welcome everyone to the august rd study session of the lakewood city council here in lakewood colorado thank you all for joining us as you can see i am not mayor adam paul i will be filling in tonight  thank you tonight is a study session so as we all know public comment will come once those items are called so that the public can participate in our discussion when we give that phone number now and i'll give it a couple of times tonight the phone number for calling in for public comment is one three four six two four eight seven seven nine nine whereby d is nine seven three six six two seven two six one one and press star after entering the web i d and star or i'm sorry a pound after that web i d and town again once more to join the meeting and then star nine to request to speak the first item on the agenda for knight study submission is item three which i the clarification of the blight definition and for that we will invite our economic our director of economic development robert consideration of a resolution that will happen next week that resolution and i apologize i thank you very much for taking some time on the agenda tonight to consider this item or think about this item a little bit more but there's a lot of numbers in the labeling of these things so i'll do my best to make sure that we're talking about the right things with the resolution to be considered next week is a resolution twenty twenty so we'll just call that twenty four and what it does is it a man's or modifies a resolution that council approved earlier in the year in january just before all the cocoa and nineteen stuff hit so seems like almost a lifetime ago so we thought we would reset the reset the chip and make sure folks were aware of what this resolution for his resolutions that would allow for some clarifying section of of certain items in there you'll recall that there were a couple of places where the words blight or line areas that sort of thing were involved with that but it wasn't  so for the purposes of life fourteen twenty seven it meant those urban renewal areas but council also allowed for a process for property owners to come forward do a blight designation under their own dime and then come forward used the exact definitions the exact same process and do all of those things come forward you can have the council consider a designation for the purposes implementing chapters fourteen twenty seven very important to understand that it doesn't connote any urban connotations to the property it's only for the purposes of fourteen twenty seven so that's available we do have a couple of properties that are going to move forward with that request in the very near future in fact we'll hear from one of them very shortly the notion of that the purpose of the fourteen twenty seven like designation is not to get around the allocation system it's not to allow your property to become dilapidated or vacant just for very so i think this was pretty well covered in staff presentation i hopefully you al got a copy of the resolution that's going to be present language of the resolution and in it basically says in lee's exactly what what your director robert smith just said i just would like to clarify that this is not an ordinance to resolution it's basically ties into the original resolution that we passed in january that was done as a kind of a r type resolution to help clarify the ordinance but it it did not take the status of a language change of the ordinance itself so the ordinance want to make it sure is intact two hundred is intact it's not it's not been changed in any way this does not change the original ordinance in any way it's basically just a rule or a clarification to help guide council on staff in saying states that whereas the blighted the term blighted as currently used in the strategic growth initiative may have the unintended effect of leaving the door open to property owners deliberately allowing their properties to fallen into  disrepair so as to avoid the permit allocation process but that's part of it i think that's really key to the resolution and we are seeing some of that going on or potentially going on amidst i can't really say it's happening but there are properties that are around the city there's several of them now that we're hearing about who are going into further and further states of disrepair and i'm not going to mention that month mentioned them by address but there is a number of and we've been some of us have been getting e mails about them so i think this is just an opportunity to kind let the public know that we are going to be watching for this kind thing and to give us the about it on the top of it i don't see anything really wrong with it but if as i read this more is it okay if i reach out to you individually so you can answer some questions prior to next monday thank you and i just had one kind of initial question here and i'm not sure whether to address who to address here but basically i'm just trying to understand the actions or what legal are potential actions well as i understand it we we have to make the ultimate decision as to whether a property blinded so this would factor into our decision if we as a council were to see a situation where the evidence was apparent to us that this property was being allowed to to to deny their rights so it's just that simple we can if we were to find this wouldn't be the case we would have the authority to deny it if we don't think that's the case and it's a legitimate bli tem is this is also probably for councilor bieda but you know you mentioned this kind of gives us an extra tool my question is we already have that ability can we just make those determined actions and wouldn't you also just factor that in with or without this additional resolution on just just curious your thoughts on that well to the extent that we i mean we do already i suppose in their week we could talk about that in the discussion but there is nothing that there's no language in to hundred which addresses this particular situation so we'd be going a little bit on a limb if we started considering evidence in my mind about this about a situation where there was an intentional blight situation you know there's nothing really in the in the in the law that says that eliminates the you know the prospective petitioner there's nothing in the lives says that if they did it intentionally they're eliminated so this really kind of puts that in focus and says we now can make that finding as part of the entire finding so it just kind of gives us something to work with where otherwise we're kind out there on a land without it you know in you know people could bring it up and make that objection but where in the law does it really say that is even a factor  people who might want to utilize this provision in the law i think i could see that but i imagine i feel like we'll probably hear soon when we start talking about this next property that wants to be  sure we're going to hear all sorts of factors that maybe aren't articulated in the law but i appreciate i appreciate the clarity on that yeah if we think there's just kind of requires good faith basis yeah by the i mean to make it sort of a broad statement it requires some good  councilor harrison you're on mute hang on one second there you go you're still muted now i can you can hear me that's really strange for me to talk to you guys not to hear me tht is amazing scary but amazing my question would be is what criteria are we just going to use code what are we going to use to identify when we think property owner is on purpose allowing the property to go into disrepair are we just going to use what our code says what what are we going to use for criteria i'm not opposed please don't hear that i'm opposed i'm just saying if we're going to say that i think we need to have something to lean on as well distributed you all want to respond to that or you sure i will thank you so section five i think addresses that it's says if that if it is determined that a property owner has failed to reasonably keep their property safe secure sanitary shall consider the length of time the property has been vacated or deteriorated the reason for the vacant deteriorating condition of the property the condition of the neighborhood surrounding the property and the marketability property so the the resolution gives you some specific criteria to consider in making your attempt termination whether this was an intentional blight situation or whether it was something that definitely support abel i see this is just a way to keep people from gaming the system there are plenty of ways to game it to start with but this give us an extra safety valve in case that that applied is when the city council is making that determination about life and what this really says is we might find blighted conditions but if that blight is the result of an intentional attempt to as mister abel said game the system you have the ability to say yes you properties in disrepair but the circumstances that put it there are suspect and he not acted in good faith in that process so it really provides more criteria more opportunity to tie the decision directly to some of the facts that are presented in the blight determination it says if it determines that a property owner has failed to reason we keep and i'd like to know if there is a possibility to strike the word reasonably that's very vague and you either keep it i would consider that friendly amendment and i would accept that thank you so we can either handle that one of two ways we could either get consensus but that's