clerk please read item for item four proclamation national african african american history month okay so i'm just gonna read this here from the dyess we're gonna celebrate proclamation recognizing and celebrating february two thousand and nineteen american history month in lakewood whereas national african american history month is an occasion to rediscover the enduring stories of african americans and the gifts of freedom purpose and opportunity they have bestowed on future generations and whereas american history brims with the stories of african americans who forever changed their communities and our country and where as recognizes inspirational leaders such as annie turnbull malone mary mcleod bethune and booker t washington and whereas african americans have exemplified heroism patriotism and have given people of all backgrounds confidence courage and faith to pursue their own dreams and whereas national african american history month is a call to each in every citizen of our great land to reflect on the cultural scientific political economic contributions of african americans which are woven throughout american society and whereas the city of lakewood supports national african american history month and the learning of our past in order to build a better and more prosperous future for month in the city of lakewood colorado so this is always a special opportunity for us to celebrate and recognize and a unique story i think i've shared this before but we have a an incredible african american woman in our community and she actually came to colorado because she want to be a nurse and she grew up in texas and was not able to go to nursing school and so special district elections i think they're in may march may april i was over at the fire district and she was there voting and she's mentioned that she never misses an election because growing up when she finally was able to vote in texas they had a poll tax that she was not able to afford once they got rid of the poll tax they then moved it to only one polling place within her county which then further disenfranchised them because they could not get there so she said it's so special for her to have that opportunity to vote and be a part of the community and i thought i'd mention that and that same couple was just recognized by the president of the united states for all their wonderful works in in our community that's mister and misess cooke so i just want to share that as we celebrate african american history month thank you yes thank you you shared what a wonderful collaboration we have in the city with our headstart program and this would be our fifth year our last year for headstart grant and then we'll make a new application those happen every five years so i just want to take this opportunity to do our annual board training and show you how we work within the city  as of each year have the opportunity to share some highlights as well as train on our overarching responsibilities at the city council and mayor provide for our program as a headstart grant were required to engage in an annual training as stated in the headstart act of two thousand and seven the city council serves as our head start governing board the mayor appoints three city council representatives to serve on our advisory committee members are appointed by the mayor and they provide program oversight kar current members are charlie abel sharon vincent and barb franks and as a quick overview of the other group that we work with is our policy council the policy council consists of at least one parent from each classroom to community representatives and one pass parent and then we also have our early head start parents who are in our home based program that do home visitation so in general the advisory committee and the policy committee policy council really review and make recommendations for the program direction and for our quality improvement this frame shows detailed responsibilities of each group that work together to provide a strong working oversight and support for the head start grant all of which are the governing body the policy council in the management staff i would like to just highlight some of the shared responsibilities so you see what it looks like on a day to day basis for governing body and policy council they would take action on hiring and terminating the head start director and other lead staff they would also have established in past procedures for the governing body and the management staff you provide legal oversight which ensure compliance of federal laws state tribal and l for the governing body policy council and men and staff you helped provide leadership and strategic direction we do this do an annual self assessment and also through developing and planning and evaluating the head start program on an annual basis again primarily assigned to the advisory committee is our work on safeguarding federal funds the program follows all city guidelines and participates in the annual audit our our transparency provides detailed information regarding all transactions and they're distributed to both the advisory committee and the policy council we also ensure that funds are used for the intended purposes and we regularly review budget and expense report and we also question expenses when needed other general's duties as assigned to the committee include compliance of federal regulations receive and review correspondence from our regional office review the annual audit report for the agency and work with our policy counsel our group or program parents and our community representatives the head start program is designed to serve families at or below a hundred percent of poverty as we enter year five of our five year grant cycle will continue to provide a quality driven program for a hundred and ten children we do this through four physical locations throughout the city and we also have home based services for our early headstart families which are prenatal moms through h three and here is our budget and what it looks like for next year we have our total amount from the federal grant and then we also have what's called our non federal share or match this is happens because we have volunteers we use those funds people donate supplies to the program the city provides for lottie's and resources and all this works together for our total program budget a little over a million six for next year just a couple of our program highlights the program is on track to complete all of the goals that we established within the five years and we're very proud of that we're also entering we also are very proud to talk about our workforce and how they provide such quality classroom experiences and they've been had done a great job in increasing parental involvement over this last five years our family community support remains strong with the ability to support families in goal setting support with resources and education training review opportunities for job attainment work with challenges around safe and stable housing and support families and being a part of our community which we're very proud of because we see them in the workforce and when we do that we can retain them in the city of lakewood which is one of our goals so to  quickly to close i want to thank you for your participation in support of our program and we're very excited to continue our early childhood services for the fifth year and right for a new opportunity for the next five years well well done thank you yeah we certainly appreciate you and the wonderful job you do for the kiddos in our community that are able to take care of that but it's also more than our kids it goes into the whole family so there any questions or comments committee just top notch one of the key components though we ran head on into week before last when we met with the policy committee the parents and there was gentleman there with his  or three children he's a single father works long hours takes such pride in his children and he shows up for every policy board meeting and as volunteered to do it all over again next year the kind of participation we get from our parents and that along with the staff for the keys to the success of the program so thank you very much we really appreciate the parents and what they bring to our program and they help drive our services you know where do we need to improve where are we doing strong so all right well thank you very much appreciate it see you next year actually will yes we'll see in the spring though yeah that's always a good one all right next up is public comment on non agenda items and it's blank which means nobody is sign up to speak on non agenda items anybody all right i'll close public comment i'll go into that's a record so this is the lakewood city council m of time so you have the next twenty minutes to yourself good oh lucky me and i actually have a short report anticipating a very long public comment session but let's start very recently chief mccaskey and i met with district attorney peter weir as well as deputy district attorney candice coolidge and rafe leer who's working for this sheriff's department do you remember they came and spoke about the porchlight family justice center just a couple of weeks ago and the commitment we made to you was that we'd be having a deeper dive with them and we did that and you will hear a financial ask in the upcoming weeks we that hasn't been identified specifically yet and i know that team is speaking with all of the other cities as well but befor april one you we will have a request to assist in the funding and to be a partner with the porchlight program so i just wanted to give you that heads up also in the police department we're anticipating seven new community service officers starting in march so the hiring is almost complete and we're lucky we're going to have these folks on board pretty soon which is good you'll remember that you approved four of these positions last year  the two thousand in the two thousand and nineteen budget process and the others are result of attrition or people who have left so we have seven coming on board which is good lakewood is the police department is also hosting their th session of the citizen police academy beginning in march the th and you might wonder well we're only turning fifty years old how is that possible and the answer is we hold more than one of these academies per year so we're running our th it starts on march th it's an eleven week course and if anyone's interested in getting involved there's still room to sign up so the information is on the website so it's the citizen police academy and it's interesting and everyone i've talked to that have gone through that academy have enjoyed it so pass that along please this has been announced once but i want to announce it one more time our own vanessa surratt a in economic development received the young professional of the year award and that's quite an honor and she is an employee in our  economic development department and we just watched her grow and blossom right in front of our eyes so congratulations to vanessa um a couple of follow ups at our annual planning session at the very end of january we talked about the city shops and some of the significant needs that we have in the in the city shops so we decided as a group that we will have a study session to discuss those needs as well as a tour so we've scheduled the tour for may six so we're hoping to have nice weather may th so you'll be wearing boots and jeans and we'll walk through the city shops and you'll get an up close and personal experience at the shops and finally we had as a result of a request for council action we had a study session oh i don't know six weeks ago i think about construction noise limitations near residential uses and that's been scheduled so first reading will be april th i just wanted to bring that to your attention and with that that concludes my report thank you  a routine nature members of the public will have an opportunity 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 propose ordinance no public comments will be heard this evening on first reading ordinances the public will have the opportunity to comment on the proposed ordinances during the scheduled public hearings on the date set tonight by the city council any council member may request two thousand and nine endorsing the two thousand and nineteen two thousand and twenty headstart grant application for the purpose of submitting a request to the federal government for grant funds available to provide head start and early head start programs item nine resolution two thousand and nineteen eight establishing non cigarette tobacco product retailers licensing fees for the city of lakewood item ten ordinance oh two thousand and nineteen six for vacating a portion of the right of way for allison street a portion of the alley within block seventy eight lakewood and that portion of said block seventy eight described in book seven seventy two page four four which vacated portions of right away are legally described and depicted in exhibit a this ordinance item eleven ordinance oh two thousand and nineteen seven repealing and replacing chapter five point three eight of the lakewood municipal code as it pertains to the lakewood liquor licensing authority ordinate item twelve ordinates oh two thousand and nineteen  amending the lakewood zoning ordinance item thirteen approving minutes of the city council meeting city council meeting of january fourteen two thousand and nineteen thank you like to open the public hearing on any of the resolutions nobody has indicated a desire to speak on the resolutions all right seeing none i will close public comment is that accurate was there somewhere that want to speak public comment and okay so we public comments over here yeah thanks all right yeah nobody signed up believe it or not so um i'll ask for a motion please on the case engine mayor paul i move for approval of the council minutes order all ordinances introduced on first reading to be published in the denver post with public hearing set for the date included in the ordinance and through adoption of resolutions all of which are included in the consent agenda items introduced into the record by the city clerk second right there's a motion a second any discussion please and the consent agenda passes eleven i zero nays well the clerk please read items fourteen and fifteen into the record item fourteen ordinance oh two thousand and nineteen and and as he's coming down just so the community knows we had a thorough presentation a few months ago and now this is a follow up think she's pulling up the we have a short presentation and we'll go from there so well good evening everyone good to see you again thanks for having us again and we're gonna go through so give you an evolution since our initial study session where we went over everything and kind of what's happened we've had the chance to talk to a lot of you answer questions specifically and then what we kind of did is we said okay there's enough questions that ring true from enough people that we're gonna kind of put it into a second presentation we'll go through all that and then we're open for any other questions you might have  best of our abilities so we'll start from there so all right so we kind of want to go back because i think one thing that we were losing track of a little of what's the goal of the lodging license what why are we here so really it's to reduce criminal activity at liquids lodging facilities and it's not to closed businesses we're not we're not out to shut places down what we're here to try and do is improve the safety and the quality of life at these locations and the surrounding neighborhoods  one thing we truly believe is like any business responsibility lies with the owners and the managers you know their business practices really determine who they rent to and what types of conduct are allowed on the premises what we really wan reinforce is that we believe good management practices can reduce the risk to the public and also the use of public safety services and that sometimes public safety services are used as de facto security for some of these places and where we could be better used for other services in the community also those facilities with that high amount of criminal activity are a danger to the public we can't forget that that they create a public nuisance and they're a drain on resources that should be used by all of the city and just not these locations that continuously are using them again and again and again so that's really why we're looking at doing this so you should have a red line copy of the ordinance from first to now but we also want to go through some of those changes so one of them was with the definitions the call for service we initially had submitted where it included the fire and ems calls so health calls obviously we don't want to include those there was some concern like well if i have a if i have a care sylheti next to my hotel and you know elderly residents are using that hotel with their families and they staff heart attacks does that count against me no not at all we are solely looking at public safety law enforcement calls for service here we changed the definition of a lodging facility to a little bit one thing we want to make sure of is that we understand what a hotel is and how this would differ from like short term rentals or apartments because we know that some locations do rent some of their rooms out sometimes two three four months six months so there was a fear that the definition might exclude those so we just made it say if you have any room available for rent for less than a thirty day period it counts the investigation piece we added in there we want to make sure it's clear that investigations are allowed to be part of this process we have to go in and actually look at how the place is run look at how how things are managed to make smart decisions on our recommendations because again our recommendations are designed to improve the business and if we can't go in and investigate and see what's wrong how are we supposed to recommend answers to that problem so that's why investigation exists new applications this is this is a this is an important one and this came up as a question from you  previously was okay so we have a facility and it's it's being run poorly and that owner loses their license what what prevents them from just selling it to a buddy and now they get a brand new license that they get to use again for two or three years and this could just continue you know if a brother sells it to a sister sells it to a cousin so the answer here is that now if you're if you're looking at buying a location or taking over location that has a license in violation you have to come up with a plan for how to reduce that and once your license is granted you have six months to make that happen and if you don't that could invoke a hearing right away so that way we're kind of kind of holding i'm on probation if you will where we're saying you gotta us that the changes we're concerned about are being made the final decision and the non renewal piece the final decision was there was some confusion as to the language of the dates like well if we send it on this date and it's mail in six days and then they have four days to do it we just clean that up to make it really easy for everyone to understand and then the non renewal piece as well so if we're if we're up for non renewal what are your options there so so instead of being called in for a hearing if if the licensing authority reviews your application for renewal and chooses not to renew it due to various issues how you would go about fixing that so that's that's the changes that we've seen since then it should be apparent with your red line and then your newest version alright so then what we did like i said really what this second reading for us about is answering the questions you have we really want to to make you feel comfortable with that you know this ordinance in and out and that you know as much as we do so what i did and and and what the group did is we basically took our powerpoint and we put up the questions and then i'll kind of give you guys the answers and and we'll go from there so one question that was asked was can we add a motel or hotel representative