good evening i'd like to call to order the regular meeting of the city council city of lakewood colorado just happens to be on february twelve two thousand and eighteen in chambers which is abraham lincoln's two hundred and ni you think you wish to speak tonight please take the time to sign in will keep the rosters back there until just before public comment and that way we can expedite we have a lot to do tonight we want to make sure we hear from everybody so please all right a couple updates before we jump into a few resolutions on the agenda this evening there's a couple different things and one will be polling item number nine which is  resolution two thousand and eighteen seven we're going to take that to general business and that's creating an ad hoc committee there was some language in there that was not reflective of the original draft and so we need to change that so it's just an opportunity for us to change there might be some members that change as well so we can address that under general business and councillor abel's ready to talk to that you'll also see an agenda request pertaining to green gables and this was an interesting one that made it in when council members submit agenda form it doesn't get filtered or anything along those lines and this oh well go ahead and pull it and i i agree it was done in advertently was not intended to be certainly okay so that will then be pulled and that was under topics for upcoming agenda items and then as we get through into general business there'll be a call for executive session and that will be brought forth by councillor bita and that will be to discuss the denver federal center and the gist of that will be made in the motion  once we do that upon adjournment from city council this body will go right into executive session and we will not be coming back so that'll end the meeting there won't be anything further from there i know cch is a polarizing topic i know it's challenging and it has great concern there's fears of the unknown there's fears that are based in reality but what i'd like to say is let's keep the conversation positive at the end of the day we're talking about human beings and when you come into our city it says we're building an inclusive community and i think we all stand by that and we had an opportunity to go to a meeting last week and there were folks who are very concerned and very passionate some of that spilled over into some negativity and i think it's important as we talk about this and talk about these types of projects that we just keep in mind these are our fellow human beings and i hope that we can carry that forth in public comment tonight as well because that's what lake was all about so with that well the clerk please read item four into the record item for resolution two thousand and eighteen three appointing and reappointing members to the lakewood advisory commission the lakewood advisory commission for an inclusive community all right so we have a motion is there a second second all right motion in a second please cast your  that passes eleven i zero nays congratulations will the clerk please read item six the record item six resolution two thousand and eighteen five appointing a member to the lakewood employees money purchase pension plan board sounds like we have a motion in a second all right please cast your votes look out eleven is zero nays very cool so before we go to the last one i just want to remind  sign up for public comment the rosters will be gathered here shortly and will the clerk please read item seven into the record item seven resolution two thousand and eighteen six appointing a member to the lakewood historic preservation i'd like to move for approval of item six resolution two thousand and eighteen i'm sorry item seven two thousand and eighteen six appointing calvin jennings to the as a member of the lakewood historic preservation commission could you stand mister  nays congratulations so just again thank you to all who are who are here tonight and willing to get involved and serve i hope you find the experience rewarding a lot of great things and councillor abel i think there's probably some more openings yes there are the screening committee is going to be busy in the next few weeks we have remaining openings on the advisory commission for an inclusive community  apply the deadline is february th also we have a opening for the victims assistance compensation board that deadline also is february th and i would like to encourage a wide variety of folks to apply we need your help great thank you very much okay next up is public comment public comment is the point in the meeting where the public is invited and encouraged to address the city council on items that did not appear on the agenda all comments should be directed to the city council i ask that all in attendance observe the decorum of the city council chambers and refrain from applause or audible support or discord with the speaker it also encourage you to just to keep your comments directly it directed at the city council or at me if that suits you there's a three three minute limit per speaker this little box here will go green two and a half minutes  it'll go yellow when your time's up it'll go red and i will politely try to wrap that up so there were some questions about public comment we'll have a second public comment for the consent agenda which are resolutions seven eight and nine so that'll be separate everything else is under general public comment looks like we have students that are here and would like to try to speak sooner than later so i'll check in with that why are you point of reference which is non agenda and then i have well we'll figure that out so public agenda raj you are up first so general no consent yes please and if you could speak loudly into the microphone will turn i'm a resident of lakewood i'm not a vendor so i just want to give back to the community that's why i'm here it helps in many ways it's a antidote for stress and it has tremendous health benefits and there are a lot of people involved in this and they're on board about twenty four medical schools are involved in it law enforcement's like the  navy seals army they're also involved in this address cutes prison systems and law enforcement's both locally there is a glendale police department doing this and then also in oregon  california and in washington several police departments are doing this and rape crisis centers are also following this then locally they are in general west of his park we have lutheran spinal clinic and there they teach this ma mindfulness program to help people who have serious spinal injuries and a lot of pain so that they can reduce the opioids that they are taking to the city it can reduce liability insurance lawsuits and legal fees and it also reduces the stress for the police officers and their families because lot of police officers home because it stays with them for nearly seventy two hours some of my neighbors are police officers i have talked to them about this and they say it's an excellent idea and then it brings them happiness because they can handle the stress they can cope with the situation it prepares them to any event that's going to take place so they won't be stressed out and then also it improves improves the relationship between the community and the policing so it tremendously improves the quality of policing police officers will be able to hand any situations because they feel that they are in control and they won't have to invoke the fight or flight response and then also it w reduce citizens complaints and then also improves policing and then you can say that we have a proud police department and then we can set an example because when it hits the news or rocket our of the denver post and they say the lakewood has the best police department in colorado then we'll come out and say how did you guys do it our herrera will come and say how did you guys do it by the way i it is very critical for you to look into this so all i want from you is a sponsorship so one of you can sponsor this program and then give me a contact person with the city so that i can work with them because i have tremendous  so that they can handle any situation and takes the stress out of it so if you can do that for me i really really appreciate for coming out we appreciate it  and is this the appropriate time because i was prepared to speak about the sustainability plan it's under good okay great thank you for having me hold the mic down please gy okay my name is andrea jal fuso i am a citizen of lakewood i also teach sustainability and i'm an environmental lawyer and i was really impressed to find out that lakewood had a sustainability plan  do i care about this issue my climate story is about camping with my kids how many of you guys like the camp anybody i love waking up in a colorado forest i especially love waking up because i spend the whole night being afraid of being attacked by bears so i'm good in the morning when my kids were little we booked a campsite in the arapaho national forest but when we pulled up instead of a tree  forest we were in a parking lot where all of the trees have been cut down because they the trees have been killed by pine beetles in colorado pine beetles have killed over three million acres of colorado forests how the pine beetle population used to be killed off by cold temperatures it doesn't have to be cold all the time but it has to be cold during specific times in the pine beetle breeding cycle and it's so warm now that pine beetles breed not once but twice a year so colorado has over eight hundred million standing dead trees because the beetle weakened trees are a safety and a fire hazard they have to be cut down so our campground was basically a treeless parking lot with stumps and mulch we found a better campground but warmer temperatures mean more dead trees and more bad camp right campsites i don't know how many of you have kids i want my kids and their kids and everyone kids everyone here who has kids to camp in a living forest not in a parking lot with stumps and mulch that's why i'm here there's no question that climate change real and let's just talk about a few of the actual effects we are experiencing in colorado we are experiencing extreme weather like extreme downpours that caused flooding that caused flooding in boulder in colorado springs rising temperatures also dry out the soil which causes severe droughts and earlier snowmelt so that are the precious water we rely on is gonna go downstream leaving the state and remember those eight hundred million dead trees they have fewer wildfires in colorado the average fire season is already seventy five days longer longer than it was in the s wildfires are literally hitting close to home remember the wildfire on green mountain i could see it from my house and mosquitos the carry diseases like the zika virus we never used to have mosquitoes that carried these exotic diseases they will be able to survive warmer colorado summers which puts colorado at risk for mosquito borne diseases we've never faced before we're already seeing the effects of climate change the good news is the city of lake woods sustainability plan i actually don't have it with me but i saw wow we are already making progress and i have to thank you for having the vision to work on that and for the city to carry it out we're already seeing results are already seeing reductions in greenhouse gases and energy consumption that's going to make a huge difference we're let's keep up this good work because the people who suffer most from the impacts of a changing climate won't be us won't be the geezers in the room like me it's gonna be my kids our kids our grandkids and they deserve better thank you for your work so far and let's keep it up all right thank you thanks for the correction on your name might do that a few times tonight there we go okay hello my name is braden kerr and i am here to testify on global warming so now to the speech over the past fifty years the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history and the experts see the trend is accelerating there's a scientific consensus on global warming that counts that the that consensus is that global warming is real and it is happening now ninety seven percent of climate scientists are in agreement there is no debate here it is just scientists debating not scientists and since the topic is science the non scientists should not get a vote yet they do and that is the reason we are having this debate here today because people who are not researchers who have never set foot in a climate laboratory were cold on their way to work this morning saying because there is snow there is no global warming is like there is dark therefore there is no sun it is scientific consensus on all the facts and all the evidence which leads those most qualified to believe that climate change is real and is happening now only one of the sixteen hottest years on record happened before the year two thousand this trend has also been going for the past one hundred years if you will refer to the second page of my handout you guys all get it yeah so you'll see that the climate has been getting warmer since the s you must forgive me but the darker areas on the map in the earlier time in like the earlier times that would be blue it's just i was out of ink so kind of the blue and red looked the same so this shows a global increase in temperature which you can also see on the second graph on the first page we know this is caused by human co emissions because if you look at graph one you can see a clear correlation between the raised amount of carbon in our atmosphere climate and temperatures climate change deniers have argued that there has been a pause or a slowdown in rising global temperatures but several recent studies and fifteen paper published in the journal of science including a two thousand and fifteen paper published in a journal of science has disproved this claim and scientists say that unless we curb global warming average u s temperatures could increase by up to ten degrees fahrenheit over the next century some might say that global warming is only a theory a theory like gravity or relativity both ideas regarded as facts because there's an overwhelming amount of evidence to support these ideas that are classified as theories there is in fact no higher scientific classification than a theory a theory is a higher is higher than a fact and a law because by its definition a theory is a logical extrapolation of the facts and laws that govern the world around us and this affects all of us even here in colorado tens of millions of trees have died in the rocky mountain regions over the past fifteen years in areas such as colorado victims of a climate driven triple assault of tree killing across much of their current range if heat trapping emissions continue to rise severe droughts may become commonplace within a few decades widespread tree mortality and major changes in character of the western landscapes thank you for hearing my concerns i hope you take my message to heart then i have mister freeman thank you my name is alex gets thank you so much for allowing me to speak on this i'm also going to talk about climate change and first stuff i just want to highlight everything that the last two speakers have said has been  absolutely correct the yeah that that's very impressive that someone as young had so much information facts i didn't bring that many facts and i have a degree in environmental science  so i'm just gonna kind of piggyback off of a lot of what he said also the first speaker was my mom so i am one of those kids she was talking about who's going to have to live with this very specifically yeah  as i said i studied environmental science and i'm about to go into a ph d program studying ecology and one of the first things that we learn in you know intro to environmental science is climate change is happening and pretty much every class that i took on the topic involved some discussion of climate change possible effects what can be done to mitigate it and what is not being done