the way we're going to go we're not voting on it tonight we may just want to keep that as an amendment that we make i could go either way with it seems like it might be cleaner because there could be other amendments we've heard pleas from council or a beer or i'm sorry councilor vincent there was going to talk directly to councilor bieda and there could be other amendments as well so especially something like that that's certainly going to be all right i'm going to go ahead and i don't see anyone hands up i'm to go ahead and open public comment on this item before i do let me just read that phone number just one more time t that want to call in on this item or the next one that phone number is three four six two four eight seven seven nine nine whereby d is nine seven three six six two seven two six one one press pound after entering the web i d and press pound again join the meeting and then star nine to request to speak  we have anyone on the line who wishes to speak and we do not have anyone in the queue their hand raised wait a few seconds now the second iem tonight somewhat d into this one so if there's any questions on it i'm sure we can entertain that too from the public we have paul stand with his hand raised mr stand welcome if you give us your award and you do have three minutes i will give you thirty second warning when you're three minutes is about to expire thank you u you're actually on the next item which is specific to that property so if you could hold off stay on the line and we'll have a presentation on item five which is  mentions the specific property as part of a broader conversation on this ok you just hold on a line and check back in with us the next item every perfect sorry for interrupting no no problem thank you sir designation and that request will be happening for the property that mr stan mentioned at thirteen forty seven lamar street typically we'll be bringing these considerations you in the form of a resolution in a single meeting but because this is the first that we've worked on th thought it may be helpful to give you ample opportunity for four questions at process considerations just so that we we make sure that when we bring it to you the the package is relatively complete we'll have the consultant run through the main points of the blight study here in just a moment  just so you know matrix the consultants on this particular property just coincidentally they're they're one of the most experienced firms in the metro area on flight study so they certainly can answer a lot of generalized questions up on there and i'm certain can also address just a little bit in terms of the fact that a short period of time probably doesn't get you to like finding an actual flight study with a reputable consultant just so you know so you know that piece of it as well fourteen twenty seven on that process very similar to the way in which urban renewal goes the report that you have you had the report in your packet this evening that you can refer to as i mentioned the consultant i'll go through it i'll talk a little bit about what's in the staff report here so that you'll know what to expect with any of these that come forward in the future in about the middle of your staff report there is a table in there that outlines all the elements of resolution number seven tw seven the one that we're contemplating amending for next week but seven has certain criteria that applicants need to meet and so the table in the middle of your staff report basically puts those questions forward and where they met so i'll run  the answer to that question is yes they followed that same sort of procedure next question is where the property owners informed the condition survey report will be scheduled for and presented to city council at a public hearing by the property owners and the independent consultant the answer to that is yes they're here this evening to to talk about that and i'll be back again next week or for the formal consideration of this where the property owners informed  presentation of the condition survey report that city council could determine whether sufficient conditions of light consistent with the state urban renewal law exist to designate the property blighted for the purposes of fourteen twenty seven the answer to that question is yes and just as a reminder in order to designated urban renewal area generally need for conditions like this particular property has six so it's well above that level you may hear from time to time from urban renewal statue well where the property owners informed that determination would not change the tax collection or the ability to use the power of eminent domain the answer to that is yes status of change were they informed that fourteen twenty seven determination would bring the property under the lakewood urban renewal authority or the lrad under their guise there so all of those things were to satisfy all of the conditions yes that's what you would want to see in that table each and every time  that you see it as i mentioned there are six conditions blighted with the consortium will run through those tell you how those are determined how those are assessed along the way that's the report the staff report also indicates those things as well as the the report there i won't go through all of these but i'll mention a couple of them one is that this particular property is located less than five hundred feet from the existing west colfax avenue re reinvestment area that you are out there so it's five hundred feet away i would venture a guess that many people would suspect that there's already an urban rural area it's that close it just happens to be outside the boundary by that short distance it's also along the light rail and that's a lot of the hard line and of course we determination that there is a higher than average unemployment in this area there's a higher poverty rate lower incomes in that engaging in strategies to try to encourage and encourage jobs growth investment are all valuable things to do under the enterpri that i would like to introduce the yes that we have sitting in our waiting room so that they can do so on a presentation of this property i'll take a few minutes of your time to get that done and then we'll have an opportunity for council to ask questions of the consultants of the property owners of the staff just to make certain that we get all of those questions answered so that you feel comfortable when we bring these in a resolution format in one meeting format that we've addressed the issues that are most  how will tonight end will we be deciding to move this for asking for consensus to move this along to resolution next week will we be asking questions that will be answered tonight and then answered again next week i'm just not sure why we have two sessions on this resolution could you explain please mine standing of  this and anyone can feel free to interject further my understanding was that this study session was to talk about the overall process by using this particular application as somewhat of a of a guide in this presents us with a good opportunity to understand what these applications will look like in the future that we will not be voting on anything tonight i don't  that there was an consensus i believe in miss hobbs and can correct me if i'm wrong that this is an agenda item for a resolution coming next week similar to mr beattie's resolution those are  for the regular meeting on the th threw a bit odd because we are talking about a specific property so that's a little strange in and of itself however i think the goal was to provide an educational  informative session and actually have something tangible to look at understanding that we will be voting on this next week it sounds like to me that we're going to be asking the questions tonight and we will get some responses and then we'll have the same questions next week and they will have longer time to think about how they want to answer the questions we ask tonight that seems like two b i'm not sure it's even proper wel let me add a little clarification so since this is our first opportunity to have a conversation around blight we we were concerned about we were concerned that if we just brought it for a resolution without any further information that we would be in a tough position so what we thought is we could take advantage of the fact that there's one in front of us and rather than really focus on the project itself we wanted to talk about the determination given of the blight elements or the criteria so that council would have a really good understanding of how that's done from the consultant when you hve when we hire consulting when the developer hires a consultant what is that process tht they go through tell us as a council understand what that criteria is so it it's really ideally it would be tonight to really listen to and learn about on designating blight on a property and then applying those principles to the project next  then from now on as we get these applications for blight designation we've we've had the experience of this particular conversation i wish we had done something like this remember last with the that was our first application for allocations and we haven't really had any any conversation about how is this going to happen and how do we keep track in what what is the criteria that and to be able to ask the right questions so that's the idea tonight is to better understand what is a blight study what is a condition study and and we want to just take take advantage of the work that already been done on our first