of four point three million dollars in savings and that's due to cobia related underspending in building maintenance parks and recreation and custodial public worksksasnststimeded of two point six million savings due to covid related underspending in fleet management and maintenance and non departmental with a two point one million dollar savings primarily due to lower than expected  nineteen actuals and then in the two thousand and twenty revised budget the police department budget was decreased by four point nine million dollars which leaves a variance of one point eight million which is what you see on from the revised budget estimate of twenty three million so we originally thinking that i was going to be twenty three million and now we're estimating that i'll be thirty one point two million dollars in the general  that have been budgeted since the revenue has not stabilized yet this is not sustainable in the long run with our current level of services additionally lakewood will not have  and twenty one so one more thing i wanted to say is that i have been impressed by how well the leadership and staff at lakewood have learned to adjust in their financial spending  operations mnagement during twenty in areas like community resources public works and other organizations there were adjustments that we made in multiple parts of the organization internally and external keep you informed as we've talked about before i'll continue to give you information about what's happening financially and i'll work with the city manager on timing when these updates will happen on the tw actuals i'll be providing the city wide pulmonary and audited numbers in two now i'll turn it back over toto ththmamayoanandnyny other questions or any questions you have about this presentation i'm happy to address counsel and actually before i do that i'm going to turn over to chairman bieda who chairs the budget audit committee and if you want to add anything or we're maybe pass on any of the conversation that the committee had i will no okay well thank you mayor i don't have a whole lot to add well it was presented the committee or the board the budget not a board except to the they report and had a few questions i don't think there was really any are with r wiwi thehe proroctctio bebecause they're hitting i mean it's like a thousand yards and they're putting it right in the bull's eye and i'm just amazed at how accurate they are and how easy and helpful it is for us to then use that information as we go forward so i would like to commend him for that greg thank you sir any other questions on this portion here last year some information about kind of just projections on on what we're expecting i wondered if you had any new update before we go to round t and thisiss the next item to do the study session and then i'll be brought back for a first and second reading aaron nordmann is going to be during the presentation and nicole stair is also here  evening okay good evening as holly mentioned tonight we're going to talk about our tax exemption review and some other administrative changes so first i'd like to take a few moments to establish the framework for tonight's discscsionon and our work as we evaluate some of the revenue opportunities in august of two thousand and twenty we met to discuss some areas where the city could potentially simplify taxation for businesses and also generate some additional revenue we established some white papers and we circulated those to you at that point in time and the purpose of those white papers was to provide some additional details and some background as taxation can be quite complex i hope you recognize that my staff has attempted to present everything in an unbiased format and i just wanted to reiterate the fact that we are trying to remain as neutral as possible so if i use the word proposed tonight it's only in the fact that i'm bringing this to you for your evaluation so the first item on the list i have marked as complete has that green checkmark with it that was the adoption of our revised lakewood municipal code and it was adopted unanimous unanimously in december it went into effect january th and so now we are kicking off our communication plan so the first sort of business is to get muni code to update our code or they're sorry their web site to reflect the changes in our code and i don't believe that has occurred yet bu we are keeping a watchful eye on that because once that occurs then we're going to want to put some language out on our web site to notify our taxpayers that the code has been updated aaron yes select it i'm sorry there you go perfect thank you ok so there's the green checkmark so the first step will be for muni code to update the website then we'll put notification on our web site for taxpayers to see that there are some updates we will also send out a blast e mail to our tax payers to notify them of the change we have taxpayer compliance guides that provide additional information and background on our interpretation of the code and so we are in the process of updating all of those those are posted online and we're also going to be updating our workshops so our our new content will be represented there in the works the last piece of the communication plan at this point in time is for us to send a letter to any of the businesses that we believe could be operating here in lakewood that would have economic  functioning as a marketplace facilitator so think of those as your online retailers or yourlalatfmsms that's helped failitate a sale so in many cases fo example amazon facilitates the sale for a smaller retailer so they would now be required to collect our tax so we've created the letter for that we've identified those taxpayers and that letter should be going out shortly so that completes the section for the checkmark and those are the items that have been done to date so tonight we're going to focus heavily on this removal or modification of certain tax exemptions and we're also going to discuss  administrative items and you might want to just put it on presentation oh my goodness i did t no worries were we're apparently i'm not very and technology it's still not showing it in presentation mode no not yet let me switch screens that i have haven't on them now no oh my gosh i was having the same problem the other day it ok i just had to close out an go back in ok so that's our intent tonight this is an opportunity for discussion with each of you and it's an opportunity for us to provide any clarification that you need prior to the first and second reading these remaining items on the list we will address at the end of our presentation and those are all items that have a large component where