to be part of the hearing and have site type of extinct sanctions that were imposed in answering to that we mimicked this exactly off of our licensing authority model for our liquor licenses and in that in that situation you have on one side the licensing authority with the inspectors in the deputy city attorney and then on the other side you have the owner of the establishment or the license and then you have the third party which is the key to this process truly being fair and due process and that is the hearing officer and the hearing officer is hired by the city but like our municipal judges we hold them it to be accountable to be fair and unbiased when they're making their decisions so in answer to that if we added someone to it it would kind take that balance out it would be like in a in a court proceeding if you added someone who wasn't involved in the case but on one side or the other to the process it just went maintain that balance so in answer to that question we believe we have the balance in place by having that neutral third party making the ultimate decision and and then we feel that we're adequate there so that was the one question another one was is there anything we can do about a person staying twenty eight days and then the motel has to go through the eviction process there's not much we can do except best business practices because the issue is based on colorado law so when we review colorado law through the defrauding an innkeeper ordinance and and residents law residential law and all that what we found is that one thing the courts look at is how long has been someone's staying there how long have they been staying there and if they've been staying for thirty days or longer they tend to side with the tenant and say that it's a residency so that and that can include in motels because they're gonna start saying well i've been here for over a month you know i've changed my address to get mail here you know i that kind of thing they view it as residency and that's not that's not our call per se we can't we can't write a law that usurps that so when it comes to the how do we avoid that issue the best answer is good management practices and and we've recommended this to hotels before where we say you can rent to someone for no more than twenty eight days and then they have to leave for a minimum of six months or they have to be leave for a minimum of ninety days and you can't do the shell game where you move them from room one hundred and two to room two hundred and six to room three hundred and five because they're still considered a resident of that complex or that building what we're saying is they have to move off site and then that way they can't use their time in residence alone as a justification to require eviction so if we have someone who's stay to a motel for twenty one days we are allowed we can go in and say hey i know you've been here for three weeks but you haven't paid for the last two days there's no lease in place it's time to move along after that thirty day period we don't have that option anymore we have to say it's a civil remedy and you have to go seek a civil eviction so that's why in that case we really don't have that but what we can do is we can teach that one of the things i want to point out about our ordinance and our goal is we do want to start educating better and we think that by having a license in place and kind of getting people to the table together we can teach them those things because i think a lot of it is they just don't know also one thing sometimes is sometimes you have an attorney for an establishment reviewing the law differently than we do but the problem is as a police department we're required to view it based on colorado law what our legal advisors recommend and kind of best industry standards so we can't just side with someone because they say well my attorney says this we have to go based on what we all agree on so that's the answer to that one  we require establishments to post rules and regulation signs notifying guests of illegal behavior and that there's a zero tolerance policy for this kind of activity absolutely we could require it from the start we could say your license requires that you post you know signs with your rules and regulations etc we could also instead because one thing i like about this licensing ordinance is you're not required to do much unless you're in violation right that's one thing i like about it because if you have hotels in the city that are doing a great job of managing themselves we really don't need a management more than they are right i mean we don't want to micromanage all these places so instead we could say signage is only required if you have an excessive number of calls or  license your license has been brought up for a suspension where signs we have recommended signs or crime free hotel motel i'm sorry our crime free multi housing program signs are an integrated part of that and it's designed to teach people this apartment complex is friends with the police department we don't allow criminal activity here right that's been successful but one thing we have to keep in mind with signs is everyday life signs are disregarded my mother disregards t speed limit signs right hopefully she's not watching but as we all know from when rtd went in no smoking signs right people how many of you have watched someone's smoke next to no smoking sign but we would hardly call this the criminal element right now imagine what the prostitute the drug dealer the guy who assaults his wife thinks about signs right so signs are only as powerful as the programs and the people that back them up all right next on here the sanction of having to hire off duty police officers seems like a conflict of interest with the police department we agree so we took that out we said it's more reasonable to say hey how about private security you need to hire private  security the reason we had thought about that is extra duty is something common we do here and it's helped a lot of places when they need it but we can understand if it was a compelled thing by a license that comes off as a conflict of interest so we've removed that completely and we we heard you on that and we agree so next one the best practice guide says to allow police to look at a motel registry when this has been ruled unconstitutional in a california case so the question is our our best practice guide recommends you share the registry with us and keep one but now case law says that you can't force them so there's the key distinction our best practice guideline that went out to all the hotels that's a recommendation of best practices that's not something we're requiring right so for example in our licensing model we can require them to keep certain records we can require them to keep if there's a car involved what kind of car it is if there's guests over eighteen names of all those people including any ids they have etc right the difference the key difference to understand is we can't compel them to share those with us anytime or on a regular basis we can compel the management of a database but we can seek a warrant for it if we need it so there's that constitutional protection now on the other hand when we've worked with crime free huh housing locations and when we've worked with motels that do grant us access we find it's mutually beneficial and because it's a consent based thing they can revoke consent at any time it's a decision each business can make for their best practices right so a lot of hotels have found if they do share it with us we're running names and finding people with warrants and they don't want people with warrants on their property either that kind of thing so so the key thing to keep in mind is we can compel domain the maintenance of a list we cannot compel the sharing of that list all right the next one can we legally tell hotel operators they cannot rent to anyone with a local address this one's this one's a little bit more in depth but the the overall answer is this motel staff have the right to refuse service to anyone as long as they do not discriminate against a protected class and we know what those protected classes are right gender sexual orientation religion race ethnicity that kind of thing they are allowed to discriminate outside that as long as they can show that what decisions they make are not based on one of those protected class items so one thing we teach in our crime free hotel or crime free multi housing class is you can discriminate against someone's criminal background you you can run even businesses they can hire based on that right so with that concept in mind what they've shown generally is those who have a local address and are staying in a motel have a higher incident of committing crime and i think the lay term where you go that makes sense is if you live three blocks away or two miles away what are you doing there right that's kind of the thought process so it's been shown that they commit crime at a higher rate than out of town guests because out of town guests usually have a more legitimate purpose for staying in a hotel so although we can't compel it like we can't say in the license you must only do this we could recommend it as a sanction based on known experience and best practices and say you should not rent too out of town or in town guests because it's been proven so that's the answer on that one can we come up with a cleanliness a renovation award to give the hotel that significantly improves their property absolutely you know the gold is program is to decrease crime and disorder we can consider an award or other designation we could have like a best improved hotel award right or we could have a you know you under the limit you know what i mean like hey you you've successfully maintained a very good record right we could do that the other thing is we've been looking at other kind of innovative options since the cat team would kind of be the driver of the bus on this working with the hotels we recently met with economic development and one thing we talked to him about is hey could we look at possibly a like a grant program since economic development dollars come from lodging license fee or lodging fees could we say hey if if a hotels in violation and the licensing authority requires them to install ten thousand dollars worth of security product could they come and get like a matching grant from the city and although that's not set in stone yet that's just some of the ideas we're talking about and economic development was receptive to the idea and said we like it and i think that shows one way that we're really trying to  we're willing to invest the city's money back into the community that we're trying to license that shows that we're not trying to close these places down if we're willing to invest money in them when we're trying to help them get better so that's an example so i'd take it one step further again more than just an award maybe some action active support to get them where you want them to be all right all right so this is i think a big one for most of you in here so we'll take some time going over this it's the only question that has a graph l or a chart right so that must mean it's important there's a concern about hotel owners calls for police service being held against them what's the p d s position on this so one thing we did because we wanted to dive into the data a little more is we decided to take five of the hotels in the city and we wanted to look at okay what did their numbers look like with the calls from the management included and the staff and what does it look like without them included to give you an idea of  comparison one thing that is hard about this is we have to find a way to track whose staff is at any given time right as we know over turn in employees you know suzy b could call in in january but by the time we run the numbers she no longer works there etc et but for this snapshot we did go around to each of these motels and request who is working in two thousand and seventeen what were their names and then we ran the data so when we ran the data here's what we came up with the hotel the second one down that actually had the lowest calls for service ratio you can see it was only zero two to calls they they literally had in the year had thirty police calls for service despite having a room count of one hundred and thirty five rooms so that hotel had the highest employee generated calls right thirty seven percent but it's still only thirty seven percent of the calls now if we look at the rest of the hotels the rest of the hotels would all be in that with the old call for service model or with the calls for service with staff included with that group they would all be in violation in that case the highest one only called three out of ten times so out of every ten calls management was only in club it called three of those times another example if you look up there is the the one that says employee generated twenty percent that top one we decided to dig even farther and we said ok if they called one out of five times what were they calling about and what we found is in those one out of five calls for every two  calls they do fifty percent of them were management calls like someone stayed over their time limit or someone's not obeying the rules or someone's just wandered onto the property and won't leave and one thing we like to point out is again hiring the right management staff hiring security if necessary if you have a big facility you could remove fifty percent of even their calls to the police department just by changing your management practices i think one other thing to mention too is one reason that we really are interested in keeping them in there because we want to hold them accountable for those management practices and the best example i could give in comparison is a bar if a bar was constantly over serving their clientele but they were calling us we would still want to hold them accountable for the calls that they called us on right we just don't want to say hey i know you called us about that bar fight but you also let everyone drink until they were way too intoxicated so we need to talk about that right so i think we have to remember there's some onus on the owner and that's the reason we're interested in keeping those calls  me see if there's anything else i want to add on that one all right the last thing i'll mention on that and to the right there it says the other thing to keep in mind is the way we set this up is we asked you as a council what number do you feel is appropriate and you said well forty percent sounds good let's let's move forward with a forty percent threshold even if we removed the calls for service from staff there would still be forty percent of the hotels in that threshold so regardless there's gonna be that number since we have a finite number of hotels forty percent is going to be in there whether or not we include the staff calls or not the only people that would change for or maybe those ones who are right on the bubble it's like if we take out their one out or their two out of ten calls maybe they would just squeak under the number but the the ones at the high end or even the moderate to high end would still be there regardless so and any of these questions i know you probably have questions about these questions so i'll go through it and then we can come right back to them however you want to do it all right can we develop a partnership with the cat team and the hotels so they don't feel like we're trying to force them out absolutely that's one thing we want to do what i mentioned in the first presentation is remember that voluntariness piece voluntar s rarely causes the desired result i talked to one of our former slough agents dutch smith who a lot of you know and i asked dutch hey tell me about what you guys did back in two thousand and sixteen when you were trying to do a crime free class and he said de lyonne and another partner took all the hotels north of six avenue and i took all the ones south of th avenue and we made sure to invite all of them to this crime free housing class so they put in that time to try and get them to come to a voluntary class it doesn't work it didn't work so we need to understand that at some point everyone has to have a little skin in the game to get them to want to come and work together right now the flip side to that is we want to include that working together we we definitely want to that's why for the first year if you're over the limit there is no mandatory sanctions or no hearings right if we find that your your calls for service are too high the only mandatory thing you have to do is sit down with me right and talk about it and go over hey what are your concerns because one thing i learned we had we had the opportunity commander the commander and i had the opportunity to meet with one of the motel owners and it was enlightening because we were at the table together and he said let me tell you some of the details that you may not know and i would be glad to help you identify solution that's the kind of back and forth we need and and now is the only time we've actually seen that start to occur so that's why absolutely we can develop a partnership and absolutely we want them to know we're not trying to force them out we're just trying to force them to be accountable for the calls that we need them to be accountable for all right there's a feeling amongst some city and come on city council that this is an effort by the city to redevelop west colfax by shutting down these hotels and the police department is the mechanism to do this what are your thoughts so we've like i said these are all these are all anonymous questions although they're the department we've long desired for a way to reduce crime and disorder i can tell you i had a sergeant who's been with us for i think three decades now he was my training sergeant or he was an agent who taught my academy thirteen years ago he came to me and said this is gonna be huge like this is gonna make a difference so we have for a long time desired for to find a way to reduce crime and disorder in our city one thing to keep in mind though is we didn't start researching this until you came to us and asked us to so our inten never to redevelop somewhere we were we were asked please try and find a solution to these problems at these hotels so we started looking the other thing we need to keep in mind is we chose this model because we want to try and help them to succeed the possibility of closure only comes after years of work and numerous hearings and attempts to do sanctions that aren't punitive we we purposely did not create a fine schedule for this we're not other cities fine people they give them tickets and say us ten grand they you know do this that and the other right we don't have that in here our goal is hey you need to meet with us you need to come up with better management practices and it's time to start getting your locks in better shape it's time to start getting some cameras on the backside where no one can see and it's time to start having more personnel here to watch your building right so that again isn't like a attempt to close anyone down all sanctions imposed just reasonable business practices and we start with the minor le impactful ones right if we go in and say hey would you keep a better registry and we need you to improve the lighting because it's not really it doesn't feel safe here when you walk at night right and we need you to start doing certain other things that's the beginning right we don't get to the concepts of like credit card only sales and you must have security that comes years into it like if we've tried everything else and nothing's working so we have it we have a scale of how we're going to approach this and finally again the sanctions are still administered through hearings there's still that third party who's neutral who has to review this and go yes i agree or no i don't and they have the final say so i think especially on this question what i would say is like with police agents we protect and serve olive lakewood will provide excellent service whether it's at a classic colfax motel or a brand new apartment complex will give the same level of service so to us it doesn't matter the makeup all we care about is those people