our first  project so that's the idea is really to better understand the conditions and what that really means as relates your project of specific questions about the allegations of bl study should be held until next week is that correct really that's all that we learn we take advantage of the work that's been done on this particular project in the  pre work if you will to really understand what the blight conditions are so and how that stand the real application of those do with the specific bite study that could have to do with all of these flights studies as well those i can see they entertain my concerns about some other things on to see next time these are the factors you're going to be considering yes the information is presented in the in the light favorable to the applicant i'd say but for purposes of the process of the judge how we're actually implement this like situation that we've talked about for such a long time so it's a sample it's real simple it's a real case but it's a sample of what you're going to see and what i was going to interject with was to encourage questions and commentary about the process about the criteria and not about the merits of whether this project meets those criteria because what you don't want to do is have your decision made times tonight even if there's no vote you don't want to all have your mind's made before you've heard many members of the public or even a full yeah i was just gonna say the same thing i think tam added some color to that pretty well i just think if we hear from the property owner today it's probably best we just listen to public comment not answer or ask an questions thanks vincent ys i just want to make is is the applicant aware of this process tonight and for next week that we won't be asking questions about the project itself are they aware of that our top of mind they have a blind study that is specific property but we did talk about this being a an opportunity for council to listen and learn about the process to have the consultant talk about how the methodology of this is is applied presentation next week as well so they are in the waiting room so presumably they've been listening to this conversation that the council's having so i assume that there's some understanding that that's what we're trying to accomplish tonight and we can move forward from there i agree that we should we should not be doing question and answer with the applicant tonight that would certainly run afoul of what mr abell and mr cox have discussed so i think at this point we certainly want to hear in public comment we are mr stand earlier i'm sure he will be back on the line let's avoid specific q and a with the applicant i don't think that's appropriate tonight for a general education discussion those questions about methodology that should drive be directed to mr smith tonight who i'm sure you can share with us that methodology any further questions obviously can be answered next week's specific questions related to  council would have been told edmond vance the way it came across it on the agenda it was confusing i can appreciate what you're doing now but i would have liked to have known ahead of time okay let's go to public comment do we have anybody on the line yes we do a caller whose number ends and for eight zero nine ok caller four eight zero nine if you'll give us your name and your award you will have three minutes and we will give you a thirty second warning when your time is about to expire welcome talking i tried to get when you gave out the phone number three four six two four eight seven seven nine nine you gave out the meeting no i put that in and by the time i got in there was no ok my comment was on you give out the phone number three four six four seven nine nine you gave out the meeting number i put that in if you turn down or turn off your computer if you're using a phone to call in will go ahead and do it that way because my back we are getting is on your end there ok i turned off my computer my comment is is on the blade amendment i live across the street or down the road there from white sands farm so i drive by that three or four times a day and they are definitely just trying to light that place the place was never closed up windows were broken doors were broken into we had the homeless living there no water they urinated all over the place the property owner made no attempt to protect his property finally he did boarded up it was full of graffiti he sprayed  the graffiti if i left m lawn mike is it was never mowed never watered trees are dead falling down there's a stream that runs through their property blight on purpose this is surely one so i think mister beattie's amendment is appropriate for people who abandon their property don't protect it they finally  have private property do not approach they didn't have that before but i hate to think what looks like inside the building after homeless will live there for two or three so i'm in support of councilman's bieda amendment for people purposely running down their property thank you thank you sir okay anybody else we have another caller but they have not raised their hand mayor do i suppose just give a three minute public comment with that specific questions we can get through next week we have mister do we have anyone else madam clerk we do not have anyone else has raised their hand  the fine i understand this the study is is done by someone who is chosen and hired and paid for by the property owner correct that is correct so the city has no say in who they choose to set no we do not that's one of the differences between the fourteen twenty seven in this process and the process of a normal blight designation determination under state statute the principal difference is is that one there but it's also the outcome while the definitions are identical to the urban renewal because that's the the definitions the council wanted to use for urban our excuse me for blight definition for fourteen twenty seven the definitions are identical the methodology is identical in those cases but the outcome once of the property designated as blight blighted under a fourteen twenty seven designation it doesn't join an urban renewal area it doesn't change tax statute it doesn't change in its ability to to utilize eminent domain to affect change on the property what it does do is it creates that exemption to fourteen twenty seven because the property is blighted and council basically has said that the rate of investment at that particular property probably outcome what we what we when we drafted that potential fo the process the idea was to not make the city responsible in any way financially for bringing the designation forward so the idea was is that if they casting aspersions on anybody or anything but i'm just saying is it a matter of as a concept well we've got someone hired by by the ower to come in and persuade council that this is a blighted area correct so we don't have a neutral neutral presentation or party here we have we don't have a party that's been that's been hired by someone else in order to do that analysis all right thank you i i don't understand how you have a quote unquote independent consultants if it is paid for and hired by the person who wants them to say what they want them and there were two parties who wanted it that value but only one party got to hire the appraiser there might be a tendency for that appraisal to come in the way that party wants and so  i just do not see how how this works at all i don't understand when you're starting the process with a bias because these people are being paid for by the property owner and my guess is over a period of time property owners would figure out how to game the system even more and more they would know the it's not right for the city to pay for that so who else would be paying for it if a property owner isn't you know i get your concern about the hired gun concept but we see applicants come in front of us all the time with pay people all the time and the assumption is yeah they are professionals they do what they need to do but there are specific criteria we can vote yes we can vote no whether we accept that but those people coming to our professionals they they do this all day long every day for various different entities i don't know who else would pay for that so thank you beer thank you yeah i just want to point out particularly for maybe viewers or constituents or people watching that the council wholly and singularly decided this process so i think we all have to take some responsibility who voted on that to say that this is the process we chose and it is the way it is because of us and i just want our our citizens to know that as far as consultants you know i think i assume they get paid either wa no matter what way they decide to tell the developer that they're going to determine their property i assume they're getting paid either way but i also just want to mention that you know i's wholly up to council council can vote down every single one of these blight designations if they so choose i don't think it's wise to do so because i think there are serious areas in the community that need these type of designations to make pencil out or make it palatable to be able to develop in these type of properties and i think we'll hear more about that next week but you know it is wholly council's ability to say no all day long if that's what they want on this thing i think the law was vague enough to give us that latitude to do that so i feel very comfortable saying no if i feel like the developer is doing  