to mitigate it but really i mean you you really cannot pass a freshman level class in environmental science without knowing that climate change is real and so there have been studies dating back very very far that have shown the clear we've all seen the graphs and we were just reminded of the graphs very helpfully but i just want to really underscore that the best case scenario at this point according to the current research is a two degree global average increase in temper sure that's in degrees celsius and that's something that is going to be felt very differently across the world and for that reason we can't just classify it very simply as global warming ie it'll get warmer you know  everywhere and kind of uh just you know flat across the board sorry i'm not really prepared so thank you yeah and so this is something that sometimes we feel as it being colder the  something that is exacerbated by the fact that the ice caps are melting and so the cold air is going down further because of the way that the wind stream works and it's all very complex and it's very it's a global scale but it's quite undeniable given the wealth of evidence and there are studies being published every month that are showing more little minor things that are changing as a result of global temperatures increasing and i was just talking to a professor who is doing a study that showed that really quite conclusively you can show that an invasive grass cheatgrass is becoming widespread at higher elevations because it's warmer up there and so it's able to survive at those higher elevations during the cold seasons and so you know it's it's these little things that just serve as reminders and so as i said the best case is a two degree increase worst case is looking like a five degree increase  which if you look at the way that that would impact sea level and patterns of extreme temperature changes over the course of the year it would really impact agriculture the the entire patterns that we've established of how agriculture works and where it occurs would have to be completely redrawn and so i just really want to again come out in support of this sustainability plan i think it's great that lakewood is putting in the effort to try to change things on this local level  because while this is a global issue the only way to really attack it is locally but at the same time the way to attack it is to band together and come up with solid plans that will have real change as the goal and that can  that can really that we can band together and focus on this and so i want to applaud the city of lakewood for having these efforts that so far have definitely been we've been seeing real decreases in energy use water  use and i think that that is the right step and by continuing along that line i think that we can do a lot of good thank you thank you thanks for coming out so your pen okay so mister freeman welcome and after that i have gary hardy senator kerr and then we have the team duo of the venters nick and allene you guys want to come up so you can get out home and do homework thirty years and somehow i found my way out from the congestion at denver to lakewood on the light rail and i never came back i've been here a few years and i love lakewood iii i knew i was a lakewood guy when i was at a conference recently and there was some have two different comments one i actually is a would one resident applaud councilwoman johnson for bringing up this issue and for giving us a forum for scientific debate but i think it you know obviously should be a discussion that focuses on the science and we have the best scientists really in the nation in the in the world in some ways here in our area who are studying this issue in order to really have a study debate we need scientists who are very focused on the scientific and who are able to help us understand where the sciences is going here i know i'm confident of how that discussion will go i don't think there's any problem with doing that as long as it's in parallel with the sustainability plan that we already have in place that kind of discussed it does it does not need to be a hindrance or impediment to the sustainability plan that many are here to applaud no crack doctors know quack scientists let's have a discussion but i don't see a problem it seems like we brought out a number of folks just to discuss that my second point is on something that i've seen about that the possible replacement or discussion about the city attorney and whether or not the city attorney should should be vetted in an rfp and as a lawyer who's worked extensively on business issues who knows city issues i would have just a few key points on that one there's a huge amount of institutional knowledge associated with being the city attorney in a place like lakewood especially now and we have so many growth issues so many nuances it's not just knowing the code that's important it's and i don't know the players involved i'm just getting involved in these types of issues i don't have any vested stake but i would discounsel you to be really thoughtful about any process that might change the construct especially there in this time where you have a number of agenda items facing you and where it's important to have continuity so make sure that process is open and accounts for that type of history that lakewood has those are my welcome to ride your bike i did not i apologize for that mayor paul and councillors thank you for this opportunity i'm concerned when i saw that it was proposed by ray me that we would devote a study session to essentially debating whether climate change is taking place or not and i think that issue has largely been settled we've had people much younger than me speak more articulately already tonight on that i think those study sessions are much too precious i think those of us and i represent one of dozens of people who devoted many many hours to him craft that sustainability plan we're looking for city council to help us start implementing it and and we think that's where we should go i'd like to leave you with just a couple of facts from the cdc the cdc has estimated that one third of all children born after two thousand will develop diabetes and it's largely related to lack of exercise and poor diet it's also estimate what's also known that asthma and obesity are becoming epidemic in our young children and again this is related to air quality and diet and exercise and the sustainability plan addresses some of these issues it addresses the things that we all want clean air clean water sources of quality food and we're anxious to see the sustainability plan start moving forward we've got a good sustainability plan in place let's keep it moving thank you very much thank you senator  thank you aren't you gonna ask me if i rode my bike did you ride your bike sir no but thank you for bringing that up mister mayor i'd like to talk about the ice that's on my street prevented me from riding my bike sorry about that that's good good stuff probably won't be the first apartment the only apology i'll be making tonight but thank you mister mayor and councillors i come before you tonight because i heard there was an effort to hear all sides of the climate change issue my first thought on that was aren't all the facts on one side well of course they are but that got me thinking what about the things beyond the facts and with that i stopped thinking and prepared these remarks sure our laboratories revealed the data our universities teach the science and even our high schools and grade schools teach the method irrationally sifting through the evidence and testing h even before kindergarten i learned a valuable lesson about the belief about belief from the story of peter pan if you believe tinker bell is real she is real if you don't she isn't that is what it is like with climate change to make it go away shut your eyes and wish it gone there's a power to the naive belief of a child and i trust we have that power with us i think this very council has an innocent childish tinkerbell wish willing to lead us past the facts to a safe happy fantasy world where nobody has to face the responsibility of growing up because if we ever did grow up we'd be forced to admit that it is no coincidence when the beadle is killing us we need a tinkerbell with fingers pressed deeply in her ears to show us a more simple way to deal with grown up thoughts when you live in neverland time stands still you can enjoy long years of profiting from the destruction you caused with enough money you can keep the jury out on anything tobacco being good for kids led being safer our air and water you can be safe from anything at all but in the real world the science catches up and while we have seen the delaying tactics before we have never seen a danger to inaction like we see today so if you insist on being rational i urge lakewood in in every city everywhere to take meaningful action to address climate change and prepare for its consequences if however you value the sweet innocence of pure belief i encourage you to point yourselves toward the second star to the left and keep yourself moving straight out till morning thank you thank you sir we'll work on that street for y good evening nick welcome let me get this laptop thank you hello my name is nick fenner i am a student of bear creek a little bit closer thank you there we go hello my name is nick benner i'm a student of bear creek high school and i'd be and i come on behalf of my peers who are unfortunately not able to make it tonight um not going to spend a terrific time beating in the climate the meeting in the science of the climate change issue i have had many of my peers come up here today who have done a much better job than i could on explaining this however i would also like to point out that this is an issue that science has only gotten better better and since then it was probably it was probably even acceptable to hold a belief ten or twenty years ago that climate change was not a real thing as the date of his come in and better analysis and atmospheric techniques have come and do that it is almost impossible to look at the signs these days and not expect that but that's not what but but you but you said mayor to keep the um but to keep the tone positive and that's what i'm here to do today is that now climate fighting climate change is now an economic necessity wind cost ninety one nine cents per kilowatt hour that's cheaper than coal that's cheaper than coal and adding storage costs only you a cent more it is crucial to act on this right now not only for the not only to protect future generations but also to protect like thousands but else just to protect the ratepayers wallets thank you very much thank you very much where you gonna she's she's skipping okay alright my name is marie venner and i'm a business owner in lakewood we love living here i grew up in colorado and i'm from an agricultural family on one one side of my family so it really strikes me to see a map like this and i unfortunately the printing got worse as they went along but can you can you all see this or is there a way to project it you put it there she will madame clerk will turn that on  and you can see the projection there's over eighty five percent chance of a thirty year dustbowl sized drought in colorado after personally had quite a bit of hope for colorado because it was ambiguous what the impacts would be in the mountain areas so i thought well you know we're pretty close to the mountains and and obviously you know how my fingers crossed it wasn't go a be too bad but as they have continued to refine the models you can see here colorado is like the bullseye for the brownest part of the country and it's now the full state not part of the state like the plains and it's equally brown going south so there's all those folks from central america in mexico that are basically going to be burned out too so coming from an agricultural family you know this just really strikes as it's completely irresponsible for us as public servants and i come from the public sector earlier to to leave this sort of legacy and we can do a lot better we can have a very positive future you know there's all these dystopic novels and in movies but that you know we can do something different today we have a good future ahead of us but we have to take it on the left there i all the other image i wanted to show you is how long carbon stays in the atmosphere essentially what we have is like a tub that's overflowing we're over filling it with carbon and it's an incredibly slow draining tub so what we put up there just accumulates and you see from those  those graphs and i actually that part printed out a little bit better i could pass those on that wherever we stop is what we're going to get so we need to stop sooner and thankfully  adam had signed on with many other mayor's around the country that that we're all in with the paris agreement with all the other countries in the world and those goals basically mean that we need to turn around now so that's the very sensible thing to do that's the positive future that's before us but we have to make those choices now otherwise i firmly believe and i  chair a number of subcommittees under the transportation research board under the national academies of science and engineering we're not going to be able to look ourselves in the mirror in ten or fifteen years we must do the responsible thing and people school so i've lived in lakewood and for as long as i can remember i've moved here when i was two so basically my whole life overall i've had a pretty great experience i really like this community and i've had a lot of fun growing up here and as a glad city council you've found a pretty great job of adhering to the public interest and holding these meetings which we can come and speak to and so and thank you for allowing told us tonight and let us talk to you  values i'm basically on here along with my whole family and many others before me to speak about climate change it really this whole issue will affect my life my future and my kids and my grandkids and i'm hoping that we can kind of turn this all around before it's too late for them because i want them to have a good future and to be kind of narcissistic me too so yeah and i don't really want to have to grow up living in this world where we have so much droughts sea level rise and ocean acidification and we won't be able to see all these animals that are currently going extinct right now and i just want to turn that right around so i know you guys all have like this thing with excel and like how you can kind of ask if you have like renewable energy or like whatever and i basically want to ask you if you could maybe talk to them about maybe going on the more renewable energy path and so because  honors to me because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time as my mom said before it's like a bathtub that's very slow to drain and scientists at ncar and noah have determined that at least twenty percent of the co is still in the atmosphere causing warming over a thousand years from now and other studies pie that to be ten thousand years from now so yeah it's basically bad so that's very slow to drain and so and there is no good way to increase that rate by  beetles and stuff so i'm just standing here before you today to remind you that this matters to me a lot because it's my future and it's my kids future and like what you do it can really help what happens to my future and if  good evening hello i am scott cruz guard and i'm really just here for a glass of water and eighty nine i attended a conference on the subject right here in colorado more than a thousand people were there i wrote probably ten zero words about that conference one thousand nine hundred and eighty nine the science has been fairly serious for seventy years now and less serious for a debt for a century the time to study it is long past it's time to act and we all know it and if you haven't studied it yet then maybe you aren't the people to study it and i don't mean that in a bad way you're not scientists but you know the science act on the