that are involved are in it like we are to reduce crime and disorder and try and keep everyone safe alright consistent criminal act be removed or the number of significant criminal acts be increased so it went re a license this one deserves a lot of discussion because i think there's some misunderstanding of this one so significant criminal act was designed for those acts that are so heinous or so problematic that we don't want to wait a year to address it right so an example i would give is let's say so we have federal task forces who do human trafficking right and they go through and a few times a year they come in and they do these major operations to solve big problems if we found a hotel that the owner was complicit in this human trafficking right we found out that the backside of the motel had been had been a place for prostitution for people who are trafficked against their will we don't wanna wait a year to bring them up to a licensing hearing we want to have a hearing now right so that hearing would take place but they still get that benefit of having that neutral third party look at it and we still have to prove that they had knowledge and that their light the licensee had involvement in this right or their business practices had involvement i think one thing to keep in mind for this significant criminal impact act piece is there's kind of two hurdles you have to cross the the first one is if when a significant criminal act comes across our desk the inspectors which be the cat team and the deputy city attorney will review it if we don't see a nexus to the hotel itself we're not going to recommend a hearing because if we're like well that could happen to anyone that's not a reason  second even if we decide we want to have a hearing it still goes to hearing so that third neutral third party we have to present our case and say here's why it's relevant and they have to agree and i know the fear is well it's in the language but if we didn't have it then we couldn't use it at all so that's why i'd say about significant criminal act is keep in mind that it's designed for those instances where you would be calling us going oh my god what happened please do something so one other thing i'll say about that real quick is the operation of the lodging facility is such that there's another piece in there that i that i talked to one of you about today where it says the operation of the lodging facility is such that it's negatively impacted the health safety or welfare of its guests or businesses or neighboring community and that one again sounds kind of vague so it kind of gives some question marks right what does that mean how would that be invoked what the intent here is is one part of our inspections is that we had invite health and sanitation inspectors fire code inspectors all these groups that you would want checking on your hotels to the table and they would come with us on the inspections if they go in and find a massive outbreak of some sort of disease or they find that it's infested with you name it and it's a risk to the entire place that's why we'd want to be able bring up a hearing if we find something like that if or for example if there is criminal activity where as counsel you get these calls all the time where the neighbors are tired of people running from the hotel and the cops and having canines entering their backyard behind the fences as the bad guys jump in the fence over and over again it just seems like this place has been a problem for that right and you have your communit surrounding it that are trying to just grow up in lakewood that are being constantly bombarded with this kind of thing that's what that's there for but again it's for those times it's it's that higher bar that we'd be using that so all i'll end on a closing for a minute and then i'll open it up for questions so two things i think in closing i want we want to remember we were asked by city council to find solutions to public safety problem posed by hotels and motels in our city and we truly believe licensing licensing ordinance is that solution a lot of you know me as the sergeant from the cat team and a lot of you have seen the benefits that we bring i've worked with each of you in different cases where you've seen that innovative thinking and new ideas are really the way to get things done right well and one of my favorite things is usually what gets referred to the cat team is things that seem like they have no answer when you sit there and scratch your head and go i don't know what to do on this one the chief gets it and he scratches his head and goes oh boy this one's been coming up for ten years what do we do that comes to my team right but even with my team and the innovation the dedication the ingenuity my all my guys have and that of the greater lakewood police department it can only take you so far if you don't have the tools and i really believe here this is the tool to make that change and i think the last bullet is what i'll end on and that is that you have the right to be concerned we have had a trainer coming in teaching our end services and she works for a jefferson county multi discipline team for human trafficking and she said many of the child victims we get at our human trafficking when we're reviewing these cases either stayed at or been trafficked from hotels along west colfax and i think that's a powerful thing because that's someone coming in from the outside and telling us that so all right i will open it up so i'm gonna yeah absolutely there's anything else to add i'm gonna open the public hearing and then we'll we'll get to questions and comments by council so will open the public hearing on items fourteen and fifteen so fourteen is the ordinance and fifteen is the lodging license fees and again nobody has signed up to speak is there anybody who was just to speak on either one of these two topics alright i will close public comment and i'll ask for a motion on for clarification mister cox final reading second all right we have a motion in a second so let's start with a couple of either questions or comments we have quite a few i'm gonna start with councillor vincent who started this whole process just thank you for answering those questions those were questions that i had also heard too from other council members and it was beginning to be out there that this was just about west colfax but you're actually licensing all of the hotels and motels and i know one good example of somebody who's cooperated and has changed what their perception was that's in a different areas the motel six that's there on wodsworth and they're now an example of somebody who's worked with the police and is now very good and a good neighbor i also want to share people too there were some questions that this is something against homeless folks and and it's not it's not about that at all it's just another tool i think in the toolbox to maybe maybe help you all so it's not just what west colfax that's getting getting i had some questions on that topic of the in the as you pointed out that a chilling effect that we talked about the study session that we don't want to make it so that nobody's calling for service and you did touch on that as one of the bigger issues i've got two points on that one council may want to consider that in five point five five zero a zero a three when we're about the discipline on the license there could be a happy medium where you use that as a mitigating factor that could be considered we can actually spell that out that it will be used as a mitigating factor at the hearing if they're over the one point eight nine say that they're at two and they can come in and say well if you take out the employee initiated calls and then dig deeper and say well some percentage of those were for civil remedies overstaying or something like that then that should be either either used as a mitigating and i don't know where you want to take that that would be up for a discussion point whether that takes you below the one point eight nine or to your point if we say well that's a mitigating factor but we need to talk about then the management policy so maybe if we added that in that section as a mitigating factor and that was five point five five point oh eight oh a three another way you could get it the same issue is under the definition sections of calls for service under b one a where it talks about if if there's a call for service comes out you could add the word criminal to that to distinguish it from civil one thing that i would that i'm thinking of and maybe this isn't a good example but i think we want to encourage folks that if they've got a civil issue somebody's overstaying and they think that's going to be an issue they're not comfortable with their employee knocking on the door and saying you got to go and they're being proactive about that if they think there's going to be a dispute i probably don't want to just incentivize them from call the police and saying we have an issue this could be something that we may need your help so maybe to that point about civil versus criminal that's another way to get at it i'd prefer the first option that i mentioned as it being a mitigating factor i think that probably covers it all but those were just the two points i was thinking of when you were mentioning the first one was on five point five five point oh eight oh under a three there's a series of points there and you could just add it and say employee originated calls if that's the right verbage will be shall be used as a mitigating factor or could be considered as a mitigating factor at the hearing and maybe that solves it the second point that i made maybe isn't as good as the first so if i might if you'd like to proceed with that if he could fill out a motion form to that extent i don't know if there's um any comment on that chief and mayor thank you thank you counselor i i don't have any i'm not sure i have a response for that the hearing officer is going to be an independent hearing officer is going to look at these and i don't know if that personally i don't know if it needs to be quantified in the ordinance i think that makes it difficult for a hearing officer i mean these are independent hearing officers they they can look at that and  we can present information the the hotel that goes through this hearing can also present information that they're making these calls as well and i guess i'd refer back to what  example if a bar has business practices where they over serve customers and allow them to drive under the influence cause accidents have bar fights have various other activities the bar they do all of these things and they still call us it doesn't doesn't negate the fact that the responsible for their business practices so so i guess i i don't i don't know if i feel like personally that it needs to be in the ordinance i think it would it'll be something that would be considered by the earing officer and then i think again and i said this at the study session and i and i'll stay with this and i think showed it tonight with statistics these hotels aren't calling us they're really not calling us i'm at so i don't know where the disincentive lies for them i mean i think we've shown that you know i think  three out of ten sometimes where they're calling us at out of ten calls so but if that's council's decision we'll be glad to make that happen thank you chief any follow up to that or no you know i was bringing that up as part of our discussion point that's why i had said throw it out there is in response to what was correctly identified as a big point that we discussed the study session i will say thank you the chief anta kathy hudson both for answering a lot of questions that i had on on some of these issues that one we didn't discuss today because actually it when we during the presentation that came to mind so thank you both for speaking with me on these issues  really want to clean up your act things happen and they happen quickly i think if you're not that concerned then we have a program here that will take care of it and hopefully we'll become more concerned as time goes on i would like to make one comment about not renting the people with local addresses so if you have your major renovation renovations going on in your home do you have to stay in also aside from prostitution and in the hopes of keeping this a g rated meeting there are other reasons that local folks might want to go to a motel so am not sure i would like to say i would like to see that portion of it removed i know there are nefarious folks who use it but you know we don't want to get innocent folks trapped into a situation where they have to leave town for a few hours for a few days sure counsel that was under the best practices guide if i but it's not actually part of the ordinance it would just be something that the hearing officer could determine based on on a case by case basis so it's not actually part of the ordinance okay no concern that that might be behavior get run your floors are being finished you have to go to lee bridge could be worse things all right yeah i think one thing i'd add to that is keep in mind that this will be amongst a bevy of sanctioning concepts and and they would be viewed from you know least intrusive to most intrusive so it may be that the top two or three hotels that still can't seem to get their numbers down we recommend something like that whereas the rest of them would not have that same issue so it would never become something where all of lakewood would suddenly not be able to rent to local guests it just may be the occasional hotel and that's like i said one small possible sanction recommendation compared to all the other ones that are out there so in that case never mind i like the whole package you can come stay at my house when you do your in the floors no thank you  okay let's continue with couple questions or comments councillor johnson thank you this is greatly needed and i'm pleased that we have a reasonable ordinance to help our community and particularly one that i view that works with the hotel owners and it's not punitive that's a big deal to me i dan i know i approached you two or three years ago about this and i know you've been working on it and giving it thought and running it up and down the legal  team as well so it's taken a lot of time i appreciate that you met with me last week and answered a lot of questions and john thank you we've spent time together on this as well and i think that you've answered all of my questions very nicely i do have a couple of items i just want to mention i had the opportunity to meet with one of the motel owners and he was he was awesome to be honest with you i was appreciative that he gave me his time he was honest and he was very insightful from a different perspective to be honest with you that i had not even understood before during that time it became apparent to me that some of the folks that live in these have lived there for many many months and these are de facto transitional housing  how is that going to be handled with this are they going to be put in a position where they've got to tell these folks that have been there for many months actually the gentleman is in the audience and he could perhaps even give us some insight onto how long some of state i am i just what i can have some peace of mind on how that's going to be handled please sure councillor johnson thank you we we  are acutely aware of some of that as you say it is is de facto transitional housing for a lot of people and really our we don't want to change that but what i think is mentioned we are a year to two years before any any type of really difficult sanctions are gonna would even potentially close a building or a facility that that was in violation of this ordinance and we don't anticipate that that's really going to be an outcome i our hope is that we'll be able to work with most of these motels to change business practices so that we never ever have to get to that that level of  sanction where we we were actually evicting people or the old hotel has to shut down i think you know we've i know in columbus and some of those other communities that have enacted this you know we won't just go in if a hearing officer says okay you've been given so many chances your conduct or your business practices are so egregious we're going to close you down we're not just going to go in that next day and close them down i you know columbus they give them you know like a thirty to sixty day time period where there's there's some time before the business actually shuts down and i would anticipate that the same with us if we ever got to that point so we're not our we're not going to just be throwing people out on the streets and that they have no place to go  and there are plenty of other establishments in lakewood where they can they can go and rent or in other communities where they can go and rent too so i'm not sure if that answers your question but that's helpful i'm extremely appreciat that there were some needed changes in this that does not use a stick approach and that in which we are talking with the motel owners giving them the opportunity to remediate problems that's really the way this should be and i'm very grateful that there are no fines i think that's that's the right step i like the idea that this is a partnership and there's going to be increased communication part of the conversation that i've had has been a feeling that there was a disconnect there with the police department and i think this is really a step in the right direction i think it's a brilliant idea that economic development is looking at some of the money particularly since they get so much money from from lodging to actually help these folks out for some of them it's gonna be a little hard press perhaps i don't know if part of this is fire extinguishers in every room i don't know how that works but certainly with the cameras all of that kind of thing i think that's a brilliant idea i love the idea of awards i always like to see people given recognition when they've done something  right i like the idea that it's on a gradual scale to give people an opportunity and i i think that some of this perhaps has been patterned after in other cities i know the denver ordinance and hopefully we've learned from them and pulled the good things out of what they've had and kind of stayed away from some of the stuff that maybe wasn't working for them also perhaps this is an awesome starting point i'd like to at least throw this out that maybe we have a two year look back to see how things are going if something needs to be changed or tweaked so we can get input not only from your perspective but frankly from the motels because it's very important to me that people get the message that we're not trying to close businesses and i know that you're not and so i know that you been sincere about it and i believe you but maybe have a tear look back see how things are going and you know for heading in the right direction with this thank you i appreciate all their time thank you thank you  in front of you kind of giving you an update on where we're at and what we're doing and actually we you know we we definitely want to be very transparent and what's going on here and and also sergeant alesh had an opportunity and i'll let jon if you want to talk about your your denver visit go ahead please so to your point i think one thing to always do is not try and reinvent the wheel right and sometimes we can learn the best from other people's successes and sometimes their failures so  commander perry reached out to denver and their lieutenant who runs their hotel licensing i reached out to him and we were invited two weeks ago on a thursday to go out to one of their inspections now they do it a little differently but it was kind of an amazing process to watch because one they're very thorough we got to see some of the successes we got to see some of the failures i'll tell you this hotel was riddled with signs that says don't do this don't do that but they were doing it for the third year in a row and they were back there i i'll also say though that we had a city council city councilman from denver present for the inspection and that shows something pretty cool if a city councilman is willing to come out and be a part of it and i had a