springsteen counselor abel like recent comments i don't think we need to go into this with blinders on there is there is a very good measure and i think it would be that staff could vet these consultants but you know if someone has approved as fund blind and one hundred percent of the cases they have ever looked for b that would concern me what concerns me much less if that percentage was even ninety five percent that so there is some balance here but i don't know  i think that without knowing though the track record of the consultant providing the study i think we're wearing blinders when we accept it as  blight survey when a city does a blind survey said he pays for it and they're gonna pay for it either way and these companies know that still i am not familiar with any bli instance the survey assembled properties so there were four or five properties in a survey block even if your property was on bli but the properties next door and around you in the then your property was assumed to be blighted so there are all kinds of ways these things can be designed so as to come up with a predetermined result and i would just like to know what the track record of these companies that are these consultants who deliver these things to our doorstep there are some flaws in this process and one of them is what we're talking about which is that there really isn't a perfect way to address this situation because if the city pays for why in the world w the city have to pay for thi why should the taxpayers have to pay for this that's not a good scenario if the industry pays for it you know that raises some questions and i think that  i will say that i feel that our council is not easily fooled or tricked and i think we have a lot of good people asking tough questions up here so i think that  it would be hard to put something past all of you i think that so that's one other thing is that i think this is fairly common in other industries one that i know for sure that does this this way is air emissions testing is paid for by the industry and then they have to submit their test to the state and so i i don't think this is entirely  uncommon but i do appreciate the concern i think that if this is going to prevent people from further from there being any sort of value for members  council then maybe we do need to look into having an approved list of approved by you know auditors i would also be interested in just hearing am from the company about you know how they remain objective etc in terms of percentage of findings i appreciate that the point is just to see whether or not someone's objective but especially with the city typically only going to go after or initiate a blight study on an area that you're probably pretty confident is blighted so that may or may not sway me but i think that having an approved list and knowing a good track record and that this is objective is fair  this i think one of this things i'd like to know if there is any actually any data that we could have regarding any of these consultants what their outcomes are another way to approach this would be that the city have a list of what councilman goodwin said approved vendors if you will the city find the vendor and then the develope pay for it that's kind of a hybrid i think the concern is is that it's actually a little bit of a conflict of interest when you are picking the person to create the blight study or to do it and then you're also paying for them so if there's any doubt if there's any lists of these consultants and we can find out what their track record would be you know if council created this then we can also try to remedy in these any loopholes and it's not cast in stone i guess that's all i have to councilor harrison that the city shouldn't pay paying for this the taxpayers shouldn't be the property owners should be paying but they shouldn't necessarily be choosing who these quote unquote independent different walks of life somehow or have a panel of citizens who live in the neighborhood who get to choose who goes on to that panel  yeah i mean i i think that a lot of people would even be concerned about this being the ones to back these consultant because you know we situations like when sgi was about to come about and people were told how to get around what the will of the voters was go for but i just think there needs to be more of a mutual choice somehow maybe a panel of three is in it's one way to go with that but i have no idea what it takes to be an expert in how to blight something so i'm speaking from ignorance on that part of it so thanks director smith you can you speak on designation with the urban renewal area even though the city would wind up paying consultant to the council would still be the ones making the determination as to whether the consultant's report was valid or not or help water or  study so it's also that that sort of up my asthma when you get that so most of the consultants that are selected for this are folks that doing this kind of work for some time the statute is fairly clear in the urban renewal statute there are eleven criteria day those those councils that are determining regardless of who pays or whether that determination is is accurate or not so again it's that the credibility of the study is is based on the fact that the statute is well written the elements of blight or well written and they should be apparent from the report that those criteria there shouldn't any particularly gray zone and should be one of those things where you it clearly meets that particular standard and again there are a credible worthy and able to do that i hear that the council's consideration how do we make sure that we determine that in this particular case matrix has done a number of these studies over the years in fact they were the ones that did the study for the  and you have something at i do and i think we need to get everybody on the same page here because you've got two different perspectives on what this process would be like one is an objective value valuation or evaluation and the other is a presentation by an advocate for an applicant and that's what we're talking about here this is much more like a rezoning case where an applicant comes in for opportunity comes in maybe they have a planner maybe they have an engineer maybe they have an attorney maybe they have a traffic person they have all the skeletons they're paying people to represent and present that information to persuade you that they should get what they want out of that application this is the same thing this is not the objective determination this is not the city's designation of a blight area as in urban renewal there is a parallel urban renewal the city is is really the urban renewal then you qualify your blighted under fourteen twenty seven this process is for the voluntary owner driven request application for a blight designation this is not a city application it is an applicant saying i want you to find that my property is blighted and here is the information i want you to rely on i brought in this consultant and they're gonna do the presentation when people do that rezoning cases we don't stop and ask them how many years have you been doing these kinds of cases how many rezoning have you done in lakewood and how many elsewhere you judge their credit and you can ask those questions you obviously can't ask this questions you judge the presentation the application in part by the credibility of the presenters but we don't concern ourselves there with how many times someone has done this you could have an engineer come in on one of these and say i've never done a a blake study before but  clear this is typical process not an atypical process at all been actually i wanted to make a suggestion i think we've kind of there's been a lot of questions that we've done now i'm wondering if we could go ahead and get into the presentation and then maybe have some additional questions about process and whatnot after the presentation because it may fill in some questions for us because we have the people here to do the presentation correct damage basically check my and you're standing so my understanding of this is that an applicant may be requesting this blighted status because they may not only to the property they believe me those conditions but they have determined that either te available applications or the fact that they would have to go through maybe a multi year banking plan just a rate that they would be able to do that makes the project more problematic so we're assessing and again check me if i'm wrong is against that that one percent growth to say should this project be exempted from that based on all of these conditions and it's really separate because they're not getting any financial tax breaks they're not getting any other incentives it's is it something that we're going to set aside and say it doesn't take allocations away from the overall allocation pool or does it socially to check my understanding at some point certainly it has to meet the criteria we've all agreed agreed on that but it's really are they going to be exempted from drawing against pool yes or no and that also takes into account what are those pools look like year to year is it is there enough available already so i think it's more i just want to check my understanding if anybody sees it differently please please  in i'm just trying to check my understanding of what our goal and goals are as we look at these application and certainly tonight when we hear the presentation and hear a generic form of it not the merits of this particular property i'd