment period that could be built for this site as well okay that would be great and just as a side note i think that the verbage that councillor gutwein is looking for is that the people were seasoned there you go thank you and just a point of clarification of the the scooters there already are on lakewood speaks there already are a lot of the issues that we're talking about that for the community to engage and i should clarify yet this is designed around hearing agendas so it's really designed only for comments on things you're gonna vote on right and we could put a general comment function as well but we have a separate site liquid together for for broader things that aren't in front of you for a decision right so maybe it would be just more general comments i would just like to have another avenue to get information from folks who may not want to go to another site if they're already on this you know where they could input thank you mister betta thank you mayor just a couple of questions the staff memo indicates that you are recommending that  we try this out for six months do a test drive and then assess the site's effectiveness is that is that incorrect or you're saying we're really not testing is this at all i'm a little i'm sorry if the site works you can test whether it works for you whether you like it whether you find it effective for the council the the planning commission is happy with it they're going to continue to use it but you all could pilot it at council okay okay well i appreciate the presentation i think it's a good idea i like the idea you're reaching out to our young citizens and giving them an opportunity to participate in government in a way that they're comfortable and that they like so i think that's a great great move thank you excellent idea yeah that's great a couple of questions is there when we have a comment here sometimes as miss duffy brought up an attachment or something to be seen with these comments can they attach any document yes okay and is there some sort of length limit to their comments can they attach like a hundred pages that's a good question i don't know if there is a size limit to the attachment the comment itself is limited to one hundred or a thousand words but i'm not certain about the size of attachments well i'm just thinking they they someone might redraw the plans  and submit it i mean very likely we could have something kind of like that so that would be a question quasi judicial i would love us to have a comment on the website that indicates that counselors and and would not be responding to the concerns because if if they comment they may think also especially when we're reading them that we would be responding back to them and that really i think could cause some problems so i think we need to have that comment on the website somewhere  you said that we would have the availability or everyone would have the availability to look at the plans and the site plans with this correct so anything that's presented here two weeks ahead of time would be presented in that online version yeah in fact planning commission doesn't get a separate email or report now planning commission entirely uses a site everything that they read is on this site and the public reads it to wow and let me also add something about we keep saying two weeks planning commission has a two week period because their notice goes out two weeks before so our rule is the site has to be up when the notice goes out to the public about a case your notices go out ten days before so if council adopts this this would be up probably ten day the same day that your notice goes out to friday two weeks before last question is a lot of times i think once  a group of people oppose or support a particular plan we get a lot of canned emails that say don't do this or yes do this or whatever it might be is there any way to where we can put those in a gosh i support this or no i don't we you know we consider a lot of things in the development of the site was like you know yeah you know a like or a dislike you know facebook thing or voting thing but we wanted to avoid we wanted to to err on the side of qualitative responses and not just voting this isn't citizens voting this is them talking to you about their concerns or their thoughts okay that's valid thank you very much so travis i have a question i want to do a quick check in with council and then we have miss goodwin and mister abel so currently when we do receive a question we send it off to you on a quasi judicial case that'll be the same way and that will still be formatted into this or those kind of outliers now no yeah i mean basically in the future if you had this site as a council if you got emails you would your response could include please go to this site and you use lakewood speaks org and they could ask questions on there or they can submit their comment on there okay and so with council the check in that i want to just just get direction as a whole so there was the comment about doing away with the bcc and going to strictly cc is that clear is that okay so we have worked where good consensus there there's a question about applicant questions and that was i think mister abel do you want to clarify a little bit on that i think we need get some direction questions to the applicant right i wanted to make sure that if someone like if someone from this audience was looking at we were having a hearing they could  bring up an issue that perhaps an african would answer after they sat down this was originally presented as someone would ask the applicant a question and that would be more or less swing them in the applicant and with staff being aware of it but that takes away the component of everybody in the room now everybody in the room is everybody in lakewood that can can tune into one of this so i think we need to follow those same parameter as part ever is asked and answered be ma parker so there's really two things that we're trying to replicate on the site and one is that discussion that happens here and we have the space for that in the public comments so if people want their comments or questions that the applicants to be part of that that broader discussion they can though they'll put that in the public comment section that gets posted the idea behind the app ask