they need a citizen vote and so the action that will be required t they're requested i should say is for each of you city council members to identify which items you might want to consider for the november twenty twenty one ballot so there are three parts to tonight's presentation and there will be an opportunity for discussion after each one of those the first element is the removal or modification of certain tax exemptions so i've listed those out for you here or there five of them that we evaluated it was medical supplieie ofofraractioione electric vehicles cigarets non essentials which are related to carry out food and drink and then the pass through exemption from exempt entities t contractors and we'll go into each one of those in greater detail the first one was the medical supplies we have found out that this is currently under review by the states so we are proposing that we put this one on hold we would like to see what changes they make to their language so that we can be nsnsisntnt where possible  a hearing for that was supposed to occur on january th but i don't have any other dates in the future ok the next item is electric vehicles and so the change that we could make here is to remove the exemption on the sale of the electric powered automotive vehicles this would be the initial sale as well as future sales it would include batteries and other accessories e r reann f for this is that it would simplify the taxation for businesses increased compliance and broaden the tax base and you should have a white paper on this in your pack so as a point of our i should start out by saying we believe that the state of colorado originally had an exemption in their code and we believe that's why lakewood chose to adopt that exemption and that will give you a feel for how many dollars we're talking about here there was a great amount of discussion at the budget not a board meeting on this topic so my team has gone back and done some more research and we're going to provide that to you here tonight so as i mentioned the states we we think that they originally had an exmption for electric vehicics bubut's s longer in their code today we have discovered that there is a colorado electric  vehicle plan twenty twenty this is for the state to transition all of colorado's transportation system to zero emission vehicles so for light duty vehicles this would put them into the category of electric vehicles and for medium or heavy duty vehicles this would put them into the category of zero emissions so we want to put this inn y yr mi t to let you know that colorado is moving toward plan of having more electric vehicles present on the road another announcement that has come out since we met with the budget not a board meeting is that general motors stated late last week that they plan to only sell zero emission cars or trucks by the year two thousand and thirty five we pulled other municipalities and discovered that none of the ones that responded had an exemption for electric vehicles  thoho that responded we received something from aurora colorado springs golden parker centennial westminster denver lafayette in boulder so we wanted to give you all of this background information for your discussion on electric vehicles obviously sustainability is something that's near and dear to our hearts but we also don't want to miss out on a taxation opportunity that could be further  it could have a further impact for us later down the road item on the list is related to cigarets in the change that we could make here is to remove an exemption on the sale of cigarets this simplifies the taxation for businesses again it increases compliance and it broadens the tax base we have discovered that a number of our other municipalities have chosen to remove their exemptions and we've listed those for you here we think the revenue impact is apapoximimelyy four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year so along with the exemption of sales tax there are some other things that you you could consider doing one is a special sales tax and there are two prongs to that you could chose choose to do a special sales tax on the sale of cigarets only or you could broaden that to include all tobacco products so as you're aware now we have electronic smoking devices vaping pens which involve refills  cartridges so you could expxpd thth spepeal sales tax to include those items for the second item the second bullet point here i have changed the wording slightly versus what you had in your original  packets that's because we're continuing to work with the city clerk's office get information about our current licensing practice and i know bruce is able to speak to that a little bit but our recommendation here is that we could expand our current licensing  to cover all tobacco retailers whether it's cigaret or non cigarets and it captures m my o othosos other items the paraphernalia and the smoking devices the last two items on this list i have crossed out because as i mentioned we found out the city clerk's office already has a licensing process in place so i don't now that number three is as relevant and for number four there have been some changes over the years related to minimum ages so in december of twenty nineteen there was some federal legislation to raise that mininim but we've also seen some changes closer to home so we've seen denver make some changes in their code to change their ordinance or start to change their minimum age that occurred on october twenty nineteen licensing edgewater have some language in their codes regarding minimum ages and licensing and then the state has also made some changes with a tobacco twenty one law so i've just put a strike through on those items as they are likely not relevant to this discussion any longer related to nn essentials for carry out food and drinks the change here would be to amend the exemptions to only apply to essential articles or containers so think about that as the packaging that goes around your hamburger that is essential but extra thngs such as napkins or ketchup packets those would not be considered essential and those would be taxable items for the retailer so again t ts w wldld splplif taxation for the businesses because we would be aligning with the state of colorado that would help businesses to be more compliant with us and it would broaden our tax base the revenue impact on that is relatively minimal but again we're striving for simplification and aligning with other jurisdictions  this last item the pass through exemption to contractors so this would just eliminate a section of our language which allows contractors to use an exemption from  entity this would just broaden our tax base we