chance to talk to him and i said yeah we're looking at something similar what do you think and and he was vehemently in support of it absolutely he was like he was like you know what this is one of the best things we've done to help deal with some of these chronic problem locations and and that was a good enough endorsement for me my i walked away coming back i came back to the chief and my team and i said i think we might have a winner here so that was a really great chance to get out there i'm especially appreciative that you understand and recognize that sometimes things happen behind closed doors that a motel owner has no idea what it is and that they cannot be penalized for something that they're unaware of and i appreciate that it sounds to me like with the independent officer if it gets to that point that things like that can be taken into consideration due process for everybody so thank you appreciate your time thanks   on some of these problem areas so i'm excited to see some you know an opportunity to make a difference in that realm but i was just curious i was taking a look at section five point five five point zero eight zero and i was looking at section b of that and it mentions the authority shall impose mandatory restrictions on the license and i'm just wondering  is that do you guys just have discretion on that or is this ordinance enabling is this enabling discretion on that or is or do we have specific things we're allowing here so the way we set this up one thing we want to do is recognize that changing in an ordinance takes time and energy and you all being involved so instead of having every sanction written into the ordinance we're gonna have a sanctioning guideline set that the hearing officer would use so it's kind of like their their rulebook of you know from least invasive to most invasive of the the types of sanctions that could occur we'll come up with that as a document for what we see as best practices and and the things that would make the greatest change the first level of discretion there will happen in that a conversation will be had between the inspectors the cat team and our deputy city attorney and we will recommend a set of sanctions so before anything else it's it's what we think would work best and that's where really having that relationship with each hotel comes into play because i think when we talk to the owners we're gonna ask them what do you think are the reasons you have so many calls we want to hear what they have to say because if they say well i think it's this this and this maybe we can we can have one of the sanctions include something that would help a concern they have right the second regardless of what we recommend it's ultimately up to that third party hearing officer to review the sanction guy and make decisions based on that so it's kind of like a tool box and you just pick the tools out that makes sense for the individual situation and then you'll develop that yes okay part of the reason was thinking about that was because on our packet it still has the officers will be higher or it says license you must hire the officers and still in that guideline so i didn't know if that was just it hasn't been updated yet or yeah that hasn't been updated so again those sanctions that was just an example the the sanctioning guidelines is a document that has yet to be formulated do be our first sanctioning guidelines set okay so that would change in that one then i apologize okay i guess the only other thing i would add is just like councillor johnson i would like to just see an annual well potentially annually but i know counselor document mentioned two years just reviewing the effectiveness of the ordinance to see if there might be changes that we might need to make that are stronger or weaker or something to that effect so i think that would be a an added thing for this council to look at so  and first of all also just really want to thank you not just for this presentation and all the work that went into this but for your bravery in the line of duty as we're talking about this issue i just really appreciate all of you stepping up and putting ourselves in dangerous situations to keep us all safe so thank you i am excited about this i think it's very well thought out and fair and you know like many people have mentioned making sure there's a fair day in court i think is really important and then i just have a couple questions one is could you explain again where the one point eight nine level of service is coming from and why that's the right point for us absolutely so we're the one eighty nine comes from is we took the two thousand and seventeen data for calls for service from all of the hotels in the city and then we ranked them for calls per service per room so the one eighty nine represents calls per service per room and that's the great equalizer so the thought there is of course a hotel that has a hundred rooms is likely to have a hotel have more calls than a hotel who has fifteen rooms so what that does is that brings everyone to allow down to a level playing field then what we did is we ranked them from highest number to lowest number and in that first session with the study session with you what we did is we said okay it is not our decision what the right numbers should be that's a public policy decision so we asked you what would you like to see kind of as a threshold for what's acceptable and what's not and you asked what we thought was good and we thought forty percent was good because we said well there you have a couple good things going for you one if sixty percent of the hotels in lakewood are able to maintain this standard the other forty should be able to that's a pretty fair and reasonably thought and we gave some other examples when you take that forty percent line that is one point eight nine and the reason we have to stick with that is if we did forty percent every year it would be a changing metric and then someone could say well i was only held to one point eight nine last year now you're holding me what's a one point three that's not fair so that's why we have to take a snapshot make that determination and then pick that number as part of the ordinance great and then a second question this is this was addressed a little bit in the packet and a little bit more tonight but about this chilling effect and you know we certainly don't want to prevent anyone from calling when their service needed could you i think that part of what you are saying is that the hotel managers aren't necessarily the ones who are making most of these calls it's actually the other guests are you know whoever else it may be but could you explain a little bit more about is that the main reason that you're not worried about it chilling is it because you think that it they're not calling anyway or are trying to be very reasonable here and if if a hotel owner calls us we're not gonna we're not just going to not show up we're still going to respond and we're still gonna take care of whatever action we need to take care of but i think  what we're trying to do is to tell them or show them business practices can influence their calls for service so for example if you know if they if they're renting to somebody who we've we've shown up at their hotel and arrested this person seven times for narcotics or prostitution or things like that and and this person rents a room and they call us again and we show up and arrest them again i think what our point to the hotel is stop renting to this person you know and so so i i guess i and i think john may be able to answer this as well we're not concerned about the chilling effect because there are so many calls you know we go to these motels in our city almost three thousand times a year so there's a lot going on but our hope is that we're reasonable and with a hearing officer the hearing officer can say look it you need to change your business practices you can call the police if you want but you need to change your business practices and quit renting to people that you know that show up and and are the you're creating a need for the police to be there so i don't i don't know if that answers it or john i don't if you want to expand on that i think one other reason to think about this way is this the when we looked at it we found that like we said about two to twenty to thirty percent of the time generally in those five that we studied overall was them calling was the hotel's calling so if there's a chilling effect yes we may lose five you know ten percent of that total right but on the other hand if we don't include those one of the things we're very careful about is and what studies have shown is you have to be careful about having police departments being your de facto privatized security and so what we don't want to do is one of the things that happens is they say well i'll take a chance on this person because if it doesn't work i know the cops are only a phone call away and they'll make my problem go away and we need to change the attitude to say we don't want you accepting the risks we because we need you understand that so that's one reason so while well the risk of the chilling effect is there the benefits to keeping it in outweigh the negatives and then also i think i'd add to one thing they recommend and that we would do is do spot checks with residents to make sure they're not giving recommendations of not calling we want to make sure that residents are encouraged to call when they have a problem and that'll be reflected in our reporting in our investigations  thank you that that gives me a level of comfort and i think for me to having that level of calls you know we're setting a reasonable level so we're not saying you can't make any calls the police department or you're gonna lose your license i mean you have a significant number that you can make and still maintain the safety of your community so that that's great and i think that this is a point that for me if we do move forward to look back that i would want to you know understand if you're seeing if you're thinking that we are having a chilling effect and if we do need to make some changes around that and then my last question is if we do a look back what is a reasonable amount of time for that to occur and how  much i just want to understand how much time that's going to take and you know how long it's going to take us to get good data and not going to question so i'm not sure who to direct that to and there's also been an emotion that's going to be presented to to offer a look back a year after the license have been promulgated so give you time to get everything issued and then a year after that and i think in our discussions the key for us is about two to three years because we can definitely as the chief said i'm glad and maybe you don't want to make this offer i'm glad to come back yearly and give you an update like they do with other other programs right i'm willing to give you a quick up shot no no now the chiefs saying no so disregard that however you know a two to three just because like we said that it would be different if the sanctions all occurred within a year but we really don't know what the success is gonna be until some of these play out right so so remember if this is enacted we won't even have our first sanction hearings until this time next year the first year is all voluntary compliance so we really won't know much in that first year so i think two years at a minimum three years because that's what he would really start seeing some of these sanctions having an impact so that would be our recommendation but obviously as the chief said before whatever you decide were we're completely with thank you and again i just want to thank you so much and i think this is going to go a long way and keeping our community safe so thank up questions first of all thank you guys again for meeting with us twice and kind of working through the issues and i think i know it's very complicated it was very at this at one point it was challenging and we kind of worked through the issues so my objective was to make sure that was open transparent and one of the thoughts that i wanted to touch back on was having some kind of opportunities for training okay i'll just say it that way and and maybe reach out to the  owners and ask them if they would like to have some continuing education or continuing training to maybe address some of those issues that they may come across if it's happening to one motel it may be happening to the other and we may be able to how would i say shed some light on that issue and we can resolve it very quickly but i think is if at all possible maybe with with this ordinance we could ask or put into some kind of program to be able to start asking them if they'd like to join the training and possibly you know bring them in and and show them exactly you know this is what we've seen this is what's going on this is our recommendation and and help them navigate through the system so it's just a thought that that that it just came up here sure thank you counselor and i that's that's a great idea and we've talked about that we've talked about like you know we have we have our  neighborhood watch captains we do training with them our crime free housing we do training with and i think you know that set sort of that ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure sort of philosophy and and and we have deaf we've already talked about that i don't know if it needs to be in the ordinance that's that's a council decision but we're going to be doing training and offering it to everybody and probably the sanction guideline to if you know if we offer training it's voluntary and your hotels on that on that and that forty percent level the hearing officer can say no you need to go meet with the police department and and attend this training and and so we're looking at that i don't know what it's gonna look like just yet but we've already had a lot of discussions about that because that again that's work upfront that helps alleviate a lot of different problems and i know the motel six was brought up earlier and i don't want to sing a lot of specific motel but we've worked with them and they have some great insight on how to and things to share on how to clean up the business and make it a make it a safe so safe business so that would be a great idea just to come up i don't think it has to be in the ordinance but i think maybe added on for additional training and recommendation to the motel owners and say hey look this is what we have this is what you know please come join us and and reach out and to the thank you just one last comment i'd like to give kudos to councilman roy ball as far as i know you're the only one that actually took the time to go and meet with the motel owners and you got introduction to me for one of them paint because of you this is a much better ordinance thank you you want to make a motion sure when i moved to have a review of the lodging license every two years after the ordinance has been promulgated  just an amendment second to the motion so there's a motion a second to the amendment for the review councillor johnson just for some clarification did you feel like it was better to wait three years in order to what is your take on this i think three only because like you said the first year is all the only thing that will be required is if you're over the limit you have to meet with us and that goes back to your point about training each of those meetings will be a mini training because we're going to talk through it then we would have two years of when sanctions would actually be put into place and we could see the effect so i think for the because we have that buffer year built in to try and help get some voluntary movement i think it'd be better to say three we counsel minh libr be open to a change on that  possibly but i also intentionally left it vague because a review i think could be pretty simple in terms in the sense that it might be something as simple as letting us know the interactions that have taken place thus far with the licensees et abel i just wanted to weigh in and say that i'm more in line with going with a three year and the reason being is the quality of the data if you get the data too early oftentimes you may be considering a course correction that wouldn't play itself out so i will not be supporting a two year i think it needs to be a three year so we have better quality data and we don't mistakenly look at that early data and make a course correction that then could skew the entire program results think that a review in a year or six months or eighteen months it'd be nice just to know an update what's going on how things are but i think if we're going to call for a review we want something more formal a real look back at the success and failures or the data connected with the program over a decent amount of time and i think  is the expert so if he thinks thirty six months is four well ago i would agree with that three years the beer to your motion do you want to speak to that i mean that's the way the council wants to move i'm happy to move to three so we wan add something about a review after a years or a discussion after a year or so of how things are going and then a real review after three so essentially if i understand the motion though it would be at three years because you're instituting a pond promulgation of the ordinance which you're still gonna the ordinance will go into effect and it'll take you potentially a year to get everything rolling and then his look back is two years after that so essentially you are at three years mister cox i was just going to suggest to accommodate both points of view that it could be a formal review or thorough review at the three year mark but nothing would preclude interim less formal updates from the police department you can do that anyway but if you wanted to be part on certainly to have a review of the lodging license every two years after ordinance has been promulgated i still have a question with that is that thirty six blunts from tonight three years from tonight the promulgated is not it could be  in ninety days and then i that in john you can tell me how they have three months before they have to each mode lodging facility has to have the license so apply for the license so it's going to be yeah we're six months really into the the nuts and bolts of the program this year so i i don't know if we'll have a lot of data for you what i can tell you you know we review by paula and our internal policies we review everything we review traffic accidents we review internal affairs files we review use of force and we do yearly reports reports on those this will also be one of those things a review on a yearly basis and i think if it's if it's any consolation or to the council we'll provide that documentation to you initially so for the first you'll be seeing that so emotion maker is gonna have an excuse me you moved to have a review of the lodging license every three years after the ordinance has been implemented the beginning big cool sure okay second second there any questions about that on this is the amendment only any comments i'm just gonna make a quick comment about supporting this this is a long long time coming we heard thirty years we also heard that you know not not all these folks or bad operators it's just a kind of a perfect storm for what i think is important is for the last decade we've been trying to get some of these motels to come on board and in fact i went up and down colfax and left my business cards at the beginning of this process and had zero callbacks and so now we're at the point where we have the opportunity and this is what i heard tonight i heard education i heard partnership i heard success i heard encourage and that's the way this ordinance is going to help move the community forward you also heard a number of three zero calls a year and i don't think that three zero calls is spread out to all of our hotels and motels i think it's a certain percentage where our highest calls are so these are incredible resources that we as a community are utilizing and then you add into the fray sex trafficking drug dealing prostitution and certainly something that really hits home and if you were here for our earlier discussion you saw a slide of one of our police