applicant or a staff is to replicate what happens now with emails when people do have just a question they want to ask on their own for before i provide a comment i need to note i need some more information and so that happens now where they ask staff a question and we get them as a response that's not part of the public record or whether they say i can i get the applicants contact information i want to ask them a question and they do that and then they might come to the hearing and provide so we were trying to replicate that conversation not necessarily prevent them from providing those comments and questions in the public so we're trying to provide both options i understand that i would prefer that any questions be asked be made public to everybody that's that goes into view this thing and one of the reasons we don't do that now with these the email as you're referring to is that's really bulky and unwieldy and no law and to be a difficult process with something like this it's buying bank or transparency so let me let me continue on that because we need to get some direction as to how you want that top rate so currently some of those things aren't part of the record it's just going in presenting that you know connecting trying to get people information before they wanna i was just going to recommend that we have one more opportunity to kind of test drive this process and and i'm getting to the answer here and that is through some kind of hands on workshop so that all of you are actually working with some kind of case so that then you can we can fine tune as you're actually working on it this is the first time you've seen this and many of you probably haven't viewed the planning commission  planning commission's process today or by today so i would recommend that we have a workshop we sit down and do a test case and everybody participates so that then we can work out some of those  bugs and maybe some of these enhancements and from that point then we'll make it as as perfectly tailored for your needs as we can the other thing we talked about was having some kind of pilot program and doing this on maybe a six month period to make or we can do it three month or whatever to to just see what kind of feedback you have and as time goes on we can listen to feedback from the public maybe some unintended kind of consequences etc and then we get together again and work that through i think if we can make this a pretty fluid process we'll eventually have the best product that we can possibly have that's thought that's good just to follow i think that's a very good way to approach it and if we approach it that way then i have no problem with us trying it mister parker's way and then if it doesn't work then we we look at making it all public one of that that's okay if that's cuz i was just trying to get you better direction but if that's the way council wants to proceed then we can do that and just wrap up with any other comments and and go forth like that what would just make one suggestion also while our addresses are it's all public record we don't publicly address unless i can't read the name then i'll say the address and in this unfortunate time of internet security bullying ending up in fake newspapers things like that i'd want to make sure that people felt comfortable and whether that's making sure we have all that information maybe just saying that the street name but not their whole address reward or the war over there from which ward they're in now and that satisfaction i think we really need to protect protect our citizens the best we can both at the dyess or electronically ok so that sounds good so sounds like the consensus is that we will do a test drive and we'll look forward to that more questions yep there's a couple more items that will come to us later under quasi judicial during very public hearing not ours they're too weak same things that keep you from watching them now online i mean yeah it's out there and available for the public and arca also will all documents be put online in these cases the county does that now you can go to the county and plug in a case number and you get everything that's been filed and i've sure been hoping we could do that for years so can we make every document available you mean like the yeah like the couple things so with the comments and and what councillors skilling had mentioned before kind of about the moderation rules did you have any issues did with comments that weren't able to be published in this trial period or the only there i think two comments that we that we did not publish in the entire thing and that's only because there were duplicates somebody accidentally submitted the same comment comment twice with what happens is the entire things automated when you submit a comment you get an email back and says thank you for your comment it'll be moderated and you'll get another email when it's when it's posted if it's posted you get an email saying your comment is now posted if it's rejected let's say i get that email with councillor skilling's comment and it violates the comment policy as the as the kaitlyn or whoever's reviewing it if i hit reject on there it pulls up a drop down menu with that ask me for the reason for rejection then includes the list of the things from the comment policy so profanity personal attacks etc i pick one of those reasons and it sends you as the comment or email that says i'm sorry your comments been rejected for this reason please resubmit and so it offers you the opportunity to resubmit after telling you why your comment wasn't posted okay thank you i i think that this might be something we're gonna have to see how it goes the reason why is you know right now during public comment people can come and say whatever they want it doesn't have to be true it can be it can be offensive it can be false and you know and that's part of the public process so i just i don't know that we should necessarily have different standards here i don't want people to get the feeling that they weren't able to participate so you know i think it's complicated because at the same time i think that you know the truth matters but i just don't want i think that that might take some working through because and we can do that so this comment policy was done in conjunction with