have found that most other municipalities do not offer this past through exemption and this could be worth two hundred and sixty thousand dollars per year so at this point i'd like to turn it back to the mayor so he could facilitate some discussion on the exemptions all right thank you very much so i'm going to go to chairman bieda and he can kind of summarize some of the different conversations and as you can imagine not everybody is going to agree on these different things so chairman to go at well i'm going to be speaking from memory here so if i leave anything out i'm sure i know consensus on any of these exemptions we went over pretty briefly i know that the cigaret tax one was one that was was definitely not consensus the  electric car exemption i think was also not a consensus there was some disagreement on that the medical the medical exemption was also past through as well with some of the citizen members yes s yes that was somewhat controversial as well are there any questions and certainly i if i might summarize a little bit more you know when you're looking at tobacco taxes you know can those be regressive and what does that look like certainly when you look the taxation on on  electric vehicles sure we have sustainability goals state of colorado has done away with that if they had that but also all all cars driving on our roads right so everybody is utilizing our adss whether you're electric or not  and you know you did hear something that was important it's not necessarily just about revenue but simplification and that's something that we've tried to do you know as home rule communities we appreciate our ability but if you've ever run a business it can certainly be challenging when you're operating a business in different cities and everybody has different rules so keep that in mind also miss johnson your hand is thank you i apologize that i didn't this sooner do we have any idea regarding the percentage of the population who smokes on it was my understanding that people that that was dropping and i just wondered if we had any idea how many how many smoke a number of how many smoke but from the data it does look like there is a continuous decrease of cigaret medical supplies caused me a little bit ofa problem because although i know it's it's the hardware that practitioners  school as hard as we can on name people or we're not going to cross people out of the market you've shown that maybe we can make it a little harder for that seventeen or eighteen sort of thing and the pass through to contractors not i am surprised that we're the only city i believe in the metro area that  that's correct we've identified the cities that do not have an exemption i don't know of any that do maybe nichols does and she can speak right right we may as well be in the majority on that  anticipating we may get some some of that yeah i'm i'm i'm a little concerned about this the medical you know we're doing away with medical exemption i'll tell you why to me medical supplies are are kind of heart essential i mean if if we don't tax food bececse youounoww iss essential to the living i'm not sure how we can justify supplies and then the pile on tax on top of it i don't know it just it just seems like as a public policy that's not something that i really relish the idea mia couple comments and a couple of questions with the medical you know i i certainly would want to understand more about the potential impacts of doing this if we were going to move forward but it sounds like we might be holding on this one for now just to see what the state does but i just want to voice i agree with you know just taking a really hard look at that one decision so i wold just love to know how much that could potentially help us achieve our goals but i do i certainly appreciate the economic sustainability component of this conversation  i think that it's definitely worthwhile to to have a conversation about cigarets and so you know no no real comment there and then the last thing is about the carry out food i just want to understand the timing of when the state did this the reason i'm asking is i would i would be worried about  making changes to one of our hardest hit industries right now and so if that if the if they're already in the process of updating i don't necessarily want to go back in and then impose another change right now just because the restaurant industry is one of the hardest hit ones so do you have any information about the timing litany of our metro neighbors including boulder that are done away with that exemption number three tobacco move that forward i share the same concerns as dana councilor good win does about the restaurant stuff realizes it doesn't seem to have to you but this is not the time to be makiki t the l lives more difficult whether that's learning a new tax code i guess i could be if it's about simple vacation and it's not really a cost issue more of simplifying making their life easier then i guess i could discuss that but i agree with counsel one i don't want to do anything that makes their lives more difficult and number five i would that there's a consensus we want out we want to get to that or if we want to move everything forward get it more information and then we'll certainly have a up or down vote with more input from the community going forward as well  johnson thank you i guess i didn't want to appreciate that we were all just going to go down the list and kind of have a little bit of input hi i'm i'm sure that you understand that under medical supplies i do not that i've got it's an interesting language here it's saying which items you're subject to tax because the same material can be taxable or exempt depending on how the material is used and then it says these items include bandages braces bandaids sutures gauze and i guess to be honest with you from my perspective sutures or sutures is his cause bandaids your bandaids i'm not sure how she would use sutures i just think that is not the right direction to go as far as the electorate cars i they use the highways they need to share in that expense hence fault and i'm just curious the hook up station or the charging station there at the city it had been free of charge i don't know if f stiti i is folks that drive electric cars there they've certainly been incentiv d and it's time now that maybe they step up as well the cigarets that's an interesting one for me isn't there going to be a challenge regarding the apportion t at the state level on that i don't know that that's a settled question i'd like to know more about that n e essential carry outs as far as restaurants not the time and it looks like there could potentially be thirteen thousand it just doesn't