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Refers to the ballot at the November 3, 2015 coordinated election a question concerning the approval of an Amendatory Intergovernmental Agreement with Adams County governing the development and use of certain property at Denver International Airport. (BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT) Refers to the ballot at the November 3, 2015 coordinated election a question concerning the approval of an Amendatory Intergovernmental Agreement with Adams County governing the development and use of certain property at Denver International Airport. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on . The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting 6-9-15.

DenverCityCouncil_06222015_15-0402

I don't want to recount all the virtues of this historic move forward together with our brothers and sisters in in Adams County. But I do want to recognize and acknowledge and thank for being in the room. Two commissioners from Adams County, the esteemed chairs, Tedesco and Steve O'Driscoll, waved to the watching public all for people who are watching Channel eight this evening. So appreciate you guys being here and thanks for all your hard work on this. Thank you, Councilman Levitt. Councilwoman Shepherd. Thank you. I do have a few questions for the airport team. My first question is a part of this agreement involves a $10 million payment to Adams County. And I'm trying to clarify, what benefit does Denver receive in return for the $10 million? Mr. President, members of council, my name is Evan Dreier. I am Mayor Hancock's deputy chief of staff. Councilwoman Sheppard, your question is, what benefit does the city and the airport benefit from for the $10 million? There's there's a couple. I think the the first one is the opportunity to develop a broader array of commercial development at the airport. We're talking about an amendment to the intergovernmental agreement that was first entered into in 1988. This would be the first major development, first major amendment. And there is a price to that. And that price we negotiated with our friends in Adams County at $10 million. Secondly, the pace of development and the revenue that will be derived from that that we will be sharing will be slow in order to provide some compensation to Adams County. Initially, we agreed on an initial upfront payment of $10 million. Those would be the two primary benefits. Okay. So but as I understand, revenues are to be shared 50, 50 equally. So we're paying 10 million upfront in order to agree to split revenues. 5050. Correct. At what I'm understanding. Okay. I also want to clarify what the talking about the clear the clear zone language, if I understand correctly, we have the ability Denver does to lease land in the clear zones. But then I was reading a few paragraphs down where it sounds like there will be some mitigation payments made back to Adams County. It sounds like there's some other financial consideration that we might either pay or forego that I wasn't clear on in the development agreement. I'm going to ask David Broadwell to respond to that question. Thank you. David Broadwell, Assistant city attorney. The the provisions in the agreement regarding the clear zones basically would again relieve land use restrictions on that property, which is in Adams County. It's owned by Denver and by DIA, but it's in Adams County and currently subject to a fairly severe set of land use restrictions dating from 1988. One of the things the mandatory agreement will allow us to do is, and on a limited basis, identify development parcels in that area for future development going forward. Now the original agreement had the concept that since Denver was buying up a lot of this acreage, which was going to remain fallow in public ownership in Adams County in 1988, we were taking it off their tax rolls and as a consequence of taking it off their tax rolls, a part of the original deal was that there would be something like a payment in lieu of taxes, which they use the term mitigation payment to describe that in the original deal. And frankly, even though it's hundreds of acres, it's basically open range land that generates only like 70 or $80,000 a year in mitigation payments. The last time we checked last year. So a very small sum of money flows to Adams County from that. To the extent a small amount of commercial development will probably evolve and occur over the years under the New Deal, that some of that will actually be subject to what's called now possession of interest taxation, where the Adams County jurisdictions will actually see more of a tax flow off of that property if it develops more in the future. But the mitigation payment idea dates from 1888. There are a lot of terms and conditions in the original deal that are simply being left intact and aren't being changed by the New Deal. I'll be happy to answer more specific questions about where that concept came from and what it means. How many acres are we talking about? And I'm sorry, what was that second term? The possessor, interest, taxation. How many acres are we talking about? Out of the 1500. Well, the reference the reference to 1500 acres in the agreement, his land that we're going to have freed up in Denver County on the airport property itself, the 1500 acres has nothing to do with the clear zones. The New Deal will allow the Clear Zone acreage to be kind of open in terms of whether or not any of that property is made available by Denver and DIA in the future for commercial development. Again, if, when and if we do, it'll be leased. It'll be in Adams County and potentially within the boundaries of Aurora or Commerce City as well. And there have been there's been an evolution in the law since 1988 that says when a public entity like Denver leases land for commercial development, then the value of that leasehold is subject to property taxation under a possessor interest theory. The value of that possession interest and all of our concessionaires and lessees at DIA now are subject to this kind of taxation that that whole concept evolves since 1988. And we make reference to it in the mandatory agreement that any leasing out there in the clear zones in Adams County will be subject to that kind of taxation and they'll keep that tax revenue. The taxing entities in Adams County will benefit from that. One final point is that development on the on that acreage, although it's in Adams County, it's physically on property we owned. Therefore, the DIA enterprise, the aviation enterprise will benefit from the ground lease revenue. Even Dreier indicated earlier that the back to the $10 Million question that in paying that we project substantial economic benefit to Denver both in terms of the 50% of the tax revenue will be retaining, but also in terms of the ground lease revenue the DIA will enjoy 100% will be kept by the aviation enterprise and will not be shared. So the $10 million payment needs to be viewed in relation to both. Some taxes which will flow to Denver, 100% of the lease revenue will flow to Denver. Okay. And then I have some other questions that are more on the planning side. So I know there's been a lot of conceptual planning happening about what this will look like as it moves forward. Is that information going to become public before the November ballot vote? Is that going to come to council? Like to lend news to our land use committee or neighborhood and