science thank you thank you evening good evening my name is louis witte and i am an attorney here in the state of colorado i've spent my entire thirty plus years doing water law in the state of colorado attending conferences many of which have been on the impacts we are going to have to our water system as a result of climate change and why the city of lakewood may think it's prudent at this point in time to look at whether or not climate change is real and debate it before moving forward i can tell you that you're way behind the curve of everybody else in colorado i bought a copy climate change in colorado and i can leave it with the council you can also get it off the internet it was a study done for half the colorado water conservation board and i don't know if they're members of lakewood know what the colorado water conservation board does cwc b but they are our state agency vested with the responsibility to manage water resources ensure the state has a sufficient supply with this report was prepared in two thousand and eight and it concludes that the scientific evidence is clear the earth's climate is warming multiple independent measurements confirm widespread warming in the western united states in colorado temperatures have increased by two degrees fahrenheit between one thousand nine hundred and seventy seven in two thousand and six increasing temperatures are affecting the state's water resources the report concludes that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is very likely the cause of most of the increase in global average temperatures now i don't know why the city of lakewood would want to reinvent the will it's been done by the state for the state of colorado you can go through read the report there's very unpleasant facts about the future of our state and water resources in this report i encourage you to look at it because i do think it's time to move and not to study this issue i'd also encourage you to look at denver water board s website they also are very concerned about climate change as is every other water manager in the west that's all water managers talk about that's all they're concerned about climate change and how it's going to dramatically affect our life denver water board is being very progressive on making sure it implements all the conservation methods necessary to attempt to continue to provide a water supply they are also taking every action they can do to reduce their own greenhouse gas footprint and that's what every government entity in the state of colorado should be doing we should not be debating it we should be marching forward so the young kids my kids have a chance to live here and drink thank you thank you jennifer good evening and then up next i'm sorry about the name i'm going to do terrible elizabeth m to the request for a study session on climate change and what i'd like to do is take a minute to recognize what the city of lakewood has already done and what's already in place  as stated on the city's website the city of lakewood has a stainability plan it guides our efforts to create a thriving community today without compromising the quality of life for future generations since we have a few new folks on city council and for anyone that doesn't know the background of the sustainability plan i wanted to read from again the city's web page and this is can be found under the planning for sustainability section and then there's another little section called sustainability plan and this is what it reads lakewood city council formally approved the sustainability plan on may th two thousand and fifteen after more than two years of collaborative planning between city staff residents community stakeholders and industry experts and then within that section there's another little link that goes a little bit further into what was involved in that planning process and it says the planning process for the state sustainability plan began in the fall of two thousand and thirteen after being endorsed by city council involved eight open houses eighty seven workgroup participants and over four hundred and fifty volunteer hours from the lakewood community and stakeholders council members every effort was made to ensure that this plan was inclusive throughout the entire process i'm pretty sure that we can all agree any effort made by our city to address the quality of the air that we breathe to ensure our water and soil is free from chemicals to provide the most efficient and cost effective energy to address issues surrounding transportation and issues of community cohesion and public health are in the best interest of us individually and collectively i'm grateful that the city has a plan in place that addresses each of these concerns specifically i see the city as my partner as i and we face changes in our community so my hope is that rather than a set on who agrees or disagrees with climate change that we have a study a study session even multiple study sessions on how to best move together as citizens and city leadership toward reaching any of the goals that are already defined in our sustainability plan thank you elizabeth and up next is michael i'd probably do the same with the last name so i apologize apologies and then barbara barbara mills after that and then carrie welcome thank you sorry mister mayor members of the city council i'm doctor elizabeth molinari and i conduct research on the social cultural impact of energy production in particular natural gas extraction i work closely with scientists in other areas of energy production from the united states the united kingdom germany france italy and australia i'm a resident of ward one here in lakewood and i would like to urge the city council to adhere to the sustainability plan simply sustainability means the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources we must prevent the exhaustion of natural resources and this is not a partisan issue president hw bush already mentioned in a one thousand nine hundred and eighty eight campaign speech in michigan our land water and soil soil support a remarkable range of human activities but they can only take so much and we must remember to treat them not as a given but as a gift and of quote and he also said quote these issues no no ideology no political boundaries it's not a liberal or conservative thing we're talking about and the quote in western europe parties on the left and the right side of the spectrum work together on sustainability and environmental issues moreover a lot of people focus on how the sustainability standards hamper our economy but economists and financial models have shown that renewables will be cheaper to use for us in the future this will benefit everyone but especially people with modest salaries and small business owned to rely on energy to render operations for a long time natural gas has been attractive because it was readily available and cheap but wind power is projected to become cheaper still as you already heard also renewables are less polluting forms of energy and will put less stress on our public health in general as is clear in my research and out of my colleagues environmental issues frequently disproportionately affect the most vulnerable people in our society i feel we sustainability and the environment they're at there are at least eight neighborhood groups and many initiatives and projects focused on sustainability and when you walk through the city you can see solar panels on houses liquid has over a dozen renewable energy businesses dealing with solar and wind and when i attended a meeting about the homeless project on federal i noticed that at least half of the people who spoke had a great concern for environmental issues related to developing of the land i'm confident that as representatives he will share lake with residents concerns about these environmental issues and will follow the sustainability plan thank you thank you doctor transport phenomena i can assure you that i'm well versed on the atmospheric science underlying the need for sustainability i understand that there are a lot of powerful and partisan motivations for different opinions in this issue but i'm neither democrat or republican in fact i've been a member of a third party since the second election i was able to vote and my purpose here is not to stir up partisan tensions i'm speaking to you this evening as an engineer well versed in the energy industry i've worked in the oil and gas closely with companies in the oil and gas sector in the united states and in europe who is always seeking the most practical and efficient solutions to existing problems and opportunities the future of energy is renewables let's just get that out right now the globe is now on  improve and increase the share of renewables as a share of our energy source resources in the energy market four reasons as various and sundry as reducing our dependence on foreign oil and all foreign energy for that matter simply saving money as was mentioned a couple of times wind is already cheaper than natural gas and forecasted to become even cheaper and solar is well on its way our societies will necessarily increase the availability of renewable and sustainable energy dramatically over the coming decades that may be in the form of wind solar trash incineration or even biologically derived electricity but make no mistake this is the direction that we are all heading as a global society that is not to say of course that there's no room for chemical fuels i can't imagine electrically powerful powered plane carrying more than one or two occupants anyway but by two thousand one hundred when we saw those predictions i certainly hope that most of those fuels are being produced by my students in from renewable energy and the chemical fuel is merely a medium for storage just like a battery personally while i do agree with the liberal perspective that something must be done to attack climate change i most certainly do not believe that liberals have all the answers here it would seem for example that cap and trade has largely failed in california and the eu where it has not resulted in significantly reduced emissions i wholeheartedly believe that we need both liberals and conservatives to come to the table with solutions that we can debate and discuss and eventually try to implement so if i may address and if i may address my representative directly council member johnson if your intent is  study session is to expand our options as to exactly how the city of lakewood will continue to uphold our sustainability plan that is the two hundred page document the official sustainability document that you refer to in your agenda request as well as maintain compliance with the paris climate agreement as our mayor has so deftly put forward i wholeheartedly support your efforts we need diverse options in how to attack this problem but if the goal of your suggested study session is rather to undermine the sustainability by casting doubt on the very science of climate change then i believe you're wasting our precious tax dollars and even more precious time i would add at this time the lakewood sustainability plan passed the city planning council planning commission by a vote of six to zero with one absent voting member and in passed this body by a vote of seven to three also with one absent voting member furthermore it only reached a vote in the planning commission after six working groups consisting of stakeholders and in this industrial experts which held a total of uphold our sustainability plan and maintain accordance with the plan paris climate agreement thank you for your time you professor thanks for the footno thank you guys for all hearing all of us we've heard from young and old and older and science and facts and and everything it's all i thought i would bring another voice into this i live in ward four and i have a few quotes from a national geographic article from last year and that magazine is currently owned by st century fox which is the murdock controlled company that owns twentieth century fox movie studio the fox television network and fox news channel i'll just read a couple quotes norfolk station is the headquarters of the atlantic fleet and flooding already disrupts military readiness there and at other bases clustered around the mouth of the chesapeake bay officials say flooding will only worsen as the seas rise and the planet warms sea level at norfolk has risen fourteen and a half inches in the century since world war one when the naval say station was built by two thousand one hundred norfolk station will flood two hundred and eighty times a year ordering to one estimate this visibly changing geography made norfolk th natural poster child for the climate challenges confronting the defense department and seems as good as setting as any to consider the fate of climate science and the military in the new political era in washington that will set the bar how climate science is pursued by the government the number one national security concern at the defense department is climate change the defense department has been planning for climate change for more than a decade often in the face of roadblocks set up by climate science skeptics in congress and then they list a bunch of naval bases that will be flooded etc and how they're concerned about that and the the condition has spurred the defense department to join forces with state and local officials and scientists in the cities of norfolk and virginia beach in an experimental partnership to find a way to adapt the region not just basis to the watery future they face this is just another indicator i'm i mean if we can't trust the defense department we're in big trouble and i i have a document here i'd like to leave with you all that was a presentation and fourteen in which he discusses it was given at the conference of defense ministers of the americas and he discusses the security implications of climate change good evening mayor paul and councillors my name is kerry sanne born i have been involved with the sustainable neighborhoods program over the past five years pretty much since its inception i'm the lead contact for sustainable bur i also got my phd in two thousand and six in energy policy with a focus on response to climate change i'm concerned that the proposed climate science study session is you know a distraction to action and perhaps even a direct attack on the sustainable neighborhoods program and also on the liquid sustainability plan both of which are hugely popular with the citizens of l as you know the sustainable neighborhoods program is an award winning program that has spread to the city of denver the lakewood sustainability plan has also been received with huge enthusiasm by them by the citizenry as others have already said and the city needs to continue encouraging and supporting environmental action by its citizens not casting doubt on basic environmental science of course if that study was going to be looking at you know bipartisan solutions if we can even talk about bipartisanship at the local level i kind of hope not but the sustainable neighborhoods program has served as a catalyst for community action on the breadth of environmental and sustainability issues climate disruption is clearly one of those accepted issues it does not need to be studied or debated for its veracity it would waste councilors valuable time and taxpayer money to do so so please let's support citizens sustainability concerns and actions not cast doubt on them by such a study thank you for your time  good evening welcome thank you thank you my name is dawn sorenson i live in lakewood ward one mayor councillors i come here to give you a trip report a little different from the other conversations can you so last week actually it was about ten days ago i attended the colorado community capote symposium that was held over in aurora it was a three day symposium that was pulled together by the governor as a result of his  is proclamation during the summer his executive order on this topic and it basically was a a symposium on climate preparedness and clean energy development colorado and my