agents who almost had his scalp removed in an altercation and that's what we don't want to have we want to make sure that our businesses are successful we want to make sure that our police are safe our fire department is safe we want to make sure that the folks who are staying and renting these motel rooms are safe as well so i am thrilled that we are finally here at this point i hope this gives you the tools that you so desperately need and it's just not limited to colfax we actually have some problem areas throughout the city so again this is this is a big night coming and i want to thank all of the folks in our police department and city attorney's office who've come a long way and to those agents who've been injured and hurt we said we're not gonna let it happen again and hopefully we don't have to see this happen again so with that if there's not and i think this is a great opportunity for our community and our and we're looking forward to the part of jill with our hotels thank you alright so now with this there's also fees and fees are not based on just numbers that we come up with but a fee has to be based upon a real number related to staff time associated with this so i will ask for a motion on resolution two thousand and nineteen mister mayor  this councils need to take a break or we ready to keep on the rolling all right okay all right i was asked to check take it easy regarding licensing of short term rentals in the city of lakewood colorado item seventeen resolution two thousand and nineteen ten establishing short term rental licensing fees for the city of lakewood all right so we're gonna begin with a presentation by our clerk and while she's coming up here i just want to read a statement that was crafted by the chair of our housing committee councillor frank's and i  certainly concur as i think some other council members but want to say thanks everyone has reached out on the topic of short term rentals to share your feedback ask questions and raise concerns this is an important topic that will have a range of impacts to include housing supply and demand affordability and attainability neighborhood character and many other housing related topics as such there will be a recommendation tonight to postpone further discussion on this topic until april st which will give us time to convene a study session to expand the discussion address the topic in a more comprehensive manner certainly that does not mean that it will or won't be adopted but we'll continue to welcome your public comment tonight and then if council so chooses to take this to april first with what we've heard tonight to continue to work on this important issue so with that visible aired welcome thank you good evening mayor and city council my name is michelle millard i'm the deputy city clerk and i'm gonna give you a very brief powerpoint presentation on short term rentals i'd like to start with a background short term rentals are currently not a named use in the zoning code and back when we did the two thousand and sixteen zoning code amendment the council removed short term rentals they could have that at a separate discussion since then our planning staff researched w other cities do and that information was presented at a study session back in may of two thousand and eighteen staff is also asked to place a survey online to gather more public input so you're provided with talking points that you could take to your ward meetings to have those discussions with your constituents any survey was placed on liquid org where approximately five hundred and twenty people participated in that survey three hundred and sixty stated that they had stayed at an airbnb or a vrbo or one hundred and eighty three responded that they had not two hundred and thirty three stated they would consider renting their home on a short term basis to supplement their income we're two hundred and eighty three stated they would not the top concerns noted in the survey were about parking traffic not knowing neighbors and crime on the plus side others stated these rentals were usually the better kept homes in the neighborhood they liked the idea of meeting new people their children were in a neighborhood setting and it provided an ability to have a second income you know whether whether people were in favor or opposed short term rentals majority agreed that regulation should be put into place so the recommendations is to allow short term rentals in the city of lakewood and license and regulation short term rentals per the proposed ordinance so city attorney tim cox and myself will be available to answer any questions you have and thank you fantastic so um still be a public hearing correct so i'll open the public hearing and there's been a request by a miss gray is representing the lakewood estates homeowners association we offer the courtesy of homeowners associations in neighborhood groups ten minutes so we would invite you to come on down and then anybody else i have a couple other folks that have indicated a wish to speak three minutes two and a half this little boxer should be green thirty seconds left it'll go yellow and it'll be red at three minutes i'll politely ask you to wrap it up and we'll go from there good evening welcome good evening i'm laurie graves i'm president of the lakewood estates homeowners to satiate homeowners association filing one within our subdivision there are five hoas one of them has not been active so  i'm only speaking for my one hundred and sixty nine homes we are zoned r six and we are small lot where we're located we're a long duel between  most of the homes are under the lots are like nine zero square feet most of the issues that we have currently just what their own residents have to do with parking because there's not a lot of frontage  on these small lots we allow as a homeowner's association with cc and ours we don't have an issue at all with long term rentals in our development what we have had breakfast recommendation that was done a couple years ago that said they could come and get a special use permit they weren't supposed to be allowed in our zoning when i approached the city about speaking to these people about their short term rental i was told they were allowed to have them i'm not very happy about that because that's not my understanding which leads to some of the issues that i think we would have with short term rentals a lot of it having to do with code enforcement would take resources the actual code enforcement personnel who are a few and far between and police officers dealing with parking and there were a lot of interesting things dealing with the short term lodging at hotels and that's what these properties will act as is like hotel motel lodging short term stays if they're already over three hundred now i don't think there are resources to do enforcement in the city the recommendation as it stands does not include enforcement it includes just tracking one of the vendors that they looked at i think it would cost i don't know in total if it was up to twenty five thousand dollars to include enforcement but the city in my opinion does not have the resources do enforcement and that kind of volume it's just not there other things that i did i don't know if you saw my white paper i spent quite a bit of time looking at it i reviewed what's going on across the country for the last year and most cities are struggling with the issue of short term rentals and what they're finding is they're having to tighten regulations aurora has already tightened theirs once denver is in the process of going to tighten errs again so my opinion is that as the ordinance is currently written i think we should step back study it look at what everybody's doing and what and what's come to light just in the last year around the country and we're talking from honolulu san francisco seattle dallas milwaukee atlanta boston new york miami just everywhere in between and so everybody's standing back  taking a look at this and i think we should do that too our concerns are the not having transients in the neighborhood affecting the character of the neighborhood we're not any different than anything you've read  we don't need more attention between property owners so we want to we want to have a regulation that suits both and i think we can write a regulation as a city that still needs the goals and  it's not iron it's not our intent to stop people from renting their homes we understand the income needs but there's got to be a balance on those goals and so  i would recommend that we just take a step back i don't know if at this point you want me to go through specific things that i would recommend i have submitted them in writing previously you know certainly  neighborhoods like notice two neighbors and a perimeter number of days that can be rented you know what the per year or based on if it's owner property they have to be in the property you know three months six months ten months this one's some city and then to look at some zones which really can't accommodate extra traffic and i know there's a new zone coming up our zero they're not going to have room for people to come in and park because those lots are even smaller so it may be something you want to look at the other thing that probably is most concern is there's nothing in the regulation that says pre approval you should deal with your  a it does deal with subleasing you know if you're using your apartment talking to your landlord but it doesn't address showing the city that the hoa has said it's okay because there are cc nrs around town that don't allow a minor business like this because once you license it's a minor business and it can fall under the cc and ours  lodging that was just suggested about training people get a license they could attend a class what does it mean to do short term rental how do you stay a good neighbor what do you have to do to your property how do you ensure the safety do you have enough insurance insurance limits look like they're going up to a million bucks nationwide that's what they're recommending so i think a training class would be a great idea so when you get licensed you get trained that's a good way to build a partnership and help prevent complaints if you start having i mean if you got three hundred now i don't know what happened once you started licensing but say personnel isn't going to be there to handle the complaints the other thing is i think it would help sending some service standards for responding to complaints and how they're addressed upon license renewal same kind of thing as what you're doing with the hotels there's no reason you can't do that from that standpoint and be consistent having a handbook maybe another way around it instead of training you know you do the property codes made easy little br could be a pamphlet or a brochure for people who are going to do short term rentals so that there they can be educated but i think education is the key to making this work in the neighbor finally i think the sales tax needs to be work out the lodging tax because the owner is different than everybody else so it would have to be across the board  it's gonna be the three percent so those are my comments and i appreciate you're hearing me thank you very much thanks for coming out and getting us that information ms mcgee do you wish to if there's anybody else that would like to speak on this please get lined up here with  get you up after welcome thank you and thank you for letting us give our comments even though your i really appreciate that that you're still allowing the comments to come forward i think there has never been an ordinance that passed council or future council would consider that has an impact on neighborhoods as much as this ordinance does my husband and i are opposed to this and you should have a handout that okay i showed this ordinance and passed this ordinance around my neighborhood nobody knows it's even up i got phone calls what does this ordinance mean so i don't even want to address that part yet because this ordinance is to me kind of an opening up the wild west short term rental behavior and is really a setup for loopholes that we're gonna open up the gate and all the horses are gonna go out and then we can never get the barn gate shut again so basically  what i want to focus on especially is there's a huge difference between home sharing and complete whole rental of a dwelling unit and so as laurie alluded to even within the last two months stricter regulations are coming up in new orleans cities all around frisco breckenridge they have all combined have a hotline they are tightening regulations and one of their council members just had to call the hotline on a short term rental so i want to ask you to imagine whether you live in a condo or a standalone single family dwelling and i want you to just think about your neighbor has just rented out their home they rented it to ten people for a four day holiday weekend you are at home with family visitors kids grandkids etc at  on thursday night ten people show up in let's say eight vehicles they are already looped is the reason they came to colorado is one of our number one destination reasons is legalized marijuana and one of our other ones is craft beer they set up except this was one of those were they told two friends and they told two friends and they told two friends and you have forty people that show up by six zero a m and you have twenty five cars blocking neighbor's driveways up in yards so on and so forth and they're all out in the backyard the whole time and they are seeing in and they are drinking and they are smoking and there's not one single thing you can do about it you can call police this is the weekend code enforcement doesn't work so well on the weekend for noise issues but you can't get them out of the property right and so you have to lay awake all night will give great consideration and i hope you will recruit the sergeant because he is very thorough and that's the kind of analysis we need before we start looking at adopting an ordinance like this and i wish you would put a moratorium to make sure there's no short term rentals now thank you so whether you're for or against this everybody's pretty much presuming this is going to pass and lakewood is going to approve some form of short term rentals i come to you not just as a liquid citizen but as someone who has managed properties and rentals in four counties in colorado of all types long term traditional and furnished medium term corporate executive short term vacation resort etc so i have direct experience in managing writing leases overseeing and consulting  other owners on how to do this while maintaining or even improving their neighborhoods and not getting into trouble as well as how to avoid problem tenants that's easier said than done i've also spoken to my neighborhoods and single family neighborhoods and in multifamily residences the multifamily residences are pretty much covered by hoas because in hoa can forbid this boom done it makes it harder if you approve this cuz now the owner is saying well so you have to allow me but it's easier if the hoa forbids it and across the board blanket approval of this in lakewood i submit is inappropriate for this type of suburban family oriented suburb that is not a tourist or cultural destination it is not a ski area it is not a scenic resort my experience with my neighbors operating illegal short term rentals is that most of the people there are there because they're the one who will avoid two things the pot rolls of the motels and hotels and spending more money in hotels and motels either in ski country or down here they're not spending their money in lakewood they're partying they're skiing their restaurant appeal not down here they're sleeping down here as the two speakers have alluded to yes they arrive late at night often with multiple vehicles they often party they often smoked pot outdoors even if the policy at the house is no prohibited substances so i asked you to take those things into consideration i would ask you to exempt short term rentals from single family homes the r zoning and from our zero zoning and anywhere else you want to do it where it's appropriate that would make more sense other than that i have specific recommendations especially under f you all know that for twelve years i've been trying to do something about residential parking and in the city neighborhoods that were built in the s that are all cul de sac oriented there isn't enough parking for the people that live there now with five to seven vehicles per home about half of the people that arrived with short term rentals arrived with multiple vehicles and a lot of the owners say you can't park in my driveway because you're blocking my car so the statement under f has pro currently proposed a parking plan that provides at least one off street parking space for a renters use is woefully inadequate and ignorance of real experience i submit and recommend be modified to a parking plan that provides at least one off street parking space for every guests vehicle it's critical and then there are other recommendations here i guess i'm out of time but i would be happy to answer any questions privately or in writing if you'd like the other one that's wally inadequate here is the insurance issue and the non requirement that they follow state law  evening welcome my name is shawna um i have nothing prepared i wanted to speak though because i have direct experience with airbnb i own a five bedroom home and i'm a single mother of one child a two year old and i did research online unfortunately i didn't call him speak with a warm body i eventually ended up calling michelle and spoke with her i believe but it was not plain to me to see that short term rentals weren't allowed i saw a bed and breakfasts and it i certainly don't run a bed and breakfast i'm not cooking breakfast for anyone but i want to tell you that my experience  airbnb from october until i was asked to stop in january for an anonymous complaint that had for no reason just that i was doing it and i'd strongly believe it was a personal thing with someone who knew i was doing this the reason i believe that is i went to every one of my neighbors who knew i was doing airbnb and let them know that there had been a complaint and they were all shocked they're like i don't understand no one would even know what's happening in in your home my experience is different with my guests that i'm hearing these other people talk about i have many people asked me for recommendations where to go locally where to eat many of my guests don't come with a vehicle i have two rooms that i run out separately and i have never had an experience with more than two vehicles usually it's one just one between the two rooms sometimes two i like i said i have a two year old i don't have parties happening there a lot of people are trying to move to colorado trying move to this area i i do have people that come to this that are coming to ski i just had some brothers from norway that are ski instructors in norway i have not i probably have had i'm guessing forty yes over three months and i have had amazing experiences with these people more often than not i walk in to the room and you can't even tell anyone's been there they empty their garbage they pick up their mess they're quiet they don't wake my baby and i really really hope that the city council does move to approve this  allows me to stay home with my baby my neighbors have not any complaints about this and airbnb i don't know about vrbo but airbnb does offer one million dollars of property damage coverage and i hope the city council does move forward with approving this right thank you very much anybody else okay i will close public comment and certainly appreciate all the the input and the opportunity that we heard from folks on lakewood speaks there was a recommendation made that we postpone this and send it back to a study session which would be held on april  t if there's any problems with that i agree with the sentiment to postpone it i do not agree that we should have a date certain of april st i think it should be postponed indefinitely we do have a housing committee that's coming up i'm certain that they will take that up at some point  don't think between now and april st is going to do it i