seem like the effort is worth the amount of money that we will get on that and actually with the and maybe if somebody feels comfortable framing that a little bit more not everybody on fixed amount on each cigaret so yes before it's sold to the retailer and the colorado department of revenue collects those taxes it's eighty four cents per pack or what is it three point two cents per cigaret so they collect tht and that's the stamp that goes onto the cigarets we received twenty seven percent revenue is distributed from the state to the cities on that piece of that now the state still tax while they remove their exemption service cigarets are taxed at two point nine percent state tax that the city receives and that is the piece that we may lose there is currently a debate between the state and a few cities on if they should receive that amount or so thank you for the helpful and then i think what was also mentioned at the budget audit meeting was that the net gain from communities that do this could still be more than the apportion seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars roughly if we calculate it based on twenty nineteen numbers and then as ms johnson said that those numbers are decreasing but then we estimate the apportionment to three hundred meeting i'm not really sure this is the vehicle for that sort thing especially since it was not an agenda but roughly my the any commercial property that stands vacant for longer than six months  having folks just sit on properties does awful things to our real estate market long cold facts it relly runs price there are places on sher some spaces contribute heavily to our crime rate and all of these boarded up buildings have an effect on our community image and i think it would be an aide and keeping in the read development of our city and it would discourage land property owners especially absentee property owners to  get on the ball and neither fix up their properties and reopen them or sell them are find other uses for it but  certainly would not want to see it applied to residents people in very leave their homes for a lengthy period of time for various reasons everything from cruising the world on a big luxury liner to helping mom and dad get through a very tough year so homeowners i think should be exempt but i do and action on our part so thank you for that let's move that let's stay focused on this i know there or other questions frfr c couilil autut oerer potential revenue sources that weren't discussed yet so let's get some sort of conclusion on this group here and then we can come back and see if council wants more information or wants to see if other committees have done that or if that's what they want to do as well as potential other right anything else on this section miss nordmann you're looking for direction on all these that's correct so we would like to know what to take to first reading much is coming up in a few weeks so if there are items that you definitely don't o one on there we can remove those ok so let's try to get some consensus and essentially the medical we're going to remove wait for the state so i'm going off my memory of the other ones electric cars seems like it could be split and i know we had two members on budget audit that remember if they weighed in chairman bieda or not on this so do we want to have the electric cars go forward for more discussion and an opportunity to to get a better ununrstataining i'm seeing a lot of nods yes yes i think i think that was not well not a consensus but there was some is that correct and so it really hasn't deter the purchase of being we're selling these these rocky cars like crazy here in lakewood and they're collecting tax already mistakenly so there was a question about i wonder how it really would affect sales well we are we already know it's not affecting sales i do think we need to bring that forward to have a more detailed so we're seeing a lot of consensus on moving that one forward the restaurant i've heard mixed on the restaurant it's a smll amount but i certainly don't mind it going forward bt i need to get a consensus remainder i definitely want to move them forward to have a more thorough cleaning discussion maybe we do it in the inverse is there anything that the folks on the rest of the list that you do not want to see go forward a a larger conversation speak now or forever hold your peace ok so we will then move everything forward for more conversation for a second reading community thank you for that and certainly we can reach out to our our different folks whether it be the chamber or the restaurant association i know that they are never shy as our our medical professionals to weigh in on these sorts of things celia i just wanted to remind everybody that i think we just have one comment on this particular section lakewood speaks i just wanted to bring that forth thank you for mentioning that again we will have public input hang on just a second i don't want to do what i did before how about now is that in presentation yes ma'am ok great so we as i mentioned city council approved our revised municipal code in december an tttimimee'e've takn the opportunity to continue to review that language and identify some other opportunities where we might need to make some administrative changes or perhaps simplify even further and so i wanted to present those to you tonight the first one is regarding the license fee approved so in our old code it merely stated a rates it never specified who was approving the licensing fee anansohehenhehe language was revised it was put in there that city council would be the ones reviewing that fee and so one opportunity that we would have to streamline this process is to assign tht duty to holly as our cfo she's going to have the most knowledge about our licensing process and our administrative costs this fee is relatively minimal and it's been fifteen dollars for quite some time and as i said she's close to the operational costs if we were to make changes in one way that you could limit it to o atatehahat uuouould only want it to be revised once a year for example but this is an opportunity for us to further streamline so that's the licensing fee approved the second component is related to license renewals so we've continued to do some operational benchmarks with other municipalities to see what they do and the one thing that we have businesses that we think are still in operation to see if they owe us a tax return or we have bad information whether it's bad email addresses or contact information and so by having  it would help ensure that we have good current information for each of our businesses and as one of my business partners for another municipality