point of bringing this to you and i got some other information  you just as an impressive numbers but what really struck me in that in that three day event that was held in the big new center over there in aurora was there was five hundred people from colorado that arrived to talk about how they were going to protect their communities from climate change how they were going to protect their communities or provide clean water and clean air and low cost energy and i was blown away by the number of speakers it was a who's who colorado leadership and at all levels of communities so let's take a look at some of the details here hey desmond so this is just a list of the people that attended it like i said and this is actually dated before the conference actually occurred so it's probably more than this fifty local governments eighteen agencies fifty nonprofits and twenty six plus companies that are that are on this list and it's kind of a who's who is that all across the state of different agencies and companies and communities community leaders so on and so forth that came to this i was like i said it was amazing in fact there were folks from houston and chicago and international visitors to the conference just to see how to do this because it hadn't ever been done in the united states at all so this is just a list of the speakers that spoke at that event there was over ninety five speakers and many of them are you know  colorado public utilities commission the ceo of excel michael hancock mayor of denver ceo of holy cross energy which is a utility in the western part of the state mayor of aurora executive director of colorado department of transportation ceo of denver water denver water's been mentioned here he was very passionate during his presentation about the issues were facing here former governor bill ritter steve  probably killed his name city of aspen so it's just a who's who of people who were there and this is what they talked about i just pulled all this off the website so it was it was basically a bunch of sessions the initial speakers and one thing another typical sort of symposium but then it was followed about by breakouts and what i found myself wishing is i was with a team with like four people to visit all these breakouts because there was tremendous amount of information being provided in every one of these sessions and they handled them so well in the sense that they were sort of community forums and basically no attribution comes out of those those forums and they just allowed everybody to talk and they had a bit of leadership in the in the conversation and what you found is some cities were really good at something some cities not so good at something else and some cities are just getting started and what it was wonderful was the collaboration that took place during this whole event so i'll leave this with you you can look it up online but i thought it would be useful in this conversation in the sense that colorado or liquid is not the only one chasing this rabbit there are a lot of a lot of folks very very concerned in fact there's seven cities and governments in colorado that have committed to a hundred percent and tomorrow night there's likely to be one more what do we leave this with you can leave it with the clerk please yep thank you here it's i'm not going to talk anything more than everything was was set until now i did my doctorate research on climate changed three years ago when the day after the thank you thanks for coming out mister horseman good evening then i have sandy and laron mayor paul councilmembers first of all thank you for your service and public service in your time tonight i appreciate that opportunity to comment i'm a registered republican don't hold that against me but i live in late quit and i'm in ward five and i'm a member of the lakewood clean energy committee i work for a western area power department of energy and i have had fifteen years in city management experience and all of my work and my entire career has been around the subject of climate change and energy so i  appreciate the opportunity just to make a few comments and most of the comments i want to make we've already been said but i want to make a comment about inclusivity lakewood is boastful about there efforts to be an inclusive community and we need everybody on board when we address climate change so doing a study on climate change can be either divisive or it can bring us together i think we need to put some attention on the efforts that have already been made to make lakewood the inclusive community that it is and continue those efforts there are several volunteer groups in lakewood that have been mentioned that are working hard to assist with the existing sustainability plan and we have made some significant progress and we're really proud of the work you guys are doing and the city staff and you know that we got it you guys helped us get excel to the table you've helped us with improving the building codes and we're working on the community solar projects and lakewood so we're just beginning that process and we need everybody's help to be successful we think we can make a huge positive impact and in lakewood and and make it the inclusive community that we want it to be there's a quote that i want to make and just conclude my remarks with and that is lakewood americans in the world can no longer afford to be complacent regarding the issues surrounding climate change it affects us socially politically economically and environmentally we must establish a new direction that leaves a legacy of good stewardship thank you for your time  i have been monitoring the activity of council for the past seven years and it's because of my due diligence that i'm very aware of your position on climate change on two occasions you've made statements regarding your stance on june six two thousand and sixteen you quoted a publication by the american association of petroleum geologists claiming that climate debate is more political than scientific on june th and two thousand seventeen he stated the earth was cooling when you were in nursing school it's because of my familiarity with your stance that i felt compelled to personally and by each a seminar being held at a local middle school regarding the latest data on the matter and it was to my delight that you responded you sent me a very nice email it said that you were gonna attend this seminar and you asked me a question i would like to read that question now and respond i believe because of the importance of this issue council should have a study session and invite a variety of speakers for me public policy is best after thorough input wouldn't you agree so that question sounds simple enough and most people including myself would agree that public policy is best after thorough input however in this instance i have to wholeheartedly disagree we learned that night at the climate change seminar that the percentage of publishing climate scientists be climbing warming trends to human activities have grown from ninety seven to ninety nine percent this number is astounding so much so that i compare having a study session the validity of climate change is like having a study session on whether the sky is blue and i just i'm really dumbfounded by this because sure at the end of the day you can find somebody to say the sky is brown you're always gonna have an outlier it doesn't mean you have to have a study session on it at this seminar you did not speak publicly but your husband did and his concern was that the numbers being presented by our speaker did not reflect the opinion of all scientists only climate scientists i have another analogy here um i just really feel this is a weak argument because if i had a heart condition and i went and asked all the cardiologists what should i do about my her condition is this a problem and if somebody came to me and said well you didn't ask the dermatologist about your heart condition it's just it's not you're saying that my data is invalid for that reason and i just i don't support that argument and i feel that having a study session on the validity of climate change is a waste of time it's illogical and i think it's a waste of countless time as well and i don't feel that this is an issue that is important to your constituents i just have a hard time believing that your constituents are reaching out to you and asking for this to be done when we have all these other pressing issues on the table right now i'm still holding  hope i'm hoping you withdraw your proposal i think it's in the best interest of our community of our city of the residents my biggest fear aside from wasting time aside from wasting taxpayer dollars is that we're gonna look foolish we have our mayor who who supports the paris agreement we have our sustainability plan we have so many people who are in favor of this and having a debate on this i'm afraid  attention from local media state media as well as national media and we're going to be the city that had a debate on the validity of climate change and i'd like to leave it at that thank you thank you misess johnson oh geez yep come on down i switched him but you're already in motion sorry plus you hung out late with us last time good evening this is early right yeah i appreciate it i feel a bit like a fish out of water because i'm not here to talk about climate change as you know my name is anne johnson and i live in ward one i'm here again to talk about the proposed d ten multi use bike path which is currently being slated to be built between kipling and oak street on the north side of the light rail tracks to begin with i support bicycle paths and those who use them what i am not in support of is using eminent domain to build a complicated and expensive multi use path when a bike path already exists on west  th avenue as you know the use of eminent domain means the taking of property trees security and profit and privacy all of which result in the decrease in value of our homes and property not to mention the pleasure we take in our homes and yards i support leading the bike path where it already is on west th avenue and using existing funds for improving this path rather than moving it and as i did last week i would like to invite you all to walk this section of the proposed path to view our properties and see how this path would impact each and every one of us in summary please reconsider the decision to move the path to the north of the light rail tracks instead improve it and leave it where it is on west th avenue thank you thank you sorry about that i hijacked you thank you hello my name is lauren me on the liquid residents and have been for ten years and on top of everything that's been said i just want to say this isn't a partisan issue how do i become a partisan issue how can someone how have we gotten to this place where there's like identity politics the one side we have every single plant country on the planet agreeing that climate change is a big problem and we need to act now we have every large political party conservative or liberal in all over the planet from the chinese communists to the staunch tories in england the first time i ever heard about climate change i was skeptical it was margaret thatcher in the s i don't think anybody can accuse margaret thatcher highlighted at the beginning but i want to read something this is a little text jerry taylor who is a resident climate change skeptic at the libertarian think tank cato institute's who used the write skeptic talking taylor describes his encounter quote on air i said that back in one thousand nine hundred and eighty eight when climate scientist james hansen testified in front of the senate he predicted we'd see a tremendous amount of warming i argued it it had been more than a decade and we could now see by looking at the temperature record that he was not accurate after we got done with a program joe said to me did you even read that testimony you've just talked about and when i told him it had been a while he said i'm dar go back and double check this he told me that some of the hansen projections were spot on so i went back to my office and i reread hansen's testimonies and joe was correct so then he talks to the climate skeptics who had made this argument to me and it turns out they done so with full knowledge they were being bit misleading after that i began to do more of that due diligence and the more i did the more i found that variations on the story kept rising again and again these are the skeptical explanation findings were dodging sketchy or misleading or the underlying science didn't hold up and taylor gradually saw that he his previous talking points about climate science were rubbish was an open mind he looked further at his economic and policy arguments against action on climate change and later crumbled and so with that you know if anyone on this console is skeptical that climate change is real there there's a large group of people in the room with a lot of competence on this we would be delighted to meet with you we promise you a peaceful calm rational evaluation effects to help you understand the reality of the planet and the ecosystem we live in but we don't we did not feel that it was a widest use of counsels time to spend hour after hour debating establish science we would rather see our console focus on workshops that plan the implementation of the existing sustainability plan and in fact this plan is about a lot more than climate change about clean air clean water much broader issues links to the fact that we have ten billion people soon living on a finite planet with finite resources and we have to do our parts to transform economies to live in harmony with this planet in a way that is sustainable and respectful of every member of humanity so thank you you l evening good evening mayor and council thank you for your time this evening my name is lavon whelchel and i live in southern gables and i'm here before you tonight to speak in favor of the city's sustainability plan and really from a different angle i i'm not a scientist i do believe what the scientists ninety nine percent of them concur but really from from my perspective of being thirty years in the southern gables neighborhood i when i first moved into that neighborhood i can tell you there was very little neighborhood participation we had a homeowners association and they were always begging people to help out we had many positions that went unfilled year after year and i can tell you that today it's a complete opposite and i feel really proud to be part of unfortunate to be to live in a vibrant connected community focused neighborhood and there's many factors that have contributed to the turnaround but the important one that finally got me and involved was the sustainability group that started and without the city's support of that program i'm not sure  that it would have gotten off the ground and i'm not sure it would have been as successful is it as it's been and i know that you're all aware of this but with our southern gables sustainability we have a community garden that's brought a of citizens and neighborhood folks in partnership with our school so we've just seen a return to vibrancy of our school that you know maybe in earlier years hadn't had that we also have an annual leaf collection day where we're not just diverting you know whole dumpster full of leaves from from going to the trash they actually get composted but we have citizens we have neighbors who are going to elderly homes in the neighborhood and they're also helping people who might have mobility issues they're helping those folks rake their own lawns we have a huge turnout i think a lot of you have attended our neighborhood our summer neighborhood party festival and hundreds of people literally show up to that every summer and and it's a direct result of our sustainability program really engaging people and getting them involved and then more classes and outings and and meetings honestly then i can even mention here but you know everything from beekeeping to composting  so knowing that you have an agenda item tonight to request