would say we do it indefinitely do it regular order find a spot for it but i know we have a lot of other pressing issues as well i agree with the postponement i just don't agree with april  st so i'll just leave it as indefinite okay mayor pro tem abel there are a lot of questions remaining we started off on this some months ago with mountain of questions and i'm not sure that we've reduced it nights we may have even added to the load and every day someone else asked me a different relevant question about these operations  i agree with councilman skilling that we don't should not postpone to a date certain i don't want to see it out there forever while we're pondering this we have folks lady that just spoke that we're operating these things outside well with no regulation and i think we need to act eventually to set regulations priority to deal with and there are folks on either side that are in limbo either dealing with it while it's not legal or you know the other opportunity that we heard as the person who brought forth the the request to to delay it i can certainly respect the concern because there are a lot of issues i think maybe a compromise would be that the april st is  study session and if we come out of that that we believe that the housing policy committee which is a committee that i may continue to chair as we move forward if we say we come out of that with enough relevant open questions i think nothing precludes us from taking an additional step but what we do is we continue the discussion in a robust fashion without unduly delaying it so i think we can accomplish both i think we can go with the date certain for a study session for which i'll have a bunch of relevant information that i'll bring forth because i had a lot of concerns about the ordinance and then i think we could make a at least try to come to a consensus that night does it look like we have something that we can move forward or the housing policy committee could look at it if we believe that we are going to create some unintended consequences in the housing realm so i'd like to maybe present that as an option that you were that clarification and if i wasn't clear that's what i had intended to say not postpone for a second hearing but postpone for a study session i would say this if we are going to go ahead and continue this for further study one of the issues i would like to have addressed very specifically is why we're going to even consider  adopting rules that allow this in lakewood in the first place okay as i understand it right now from reading everything i've read technically we it's not allowed in lakewood but it's happening anyway we're not enforcing it but it is happening so it's almost assumed that if we adopt this regulation we've therefore now adopted airbnb zin lakewood without any real discussion as to why we need them why are we doing it who's behind it where's impetus coming from i've never heard any of that it's just been kind of put out there with the assumption like somebody says well i assume it's gonna be passed it's just a matter of are we gonna regulate it i want to step back and go oh wait a minute why are we passing it in the first place why are we allowing this in lakewood is that the best thing for lakewood what impact has that had on other communities like liquid and i'm not talking denver i'm talking like lakewood what impact does that had on those communities adverse or positive either way so any study session we have i want to see us address that issue as well as the specifics of any suggested regulations you you took the words out of my mouth i happen to agree with you on this yeah no don't be sorry frankly i've had some concerns that the city's aware of this we've known about him all you have to do is look online and why we have kind of turned our head to begin with we've kind of created a situation where people are going ahead and frankly after they're even aware they're breaking the law and we're not doing anything i've got some issues with that and i happen to agree with councilman skilling this is not ready for primetime on april st i think we need to there's a lot more that needs to be  this this needs to be pushed out on our ward meetings and we need to get a whole lot more input everything that i have received with the exception of a nice lady that came to speak has had real concerns about this there is a lot of material a lot of data out there other cities are pulling back we need to learn from that and i don't want to see us have a date certain on thi so and just let me remind council we had a study session about this and at that time if you didn't want to proceed with this issue that should have been pronounced right now we've gone through a lot of work and it's actually been talked about in a lot of different forums so i want to remind council that and if you want to just do an up or down vote then that is an option as well but the reason why we're here is because this coun directed staff to move forward we're also here because yes you can see it on a map but we can't verify the addresses so we do enforce when we can prove it at this point we can't prove it so that's  kind of how we got here counselor good wine thank you i just want to speak in favor of moving this forward to a start session i'm not sure how the date of april first was chosen but i trust that there was a reason and it was chosen that that's probably a realistic amount of time that we can get some of these questions answered is that correct um and i think that you know we have we've started this process and then we as a council gave consensus to move it forward we've been discussing it a lot in our board meetings and getting some feedback i i don't think that what we have here is ready tonight which is why i think that it's really good that we're gonna delay it i think that there's some really meaningful changes that we could make especially around parking that could could address a lot of the concerns and then at that time of course we will all you know have the opportunity to vote it up or down so i think that it makes sense to continue this conversation people are in  limbo i've heard from a number of people in the community that you know i just want to point this out i think that a fair amount of people up here have probably purchased their home before the last ten years or five or ten years and in the since we bought our house the price has doubled and so you know the people that are moving to liquid now it's expensive to live here and i think we're hearing more and more from young families from working families from seniors living in their homes that it's hard to make ends meet and i think that if we can find a way that this can not negatively impact the surrounding community in the surrounding neighborhood then i think that it you know it makes sense don't think we're there yet i think we could potentially get there and the last thing i want to say is that i have stated in airbnb many times i'm a mom with two young kids i don't drink i don't smoke so i certainly think that that could happen and we need to plan for that but it's not gonna be you know i just don't want to make it seem like everyone who stays in and b and b is this wild party animal i just don't think that's the case all right well thank you everyone for the ongoing input and discussion and i think together we can find a way to make this work i have three more folks mister real quick or did you wanna know it's about the logistics of dates moving forward so we can okay ten four  mirror yeah i uh i too have also stayed in many airbnb e's and one thing i can tell you that's great about technology is not only do you rate the homeowner whenever you're renting one of these things on the app but they also rate you so if you're a bad tenant you typically get pushed off of these things and then you're not able to beyond them any longer and i've also stayed in quite a few in suburbs usually when i go out to california i stay out there why because they're closer to the beach i'm just saying  so i've had some experience with it myself but i will say there's a lot in here this is a pretty sweeping change so there's a lot to grasp and a lot of things that i think will take quite a bit of study to understand and i do remember the study session fairly well that we had a year ago i believe in may i think it was but i also think i i just don't think a study session  personally for me will actually do it because i think there's a lot of things to wrap my head around whether it's what type of zoning is appropriate or etc so i would maybe add if this is a way to end up in a committee or something like that where people can have a little bit you know more depth to it which i think councilman skilling alluded to a little bit with the housing one i'd be happy to take a look at that i'm just throwing that out there because i don't know if i could support skilling brought up a great point and i think where it needs to be is at the housing study or the housing committee and i think we can have a great robust discussion there i think we  can iron out a lot of the things that need to be ironed out everything including parking and zoning and other things like that but i think that's the appropriate place for it to be so i would really  d my thought i think i would really like to see it in the housing committee so that's what i have don't slurve incent and and that's fine if it ends up in the housing committee but i've got i've got to support what councilwoman frank said we need more information to do that because it's easy to put something in a committee try to pull something together and then i wouldn't be confident that everybody wouldn't take the time then to smash apart everything that we had without giving any input first so at least if you had a study session that would give us something to wrap our arms around with and maybe try to work with  know we're going to do this and bring us some rules i don't believe that was the conversation certainly we can say no at the end of second reading but there are just so many questions here and tonight we're are a lot of comments about the pros and cons of the ordinance in general as opposed to whether we're going to put it off for the moment and i do want to mention that no matter how well you and your daughters behave we heard  award one meeting about this air b and b over in daniels gardens for there are wild parties and the hot tub with the view of the mountains and people getting drinking way too heavily and that's what we're concerned about don't call me i don't have their phone numbers if you're curious i can't help you but i did this is about tonight is about the thank you mayor i also want to kind of address a point you made mayor i have to take issue with and that is this you know by agreeing to keep an open mind on these kind of subjects early on looking at the study session allowing the staff to go forward with what they would recommend as an ordinance i don't think that it should in any way be looked at as somehow a message that we're going to go ahead and vote that we're sort of bound by by that at that point by agreeing to allow it to go forward so that we can get a better picture so that we can keep an open mind and understand all the implications and if that is going to be the case in future and if that's going to be the case by tonight us agreeing to allow this to go for further study then i would say let's call the question now that would be my let's call it now otherwise there has to be a clear understanding  allowing this to go forward for further review for their study that does not in any way bind any of us to vote for yes or no on any of it i think that has to be made clear so that's all i have i want to speak to a couple things i still am for the original proposal and the reason being is the study session continues the conversation going to the housing committee i appreciate that but keep in mind we don't yet have  housing committee because the ordinance i have not signed off on it moving forward because i have issues with that case y'all don't realize i'm very detail oriented so it's a person i'm in the weeds so i think that is the perfect compromise study session let me finish the housing ordinance so we can get that in front of you so you can actually authorize us to be a commission because we are not authorized so there is no housing policy commission at this point and i agree with councilor  think the mayor also said at the beginning this doesn't mean there's any bias towards this we all at anytime can get input from our communities i am a representative of ward four even if i thought something was the best thing and i would personally vote for that my job is to go out and talk to everyone in the community that i can get in touch with and find out what the community wants i represent you i don't bring my own ideology or my own wishes so i think we can maybe cut quickly to the chase can i get it'll start getting some nods that yeah all right i'm trying to pull this together so we are going to hopefully get consensus for a study session at the end of that if we want to send it to the housing policy commission we can absolutely do that thank you well said mister cox yeah just a couple of follow ups on the scheduling of this this was a most unusual situation having a study session all those months ago and  when it came to getting this not an agenda we're scrambling through various people's notes to remember and remind ourselves what was happening back last may but we certainly didn't take it as a direction  to adopt an ordinance it was preparing ordinance for discussion and council would have the opportunity at this time or later to vote however you wanted to on it in terms of going forward we we generally talk about a date certain when we're at this stage because you need that in order to keep this placeholder and them in the process if you wanted to simply continue the second reading that would have to be to a date certain or else you you lose the the benefit of having gotten to that point in the process so it seems that that's what the what i'm hearing from various council members is it's okay not to have the date certain for further public hearings not ready for that that being the case it really doesn't matter whether you continue it to date certain for study session because that's not part of the first reading second reading adoption process so you can essentially continue it indefinitely and select a date for study session in the interim or however you want to do that but i just wanted to make sure it was clear that that if you go through that process of a study session you won't be able to pick it up at second reading  backwards which sounds like that's what's desired and what's necessary so would you need a motion to postpone indefinitely and then a secondary for or just a recension back to study session fourteen now sixteen and seventeen separately mayor i moved to continue and definitely  the consideration of ordinance o two thousand and nineteen three and resolution two thousand and nineteen ten or do i have to do them separately  second motion in a second please so that will take those off the plate and then is there consensus to go to april st for a study session which will also allow for public input as well okay so we'll go to april st yep can we get a more clear consensus one two three four five six seven eight we don't have many of these so just want to make sure my notes are correct the next item is a rezoning hearing there's a written sheet title rezoning hearing procedures at city council meetings on green paper available on the table by the entrance to city council chambers is that still accurate this is an old script i'm not sure it might not okay well or there's a sign up roster at the back and actually have some folks who have signed up for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the steps we follow in conducting the hearing you're welcome to get a copy of this information at any time which i apologize we probably don't have so i'm gonna skip this script applicants presentation and then after that will be miss cara mueller principal planner and she will share the staff presentation good evening welcome good evening m council first let me apologize for being the person coughing that's been disrupting things this evening hopefully i can get through this without having a there's a lot of sick people in here is like physically thank you for being here tonight this is a rezoning request as mentioned it's for a small infill parcel about eight three acres as mentioned the the address is off new orleans street it's basically along west jewel just to the east of the green gables redevelopment so this slide shows you the existing condition on the left hand side it's a property controlled or owned by the haight lers and the portion that we're bringing before you tonight is highlighted on the right side of the slide as you can to accommodate detached patio ranch homes on that center portion of the highclere property i'll give you a little bit of context on the site in the area and then kind of some specifics on the process we've been through over time so this is obviously an older photo just wanted to show some context that that was actually the original holdings of the heitler family that stretched from green gables country club on the west hand side all the way over to sheridan in the southeast corner  and obviously it's developed into predominantly residential over many decades this slide shows the more recent holdings of the heitler family you can see two parcels on either side of ward lake the one to the southeast has has been sold so the portion on the north side of the lake adjacent to what's highlighted by area of green gables shows the remainder of the hilar family holdings in this portion of the city this slide shows the site again highlighted in red in the context of the zoning of the greater neighborhood the areas shown in white on here our lower density parcels zoned between one and two the west of us in green gables this slide just zooms in on the area a little more closely so you can see with our request we're proposing because we believe that this provides a transition from our neighboring properties in the r zoning to the east as you move west to the new redevelopment in green gables the there's as you can see on the map there's much higher densities allowed in green gables per the zoning of up to five and fifteen d u per acre but what's planned there actually falls one of the parcels at three two to you per a for the other three eight so we believe our three four request is is in keeping with those adjacent properties in terms of the resigning rezoning criteria that the looks at in our relationship to it we believe that we'll be providing a range of housing types and provides when i say that i mean within the greater area obviously with twenty eight units there's not that much diversity within those but we're proposing to bring age targeted residential product to this area so in that sense diversifying the product within the area we're protecting the natural environment by maintaining shweder pond waiter lake on the property we're promoting orderly development through the integration of single family detached within an area of single family detached homes and we're also providing good pedestrian and vehicular connectivity not to the east because there's a gated community directly east of us but to the west with the new green in terms of being compatible with existing land uses as i mentioned we are proposing single family detached homes and that's what's surrounding our property the proposed our to zoning provides a compatible transition between adjacent properties in both directions we're proposing quality infill development that provides housing options for the city's aging population and for those that may be looking to downsize from larger homes with greater maintenance responsibilities also in terms of implementation of the comprehensive plan the demographics for lakewood do show an aging and growing population in that in that area so providing product for those people to design downsize while remaining within this portion of the city we're also keeping a portion of the property zoned as r on the heitler ground to be consistent with some of the neighboring properties