said it's kind of like having bloat you know we can say we h he ten thousand licensed businesses but perhaps that's not the case and we are wasting a lot of energy trying to track down the right people or the right address to get information to them so that's the license renewal piece the next recommendation is to update chapter three point zero two which is the registration of motor vehicle we just want to align this with the language that we put into chapter three point one that was the chapter that you approved in december we just want to make sure we'e coconstetent so just minor changes chapter three three is our accommodations tax and again we won't want to align that with the language that we had in chapter three point  this strengthens in our language and it clarifies that those online travel companies that book blocks of rooms for example that taxation would apply to them it also and with that i'd like to turn it back to the mayor for some discussion on those administrative changes thank you and just to summarize german bieda correct me if i'm wrong the only issues with this one had to do with the administrative approval and there was some concern about whether councils should still approve or not chairman vito was there anything else no i think everything else was i think you're right mayor was a really non controversial i didn't have any it some discussion on the license fee so that's something we can we can deal with i guess if we move forward are there any questions from  johnson your hand is up put it up late in the game i would be uncomfortable with council relinquishing authority at this point although i can understand it would make sale now no oh my goodness well this is our last slide ok what is wrong with it ok we're gonna roll with that so the we had identified some opportunity that would require a citizen vote and so i wanted to bring those on these items and so that's why it's of utmost importance so the five items that we had identified was an additional tax on cigarets or like products so that would be a special tax we had identified taxation of specific services and examples of that could be all seseicesesr r itououldee specific to a handful of services software as a service for example or landscaping services the third item is legalization of specific business activities as you know mayor recreational marijuana was approved with the november twenty twenty ballot but there were a couple of other items on that list related to delivery of marijuana or special taxes on marijuana the adoption of an occupational privilege tax was t t f frtrth item and then the fifth one was modification of the tabor base and the base is what is used to calculate the refund on an annual basis so that's all i had for those items and again i'd like to turn it over for discussion all right so let's go ahead and go through these mister chair and again i was notified yes there is somebody we haven't gone to public input yet weweilll c ctain  i i do't know that there was a consensus i don't i would like this each one of them briefly and i don't want to say i'm speaking necessarily for the committee i'm speaking in this case i'm on just as one person to do that now or do you want to wait mister mayor no we certainly can and also just for clarification on the process if any of these did go forward we would still have a further study session with more information is that accurate ok so so these would not be something that would go right into any sort of ordinance yet but this would give the staff the direction just to continue bringing more information and we're assuming you would not want to take all of this to the voter and november so we'd like to get some direction on which ones you would like to consider for november vs exploring the i would just say it again not as being for the tire but it's not a board but just as one counselor here i would not be inclined to take any of these forward and let me just say this as a general without going into each one specifically because each one has their own issues and problems well let you just say this we know that we are looking at some some taxes substantial taxes coming down the pike from washington we  are not sure what they're going to look like how much they're going to be but we know they're going be substantial that seems to be a given and it's unfortunate in my mind it's unfortunate that the local government ends like  across this country has to take the back seat and defer whatever washington does to decide well we're going to do in terms of our taxing ability and a revenue enhancement specifics we have to sort of take a backseat i don't see them doing that with us they're not considering i herer needs and certainly every municipality in this country just about has suffered a lot of setbacks because of over ninety and so we're all looking for ways of trying to fill that gap yes we're going to be trying to do that in an environment where our where our constituents our businesses of all are all going to be hit hard with some substantial tax increases i think we like it or not i don't like it like it or not that's the environment that we're we're in right now and going to be for the next year and that's why i am thinking is just as an overall approach i don't think we want to take anything to the payers right now in terms of trying to increase their thank you sirs and since you set the tempo i'll just speak my piece this is just to get more information for me cigarets and i don't support the specific seseicicesegegalatatio of businesses yes and also a potential marijuana tax is something i would certainly like to learn more about and then no occupation privilege tax certainly anybody that's done business in denver knows the challenge that is and then the modification of the taxpayer's i think there was some support on that also from our committee members and maybe i overlooked it end up in the packet saw apologize if i did but are there any estimated revenue dollars associated you certainly if you're going to take something to the voters in my mind it would need to be meaningful and it would need to make sense and not cause undue harm it was there estimated revenues associated with each of these line items so that we can kind of cut contrast that if you look within your white papers there are a few of these elements that do you have estimates associated with them but there are also many of that are tbd at this point in time for example if you do a special tax r reet would be d denendent upon theaxax rate that was chosen  and then there are just others where we just have to get some more information great well as far as i do you know certainly on the specific services i mean the