here all sides of the time of the climate change can conversation i think i'd like you to keep in mind that i believe that we have a moral imperative to err on the side of an abundance of caution because honestly what harm comes from doing our part to make our planet a cleaner more livable place and there's also significant side benefits to the i might be harder to quantify but i think community is of such a value i'm not sure how you put a price on that and and those benefits accrue to the city they accrue to our residents and to our neighborhoods so in closing i would ask you to please continue to support our valuable sustainability plan that we already have in place and please don't let the deniers convince you otherwise talk about the study session on climate change in the requests she includes asleep statements that speakers need to represent all sides of the chat climate change issue no they don't climate change is council to debate whether or not climate change is real experts from all over the world agree that it is people far more knowledgeable to me and most of the people in this room although quite a few scientists here who have got the information they agree it is real politicians from every single other country on the planet have taken the advice of experts and agree that it is real and needs to be addressed every other country in the change is real and society as a whole needs to address this issue it is not the place of a a city council nor this city council to debate this worldwide consensus is it climate change is real in addition as somebody said ninety nine percent of scientists in the field agrees that human activity since the industrial revolution is at least partly responsible for the acceleration than the climate changes we are see no need to invite people from all sides as miss johnson suggests to discuss and debate the issue there are those people who don't believe in climate change that is their choice but it does not change the fact that climate change is real believe in whatever you want belief is a choice and don't get me wrong i understand belief and support everyone's right to believe in what they want i come from a country whose national anthem animal theories of evolution because it went against what he believed but he followed the facts so back to the facts and whether or not council needs to debate the science of climate change it was a level of scientific evidence  and s when a city council was induced introducing origin c's to ban smoking in public areas and more recently in bars and clubs because of secondhand smoke there wasn't a study session to debate the merits of science proving that smoking and secondhand smoke was bad for you city council accepted the medical experts advice but it was moved on to ordinances to protect the res so the city from being exposed to smoke there was no study session that invited post smoking lobby to debate the reality of medical evidence or you know inviting people say hey actually smoking is not bad he should start puffing because it's good for you know they accepted the facts city council many stand follow that precedent of accepting the majority of scientific consensus that climate change israel i think i'm repeating myself and move on to what it can do as the governing body of this city to address the issues that residents face as a result of climate change sure have a sorry sorry have a study address what you can do to mitigate it thank you sarah hi i had written down a bunch of stuff but i think that everything i have here has pretty much been touched on my name is sarah nelson i'm also award one resident and i did come here in part to speak about the sustainability plan and in support of the sustainability plan as eva said you know we used to debate whether smoking was good for you although it wasn't we weren't really debating that in the s and s but in the s and s you could have found a scientist to come out or a doctor to come out and say oh smoking is fine it's good it cures your co so as we know there's a ninety nine percent consensus on the issue and i also support the sustainability plan so i'll leave it at that i am gonna let the cch genie out of the bottle really quickly because i didn't get a chance to speak the other night and i know that the city it's out of the city's hands because the council voted to not take that land a year ago or so  but i live in one of the neighborhoods that is closest to the proposed development just on the side of six and after doing a bit of research and it is regrettable that the government won't allow mixed use development there it is what it is mckinney vento act will only allow it to be used for homeless development what they've come up with to deal with a landfill is brilliant the solar array  i've looked into property values research dealing with property values in neighborhoods where homeless services have put in i found that there has been no effect or actually a slight increase in property values have been found and also i just feel it's the right thing to do so personally as a resident i would support the development i'm not angry about it we also at the december ward one meeting we a business owner come and talk to us she owned an auntie anne's pretzel and another franchise in colorado mills she was there to give us an update on the colorado mills reopening but she mentioned that she was having trouble finding workers who can work for you know what an auntie anne's pretzels can pay or any other business in the mills oh man i'm getting dry mouth water yeah what's your reward fight or flight syndrome okay anyways so you know a development like that with six hundred units even though it might be more dense than we want that could provide a ready workforce for the mall for businesses all along the union corridor there would be easy access to mass transportation so you know i just wanted to bring that up i was thrilled to see all of the all of my neighbors come out to speak in support sustainability plan but i just wanted to add my voice to the conversation on the coalition for the homeless proposed development so thanks getting thank  good evening welcome good evening mayor council thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak with you i also have the dry mouth and it occurs to me you know our attitudes towards our environment coincide with our attitudes towards the poor and it's funny that we're dealing with both these issues at the same time just something to think about i want to introduce myself my name is michael de rocha i am a resident of liquid in ward four  i'm also a graduate of green mountain high school i'm a marine i served in desert shield desert storm i'm a volunteer ski patrol at loveland ski area so if you get injured i'll be happy to bring  down in a toboggan safely i'm also a solar guy and i am now following my dream as a small business owner in providing solar energy to both residential and commercial thank councilwoman johnson tonight you know it's it's a good way to get us out and talking about a very important issue by suggesting a study session and i don't want to turn this into a political event and i would suggest instead of researching climate change we start thinking about how we're going to work together to address it i get that people get twisted over climate change it's a complicated issue for lakewood i want to suggest that we think of about a higher standard of living a cleaner standard of living for our community as part of it since i am in the solar industry i think i'm gonna just talk about solar for a little while if you don't mind independence yet another way to think about solar energy is asn't it as an asset what other home improvement offers an internal rate of return or return on investment i want you to think about that finally as a smart technology leading us to a new energy frontier think about your smartphone think about the convergence of technologies that created that device microprocessor digital camera it all came together and at one point the experts stopped and said who's gonna pay six hundred dollars for that phone when you can buy a nokia for two hundred bucks experts were wrong it was a disruptive technology i want you to think about solar energy in the same sense we've got other converging technologies happening at the same time we have artificial intelligence we have driverless cars we have batteries that are coming and we saw a big decrease in solar energy about eighty five percent in the last ten years on photovoltaic modules we're gonna see about the same time of decrease with batteries and when that happens it's really going to turn the way we think about energy and i think anybody that's in the industry knows it's coming solar energy provides a higher standard of living for liquid it's going to protect our natural resources i enjoy hiking on green mountain trail just like adam paul does mayor adam paul and i enjoy going out to the bear creek lake and i enjoy clean water and clean air and i think we all value those things so let's think about what we can do together to build a more sustainable neighborhood welcome my name is i also have the dry mouth apparently it's going around some water please the most that's ever been drank from that first i want to thank the council for your service just sitting here for i guess two hours  think that makes it easy when you think of global warming is currently in the world we burn about ninety million barrels of oil a day that works out to one eight trillion gallons a year of oil and when you include that we also burn coal natural gas and we create other energy other ways that's three times total that the amount of energy that we that we use from oil so more importantly that's fourteen percent more energy than we get from the sun every day so when you go back in history forever we've been getting energy from the sun so all of a sudden in the last hundred years fifty years we've been putting fourteen percent more energy into the into the atmosphere than we have forever so that that's kind of the genesis of global warming it's not that big of a deal you put gas in your house to heat your furnace and your house stays warm right it's the same concept so the other part so i mentioned i'm a professional engineer so i also deal with ventilation so in this room we have air diffusers and we have what's called an air handling unit and we bring in outside air and it changes the amount changes based on the co in the room and studies have been done that per million per year so if we look at that extra four hundred parts per million that's talked in eighty years so in eighty years my kids will be able to think twenty one percent less effectively than they can now based on the current rate thank you mayor city councilmembers for allowing us to speak tonight my name is jan mcgee i'm thirty five year resident of ward four and i've just loved lakewood all this this time i am very proud of the sustainability plan that you all oil most of you developed it was a lot of hard work and long nights and diverse opinions in that process i'm really proud of that process and i just want you to know that i support the plan as it was written as it was developed by so many people that now say we don't need to go back and  back and your review undermine it we need to implement it so i had a lot more i wanted to say but it's already been said several times tonight so thank you for your time right thank you evening welcome good evening council members thank you for your time this evening my name is ali farah fino i'm the jefferson county community organizer with conservation colorado but the hit that program we  state's largest member based environmental organization with over thirty zero members time and time again our members make it clear that climate change is an issue that they want and that they want to ensure our air water land people are protected conservation colorado is not taking a stance on a specific policy this evening i'm here to express the urgency and importance of liquids continued leadership on sustainability and climate change colorado is vulnerable to rising temperatures and we've already begun to see the direct impacts of our changing climate colorado's snowpack is at a thirty year record low impacting our water supply and ecosystems we have faced hotter summers increasing the formation of ground level ozone which directly impacts the health a city residents such as those in lakewood if you look at our mountains our wildlife our what excuse me our wildfire season is increasing in length risking property damage and physical harm our neighboring colorado communities climate change is more than a scientific consensus and immediate action is imperative as already noted on this evening ninety seven percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists  see that climate warming trends over the past the our climate warming trends over the past century are due to human activity something that the lakewood residents here and elsewhere have made abundantly clear as an organizer in jefferson county spending the majority of my time evening board on a monday night i think this is the first time i've been back welcome back i'm shakti formerly on lakewood city council now a candidate for the state house and i'm here to talk about the idea of discussing different ideas about climate change and on its face that sounds like a reasonable idea but actually it's not and that's because of the context i twenty years ago i studied at cu and when i was there insurance companies were already changing their rates based on climate change models and they were doing that because it affected their bottom line so where we have ninety nine percent of scientists agreeing the political conversation has been slower but at this point the vast majority of americans and the vast majority of people in colorado agree with the scientist i one of the things i'm most proud of during my time on lakewood city council is passing the sustainability plan that so many people had put their energy into and so i would like to see the plan implemented and i think that having that this kind of discussion that's proposed would be moving backwards and rehashing a conversation that's actually settled so thank you thank you i got this hat because i came became a member of this organization it's been around for a little while about s or so okay and they publish science magazine one of the most erudite science journals in this country and i actually wanted to download some information on genetic engineering that's through casper cass nine and i had to join so that's what i did that's why i'm wearing a hat so the basic statement i want to make is the climate is changing or causing it it's a real problem and weed i'm well better do something about it i'm not alone in making that statement and if councillor johnson wants to look at all sides i'd like to make a few suggestions of people we can talk to about bringing  talking to us about this one of them would be the international panel on climate change that's the conservative organization on climate change you may be surprised to hear me say that it is the conservative organization on climate change because they need a consensus to put out these papers and this reports with ninety nine percent of the scientists agreeing with it you're not going to get to all the bleeding edge with that sort of a thing now i know an engineer who works nrel who i've worked with a lot over the last decade in the legislature who has gone through that in great detail and it could perhaps present it you know that's the conservative side somebody mentioned jim hansen a little bit earlier from nasa he the director of nasa he's not so conservative but let me tell you he's running around with his hair on fire because he's really worried that we've got some issues out there we have to solve right now because we're in real trouble well guess who's model has been the most accurate over the last ten years james hansen so the most accurate climate change model out there is much more radical and much more accurate than put out by the ipcc let me list some of the other organizations