the planning commission and the planning commission decided you know if someone came up to them and started using profanity or personal attacks they would th you know the chair would say please stop that you know it would put it into it so that their thought was that these were the standards that they would try to enforce and in live hearings and they wanted to do that in online as well but we can do just set different policy and convention with your preferences if you'd like personally i think that all of our behaviors should be acceptable in a kindergarten classroom however that's not really the standard that we operate under  so i just think that that's just something that i kind of wanted to raise and and we can see how it goes the other thing was about the questions to staff or to the applicant if there's repeat questions then i think that that might be helpful if the answers could be public as a lot of times you know things like the parking are a big question that chance to start over mister hanks so i just heard something it sounds like since we send a responsive email to their comment that then if the email bounces then do we  nullify the comment because it's a do do we basically scrub that out so immediately if i put in a comment and put in a fake email address or something you guys try to send it to me does the bounce automatically nullify the comment interesting that's a good question i'll ask the developers that okay so we'll get in the weeds a little bit later and then on the ability to ask a question what i want to make sure is that we protect that right because if especially when i was kind of learning about the charter and municipal code and in not understanding at all i don't think i would have been very comfortable had i known that my question was going to end up public because it might have been i was way off base or misinterpreting something so i think we have to make a clear thing to say these questions are going here and here for this purpose and then this other avenue is to get it into the record for consideration by counsel so people understand that they can ask a safe question and not end up maybe being somewhat humiliated if it turns out that they just were miss reading something so i want to be really cognizant about that that we protect people's right to still get that information which now they can do and it doesn't make it into a packet that we see and then clarify for them where that information amasses for us to consider as part of the testimony those things will be key to me excuse me thank you mister merrick my only comment was just sort of along what councilman abel already said which was just i think it'd be great just to get some hands on experience with this and come back to it hopefully in three months or six months or whatever the time is just sort of way and then because i think i'll have a better sense of my likes and dislikes and perceptions of it then thanks oh awesome  i'll open the public input part nobody's signed up but anybody wish to speak yes sir he's back i was actually on the lakewood speaks page a couple days ago playing around with it and after going playing with it for a little bit i had all kinds of questions but ninety nine percent of them were answered during your presentation so kudos to your presentation the one question i do have outstanding was actually asked by councillor johnson earlier so great minds think alike but my question is as i was going through the website it did occur to me that comments and questions could be quite different depending on whether or not the comet maker or the question asker was a property owner or a renter so my question is i know it's possible but should there be on that page where the citizen before asking their question or comment where they put their name address email address and so forth should there be a question or a box to check that designates them as a property owner or a renter because we would probably give you a pretty good sense of where they might be coming from with their question or comment and secondly it would be another data stream for you to be able to gather information on on who's using the site so that'll be my question rent they own whether they're homeless and so i'm not sure that a comment based upon whether you rent her own should be part of an official record i don't know the validity of that i mean it seems like it's your constitutional right to be part of any conversation and i would shy from that i'm looking at our attorneys maybe saying the same type of thing mister abel i just want to say that's not something we ask people who come up and give us public look i did not actually suggest that that be part of it i'm just saying that there are different perceptions when your own property well it was just to comment it was not a request great thank you okay so we'll go to reports at a set on our little agenda a forty five we're so yeah we started late so we are we're cruising for those in the audience or at home we actually have a time listed on our agendas that we're trying to adhere to and this is the first night i think we're in line with that so i wanted to we'll go with reports clearly tomorrow is election day so vote get it in don't mail it in please because your vote will not count but find a place and our place is right out here if you want to drop in your location that'd be fantastic shout out to the first friday people unbelievable i mean that art walk was packed with people new people of all kinds enjoying enjoying the events and i just i was blown away with the amount of energy and art and families out enjoying the evening the council to end hunger this coincides with an initiative of the metro mayor's we normally do  a proclamation every year but we won't be meeting again for a few weeks before until after thanksgiving metro mayor's try to raise awareness to hunger and hunger related issues throughout our communities so november is that month there's a lot more to it but i know this council is very active in trying to find different ways but just keep in mind there are people who are homeless hungry cold looking for ways to have clean socks to something in their belly and the council to end hunger which was created here in the city lakewood is up and going and it's a group of different agencies