service economy that certainly is a concern not really interested in a lot with the occupational privilege tax unless there can be some compelling arguments certainly with the legalization i think we want to i think a reordering with the mayor said want to look at that certainly would want to understand the impact on that certainly i think that community education goes a long way in helping us not only make the decisions we need to make but then being able to articulate the community why those decisions were being made so those  information so  ch sorry the adoption of the occupational privilege tax i really do not want to move forward with that if you've ever worked in an environment where that's been collected it causes just a lot of really angst among employees and it seems like a little amount but it's across the board so somebody who's making twelve dollars an hour pays the same amount as somebody who makes one hundred thirty thousand a year  so that when i don't want to see move forward and i'm a little leery on the tatatnn of specific services but the rest of it i'm more than happy to get some information on thank you thank you miss johnson and then mister bieda your hand is  good thank you on taxing services i would not be supportive of that i don't think it's a healthy policy public wise to be taxing labor also it sounds like many of us understand the difficulty with the head tax that's what i'm calling it the marijuana industry did run on a platform that would give us our taxes are definitely going to be going up at the federal level our property taxes have gone up although i thought there would have been more i'm assuming that will come down the pike you're pretty close and we really don't know what's going to happen at the state level but we can be guaranteed at the federal level it's going to happen people are struggling and to be adding to their tax burden right now bieda thank you mayor so i'm i'm open to learning more are exploring the cigarets i i doanant make a case for continuing to look at only the soft where as a service not any of the other services not any of the businesses that we're talking about not the the landscaping but just only the software as a service component and the reason why and and my understanding could be wrong so please correct me if if i state anything wrong here but i believe that this these types of products used to be taxed because they were you know a disk or some kind of physical item that you went to the store and bought but now  people are buying them online and so is that right or you know they're downloading things yeah thank you and so this is something that previously was tax and now it's not it's simply because of  you know a technological advance i gueue i think so i think it's worth keeping this one on the table the other reason i think it's worth that is because a more substantial one and it's not going to i don't believe and i would be intetestededo len n th b but i don't believe that that one is going to be impacting our small local businesses this is in the same way it seems like more of a big you know big operations that are that are doing that could be run on that piece but i think that that one is worth learning more about i don't support necessar moving any of the other services forward marijuana certainly happy continue to lelen n mo a abo t tha i also don't support the occupational privilege tax i am i do think we should continue the table conversation and to counselor frank's point that could come with a heavy maybe we can continue this conversation after this piece but i just really want to understand why our council is hoping to accomplish through these conversations because we've talked about we certainly it because w wer c conrnrned about falling revenues and then we've also talked a lot about big picture items that we would like to you know things that our community would like to see including transportation funding infrastructure funding those kinds of things tht in frankly none of these items are going to get us there so i just want to understand we'll continue this kind of pick these off and then we can come back in we still have mister cable's comments as well as i think folks want to talk about not about payroll processing management software i mean i use a lot of this stuff in my business every one ofthose things was tax well use me as an example but i can imagine that there are there are businesses that have too much of that i guess i just wanted to make an observation and ask a question about sort of how these options were selected i mean we're sort of talking about a syntax with syntax but the other observation i would make i a lot of these options to me seem sort of attacks on those who are not so well to do so what about concentrating on taxing the wealthy more in some way and i don't see how this is a concentration on that so that was just an observation i wanted to make thank you mister bieda real quick i wanted to correct the record i misstated something about the budget not in committee there was a consensus anyny ra folks championing a occupation tax so is that fair to say that one will be off the table ok correct me if i'm wrong i do not see any support there ok ok so we're going to continue that conversation forgive me i'm trying to look a few different screens here specific business d for m s word and they could just keep it as long as it worked on their computer and they paid for it one time the software as a service is different and so oftentimes it's a yearly fee and so you know it just it can be over time cost prohibitive based on how they are licensing those those services so it's different like i said i remember buying software products and using it for like eight years which you know obviously paid the tax one time so i think that that certainly needs to be factored in i'm ok maybe discussing it in a very limited sense but not certainly at this point not certain that it's the right move thank you for that so is there still consensus on going forward to learn more or what what's the purview i'm not going i'm not sensing that there is so we're going to take that off the plate for now and those so just to summarize what i heard is that we would continue exploration a number one which was a special tax on cigarets like products number three in terms of legalization of specific business activities the specific interest there was on marijuana which could be a special tax or delivery as part of that as well and number five was tabor yes into the point  made i think the housing commission we'll be moving forward with something and at that time if council decides to do something with  drawing a blank on the vacation rentals short term