that might be willing to come out and talk to us and all of these organizations i could read this three paragraph statement but they all basically say what i said the claim is changing or causing it it's an existential issue for human civilization we don't well better do something about it now here's the organization's oh right american association for the advancement of science american chemical society american geophysical ecological society of america natural science collections alliance organization of biological field stations society for industrial and applied mathematics society for systematic biologists soil science society for america american corporation for atmospheric research own if you want to talk about corporations you can bring in somebody out here from starbucks who sees their entire market disappearing because coffee is going to be disappearing because of climate change and there a lot of other corporations that are really following what's going on a climate change and adjusting their bottom line to match including by the way walmart which is not my favorite operation but that's okay now let me throw out a couple other possibilities we could hire we could bring in all the scientists who have published in reputable scientific peer reviewed journals challenges to the foundational theories of climate reviewed scientific paper that challenges the basic theories it's not out there this is basically middle school science and finally to wrap up miss johnson if you want somebody that's going to live in that kind of peter pan world that's really possible the koch brothers paid for somebody to come out and engage and the on the negative side of the debate the denier side of the debate and a sponsored something i sponsored in the legislature last year i'm sure you could get back in touch with the koch brothers and they find somebody in that peter pan wrap it up please thank you all right that exhausted the list of folks who signed up thank you everybody for signing up and mister johnson would you like to speak welcome thank you for letting me come i did not sign up but something you're fired you came in late don't worry a couple of things i'd like to point out i provided the article for councilor johnson to quote it was written by lee gerhardt doctor lee gerhardt a professor emeritus from csu hardly a wacko and his article was just saying to go a little slow she had mentioned getting some other people in i have three in mind they're all phd scientists they're acknowledged they say there are some problems with what we're presented they're not saying that the earth is cooling but there are things we should be aware of and they promise like i'll pay for one of them to come and they all three promise if they come they will spend no more than forty five minutes and they will present things from published verified articles already by government some of them and just pointing that out and we're giving away a lot of our freedoms with this movement and i i just encourage us to spend a little bit of time thinking about it and they would take less time and waste less of your time than what we've spent already tonight thank you thank you anybody else mister bartel you did not follow the rules magazine that just came out i find out a long time before that every household is limited to thirteen gallons a day for drinking washing eating and flushing thirteen gallons a day it's not participation you're looking about the hills coming down i mean what what because there's nothing to hold it back thank you for your time thank you all right anybody else all right i'm gonna close public comment so um councillor harrison did you want to speak or did you want to okay yes ma'am you know i think that there's a lot of discussion about whether or not climate change exists and what i see is the beauty of the sustainability program and what it does in community building i don't care honestly what causes the climate change what i love is what it does to our community and how it builds each other when i see the beauty of what happened in gables and i see that neighborhood coming together and with a common focus and a common goal it could be climate change it could be snowflakes i don't care what it is as long as it brings us together closer i would be really opposed to having this study session to go back to the start and looking at this all over again i support the sustainability program and would like to continue it thank you do we want to have comments on the proposal now or shall we wait until the i'd prefer to wait so we can follow in line thank you please at under general business thank you okay so just for folks who are here and bear with us it's actually the first under general business so we have a consent agenda which we'll get through rather fast secure and then we can go in so if you do have to leave i really want to thank everybody who did come out and your thoughtful dialogue tonight as much appreciated so with that these are the consent agenda has been made to expedite council action it contains both resolutions and on this one only resolutions any council member may request an item on the consent agenda be removed for separate discussion and action under general business well the city clerk please read items on the consent agenda into the record with the removal of item nine from the consent agenda the consent agenda consists of items ten through twelve inclusive item ten resolution two thousand and eighteen eight establishing projects and project funding levels for the two thousand and eighteen capital improvement and preservation program neighborhood participation program item eleven resolution two thousand and eighteen nine hundred izing condemnation of an easement for a sidewalk at nine hundred and thirty five sheridan boulevard for the sheridan boulevard improvement project in item twelve approving the minutes of the december th regular city council meeting and these would be the revised ones at your places tonight and the january th two thousand and eighteen  good evening welcome well thank you mayor and city council members i'm holly bayne with the comprehensive planning and research division and i'm here tonight to give you a quick i hope background and update on our neighborhood participation program i want to start by just providing a brief update on it our selection process and criteria for the program a status of our past projects and then staffs recommendation for the two thousand and eighteen projects the neighborhood participation program or mpp began in and ninety two since its inception we have funded one hundred and forty two projects citywide the program is funded with one hundred and sixty thousand dollars for construction with an additional twenty thousand dollars for project contingencies and design work are four project requirements first it must have a general benefit to an entire neighborhood and not just a single entity or a few people it must not significantly increase city maintenance requirements funding levels per project cannot exceed sixty thousand dollars and the project cannot currently be funded in the five year cip peak budget it is a selective project program each year we generally open the project program in september and review applications and evaluate by staff team from planning community resources and public works the projects are then scored based on a weighted criteria which i'll discuss in a moment and then the projects are ranked by staff and then presented to city council for your approval there are five criteria that staff reviews and looks at when analyzing each project application the first is the benefits that we see the project bringing to the community versus the cost of the project the health and safety of the project the amount of neighborhood support or neighborhood contributions that we see with the application the  project the compliance of the project with the master plan the comprehensive master plan as well as the community resources master plan and whether or not the project significantly increases maintenance requirements so from two thousand and fourteen we're proud to say that our pathway connection between sutherland park and maine lake has been finalized and is open now concrete path which i think we've heard a lot of really positive things about it's um excited from two thousand and sixteen we have three projects that will be completed this year in june we will complete the steps and the sidewalk connection at houghton park and we are now underway with the community outreach and have developed a draft master plan anticipate that being completed in the fall and our final outstanding project from two thousand and sixteen there's a picnic shelter at clinton heights which will be installed in june of this year from last year we have park two projects which will be completed this year are the art sculpture in walker branch park the art sculpture has been selected as depicted in this picture here and it will be installed this spring and the sidewalk connection between rob street on rob street between  and th avenue will be completed in two thousand and eighteen the community garden at foothills elementary school has been completed and it will be planted by the students this spring and the additional horseshoe pit and benches in richie park have been installed and the horseshoe pits will be also landscaped this spring and the irrigation put him and our final project from two thousand and seventeen is a little free library and lock more in the lochner neighborhood park for this year we received twelve applications and they totaled over five hundred thousand dollars in estimated construction costs staff has reviewed them and is recommending to city council for projects that total and estimated at about one hundred sixty eight thousand dollars in construction costs those projects include oh i'm sorry the map before you shows you the distribution of the projects that we received through the city so the four project staff recommending to you this year are a new playground at you trail park as well as a couple of picnic benches an outdoor environment learning classroom is soft liquid elementary that will include a little free library perhaps nooks and a nature paths we are supporting and approving improvements to the community garden at green gables elementary school these improvements are small in nature but they add up they will include like small signage a some additional trees and some benches and we're also proving phase two of the rooney ranch elementary school playground  upgrades to summarize we're recommending at the four projects just presented to you for a total of about approximately hundred sixty eight thousand in construction costs so tonight a staff is asking city council to approve the resolution adopting the recommended two thousand and eighteen neighborhood participation program projects thank you thank you i'm gonna reopen the public hearing because i got a look that i did not do that properly nobody's still indicated a wish to speak but a  right seeing none anybody okay seeing that i closed the public comment period and just a couple quick comments we got a really nice email from the morningstar community thinking you know thanking you and the staff for all the work they really appreciate that i wanted to make sure i pass that on i don't know how this hudson park keeps getting improvements but i must always say as a disclaimer has nothing to do with  city manager kathy hudson and ute trail park that fire truck has been there since i was young enough to play on it so it will be it was probably before and i actually played on it so wow it's time to do that so thank you thank you francs for those of you who know i garden at you trail community garden and so that little piece of equipment gets roasty hot and we've seen a number of little hands and feet get burned there so i really am excited to see that get replaced and really wanted just to these these projects mean a lot to the communities on the path from maine reservoir to southern and shire park there was some community concern but when i got out there and walked it three different times got to meet a lot of people and saw what a benefit it was benefit to people in in the condominiums who didn't have a connection to be able to walk we had people with walkers strollers and i just wanted to say thanks i know that that sometimes they seem small but they really make a big difference in people's lives so thank you yeah i completely agree i can't say enough great things about this program and the impact that it's had in our neighborhood with the green gables community garden and just seeing all these projects throughout the community it's really exciting and it projects are centered around elementary schools the best investments we can make in our community are those that benefit kids and these monies do double duty by strengthening the neighborhoods and making these neighborhood schools the center of our community so thank you very much councillor johnson thank you mayor holley that was a nice presentation i noticed on some of the projects that were turned down one of them was for planting new trees someplace i think it was in i'm just curious if people in the area wanted to purchase their trees purchase trees themselves or else purchase them somehow through the city and plant them themselves is there a process that they can do there was an issue in ward one where a sewer system had torn up a street pretty badly and several trees were taken out and i there might be an appetite for that neighborhood to actually purchase trees and plant them since it's on public land what are the guidelines for them i would definitely have encouraged people that want to do that to check with city staff one of the concerns one of the concerns with the sander gulch is that it would be in the gulch and we do want to maintain the goal to make sure that it functions appropriately we've also found many times that with trees planted near a sewer line or a lot of times they will get into the line and damage the line so we really want to make sure that the right type of trees are being planted as well as in the correct location so i would just have anybody check with city staff before they go about doing that okay so if it would work under the right in the right circumstances but the first thing to do is check with with staff perfect that's good to know also one of the projects that was turned down was for a sidewalk connecting on th between kline and kipling can that neighborhood reapply again or is there any grant money for that that is actually a pretty big issue for the people that live there not having a sidewalk on th there is no other grant money that i'm aware of that would fund that for this year but we do is more than happy to have discussions with the applicants as to what could help have them reach their goal that the following year so now their words how to submit a more viable yes plan next time worded a little better that that kind of thing perfectly thank you and i generally tried to communicate that when i when i send out my letters i you know letting people applicants know that they did not receive grants this year to reach out and work with us perfect thank you might dramatically change things i think that if it's possible my son would probably like that firetruck if you're gonna remove it because he's also played on and then the second quick point i probably speak on behalf of all of the rooney elementary kids if  establishing projects and project funding levels for the two thousand and eighteen capital improvement and preservation program neighborhood participation program whereas the city of lakewood has established neighborhood participation birth okay good thank you well passes eleven zero nays good job thank you very much excuse me there paul we actually need a vote on the consent agenda which that was a part of if we could have a separate vote on so so considering i polled nine that's why i went to individual or polled yeah item nine i'm sorry thank you so i don't so it will still adopt them individually i think that's sufficient it's