be interested to see if anyone has a different understanding that maybe doesn't align with mine so thank  that pont to work we have to understand why we need to be skeptical observers don't just accept what is said by these consultants as is subjective so we need to fulfill our roles as questioners as folks who have to have it proved to us as opposed to just taking things on presenting information to us and that's that's the whole point i'd like to know usually with these consulting firms are the folks architects or the engineers what kind of criteria do they have to do this do we know or is this something i  don't know that that question generally there folks that are involved in the development industry or some kind of engineering sort capacity either remote planning standpoint or an architectural standpoint or hydro geology or those sorts of things they understand the development of the properties but they also understand the methodology of the statute and where the statute is written specifically for the lighting up of those properties as you know there are eleven criteria and those eleven criteria encompass a great number of  disciplines along the way so essentially firms that have those kinds of experts within their wheelhouse you can analyze it from a variety of different places ok so they do have standards because if it was say for instance an engineer or an architect they came up with something that was really inappropriate outrageous i would imagine that their license  correct depends on the kind of license they have and what outrageousness they're trying to pull in that hypothetical that you're you're bringing up their as far as a designation in the state of polite consult and there's some level of standard that you can get a license back no there's no licensure for that specific criteria just most of the firms that do it successfully and i believe credibly our folks that backgrounds in that springsteen yeah i just wanted to mention that i appreciate ten your point about the advocacy piece and i think we'll hear from some of the neighbors next week but i think we should also just keep in mind what the neighbors think about this property or any potential property wherever that ward or area is i know i plan on adding some color to my thoughts on this property as it's two blocks from my house and i drive by it every day so i'm looking forward to making some comments on it as well so i'm sure a lot of the neighbors will also if they can figure out how to work our phone system thanks again for springsteen and then we'll continue the happens it seems like people could get in a mess that maybe somebody has an answer on that saying look at my wonderful property look at my wonderful plan look it's going to fit the neighborhood it'll be great for the city in this case you're saying look how awful he is please declare it so and so you're going to end up with a situation applied fourteen twenty seven forty twenty seven says blighted properties treated in the allocation process and so if you get that like designation we now know this is what it means for allocations it doesn't mean you're gonna have your rezoning proposal approved or your site plan or whatever application might be the next in line it's it's a risk agenda take but presumably if you found the council to be a blighted property taking into consideration criteria for how long has it been that way how did it get to be that way why is it that way if you're looking at those criteria as to why it is or is not it you're going to find that it's been an ongoing condition for some time and those properties can be hard to develop they could also be easy to develop because people want to see them improve and upgraded so just to reflect what councilor franks said a little while ago the ultimate repercussion of all this is immunity in the decision making process and then it's all out in the open and aboveboard when someone's marketing the properties well more there's more risk for someone marketing the property for sale who doesn't disclose a condition like this that exists all right mister smith you going to continue with the presentation  yes i'd be happy to introduce the consultant they've obviously been in the waiting area listening to this conversation and had in mind to do the presentation their experts in the process as well as the specifics of this site and so we were looking to this site to give a very specific sorts of definitions done on how the process comes together and hopefully they will feel comfortable making that presentation under those circumstances given the conversation so far so let's let's do this let me introduce in our waiting room mister  going to be there for a while i also mentioned that matrix is the the consultant that did the original study for the west colfax urban renewal area back in two thousand and five where the council found the urban renewal area to be in out for me it seems so i as what i understand let me kind of give you a background on how this process works and address some of your concerns i think originally i was just under the impression that i was going to be presenting this particular property but i don't mind changing course and just kind of going over a question and answer on the procedures and how it works and what consulting is and i've been doing this for twenty years now fifteen at matrix i've done numerous studies in the past couple of years i've done the broomfield civic center westerly creek blight study montague corridor i did the fitzsimmons campus i did a corridor study at east colfax and and peoria and i was actually involved in the blight studying along colfax avenue that it was divided into a couple of different studies and i was involved with the whole corridor or all the way east west so i'm very familiar with the area this however what you are doing with the blight study here is different than what a normal reason for blight study is and blight studies are just tools all they are is it helps a community or helps a municipality figure out a better way to develop areas and i believe it was one of the council members i think councilm abel said something about a blight study having one property that's gotten you know absolutely no factors of blight right next to one that does have blight and soon and so forth all along the corridor where you may have one hundred and fifty properties and seventy five of those are blighted and how does seem fair that the other seventy five get thrown into that designation and the answer to that is i think first of all blight studies have very bad reputation they're not what what the blight study is saying is not that your particular property is blighted it is saying that this whole area as a whole could be better and we could use blight studies to make those areas better and that's why it's a  development tool every state has their own regulations and i've done blight studies and both arizona he and here in colorado and each state has a little bit different definitions when it comes to what makes  instance the way that you are using this tool is your kind of instead of using the blight study as a development method you know how to get financing for the tax incremental financing or you know ways stick to get other properties into the fold you're using this as a as a go no go on development so what you're what you're doing is you're you know you have a one percent growth cap but you've you've stated in that growth cap that you are you're ok with that we're going around that growth cap if a property is is properly blighted one other question a really interesting one that councilman abel made is that a consultant that does blight studies what's our track record and i can tell you honestly when somebody hires us to do a blight study as using it as a tool our records are very close to one hundred percent finding blight it's that that is absolutely the case mister abell and you're dead on on that  and every blight consultant out there does the same thing and the the reason i can say that and maintain integrity is because the way the statutes are written they do have eleven factors in working if you really if we want we can go back into this presentation i had prepared and we kind of use this property as an example property in this property would actually be a pretty good example property because it's not the typical no broken windows caved in roof  type of blight that you think of when you think of blight this is more of a developmental type of blight that does take some of the other factors the six factors we did identify it ticks the boxes on those but you still at the end of the day need to make a determination on whether you're happy with those boxes being ticked or or not so i can go any way you guys want if you just want to ask questions about procedure if you want me to put the presentation on the screen and and go through that i can't i know we've spent a lot of time tonight and i'm sure most of your you know i don't think you expected it to be this long so however you want me to proceed i will be happy to proceed with you guys go ahead thank you for that but i think before we get into any questions again we want to stay away from specifics that was kind of the ground rules we started the beginning of this session i appreciate that you kind of given us that thirty thousand foot view let's stay away from specific questions but i'm told that we have a caller on our public comment and you'll note that we left it open a little longer just to make sure that everybody got we've had some phone issues in the past so i think  caller we did