on that portion of ward lake and to still allow for the keeping of horses as the comp plan desires and then obviously we believe there's been a material change in the neighborhood with the green gables redevelopment to the west so this is just a conceptual plan for reference we thought it was important because i'm gonna go through some steps to show you what we've been through we've been working on this project for quite some time so while it's not technically part of the rezone it sort of serves as the basis for our request lennar would be looking to build as i mentioned twenty eight patio ranch homes we'll still need to obviously come back before the city with a subsequent planning to actually create those twenty eight lots because that's not part of the request tonight so we show this to you just to give you the context of the basis of the request the areas shown in gray to the south and north of this property are to retained by the owner and and they will remain in that r zoning so if we go back this was actually i think our original plan was forty one or forty two units but this one with thirty eight was the first plan that came before the city and as you can see there was an initial city meeting on january th of two thousand and fifteen so we've been working on this with your staff and with neighbors for a little while now  so this one was brought before the city had thirty eight units on it and as you can see there was a looped road configuration and we had we were providing a buffer to our closest neighbor to the east and then we had four lots proposed on the eastern side of our road  adjacent to our other neighbors it also shows an assisted living facility up along jewell that that was by someone else and it's no longer part of of this application we in going through that first process learned that some of our neighbors to the east weren't happy with with the plan and so we we made some revisions to it we included only three lots to the east side of our loop ro instead of four and we had a buffer that was twenty or twenty five feet wide behind those three lots as well as the larger buffer that you can see shown there i think it was about three quarters of an acre this plan actually went before planning commission in january of two thousand and seventeen was recommended for approval but we learned at that point still from talking to some of the neighbors that they still weren't in favor of it so we actually pulled the application before bringing it before council and continued to work with the neighbors in working with the neighbors sort of the one of the things we learned was that the existing barn on the property was viewed very favorably people wanted to keep it for the character that it brought in the neighborhood and they wanted the buffer increased and so we took that to heart we looked at revising the plan we brought it down from thirty eight to thirty two units created a lot for the existing barn that was also part of the buffer that obviously wrapped the entire eastern side of the property excuse me so this was one that we went to the neighbors and we were ready to kind of forge forward with and we kind of heard it's a lot better but and so we we kept working with them and we arrived at the plan now that this is shining back to the one you saw earlier that's before you guys again not really part of the rezoning but it's the basis for everything that's happened and for our request so it's been reduced to twenty eight units you can see the existing barn lawton buffer on that side it's a minimum of seventy five feet wide and that's well over an acre so that it could that portion of the ground could actually remain in r it's not part of the rezoning request and then you can also see that part of the what drove us to this plan was there the four lots that are on that are closest to that buffer being larger to even so they do even transition within this property so there's a kind of a close up of that area and something we talked about with them that you can see the buffer how the existing barn sits and a lot it creates and then there is a covenant that comes with this that i'll talk about in just a second that a declaration and covered covenant that specifies that within that area that's defined as parcel b that there would only be four lots and as configured that allows us to have two half acre lots closest to the eastern side of our property and transition down from there so as i mentioned before we believe that our request provides a suitable transition between the densities in the area within the residential developments there we're requesting our to zoning as a part posed to r to accommodate the lot sizes for the patio homes we found that when you do these kind of age targeted patio homes that smaller lot sizes with much lower maintenance is what people desire just to be clear with our to zoning obviously in your it allows duplexes that's off the table as part of the declaration and covenant that was executed between the applicant and and the surrounding landowners duplexes would not be built on the property so the request for our two is is basically based on the lot sizes to bring in the smaller patio homes so this side again shows the close up of the plan in just a couple product types as mentioned the commitment has been to do patio ranch homes so it'll be single story although they could be walkouts if the grade condition allows on the back but they won't be two story homes in that condition  and as being age targeted the project's not age restricted so they won't be deed restricted but being age targeted cal atlantic and lennar and their experience where they've done this they typically get basically the same results when they when they market something as age targeted they tend to find that eighty percent of the people that buy there kind of fall into that active adult category and the twenty percent don't which is sort of how the the deed restriction would fall so without going to that sense it's still age targeted and with that you get very low traffic impacts that come from it because people have more flexible schedules so they can drive when they want during the day and reduce peak hour impacts this slide just shows some of the architectural quality and what could be expected in these kind of open living concept ranches when we started this project it was with cal atlantic holmes who received the builder of the year award in two thousand and sixteen as you probably most probably know they've been since acquired by allen r who actually one builder of the year in two thousand and eighteen so i think that commitment to quality in to energy efficiency and and modern construction techniques and they have affiliations with amazon and ring doorbells and all kinds of things to make sure that their houses keep up with the demands of modern living just a couple more slides that kind of show some of the designs of the patio homes and how they come  together in terms of being age targeted we've learned that active adult people obviously in colorado are active anyway one of the things we're excited about is the ability of this while it's a smaller infill one you can see here how it can tie into i think it's about two and a half miles worth of trails throughout green gables and sanderson gulch to kind of really promote that active lifestyle in terms of vehicle connectivity this was worked on we actually worked on the planning of green gables reserve so we've been working with the city for quite a while on on your city staff requiring the the connection of newland street  and foreseeing the future and allowing this property to connect three green gables so there are connections out to wodsworth so it wouldn't be forcing all the traffic on the jewel and as mentioned it's only twenty eight units and with them being age targeted the the peak hour traffic coming from it is really minimal and negligent shouldn't have any effect on that anyway in terms of the signed covenant you can see it here the the commitment of the the the applicant made so that the owners knew what they were getting is for single family detached homes they'll only be twenty eight of them they're single story ranch homes the four lots that were defined on that parcel b with the size that's there as they're laid out those are half acre lots the two to the east and then transitional ones between that as we get down to the remainder of the patio lots it creates a barn lot that has a minimum seventy five foot buffer associated with it jason to the existing residence to the east and then there's also vision for either an eight foot concrete wall or landscape or combination thereof that the applicant will work with the specific landowners adjacent to the east on what they want to see as part of that buffer so in summary we've worked on this extensively for i guess four years now which is a lot for a twenty eight unit project i must say we believe we're providing a transitional density on a parcel  providing a product that we think from the demographic will be sought after in this part of the city allowing people who are aging in lakewood and maybe want to downsize to a smaller ranch home the ability to do so and to stay so and stay within the city and and the applicants provided a signed declaration into to make sure that the our neighbors are comfortable that they're going to do what they said they were going to do all the way through this process so with that myself and kent peterson with one of our homes  striking case numbers we wanted to keep that so people would know when they saw that that this may be potentially the same property the planning commission on december th of two thousand and eighteen did approve make a recommendation for approval of this to council at the hearing on that  evening this proposed rezoning is from one acre residential r the two family and small lot residential the r zone district the applicant has also as stated proposed deed restrictions on this property we do have a copy of that deed restriction that is already signed and notarized and it is held with staff so if there is approval that will be recorded along with the ordinance at the same time the applicant  with that is proposing only single family homes those would be ranch there's a limit on that height as well they would provide a lot for the barn to exist on the property there would be a seventy five foot wide buffer is well along the east side between the eastern neighborhood and this development as well they proposed a wall and they'll leave that up along with landscaping up to those neighbors that are along the east side working with them as they move forward if this is approved they're also only going to be allowed for lots on that easternmost piece the two closest have to be at least a minimum of a half acre in size and then the other two would transition back to the  property proposed for that rezoning is really five seven acres of the overall acreage of what's being shown with the tract area of eight three the zoning process is our most public process it begins with the pre planning application that helped in quite a while ago the neighborhood meeting is then held prior to making any kind of formal application on a rezoning request that allows the applicant to reach out to the citizenry hoas in the area and share what they would like to do proceeding forward and garnish their feedback in order to make a determination if they would like to enter into the rezoning process they then may submit a formal application which they have once again on december th they went to planning commission that body maker made a recommendation for approval to council and we're here this evening for that final public hearing if it is approved this evening then after the referenda period required forty five day referendum period they can come back in with a major subdivision and a site plan and then building permits it's important to note that any subdivision that's ten lots or more that single family or duplex development is considered a major versus a minor subdivision and that will go back to planning commission at a hearing for them to just check make sure that all of the requirements are being  site that we're looking at for the rezoning component once again the barn law as well as the seventy five foot buffer tract going out to western avenue is indicated in red this is just a blow up of that you can see south newland street and then the gated community directly to the to the east is in the six thousand two hundred west you'll a it's a little bit of site context this is standing on south newland street and the two top photos this is looking westbound across the drainage channel that is bringing in drainage from sanderson gulch and various drainage ways across the property they do end up in shweder lake and then those continue across jewell and to the  east in the lower picture those are some of the green gables homes these are looking actually westbound from south newland street on the top portion you can see a schrader lake on the right and you can see the barn if you look really carefully through the trees on the property on the left hand photo on the lower photo you can see that some of those connected sidewalks are already in place along the east side of south newland street  will provide some of that connectivity and then be required to also continue to the east into this proposal so a little site context they've worked a lot with neighbors i've been out on some of the neighboring properties and this is a photo looking to the south toward the actual barn lots and you can see the barn and this is a chain link fence support of the neighboring properties to the east this is looking south from that property and this is the holthouse property you can see kind of the ring road that exists today the buffer i'll kind of follow along that this is just another photo you can see that there is some greenery and some evergreens those are obviously on the neighboring property those will remain but there'll be an opportunity to work with them just some more photos of that the barn is actually beyond those trees and then this is the interior hawthorn lane road the private road within the community you can see the roofing of the barn in the distance previously that was not kept as part of the original application as you heard from the applicant there was a lot of interest to keep it nice structure and it brings some history to the area so they're looking to keep that now with this application and this is just kind of an idea of what is it exists actually between liquid estates and thousand two hundred neighborhoods so this is kind of an idea of what a six foot fence with some landscape screening when you have two residential developments that are actually fairly well established you can see some rooftops but there's really some good  the boundary really breaks there at south newland street and you have unincorporated jefferson county you heard from the applicant that the densities that are proposed within the r are very consistent with what is proposed and currently happening to the west of south newland street in that green gables developments if you go to the north we get into pd zoning which is very specific to you some of those single family residential districts such as white fence form neighborhood and that we do have some mixed use employment but there's a lot of are one districts within the area and on the south side it is predominantly residential the intents of the earth to zone district is  to provide for small lot single family and duplex residential development once again the covenant that we hold in place if this does get approved would remove the ability to do duplex from the land use so here's a use comparison some of the biggest things you'll notice is a lot of it is very similar there's a few differences but the big one is the highlighted one where duplex would be allowed it would be removed by that deep restriction these are some of the dimensional standards you'll know obviously there's a very large difference between lot size and lot width these are you know very different residential zone districts but a lot of the setbacks are very similar and so what they be looking at is that five thousand square foot single family lot because once again you would not be allowed to do paired or duplex units provide enough information to really understand some of the constraints and opportunities of the areas surrounding a proposed rezoning as well as the property itself so once again real quick the areas shown in blue that's the area where they would only be allowed for two access points coming in off south newland street which would meet spacing requirements and really what we're looking at rezoning is that lot for peace to r and the transition that's provided from the buffer as well across from the larger lots provides that transition between the r over into the green gables development so public improvements in assessment is a large part of what we'd be looking at if approved through the planning process as well as the site planning process we'll be looking again at pedestrian connectivity street connections spacing requirements all the ordinance requirements for engineering and transportation engineering detention and water quality will need to be provided on this site as well they'll have to process that major site plan and plan the neighborhood meeting was held on january th they were looking at last time was received fairly well still always a concern with traffic generator to all the trips go to jewel we know the connectivities there and it can take him to bots worth as well the question on age restriction is that part of the deed it is not proposed as part of the deed it's just their target market and then what's the overall process moving forward public notification was met you have to publish in a mailer that was your hub of a certain percentage of the area a notification was mailed to all owners of property in tennis within five hundred feet as well as all registered hoas within half a mile as well the site was posted at several locations to meet the zoning ordinance requirement we did not receive any public correspondence in writing since the posting of this  there are outside agency reviews seven outside agencies were sent outside referrals we did receive no objections this includes the jefferson county school district water and sanitation district xcel energy and jefferson county the reason there's three rezoning review criteria conformance with the intent of the zoning ordinance is number one the second is compatibility with surrounding land uses and land uses envisioned in the comprehensive plan and the third is consistency with the the largest intent of the zoning ordinance is obviously to promote health safety and welfare of the citizens in flake would providing connectivity making sure that any drainage issues situations anything that can affect adjacent properties as well as the property that we're looking at orderly development through a public process is also very important this is the most public process and staff feels that there was a lot of communication on this one so that was good as far as providing that that continued communication it also provides for an opportunity for a range of housing types to meet our current and future needs whether those be an aging population or just residents in general  compatibility is a large one so compatibility with the r zone district there has been a material change in the area with green gables development whether you like it or or don't like the development it did bring residential to the area it was a large change from what used to be a golf course that was also you know pretty much in a same zoning classification in jefferson county complimentary to an ar one hundred and forty three so that increase  increasing density as well as the density that does run along the west side of the street the r is very compatible with that we also feel that with negotiating true seventy five foot wide buffer as well as those transitional lots provides that good transition that wasn't there originally from those are one hundred and forty three lots to the east liquid two thousand and twenty five moving forward is our comprehensive plan is pretty much our vision our guiding principles and our goals and action steps