certainly sufficient okay ross what year did you put that in eighty seven there you go all right well the clerk please read item eleven into the record i already did that so item eleven mister doar please come on up council once again larry door city of liquid finance director and city treasurer before you tonight item eleven resolution nine authorizes condemnation actions and condemnation is a serious matter and so thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about the matter and also about the project that it relates to of course no to condemnation matters are the same and some  impact neighborhoods and residences but some don't so let me talk a little bit about the project first and then the action at hand just to orient you this is a sidewalk project in ward two in lakewood along sh boulevard at the border with the city and county of denver in two thousand and fifteen city council authorized funds two two million dollars in funds for the construction of this sidewalk there is no sidewalk present at this time along this corridor six tenths of a mile of sidewalk construction that will be completed the sidewalk requires the city to acquire property rights across eighteen different properties on sheridan boulevard the city has successfully negotiated with all property owners but one and we have actually not had disagreement with this property owner as to the price of the property or the installation of the facilities at hand in fact the property owner and their residents will benefit greatly from the installation of the sidewalks i should have mentioned in the cost the city has the opportunity to receive eight hundred thousand dollars in federal highway funds through the colorado department of transportation so this will be a very meaningful improvement in ward two along shirt and boulevard however this particular property that happens to be a fifty two unit owner excuse me fifty two unit a non owner occupied apartment complex and when you get within to commercial properties things get a little bit more complicated in terms of of getting it real property entitlements the city's been in negotiation and contact owners now for nearly nine months and what's complicating the matter is that the owners which are ewg p associates of sherman oaks california their property is encumbered by a mortgage that mortgage held by the colorado housing and finance authority also known as chafa it's a very large organization and commercial property loans and mortgages are complex they come with many different loan covenants and requirements and it isn't a lender like a local bank it's a much larger government sponsored organization so they tend to move a little bit more slowly unfortunately in allowing a release of the encumbrance of this section of property along sh boulevard it would be a ten foot deep easement and a hundred feet long in front of this particular property in addition the property is is restricted under section eight housing requirements by the united states housing and urban development so the city is not in dispute with the owners about the price or the need for the project but really just getting through the real property entitlements phase and we will continue to negotiate and  property owner but what this condemnation action will authorized is for the city to seek immediate possession so that our engineers and our constructors can move forward with the project and preserve these grant funds from the colorado department of transportation we can't proceed at such a pace where those funds could otherwise be used by the cidade for other projects across colorado so those grant funds can be somewhat in jeopardy over time additionally we need to get these construction elements moving because we can't do that during the the coming winter months of two thousand in two thousand and eighteen so we want to get started on those so we could have the improvements in if i m turn on the document camera and i just want to show the current state of the sidewalk along sheridan boulevard and then answer any questions that council may have and just show the map for those who are in chambers tonight are watching on tv who may not have seen councils packet so rectangle to the right of the screen depicts the easement needed for the installation of improvements and you'll notice in the resolution that it would also authorize a temporary  is the pink line just to the left and that's so that the contractor can get in and do construction installing the sidewalk again this sidewalk will bring a benefit to these residents at this location and i'm sure they look forward to the improvement but again we've just got to clear the entitlements that are in place by hud and chafa and then let me show one more picture and there there is no sidewalk there at the moment we're not widening anything or rebuilding anything at all this is a fairly treacherous part assured and boulevard for the city's residents here it's very difficult to walk down these paths and of course we have children and people of all ages moving up and down sheridan boulevard and and i know that many of you have seen this in our budget presentations in the past through public works so that mister mayor be happy to entertain any questions and i do have our property management folks and public works engineers here in chambers thank you i appreciate it i'm gonna open the public hearing on resolution two thousand and eighteen nine nobody is signed up saying nobody i will close the public hearing and go to council questions i'm gonna start with our war two folks this is home for them yes thank you this is a project that's been a long time coming i am far from being excited about the method that we're going through but also i've dealt with a lot of things within the ward with with chafa and section eight housing  this is a horrible intersection a horrible problem and as long and i've had many i've had many talks and i do understand that there's not an issue about taking the property about not about the residents not getting something of added value there so although it goes against a lot of things that i probably  is i would support this because i think is necessary to get the project moving forward thank you carol amir yeah just like to add that uh first of all i live right near this on i get the pleasure of driving by it every day and i think this is much desired in the neighborhood so i think this will be a great addition if we can see some sidewalks which i'm told could be completed even this year so that's exciting to hear i think this will go a long way to just helping out with beautification on sheridan and helping with the revitalization efforts that many of us are pursuing and i'm very much in support of it and my understanding is as a director d'or mentioned is that yeah because of the just the complications this is a way to sort of cut through some of that red tape that might be holding up the project so very much looking forward to voting yes on this the skilling and i just wanted to comment that piggybacking on that i went out to the property over the weekend just to actually walk it to the best of my ability all those really wet and you couldn't really walk it so i did not know until just now that the or mister gore's presentation that this was not a controversial issue that there wasn't a dispute so that's great dear so this is as jacob mentioned this is i'm sorry councilman lieber mentioned this is a a technical issue that the owner is supportive so i did just want to want to clarify though it's different than eminent domain is really a condemnation the difference being for people in the audience when they hear the terms could we i just want to make sure we all understand that way when we hear the terms later so condemnation versus the city is taking a condemnation action by using its authority of eminent oh okay essentially one in this i thought so but i just wanted to make sure on that and like everyone the other folks here i've been on that path multiple  times driving that it is a dangerous spot and i am glad to hear i would expect we would see the property owners representative here if there was anyone who was opposed to that and that's the one thing that gives me comfort is that they haven't dispatched someone here to oppose the effort so thank you just wanted to emphasize this sidewalk is coming from tenth avenue all the way up to the sixth avenue bridge and it's on the north side of sixth avenue bridge so we're doing some major improvements along the sheraton co and i do support this and i supported it three years ago and and i want to bring it forward so i'm glad it's it's it's coming to its you know conclusion thank you  i just want to point out that there are certain times when there is an appropriate use for eminent domain and there are other times when it's not this is one of the times when it's appropriate that's not to say that there won't be other times when we look at that issue and have a different result thank you thank you like everyone has said it's not something we should ever take lightly to use eminent domain but in this circumstance like you said each one is different and based on the circumstances of this and then also i'm certainly not a advocate of eminent domain but in this case there's no arm twisting going on we're only unraveling a little bit of red tape that the property owner had difficulty with so i'm certainly in thank you mayor i just like to say i am comfortable in supporting this and i understand the issue of eminent domain but this is appropriate this time yeah all right second right we have a motion a second any discussion to accept the council minutes for december th and january th or map aw i move to approve the minutes of city council meetings on december eleven two thousand and seventeen and january th two thousand and eighteen almost to discussion topics item nine was pulled it was pulled because i'm pulling myself off of the proposed committee and there could be some other changes as to some other council members that had signed up to be part of this and may do some switching so i will turn over to council able councilman abel i would request that we table mayor said i understand there are some changes in council people who might be willing to participate and the wording of the resolution as it stand does not reflect accurately reflect the consensus of council from two weeks ago i believe maybe a little bit longer about a little bit give or take all right so that would be a request to table that and come back miss hudson please advise the next regular meeting would be february th we already that's a joint joint meeting with our school board but this seems like it wouldn't be a long extended oh my i owe you all an apology i could have saved you all a lot of time i actually was going to pull this off of the agenda and just didn't get it done in time when i look at all of our priorities  that need to be addressed the timing isn't there for this to go forward either now or probably maybe never the time for discussion it looks like his long passed a couple things i'd like to address the first one sandy weathers made a comment that i had said that when i was in nursing school or something when the earth was cooling that was meant as a joke i said it tongue in cheek obviously that was taken literally and i will certainly be more careful with the way that i joke from now on this never wasn't an attempt to change or to attack the sustainability plan i'm sorry that that was perceived that way that was never the intention i strongly support the sustainability plan who wouldn't mean really come on and i never really intended for it to be a debate okay i thought that i've been on council now for six years we've done a lot of things with sustainability and i think it would have been nice had people on all sides of the perspective actually had an opportunity to come and give different sides and points of view it was never done formally that way that was all that this was intended to do it is our responsibility and our sacred duty to seek out and ask for all sides on every issue not just this would you expect less of us when we cast a vote to only be given a certain kind or amount of information and to make a vote based on that rather than to actively seek what all the perspectives are i don't think so i hope not you the people should not only expect this standard but demand that of this body honest public policy demands this that we are looking at all perspectives that was all this was intended to do obviously this grew legs and i apologize i had no idea that this was going to be in the way that it was none of us should fear hearing what other people have to say just because you might think that they see something differently or have a different perspective please be open minded you expect that of us to listen to all sides we shouldn't fear what anybody has to say and with that i am pulling this off of the agenda it is obviously not not something that this council could or should go forward with and there's definitely not interest in the community it was never designed to create this kind of commotion i apologize  so we had close to two hours of people coming out and speaking which i very much appreciated but rather than just pull it which that isn't relevant to what i'm about to say i suggest that we do have a study session in the future but that we look at ways that we can actually do the things that we heard about tonight of great interest to me and this is something we'll be talking about on saturday mister de rosa and i'm not picking favorites just because he's from my ward but he mentioned solar we had a couple of got a couple of speakers tonight talked about the importance of solar well it just so happens there are some areas and in lakewood especially in ward four that might make good spots to have things like solar or wind or whatever it is and i think that's something that the community's really wanted so if we're going to be bold and bring in new ideas i think that that's something that we could actually take a look at that we can incentivize rather than just building more strip malls and expensive houses why don't we do that i mean think about that project you hear infrastructure every day in the news they don't actually do anything they just talk about infrastructure we could actually lead the way we take our sustainability plan and say look we mean it and we're gonna build whatever it is solar wind you guys name it and that's for a study session for us to name that project so i think let's use tonight and all the time and effort and everyone coming out and councilman johnson putting forward this and starting this discussion let's take the big positive out of this and let's do something as let's be bold and let's have a study session i would just say that i'd like to lead that study session with looking at how we as a city can do things like solar farms if that's even possible or bringing in solar businesses or renewable energy businesses something of that nature thank you so i think the water messed up your button cuz you keep turning on and off just fyi so if i don't call on you or care and let me know actually i did that on purpose because what i did was i made sure the no button doesn't work for dave anymore he can only vote supporting from now on let's take advantage of that councillor abel thank you i and it's also preventative health care for our children and adults so i would be very much in favor of advancing ideas that we might add to the sustainability plan thank you for that offer wine thank you well i'm just want to say not many of you are left from that that came this evening but just wow and thank you so much for the passion in our community and stepping up for this important cause that we all share and value it was a truly inspirational night and we got to hear a lot i feel like i got smarter after listening to all of that um so you know there's not a decision that i make in my life or in my day that doesn't think about i'm going to impact my children and to me that's what sustainability is all about we heard about that from even some some kids which