rentals then i think that could be part of that discussion then to go forward there so we'll we'll just take that going forward all right so now going back there was a couple questions one you heard explained by mister abell about kind of a vacant seat tax and this would be really direction from council to get rere iorormaonon on these sorts of things and then miscue when i know that you had mentioned in that truly take just to understand when you're looking at fifty one hundred one hundred and fifty million dollars how do you do those sorts of things consensus from council on trying to learn more about a program like that mister skilling your hand is is up to respond to this and mister abel your hands up is up to respond to this yeah i was just going reiterate that this was and twenty priority that we reaffirm as part of the long term funding strategies and this should be something that we are still supportive of learning more mister abel you reaffirm your support for your proposal well i do this is a new concept that hasn't been instituted in many places i think it's worth our discussion i'd like to learn more about it and frankly our if it has had the desired feedback one thing i don't want to do is enact a law legislation that is a net zero product so i would like to discuss it a little more yes wanted to kind of learn more about copd and especially in relation to some of our you know twenty twenty and twenty twenty one goals in transportation you know we talked about identifying gaps in in sidewalks and pads and that kind of thing and you know i would just love to understand what what thank you for that i was gonna bring that up and you know one of the things we did take off the table early on was sales tax inineaease soso i want to be just crystal clear for the community that was taken off but there is a law about bonded and how does that work and maybe just a primer for this council to understand because when you are looking at big issues we're talking fifty million one hundred million that is where these things come into play and so if there's consensus to just learn more about municipal bonding how that can work what that would look like in the city of lakewood ththatouould g go aiain in line with this twenty twenty twenty twenty input now and so this community's opportunity to weigh in on everything that we just discussed and certainly are welcome to ask any questions that you might want answered just like you are a council member so with that mister room if there's anybody in the queue and it's again it's our three minute time limit and i will kick the time off in can tell you when you have thirty seconds left yes we have one caller last four zero one eight four okay cocor r good evening you are in the meeting furlough days an salary reductions and besides seasonal at city of lakewood i don't know that furloughs or salary reductions have been looked  now i'm going to move on to and we were dealing with ranged between two hundred fifty million to two hundred and fifty million dollar shortfall and we took a substantial chunk ofofhat t t wi s stadd furlough days and salary reductions salary reductions these work for city employees i mean for our pd employees about earning above a certain dollar amount and the furlough days really didn't impact operations negatively but it certainly helped us to close that gap now moving on to some of the other items that have been discussed this evening i'm going to go to one to pass through exemptions while non profits  you may be talking about churches and charitable it also means that you're going to now be charging sales tax to other government agencies if you go that route keep that in mind please because it's almost like a double taxation for the taxpayer and then i'm going to speak to the tobacco issue and i don't know if any city council member shohod smomo o use tobacco as an adult with illegal activity but a huge huge tax increase went through january st and i'm not talking a small amount of money i'm talking very large amount of money there are minimums there is a lawsuit that was brought up part of it has to do with a price fixing seconds ok smokers are the minority and it is very easy for them to be an easy target and you trying to tax them more it's double taxation if you were  to eliminate the sales tax exemption so how is that fair for adult smokers that they're going to be facing double taxation to fund the city general fund smokers now pay more to schools mo to housing because  january one tax increase how is that not a terribly regressive policy we are talking about adult smokers i would hope that you would consider it and i'm glad to hear sales taxes off the nine good evening if you give us your name and address or name and ward we'll get your three minutes started well i just signed on my name because i got a medical problem but i guarantee  say i here i order medical supplies from amazon on b bauseseheheyavave nt stocked locally in lakewood and i've got a bill in front of me here for about two hundred dollars the sales tax is for eight percent because i am and amazon doesn't no that is medical supplies so i'm paying get so i just want to bring it the attention i'm paying thirty two dollars a month for tax on medical supplies sue there anybody else in the queue who has not had an opportunity to speak no one else ok so i just want to comment on color the gentleman that just calald ininnn m medalal supplies there might be some confusion there so if you'd like to email us we can try to get that figured out because that could be some just regular sales tax so if you just send a email i'm a paul  certainly find us at lakewood dot org we can try to figure that out for you that sounds a little bit different for me so we appreciate that and mismanaged certainly we know that we'll hear from you going for ananapprpriateteouour iutut tonight and just know that most not most all of us will come back for certainly much more public conversation going forward so we appreciate that and we know that there are certain concerns on all the issues raised  and i think even amongst this council this is an opportunity for us all to learn more so thank you very much all right so good work council a lot of great information great questions and i'd like to a ao ththk o o citizen representatives who are on the budget audit committee didn't come out tonight but they certainly earned their pay on  wednesday night last week so any other follow ups to the presentation or any more clear great thank you again and we look forward to hearing from you in the future nicely done so council moving on we're going to go to reports committee report so if you are a m mberr of  would like to give an update on