the demographics of lakewood they do illustrate an aging and a growing population pretty much much like the denver metropolitan area  this results in the need for additional housing accommodations of which this development could provide consistency with the comprehensive plan in the our to the proposed zoning is consistent with the south lakewood neighborhood it'll be in character with the surrounding single family land uses as well and compatible it's a large portion of the property to the south of this will remain are one hundred and forty three one of the concerns of the comprehensive plan is losing properties that may have the ability to keep large animals with this proposal a lot of that r peace will still be held in part or a large part by the hilar family heitler land control the rezoning will allow for mixed housing types as the applicant said with twenty eight homes it's not that great a mix but it does add into the character in the mix of what's already existing within that south side of west ewell avenue it kind of also accommodate for low maintenance and meet the housing needs of the city staff does find as you will see in the findings of fact in order that this rezoning application is in compartments with the intent of the zoning ordinance is compatible with surrounding land uses and land uses envisioned in the comprehensive plan and it's also consistent with the comprehensive plan therefore planning commission recommends that the city council approve rezoning case rz eighteen thousand and one that concludes staffs presentation and be available for any questions thank you thank you done all right i'm gonna now open the public hearing on ordinance between nineteen four i have mister and m thune it looks like mister thin you wish to speak on through my apologies come on down well welcome thanks for coming out one question but i'll put a little levity first i live just up the hill from this along i guess it's long south newland it used to be called country club road in green gables reserve we would have moved to this place in a heartbeat if it had been built before the others because it is for aging population and single family looks great along the lake i i run there every morning and run along sanderson gulch and this morning a coyote walked right across that that schrader lake anyway my question is the staff mmm the part that wasn't shown in the pictures is and the really the only reason i would say not to have it is it what's there now is a bit is a buffer the width of the the width of the lake or a little bit more and that goes all the way up the hill and in the front there which was not mentioned is about seventy or sixty pine trees look real beautiful so there's a whole hillside that is a buffer now that question is what happens to the part to the north in front of the in front of the lake great is that gonna be still r or so we'll tackle that after public comment so thank you sir appreciate it nobody else has signed up to speak if you wish to all right i will close public comment and now we'll see if we can address that that question okay so i'm gonna go to council questions or comments i'll start with our ward three representatives since this is in your neck of the woods  i was just gonna start with the ward three folks since this is do you want to talk about our ward meeting on saturday we had two hundred people show up to show their concerns for a white fence farm what that tells us is that this is a very connected community and they're very more than willing and able to come out and express their concerns and objections if they have them and so seeing none here i think that tells us a lot  i also feel that the owner and developer have worked very hard to work with the surrounding neighbors in the community to make this something that's compatible with them and so i'm gonna be voting for it and i able just a couple of years ago this was a very contentious not this project but one on the part of the same ground was very contentious and it  wasn't quite resolved in a piece a way that everyone liked but now everyone's put their heads together the developer has been very responsive staffs been very know to everything that everyone just said and if if all projects went like this my job would be so much easier so thank you for all the work that you did and i just yeah i really appreciate you working with the community and the community working all of you working together to make this happen and i'm excited that we're gonna have some patio homes and like what i know that there's a lot of people that would like to see this kind of option so thank you yep i will echo everything that's been said it was actually interesting to see that slide of the original heitler property that took in a lot of that residential that is now there today but you know it's been a long road but i appreciate your willingness to continue to work it's always easier for us when we can have the neighborhood come on board and tonight i was talking on my way in to somebody from the neighborhood who really thinks highly of mister cunningham and mister patterson so that you were even sitting around people's dinner tables so that says a lot i appreciate that and we'll certainly be in full support before i entertain a motion mister cox do we need to we just have a general do we need to accept the findings of fact by planning commission the mote the motion should have that finding in there well we will improvise we'll make it up mayor pro tem will figured out he's a word abell we just modified the format a little bit to make it a little a little bit shorter but this would as counsel knows remove the three sections of the initiative referendum chapter in our code to remove the stay provisions that have been discussed in the pending initiative case but the third section would be removed as well that's applicable  referendum matters so it would eliminate the state provision for both kinds of questions thank you my apologies miss moore did you read that into the record she dead yet okay all right let's open the public hearing again three minutes two and a half green thirty seconds yellow and red at three minutes miss king you're up you're not here to talk about weeds vote and we're being denied the right to vote the way that code is mentioned here so i am for this the changing the code so that we have the right to vote doesn't mean we're going to win but we have the right to vote so i urge you to pass this okay thank you charles you wish to speak john  ash and anybody else who hasn't signed up please come and get with miss maillard good evening good evening i just want to say that i'm very much in favor of amending chapter two five to  code for the aforementioned reasons as right now we all know that this has been brought forward because of the delays in getting the strategic growth initiative to the citizens regardless of how you think or what you believe about that strategic growth initiative the bigger picture here is that the citizens of lakewood of being denied the chance to vote yay or nay on the matter and that's just plain wrong  the it's important to point out that changing this this part of the code would not take away a citizen's ability to appeal any initiative that is brought forward either whether presently with a strategic growth initiative but any other  initiative that will certainly be brought forward at some point in the future the citizens have the right to vote on this and it's just the right thing to do and our citizens look to you folks to do what's right for the citizens so i and it seems ironic to me that this is one of the last items on the agenda since waiting has been the norm for the past year and a half regarding this issue it's unfortunate that the deliberate effort of a few has good evening mayor coun my name is cathy kentner co petitioner of liquid strategic growth initiative but i'm not here tonight to talk about the growth initiative tonight the subject is the people's right to petition and vote initiative referenda and recall are necessary checks and balances on you our legislators when you let things get out of hand when the government isn't responsive we the people have little recourse petitioning through the initiative referendum and recall is often the only option but the lakewood municipal code currently takes away this constitutional right by keeping issues off the ballot when any appeal as meritless as it may be is filed this allows big money interests to control access to our constitutional rights in fact the last two petitions which garnered enough signatures a referendum on the rezoning of two thousand and ninety wright street and the lakewood strategic gro initiative were held off the ballot by legal maneuvering because some elected officials didn't want them to go to a vote this allows big money interests to control access to our constitutional rights there is little and perhaps nothing democrat attorney on election law and scott kessler the preeminent republican attorney on election law and former colorado secretary of state have agreed upon throughout the years but they are in greement and currently in the opinion that the section of code you are considering to repeal is likely unconstitutional what you are considering tonight as mister ashe mentioned does not change the appeal process it brings our code in process to constitutional compliance it lifts an unconstitutional restriction to initiative referenda and recall and it removes a provision that allows big money interests to control access to our constitutional rights thank you thank you anybody else all right i will now close public comment and ask for a motion this repeal and replacement changes nothing as was said earlier about the appeals process it merely lifts a limitation the council placed on itself some years ago it did so and remained in force even though in november of two thousand and ten lakewood voters defeated some charter issues that would have required just doubling the time that these things be placed on the ballot from ninety days to one hundred and eighty but in fact that proposal that finally went to a charter vote began its life as a request to have anisha and referenda considered only in november elections that removes the privilege of a timely vote initiative which again is not at issue here the ordinance came up the judge diego hunt was concerned that he had dismissed the case in early november and  didn't the ordinance did not appear on the ballot i'm sorry he had dismissed the case in august and it hadn't been to the ballot yet he was informed that it was because of this particular lakewood city ordinance position that particular this particular limitation may not be applicable to the district court case and in fact may not be constitutional in light of the fundamental right of initiative those are direct quotes from an attorney appearing on behalf of the city and an attorney who is  well recognized in his knowledge of constitutional law and election law it also seems to go against the grain of the city charter which says that  clerk must bring these things to us within ninety days and it says counsel cannot pass ordinances that conflict with that in any way but yet we did in two thousand  we placed the limitation on putting these things to it ballot as long as an appeal our protest is under way it says nothing about the quality of that appeal what doing tonight would remove the limitation from counsel but it would allow anyone to could go ahead and file an appeal but in doing so they would have to prove their argument has merit and request the judge remove it from the ballot otherwise it would remain on the ballot and we would be able to vote in a timely fashion so i urge my colleagues on council to please slip i just would say that i appreciate councilman abel's assistance on this we worked on this together and i appreciated his assistance and i'm going to be voting for this for all the reasons that have already been stated i i don't think they need to be repeated it's the right thing to do and i urge my colleagues to do so as well so we have a motion in a second any more thank you i i will be supporting this i want to just also acknowledge that we're not voting on the growth cap right now and i know that some of us have concerns about that issue but that's not what we're discussing tonight and i think that it is important that we update our rules so that they're fair and so that people can vote concerns about repealing this day and and you know i understand their perspective but i also think we all benefit from having a right to the ballot so i look forward to voting in support okay and then we will go back one more thing i just wanted to reman ssin that some folks were able to weigh in online and we appreciate that and so there's more public comment to this and you can go to lakewood speaks which was actually really helpful so as our first night to kick off i appreciate the folks that weighed in online so please cast your vote passes eleven eyes zero nays okay so general business we did have a topic related to lakewood high school there was a request it was brought forth by councillor johnson and there was a request to pull that for this evening and spoke with her before and what i would like to offer council because there was a mention of this at our annual planning retreat so i'd like to have and i sent out a link of the conversation i would encourage council to review that and i'd like to have us discuss that if we could under general business on the th and if there's consensus as to what that was on the th then we can go forward if not then we will need to i don't know what we'll need to do but that was the request by miss hudson so councillor johnson thank you  myself decided we wanted to put this out there for us again because this has been a very contentious issue and the study session we had there was ambiguity frankly regarding what the outcome was i asked to have this pulled from the agenda at this time the signs that are up on th avenue are working well they only prohibit students in the evenings and on weekends i'd like to see frankly how this plays itself out this is the first year that the  happened and putting those signs up was the right thing and i absolutely believe that it has made a huge difference in that neighborhood and i'd also like to just publicly state that if we take the signs down at lakewood we need to be looking at alameda green mountain and bear creek high school as well okay so i'd like to just see it tabled for now so there still needs to be there's a request from his hots in that that there's a weigh in on that claire on the direction that was given so i would ask council to please watch the tape and we can have that discussion i'd like to have it march th if that's possible aye we're off on the th so it's either the fourth or the th and if we can't get clear consensus from that tape then we'll have to figure out plan b but that is i let's just go with that please okay anything else in our general business great so thank you council for all your hard work tonight and your preparation what we thought would be a meeting that ended on tuesday morning could very well end before ten forty five tonight so thank you very much and thank you to the community as well for engaging in getting a lot of your questions in prior and the communication from our folks about the vacation rental and airbnb super helpful and hopefully we can carry this trend forward like to just remind people to please slow down out there pay attention use crosswalks try not to jaywalk our roads are somewhat dangerous and unfortunately we've had a terrible rash of vehicular fatalities as well as pedestrian deaths so whatever we can do to make sure that we're paying better attention i appreciate staffs effort to put up some sign boards and try to encourage people to not text and to slow down and do different things and then i had mentioned this before and i'll get you out the criteria this week about the complete count committee for the two thousand and twenty census and so there's some criteria that we've put together as well as what that'll entail to be on the complete cal committee the time commitment and things along those lines so that would be super helpful once i get that out if you could recommend some names and we'll start to put that together thank you this saturday is the ward one meeting at nine thirty at holy shepherd union coalition for union holy shepherd church we will be having a legislative update i'm chairman of the legislative committee and that will be followed by other updates within folks within this community and then we will have an open mic to listen to the folks in here what's on your mind thank you officer betta dare i say thank you again  as i mentioned earlier we had over two hundred people at our word meeting on saturday very concerned about white fence farm and so we sure appreciate all their coming out to talk to us about that and we're gonna be taking the information that we got from that and going forward you know with our staff providing you that i want to say thank you to kara for her presentation  on the white fence farm and also on the planning process the meeting was little contentious at times and she did a very good job of standing in there and holding her ground and you know explain people how things work so so she did a great job we really appreciate it also to our two officers whose names all not mentioned who also came and gave us a presentation on the car our least favorite topic which is crime in lakewood but they did a great job and i thought they were gonna get a standing ovation there for a while they were they were the the folks were so pleased with them and just loved them i thought they're gonna get a standing ovation they were that excited so thank you to be a good one march th is our next development dialogue committee meeting it has been announced last week it has now posted online i believe the agenda should be up there march th six zero p m upstairs in our usual room the topic will be parking part two and we have many many topics to go through in that two hour time frame but look forward to seeing everyone there so good why thank you two quick topic is community gardens in lakewood so i think it's gonna be a great topic and then of course we will do council update and community concerns and questions so please join us and again it's at  westwoods not at our regular location and then i quickly wanted to update all of you about our last doctor cog meeting the main thing we talked about was just getting an overview on all of the different potential what we're gonna do about transportation because the ballot measures failed last november and so there's just since doctor cog deals primarily with transportation we just discussed what the what the options are and what the governor is looking at doing in various other groups so nothing in the works yet but of course it's an important conversation as we continue to robust meeting here were three meetings saturday and it was really a good discussion and we kept it very simple conversation came out we kept our tempers down and everybody was somewhat happy when we left so that's all i have to report i i'm sorry yes i do i would like to make a plug for the quarterly breakfast and it's on march th and it's with the board of county commissioners as well as the municipalities this is a breakfast that typically we don't have great participation from our elected officials frankly and at this meeting again it's march th and it's at the county building the city managers will be rolling out the whole on the program that we're proposing for the homeless initiative so and i've talked to you about that a few times especially at our last planning session so if you can make it that'd be great it's at seven thirty in the morning and it's at the county building and it's the quarterly breakfast with the county commissioners as well as the municipalities elected officials so please come you and i'd love to see about ten and a half and a half i'll be the half all right anything else like to thank our police agent i'd also like to thank a special guest who's here with us tonight the mayor of  mayor heidi williams thanks for coming out and hanging out with the city lakewood tonight with that we were adjourned at ten thirty three p