that are actually looking at the best ways to help attack hunger in the city so we're excited to see that had the opportunity to attend the severe weather shelter dinner at bethlehem lutheran with two of our police agents and so that was a great turnout to see where they're going now i had briefed that the family shelter means tre family shelter was looking at for mobile locations they actually only have one so far in its nerve atom so if you know a church or an entity that's willing to work with them on a family shelter they certainly are looking to have something here within the city of lakewood so again we will be gone for two weeks i hope you will this us and we will miss you barry real quick tomorrow we're having our family food basket program at philips united methodist church which is come on down bring your id with you and open up your trunk and here we're gonna load you up so it starts at three o'clock it we usually feed about roughly between two hundred and fifty to three hundred family food baskets in three hours so that that's huge and also just wanted to also reach out to my fellow veterans monday is veterans day and i wanted to reach out tell everybody welcome home go with it well first and foremost i wanted to say congratulations to the action center for meeting and exceeding the seventeen thousand dollars challenge that was pretty amazing the other thing i want to call attention to is colorado gives day coming up december th which you can pre schedule your donations now and i know councillor abel and i and others have been pushing for a lakewood gives day since we're not really gonna get that but you can search you can go on and you can search by zip code you can search by name so we would love to see you if you have extra dollars that you can spare to support lakewood charities for all the good work they do and again if your employer has matching dollars be sure not to forget about that and i'll leave our meeting coming up to i really didn't know which way you were going so one one thing is is our war two meeting will be held the second wednesday at seven thirty of forty west and i need to mention that because we won't have another meeting until i i've got to confess the forty west thing blew me away i was late getting out we had an all day jefferson county corrections board meeting and so i was behind and it was dark so i drove down and i couldn't find a place to park because i was i couldn't i almost hit five people to running across but it was phenomenal it really really was which leads me into something else just as as a public message let's try to be careful out there we've had people hit lately i see it just about every day it's it scares me people are trying to cross wodsworth they're trying to cross colfax and people are looking to try to turn right on the road and they're not looking and and there's been too many near misses both with kids and seasoned people and and walkers and bikers so just as a caution let's let's just try to be careful out there slow down thanks miss johnson thank you considering your remarks counselor frank's i would just like to put in a plug again that we as a city on our website have a drop down where folks can go in year round actually and give to any charity of their of their liking of course it would be  would be on that website but it could be something could be year round actually thank you we had our ward five meeting on saturday um i think it was one of our least attended ward five meetings that we've had lately it we just did a council update and open discussion  so i really appreciate everyone who did come out and i think that because we didn't have such a heated topic like elections and tabor that we've been having in the  past that that's probably why we we saw those people but we are also going to be having two meetings in december we're gonna try it for the first time and see if we can scoop up some new people so anyone that and also anyone up here that has any input on meeting times that have worked well for you we would love to hear it so thank you mister skilling so thank you to councillor able and johnson f at the ward one meeting we had a discussion of the development dialogue committee and bringing people in that ward up to speed with what we've been doing there which brings me to the next announcement that november th which is this wednesday six to eight is our next development dialogue meeting upstairs in the cabinet room and our ward four meeting all lamas can come is going to be this saturday at green mountain presbyterian church nine thirty to eleven that's a time that does work very well we will just have an open forum we're not gonna have a december meeting so if you want to talk about something now would be the time all over they're talking about near misses or school zones like all and it's all it seems like we're getting a lot more of it and i know we had that we've had public comments on it so maybe such because we've gotten some very detailed issues going on there and maybe some solutions that the community has come up with and maybe those are things we can talk about citywide because we use a lot of common problems a lot of people just you know blowing through neighborhoods i that in my neighborhood halloween although i know i'm kind of going in a different tangent but halloween we had people just flying through our neighborhood you know it's it's kind of strange i don't know and especially on the schools not schools back in with need to look at maybe it's a future thing maybe we can globally look at ways to address some of these issues we're seeing we had a tough week actually three fatalities but denver has adopted vision wide hanging on fences in lakewood and that is about five times larger than our sign codes permit so gentlemen if you folks will before your next campaigns read  ballot initiatives obviously this is a very important election it's gonna have a big impact on the state of colorado and you know that because during our meeting we had to have a tourney come in to explain to all the residents all the different ballot initiatives so i want to thank the organization that provided that and then also just think all the residents who came out we had over twenty people which was great turnout for a meeting that we don't regularly have and