actually they just hung up hopefully they call back at our prompt to us they do call back he just texted me and said he's gotten kicked off so i just encouraged him to call again so i think ok does anybody have any questions  and then we have councilor abel what i would like mister kuchar if that would be possible is kind of just a sixty thousand foot level talk walk us through the process that as you as a consultant when you you have the ability director smith to share a screen that answers the question ok so i'll just kind of skip through this particular piece of property because it sounds like you want to make that decision next week and this is more of a informational section on how blight studies are done mayor pro tem yes before we start we have the caller back ok mister cooper you excuse us for just a moment are you okay with that yes sir do you need me to turn off my share screen no it's fine i think council can look at that maybe they can generate some questions based on that that's just the generic cprs that's the revise long long time and congratulations on taking it making a very good meeting the one question i had was why does this why does this developer want to blight to properties besides the reasons of getting around two hundred is there a huge tax break on his property taxes on this and i'm i'm sorry that i didn't get all the information that i've been really fighting computer in and trying to get on this phone call i was wondering if that is the case and and why would we want to blight it if there isn't that big a deal on it except for his benefit thank you very much ok thank you okay i think we may answer more questions on that as far as taxes and kind of those thirty thousand foot view on why some of the reasons folks would want to buy properties but before we get to that let's just continue on with what m designation of blight comes from the municipality so when you when when i do prepare a report basically i'm telling you all of the things that i've seen and then what i believe clicks off the factors blight and then you a a city council would make the decision whether or not this property was blighted and that is in no way out of the ordinary i've been involved with probably twenty or thirty blight studies and none of them so far have actually been denied by the city council and then honestly it's usually because the blight studies that i do are for communities valley or forest city and so the city has motives for doing the blight study and motives for having a blight designation whether it's development related or tax related or whatever this is totally different because it puts the city in a position of basically ruling on a blight study on behalf of somebody else and not themselves and so that's kind the difference a little bit of a difference in the process that you have going on here and being the first first one of these i do understand the everybody's point of view and i and i took everything tht you said and i  agreed with everything you said in fact i agreed with both of you all of you that argued one way and all of you that argued the other so i see both sides and i do try to be a neutral party and my professional reputation is at stake so i would hope that the reasons i come up with are either adequate or you know if you have a good enough reason to vote against them then i would totally honor that as well so at any rate does the colorado statutes list factors and that is the crux of this whole issue is that there are eleven factors and a certain number of factors must be met for property to be considered blighted in this instance because the owner owns a property by colorado urban renewal law one of these factors ticked off would constitute in the caller that just called and asked why anybody would want their property be considered blight and yes it's one hundred percent so that they can develop this property is residential outside of that one percent growth cap that's why this property he would like this property to be designated as blight so let's go through the the eleven and i i'm i'm pretty sure you probably have all read through the the report i submitted but the factors of blight are the first one is a slum deteriorated deteriorate structures that's one that everybody thinks about when they think of blight so that's the buildings with the broken windows of the boarded up windows or the  caved in roofs that kind of stuff so that one's pretty easy to see as you're walking down the street and you're identifying various things the second one is is is a little bit harder and that's a predominance of defective or inadequate street layout and that could be anything from you know tight turning radius is or streets that are not big enough for the for the amount of product for the amount of traffic that run the streets without sidewalks in this particular instance this one was part of the blight designation and that was because there were there was no access to the street so you've got a property with no street access so that's an inadequate street layout now this next one is faulty loft layout in relation to size adequa accessibility or usefulness and it actually ties to to be now anybody that's a colorado urban statute i could i could see somebody arguing why or b c separated and they both get a  on this you know how many factors of blight are there because almost always when you see a b you also get a c because there's so closely related so those two basically did take two of the boxes unsanitary or unsafe conditions that could have anything to do with you know whether you were in a floodplain or a high crime area or even not having sidewalks along the street those are all considered unsanitary unsafe homelessness can be considered unsanitary unsafe those types of things all tick the box for unsanitary unsafe conditions deterioration of sight or other improvements that's that's for the things that are not building related so that would be overgrown lawns or your fences that are falling down or not repaired or or that kind of stuff unusual topography there were inadequate public improvements why those two were put together in the same the same factor is i don't know because unusual topography just means a property is a very very difficult develop because the developer would either have to bring in phil or do a lot of cut basically they would have to do an awful lot of extra work just to get the property ready for development and inadequate public public improvements are if that property has even been hooked up to the to the utility system or would the developer have to go to a mount expense to bring in utilities to that property to actually develop it so that's those are thrown into the same factor of blight the next one is defective or unusual conditions of title now that one's more difficult  most consultants don't even they don't even go looking for that because it takes a lot of lot more effort to go back through title and find problems with title so we typically don't even look for that one so we're actually trying to find the four five blight factors on ten of the eleven because we don't do the the title rendering the title not marketable the existence of conditions that endanger life or property by fire or other causes that could be a dilapidation issue where you know  older building doesn't have any sprinkler systems or it could be not being able to get a fire truck onto the property because of access issues buildings that are unsafe or unhealthy for persons to live or work because of code violations  deterioration effect design physical construction or faulty or inadequate facilities again why are a and i separated into two separate blight factors i don't know that's just the way that it's written and you can if you definitely if you i you obviously have a not it's not necessarily the other way around but sometimes you know it helps to have these two together and then j and environmental contamination buildings or property and that could be surrounding properties with potential fo contamination like an old gas station right next door in an upgrading position could be considered a potential contamination of a property or asbestos buildings that could be considered environmental contamination or it could be you know in any of the other we basically do a full environmental assessment of the site when we do this we we review governmental records to see what kinds of  environmental contamination is in the area and then the the most open ended one is this last one and it's the existence of health safety or welfare factors requiring high levels of municipal services or substantial physical under utilization or vacancy of sites so that's kind of the catch all throw all and i hope as i read through that list all of you thinking in your mind well it really easy to blight almost any property out there and you're right there it's it's not difficult to come up with enough designations to blight a property so having said that you when you do see a blight study that somebody's prepared you just you know and it's done of those are met then you do have bye bye at least colorado urban's law a blight condition and that's what what we came up with we're not talking about this property but that's how we designate blight for properties and then at the end of the report we say out of those eleven we identified factors within those eleven that would would tick off five of those boxes are six of those boxes are seven of those boxes and that's and then we would say based on that we believe that this property could be considered blighted anybody have any