any of the information that's going on please raise your hand miss johnson go ahead just wanted to give an update on the housing policy commission on the work product that we've been working on for some time and remotely off work for two thousand and twenty with short term rentals i met with staff last week   to discuss kind of the meeting minutes and the elicit station form that we'd filled out after that meeting i determined that it probably made good sense for us to reconvene the housing policy commission we have just a few open items or three open items that we want to kind of maybe discuss more as a commission and so i have reached out to all the c commissioners to ask them for their availability for the last two weeks in february so those of you that haven't yet gotten that to robert and myself please do so so we will have a hpc meeting on short term rentals the last two weeks of february some time then we're going to give staff a bunch of time to prepare for a council study session the policy commission is made up of six members that includes one from each ward plus the mayor and so that study session on april th will be the opportunity to bringhehe other five councilors up to speed on all of the topics that we discussed certainly elicit any additional questions or concerns and then we would be at that point wanting to provide direction for staff on some type of an ordinance and when i say some type of an ordinance we do need to either move forward with a some policies around short term rentals to ensure that our code enforcement has good things on the books that are enforceable whatever that looks like from council so that's just a long winded update but it's yes i just wanted to report on my request for council action to form a committee on police policy and accountability still have not it has not been put on the agenda and your general business and i'm hoping that will happen we have to support our police force who are going to  session nights we just moved to reports only on committees and not reports for wards we did both for because i know on at least one night councilor bieda was trying to report any other committee reports all right so i will just mention jusus brflfly mss springsteen the council did discuss your proposals out retreat on saturday and that proposal was not moved forward so that was where happened with that going forward as far as reports i had mentioned at a previous meeting that this is something that we have been engaged in years ago and was an opportunity which we kind of started to lose for council to talk about the different committees that they serve on and inform the mmmmuny y we do counsel reports at regular meetings and committee reports  study sessions mr beattie your hand mayor i just wanted to clarify something on councilor springsteen's comment we we actually did the planning retreat address specifically the issue that she talked about which is the liability the legislature does with that entire senate bill to seventeen as we understand they're going to go back and do some changes to it and then after they get done working their magic i think we decided within we would take a look a forward ok so i have some quick reports thth cliliti to end hunger in lakewood is working on a web site and it's going to be lakewood food dot or so it's not up  yet this is gonna be a great resource for the community to engage in not only to find where food banks are or resources but also to solicit volunteers for the committee that's something if you remember when miss barnes gave the right now we're gearing up to deal with transportation legislation you may have seen in some of the latest reports that there's a coalition working on some different metrics and one of them has to do with multi modal which for communities in the metro area is an important piece of art of our stuff and some of that's been kind of thrown out and so there'll be some lively conversations going forward with the metro area as well as the whole entire stata a as t to how we deal with that also maybe reexamining the highway users trust fund and those allocations and how they do the percentages on those nothing to report from the mile high flood district and  it's kind of wrapping up some of their information from last year and they actually had a pretty productive year as far as job retention and attraction and i'll be happy to get you some more information if you'd like please know as to what they have done thus far important to note that there's's gogog g toe e so d dia changes that the timing closed today for feedback the governor did reach out to all of the council members i think and county commissioners for a quick meeting on saturday to talk about those dial changes and that's going to change some thresholds which should hopefully open up our businesses more effectively but keep in mind please please please still do all that sh can to be safe and protect yourselves and your neighbors franks your hand is i didn't know i i a aonone was going to mention that we have three planning commission openings and that those deadlines for applicator sessions i believe is march st collette correct me if i'm wrong mister room but three that that's a quick turnaround so if you canhaharehohose on your platforms and your ward meetings there's a lot of different openings for different boards and commissions a lot on the planning commission so please if you'd like to get involved this is a great  opportunity and then in closing i just want to address something from the retreat and i'd like to think certainly think my colleagues for helping lead an important conversation on civility during our retreat while the significant work ahead of us the most important takeaway was that many of us believe we are o o t t rhtht path we certainly acknowledge that we must hold each other accountable that words matter more most importantly facts matter we're also committed to honoring each other's first amendment rights and exercising those same rights to call out statements that depart from acknowledged facts we also agree that it's our duty to uphold our existing code conduct and to adopt a code of ethics each of these steps is critical as we carry out the jobs the voters sent here to do so one piece i'd like to dresesa lililele bururth tonight has to do with our code of conduct and violation that took place on january th we are going to address that as a body at our next regular meeting under general business i will send you all out the code of conduct and we will address the allegations that were made by mister springsteen at the meeting on the th so that would be under general business and i'll get that santo all right is there anything else for the good