i thought was really moving and like i said  this was just an inspirational evening to me i believe in the importance and that it's critical that we act on this and act on it now i'm incredibly excited about the progress that we've made and in the progress outlined in the sustainability plan and after tonight i'm really optimistic that we're gonna make meaningful progress together i'm also thrilled with the outcome that now we're talking about hey let's have a study session and talk about how we can make meaningful progress together i think that's really how the plan has been all along it's been focusing on nonpartisan we've not gotten bogged down in ideology we've found common ground worked on things we all care about like clean air clean water efficiency reducing our energy regarding sustainability and how we can increase making sure that we're increasing our efforts to watch out for or to address our smog and and clean air issues you can imagine that i'm supportive of  having a further discussion about sustainability and and further efforts that we can make to make our community even more sustainable but i just want to i also want to comment just an fyi i was watching a documentary the other day called chasing coral which you can see on netflix and at the end of it they're applauding some communities that have done a lot with sustainability efforts and one of the communities that they mentioned on there is lakewood colorado so i was impressed to see that and surprised actually so i encourage you to watch it it's a good documentary and then you can see that they're excited about some of the efforts we're making here in lakewood and hopefully we continue to do so so i just wanted to let you all in on that so thank you francs i just wanted to add what i'm finding most encouraging is that really citizens aren't waiting for us they are on facebook setting up groups where they are sharing unused items finding new homes for things sharing services so i definitely want us to get together and be big and be bold but at the community garden we teach other people how to compost in their backyard you know we teach seeds sharing and setting starting and so what i love about all of this is that it's connecting neighbors to reach out to other neighbors and so i think that that's also very exciting and maybe doesn't get all the big press but that's where i see communities really pulling together and  green mountain sustainability unfortunately has their meetings on a monday night which kind of makes it a little hard with my job here to to go but i did on our one fifth monday go and what a wonderful group of people and there's someone there i'm going to call her out my name emily post she is inspiring with the amount of waste she doesn't produce and that's another thing so i have a new level my husband has not thrilled with emily because now we have increased recycling responsibilities but i wanted to encourage everybody that came there's so many things you can do in your own communities and while we look for some of the bigger opportunities so thank you yes they do beer trivia on monday nights where would you rather be kombucha so let me let me throw this out there so we are we have a second reading coming up on energy efficiency performance we also have our retreat so there might be some other proposals pertaining to sustainability and we have a sustainability update so i'm thinking we wait until we see what council priorities are at the retreat and we get a better idea of when the sustainability update is along with some of the other things and that's when we tie this discussion in that fair to go forward okay and i just close with again thank you to the folks who stayed i have learned one thing you know as its it's important that we create this community and we heard a lot about what it's done and its really empowered the community and sustainability means so much to so many different people whether it's just neighbors getting together whether it's energy efficiency but it's a good thing and it's a good thing not so much the why or the how but let's keep making progress and working together and that's been great and i can tell you as the mayor and jonathan wachtel is here we get pressure a lot of pressure that we don't go far enough and that we go too far so it's i think we've tried to strike a nice balance that really reflects the community and honors the plan and it moves us forward so thank you to everybody always great to hear from the kids or the the young adults i should say and so that's how we will move forward as that coolness hodson yes absolutely have a ordinance as it relates to unattended vehicles it's illegal to leave your vehicle unattended and running in the city of lakewood other cities have added language that add additional provisions that are that go further that aren't just an anti theft provision as is the unattended vehicle ordinance but actually go a little bit further that also address the pollution that's exhibited by vehicles idling for long periods of time so what i've asked all of you to consider is us addressing this issue by adding additional language to the provision that would limit the length of time a vehicle can idle and i just like to add that a lot of cities and municipalities around colorado in the country have adopted these ordinances the epa has a really long list of various cities that have made similar language changes to their code so this wouldn't be out of the norm even beautiful towns like johnstown colorado have things like that so i've been encouraged to add this as something that we speak about at saturday's retreat so i'm happy to entertain that if all of you would like to do that instead of moving it forward as just another agenda item so thanks thank you sir  and thank you for your flexibility kelseyville well i was about to remove my request to speak i was going to suggest that this fits hand in glove with what we've been talking about so perhaps we make it part of that study session out there in the immediate future our hope on others dis and other sustainability items it's not acceptable to council all right so that's what we'll do we'll carry this conversation to proposal the motion was to initiate a process for an rfp for the lakewood city attorney the background is it's it's the exclusive duty of the city council under article three point one five point three and four six of the city charter to appoint the city attorney and it's been a number of years since the position of the city attorney has been put out for proposal for bid being able by an able colorado attorney as a matter of good practice busier business practice and procedures this position should be put out for proposal and bid on a regular basis in accordance with the city charter so therefore i move and i wanted to request to move forward to appoint five councilors one from every ward along with an independent legal counsel chosen by that committee to prepare the documents necessary for to initiate the rfp process and shall take all necessary actions to obtain review and recommendations three final candidates to the full council for further action and i wanted to bring this up to city council great thank you and just for clarification those articles mentioned actually i think only one of them pertains to the city attorney the other two pertain to the city manager is that accurate  that would be in a more personal type setting i suggest a friendly amendment to call an executive session to just to evaluate the city attorney that were in the third year of his contract we have a wording in place in that contract to evaluate in the third year we are also changing the policies and procedures manual and one of the proposed changes is an annual evaluation of the city attorney i think these matters would be best handled in executive session under personnel issues we can address our concerns to the city manager and then if we so decide to initiate the rfp process we can do that following that forum so the maker of the motion except that as a friendly amendment i do okay so the request as i hear now would be that we would think you would like to have the city attorney create so we want to review the city attorney in his work so we'd summary of his work this last year or more than that that you would then present to us in an executive session much like we do with the city manager where a report is produced and then we review that in executive sessions that correct yes and if i may i would like to add that we do this without  very much delay we're reviewing the manager and i think sometime in coming weeks and they perhaps shortly after that we could schedule this session so hudson i think are you may it's usually april or may it's it's at the conclusion of all of the other employees evaluations the when the city managers falls at the end of that so would you want to mirror that end of april early may if that's acceptable to the maker of the notion that is okay all right so there's a little bit of a modification and the christmas trees going on and off distinction i think between performance and procedure i think those are two separate things and this isn't talking about performance it's not talking about whether or not anybody is unhappy with the performance of the city attorney that's a whole different discussion what this is talking about is a regular procedure that would be done on a regular basis whether it's annually two years three years whatever to automatically as i understand put this out for review to the legal community as a matter of good practice nothing to do with performance performance on the other hand because of the city attorney serves at the pleasure of counsel could be terminated really at any time for performance issues and obviously that hasn't been hasn't come up or isn't not an issue at this time so i i want to make that distinction there so that people understand that i don't think it has anything to do with performance its procedure and that's that's also very important right thank you sir so here there is a motion  let me just hold on real quick before we get in so i don't know i mean i think we can just give direction city attorney works for the city council we can give you direction to produce your annual report and we can set a review or that executive session i don't know if we need a motion to have that in place sir yes just the the practice i think has been with these requests for agenda items which has not been in the works for that long has been to have a discussion in a sent direction going forward to the appropriate staff so i well we could certainly do it by motion it's not typical to do it that way and the formalities would not have to be met like i said there's nothing wrong with doing it but in keeping consistent with what we've done with previous agenda requests as with  suggestion that was disposed of in a in a logical fashion and we could do the same thing with any of these i think so could we mirror would it be acceptable in the time frame to council and for you to produce that type of you know be prepared for a review in line with a similar process to miss hodson so late april early may that's it's more than enough time just for the record going back many years a previous council had asked us to prepare an annual report in lieu of a review so we've never actually had a performance review i think it was done as a concession to to us to just put together a summary  done over the course of the previous year and that's what we've done so happy to produce a similar report for this year that can be used as the basis for the discussion with with council and well will will say as long as we need to so i  as long as it's in the line with the requirement in the contract for an evaluation in the third year yeah okay so that's clear direction then council has consensus okay all right so we will look to mirror that you know i'm not optimistic we'll have double executive sessions so we probably won't be able to schedule both of you on one night but let's keep that in a tight timeframe with the review documentation as well as the actual executive session cool all right thank you all all right so and this is now the last topic which will be a motion to call for an executive session and what will happen is  gonna make that motion in line it's pretty tight legally as to what we will be able to discuss after he makes that motion we will go into executive session upon adjournment so after item sixteen and we will not return so there won't be any we won't be coming out with any sort of votes or anything along those lines so councillor betta yes thank you mayor at this time i move to go into an executive session purs and specifically receiving reports on the progress and status of negotiations determining positions relative to issues subject to negotiation and instruction and instructing negotiators as well as conferring with the city attorney to receive legal advice on specific legal questions all with regard to the proposed use of the fifty acre property on the denver federal section i center excuse me because i'm executive session to immediately follow tonight's meeting i second so we have a motion in a second to  go into executive session upon adjournment from this meeting any discussion all right or the thought that the new reservoir that was excavated at the federal center on the kipling side was subject to perhaps recreational use by the city and the council member said that opposition on city council prohibited that i'm not aware that we were ever asked is that do you have any information regarding that allegation no we've we were never asked this is the property that's within the fences as the the excavation required by the state department of health to remove tainted believed tainted material yes that was never an offer from the federal government for the city residents to use that in any way okay so that information was not based in fact right thank you and his  skilling briefly just to thank you to all of our ward for people who made it out to our ward for meeting through the snow it just hit exactly during the time period that we were having our word meeting so that was fun but thank you to everyone who came out to that we had a good showing as always and hopefully that'll continue in the future and i'm sure we'll thank you oops real abeer i just want to reiterate something i mentioned at the last meeting but  councillor vincent and i are having a meet and greet with one of your state house representatives for our ward chris kennedy and that is going to be at west facts brewing company that's six seven thirty three west colfax avenue that'll be on february th of this year and i hope to see you there six thirty to eight zero p m and i'm told they have soda in case you don't drink the primary beverage that they sell also i just want to remind people that we are trying to get as much information as possible on our website lakewood ward to com so i hope you'll keep checking that out i do see some of our stats going up so i think this is working so i'm going to keep saying it also i just want to mention that i've had several neighbors reach out to me about issues around the city whether it was you know trucks coming into the neighborhood that shouldn't have been there due to the weight and size and also traffic issues on th avenue all those issues were sent to city staff and all those issues were addressed with new signage and cones out in front of construction areas that took into account  neighbors with disabilities etc so i just want to thank our city staff for that and our city manager miss miss hudson which i always want to say hutch and sorry so i just want to thank y'all for that  and i want to also just mention if you have issues please give me a call i'm happy to sit down and talk with you on the phone or sit down for some coffee cuz i usually need it so thank you c those nice to have an update i'd like to thank our police agent for hanging out with us tonight keeping us safe and if there's nothing else for the good of the order we will adjourn and start our executive session  fifteen so that gives us a couple minutes