questions it should not have been up thank you probably from where you ignored me before the two i haven't allowed you to speak at all tonight i apologize for that  just maybe this is mister smith or mister coker i did have a question just a follow up we did hear on the caller and that is interesting about some of the whether it be tax implications of a blight property can you speak to that maybe  director smith about what happens if apart from just two hundred what property as far as taxes and so forth once it's declared blighted well in this particular case because this is a fourteen twenty seven blighting condition it would not have ay tax affect on the property or the property tax that's one of the reasons why we bring up the fact that we want to make sure owners are aware of the fact that because it's not getting absorbed into an renewal area there's no change in the way that the tax code dressing mister mueller's a little bit more specific question every property is assessed based on the land and that's largely has to do with the location within the context of other properties around it as you know properties in the area tend to rise together kind of fall together at the same time but they tend to stay together because they're based on their geography that location location location that you hear so much about the other part that assessed on there are the improvements and i think that's what mister was getting at is that when you put improvements on the property the value of the property goes up so if you build a building or you do those those kinds of activities where you have improvements for the property value of the property goes up an so the amount of the tax doesn't change percentage wise because the valuation is higher the amount of tax is increased overall because the property is now worth more because you've invested in it and that's one of  the development objectives of economic development is to get investment into the area so that property values rise so that we're clear that the blight designation is just a creature what we've been discussing is just a creature fourteen twenty seven and does not extend past the correct it doesn't have a tax implication anybody have any further questions for mister coker exactly what we wanted to do we wanted to have a chance for actually i think this has been pretty helpful i hope so to have this conversation about how blight is determined and i appreciate mister coope presentation and how candid he's been about how this is actually done so i that's what we were looking for so the questions around the specific property itself be thinking about that for our meeting next of factors which in if we as a council are then if if we're supposed to get into the motives of property owner and whether they brought on these factors light somehow is that is that part of the part of your report in some way part of the determination  few months or something that that's something that's that i would not necessarily consider blight now say say at ten or something for the last ten years that they were living at that house was slowly letting it regress into dilapidation then yeah that would be considered blight but if somebody just decided i'm going to stop mowing the lawn so that i could get buy property blighted we don't look at that as blight what we're looking at are things that have been around for a while so we're looking at you know like paint peeling paint doesn't peel within six months it's that's a process that's taken years to happen or we're looking for shingles missing you which one is it the deterioration we of site or other improvements somebody could come in and say that because the grass is more than eighteen inches high that one ticks the box but i wouldn't do that because that would kind of especially if that was the only factor of blight i wouldn't be able to do that with a straight face and be able to report it does that make sense homeless people have moved into it and have you know honestly regardless of when that happened that would probably be considered a factor of blight at this point in time number one it's a health and safety issue and he even did point out the fact that he would hate to see what the inside of that building looks like now and you know that that kind of thing can happen pretty quickly if you let the wrong kinds of people onto that property they could they could cause you know a an unsafe condition in that building and by just you know destroying the plumbing inside or you know pouring concrete all of that stuff would start taking off factors of blight pretty quickly so take take there when you are judging these properties and somebody comes across and i don't know the history of that white fence farm place but it sounds to me like if i were to go do that you know tomorrow or something it would you know i haven't seen it but there would be argument that you could find enough factors of blight even in six months that that property has been shut down just based on how bad it's gotten now having said that again you're just making it go no go decision on whether or not you're going to let them redevelop that and in so kind of what you're saying is is this property in the condition it's in right now better off than it would be if we let them build a housing complex on or is it better off now if we or would it be better if we let them build an apartment complex so that's really what you're doing is you're maing a go no go decision so if you vacant property in the middle of an area that really needs to be developed because it's right along the  corridor is it better to leave it vacant or is it better to build an apartment complex on it and all we're doing with this blight study is giving you ammunition to make a no go or no go decision on development us good instruction and education i do want to see if you agree that by designation the way understand the states legislation and ours is that why designation is intended to sure the blight is that correct but the designation is to give you a tool towards development of particularly difficult property to develop so yes to cure t dang sorry thanks i just want to make sure we don't get too much into the particular mama property simply because i think this is a really good example of what we have been talking about at the beginning  that neighbors would know businesses would know and actually point of fact there's probably a couple members on this council they're very knowledgeable about that particular parcel you know within the last fifteen years or so so i just want to make sure that we don't get bogged down in a conversation of length of time in any any of that i i was fearful that we were starting to go into the particular property so thank you and then councilor johnson real quick and thank you mister coker for your presentation and discussion however i have to respectfully disagree with just one thing that you said which is that under fourteen twenty seven if we're making a blight designation determination that the effect of that determination is not to decide whether or not that property can be developed strategic growth initiative apply if they apply it can still be developed it's just gonna have a little bit different set of rules if if it doesn't apply it can still be developed what real rules are gonna be a little more relaxed so that's really the difference not a black or white yes you can develop no you can't so i just wanted to make that clarification that's all you daria i actually do agree with that i probably didn't say that well enough you're is getting information maybe like the white fence farmer or other areas that folks have got concern of it diary of a detour rating at what point is code enforcement called in and if there are some things that mattresses and all kinds of things why where we enforcing some of our code violations with these things to help pull property out from that kind of deterioration because basically when it starts at one property it just starts to go into other areas as well it's hard for the all the adjacent understand to be blight and how many times tonight we've heard broken windows and things like that so example of of a deteriorating property that's not being maintained well some of those things are not enforcement deal with mostly the condition of the property and activity on the property as opposed to the condition of structures there's a whole code of building regulations and it's my mind just drawing a blank or a storm door that's off and say those sorts of things are within the scope that code which we don't have and the reason we don't have it is it's if it takes you to a whole new level puts you in a different category in terms of oversight of private property but that aside we may well get code complaints on a property that's in that condition if it's got broken windows there's a pretty good chance that the weeds are too high or there's mattresses other things stored outside that aren't supposed to be stored 're talking about the process and how we we get to this know these questions that we ask the eleven factors are right there for the the consultant to present ok number one is this i  find i believe there's blight there in my opinion because of these conditions and they show you pictures and they tell you about they go through those at any hearing on one of these that's what you are all going to be doing is listening to that presentation do i agree with his opinion no one is a factor on this property all the way down the list when you get to the end of that you're probably gonna find that there's multiple examples of blight on that property if the report is any good at all they're going to help you find at least four five six seven of those if they can what are what the amendment that was done earlier tonight will do is gives you another layer of questions to ask yourself to ask the consultant to ask the applicant to ask staff and those are the questions set forth in the resolution we passed earlier where you can say you find that the property owner has not reasonable or not depending on whether you keep that word in next week but if you find that the sure there's evidence in the record that answers these questions and you're going to decide from there whether that flight condition exists or not ultimately that's the question i guess i'm concerned that somehow we're not intervening sooner on some properties and allowing them to just go downhill when we know that they're starting to look more and more as you  because the way things stand right now it does seem to me that there is a loophole that can be gamed and the developers understand that as well i guess i'd like to see more proactive behavior on the part of the city to say hey you need to clean this up you know you're affecting other people charlie help me out seems like on west colfax there was some land there that looked pretty bad spent an enormous amount of time with our cat team over at the white fence farm property it has been continual struggle and a real drain on resources so that is something that we would like to  olson say that he sees some improvements in as of late i'm glad to hear that because it sounds like the property is doing something but yeah it really is a drain on our resources when the pd and code enforcement has to go to a property over and over and over so it's a significant concern thank you food beer yep just a few comments and two thousand and eighteen we updated our building codes we didn't include property maintenance in that twenty nineteen i introduced us taking a look adding proper property maintenance codes that went through our development committee our development committee recommended that to the council we take a look at that at least for commercial property maintenance go so i think that was something that was in the works but i think in cove and a few other things i think really delayed the progress on but i do think that's an excellent point from councilor johnson that you know property maintenance should be an important factor and not that i don't want to get into the specifics of  parcel but i will just say briefly that the new owners have done an excellent job of cleaning up it was quite the mess for many years but you will probably hear more about that on monday next monday mister coker about whether or not this is a go or no go and just saying it's not it may not be a go or no go determination based on whether or not you blight this or not but it could have that an unintended effect and i think the reason for that is for all sorts of reasons i can tell you this parcel used to be owned by some other people in the community and they weren't able to develop it and we'll hear more about that i'm sure on mnday but there's a lot of reasons why this could be a difficult property to develop including it being a smaller parcel relatively strict zoning and a former formal formal industrial area so it's sort of out of place in some sense or at least the first one to try to go to changing the block but you know we'll hear all that monday but i just kind of want to you know add a little context to some of the discussions we're all  of our audiences and i remember we were having conversation from the dias with code there was a little bit of pushback because i think we were trying to have a pretty we were doing it with absentee commercial owners in town and we were all fed up by seeing that and we did add language to enforce that's correct us we did do something for the commercial piece but the property maintenance code which i think is actually the title of it at least the ones that some other municipalities use we have looked into that and it did sort of if you adopted the whole thing you basically did become a city age away everything from where spores can be located a height of grass and all the rest of it goes on and on but just to that point i think we did do it for commercial if you don't mind me responding we added a couple of elements but that wasn't we didn't we didn't get to the meat of think that will conclude this item and thank you mister coker and thank you to any of your associates to also think there was a couple of you that came and were with us tonight so thank you for paying out tonight thank you mister koga for being a good sport appreciate has mister abel said you did adapt quite definitely and were very candid and we certainly appreciate that so thank you for joining us and we will see you next all right so i think at this point in the meeting that we go to reports so before i do that let's ask our city manager if she has any reports tonight thank you ver much miss johnson anything from well i just would like to back you up on that we try very hard to have board meetings that are relevant and ask people what kind of information they would like and swell and this last satrday was a very good example of a point counterpoint presentation regarding marijuana bot presenters were able to have some back and forth and then we also had some excellent questions and i'm glad to hear it sounds like some of the other awards might entertainers  i'm certainly happy to help you with that thank you yes we will be having a ward two meeting and we're going to have we don't have specific person yet but it will be somebody from the cat and specifically addressing some of the homeless issues that we're having here section of lakewood so everybody is welcome to attend and that's all i have jacob may want to because we may have to tighten tighten our zoom down a little so we may have to have advance because we won't the only people who were gonna be on video will be counselor vince and i and the cat team and then also i just want to thank charlie for finding another speaker on marijuana for his ward meeting i would have been ill prepared to fill that role so thank you pess in several places it was covered on fox thirty one and i'm hoping to get some kind of response from the governor just today there was a story out to file other complaints with the department of health regarding this issue i really really think that it's something that needs to change before we get another that's like my plane thanks if i may i'd like to just remind everyone tomorrow that the food bank of the rockies will be distributing food to needy families this will start at approximately three o'clock at the  them to this to the food bank and we're also going to be needing volunteers last month we serviced over three hundred families so it would get a really big turnout there's a lot need in our community right now and that need is growing they told me that i'll get to i'll be there and i'm going to be directing traffic so if anybody has a whistle i'd sure like to borrow that and you could come and watch me direct traffic announcements bringing people up to speed on recent events we then we'll follow with the i'll give an update on the housing policy commission our work for looking into short term rentals and make sure folks have a good update on that certainly want to encourage discussion and then followed by an open forum and piggybacking off of councilor betas you know notice about assistance for the community i want to make sure that folks are aware that there is a colorado rental assistance program for people who maybe are getting into difficult circumstances with unemployment maybe running out and we included information in our ward four newsletter but certainly if you're in circumstance where you feel that you or someone you know would need rental assistance reach out to either myself or a counselor skilling we can connect you to that information or certainly you can call into the city and i know they could connect you to that information thank you it's been a while since i've plotted what i consider to be the city certainly the state's best newsletter so if you don't subscribe to our newsletter you really need to do that you would really know all this and we had our ward five meeting this past weekend we we did just you know provided updates on all of the kind of going guns and lakewood and then also tried to provide an update informative so unfortunately we didn't have a ton of good news for our community ad but it was it was good to see everybody's face and just check in and see how people are doing and address their concerns we did hear interest from our word in talking about the marijuana ballot question so we will potentially or probably do tht  next month so that's all i have thank you and i have some names for us to use dana also i wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that s lakewood business associate ann is going to venture in tomorrow morning at seven fifteen a real live in person meeting at westwood community church so com one come all know a limited number of people but what we will be doing is a very very strict safety protocols so expect having your temperature taken and all the questions and sitting six feet away from everybody else you must have a mask to attend and you must have it on to attend so just so that you know that and now i'm really looking forward to seeing a lot of friends tomorrow morning thank you mister coker and all of our listeners and with that we will adjourn