planning committee. Might be helpful if Kim Dae or comes to the podium. I mean, yes, we have been doing a lot of looking at what potential could be developed on the property. The truth is this agreement that is in front of you hits a little reset for us because all of the planning we were doing did not include the clear zones. So we're going to be going back over the next few months, relooking at it, because we now have a different landmass to look at. And we want to look at all of our planning efforts based on this concept of 1500 acres. So, no, you probably will not see a plan prior to November 11. Okay. So towards the end of the agreement, Article 11, it talks about Denver and the HCC forming a new regional entity to promote and market development opportunities on or around the new airport and assist in coordinating land use and infrastructure planning. It gives a date of 1231 2016 for that to be completed. My big question is this is we're talking about greenfield development, and that's a tremendous amount of new infrastructure in terms of both utilities as well as new roads. My big question is, who will pay for that infrastructure not only to build it, but also how it will be maintained? Because this is not. Right for an airport development. The airport enterprise will be responsible for paying for infrastructure. Off airport development, I think, is still something that we are hoping to have conversations with the Adams County and Adams County jurisdictions about this regional entity that you mentioned. Councilwoman Shepherd could be a vehicle to getting to regionally cooperative infrastructure, both the development of the planning for and the payment of. But it may not be there may be other options out there as well, but that entity could be a vehicle. Okay. And then my other. So one of our upcoming agenda items is about I-70. And certainly all of the growth in northeast Denver in the metro area has caused tremendous impact to I-70, which we're going to be discussing here pretty soon. Will part of this planning include a traffic impact study for I-70? For Pena Boulevard? Yes. I'm not sure about I-70. Okay. Those are my questions. Council President and I would like to pull it out for a vote. Sure. All right. Well, let's do that first. Councilwoman Ortega, when you make the motions for us tonight. I will. Will you please have four or two ordered published? Mr. President, I move that council bill 402 series of 2015 be ordered published. Has been moved in saying Councilman Shepard. Okay we go to the other council member station. And then if you could come. Back. Absolutely, we will do that. Councilman five zero. Thank you, Madam President. Mr. President, I know. That. You have been gone so long that in. Now that we have this up for a vote, I would perhaps like to even make an additional comment. The more than one I was going to to say I'm going to be supporting this agreement, I think it really is a fine agreement. I'm delighted to see the Adams County officials here. Thank you for coming. I remember back in the 1988 time period when even for your predecessors, this was a tough swallow. And it was really an excellent example of cooperation, very tightly drawn agreement that needed changes if the vision that we were all flying today were to come about . So this agreement, I believe, is essential. Now, Councilwoman Sheppard, the $10 million made me flinch at first to $10 million has that habit. But when I think about what Adams County is doing to come to the table now, I am willing to go that extra step because I know it's difficult to get these kind of agreements going . And I also remember the history. And given the history and since we have acknowledged individually the Adams County Commissioners, I want to acknowledge former Representative Pat Grant, who I also think had something to do historically with the original agreement. Thank you, Pat. Thank you to all of the Adams County officials, former and present for supporting this. And I hope council will also. Thank you, Councilwoman Fox, Councilwoman Ortega. I just want to ask David Broadwell a couple clarifying questions. I didn't hear the answer to Councilwoman Sheppard's question about the number of acres in the clear zone. And then I also want to clarify whether or not those the land in the clear zone is within the LDA noise contour and whether any residential can be built on that. So when you say land in the clear zone, you mean total number of clear zone acres or developer developable number of clears on acres? Probably developable is more important and accurate. Well, I'm going to defer Dan Paramus in the room and he may have some more precise acreage language, but it's a good it's a good time to pause and clarify that the clear zone areas are heavily regulated still under federal regulations that define what can and can't be there in terms of instruction. They're called clear zones for a reason. Right. So so we've identified very surgically some potential. And I'll I'll turn it over to Dan right now to talk about kind of in gross numbers, how much acreage that might be. Just to start answering your series of questions. Thanks, David. Council President and Council Members Dan Paramo with Dear Dan Real Estate in total Councilwoman. There's about 8000, a little over 8000 total acres in the clear zones. When we look at the actual developable acreage, we've focused just as we have on the airport land, on what's kind of immediately developable. And that generally looks to be about 500 to 800 acres. But over the long term, as we develop infrastructure. Additional acreage will become. Developable out of that 8000. Then will you just clarify from the maps that you all provided in the documents that we received, it looks like all of the clear zoned land is on the outside edges of the airport. You just clear? Correct. I believe on your packet, the clear zone was all in green on the perimeter of. Of the airport. Okay. Thank you, ma'am. I have no further questions. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. Councilwoman Shephard, come back to you. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. I am calling it out for a vote. There is a lot to like in the plan. Obviously, the economic development potential of this is huge, not just for Denver, but the whole region. And I mean, the revenue sharing between the counties is absolutely historic and precedent setting, setting. And, you know, it has so many wonderful implications in so many ways. I have not been privy to any of the negotiations. I also do not serve on the airport committee. I have tried to do my best due diligence on this and have been briefed a couple of times by the consultants on the plans. But. And I mean, this is huge. What we're talking about has huge implications for the city, for the region, for what development looks like for the whole northeast area. I have a lot of questions about, you know, where will the workers that are going to be working at this be housed? And I have huge questions about the impacts to our transportation infrastructure, not just to the things that are going to be built on airport property as a result of this. But for the surrounding transportation infrastructure, I have a lot of questions about, you know, what type of public transportation will be here, how it will be augmenting all of this. And I feel for my and this is my comments are in no way meant to disparage all of the hard work of everyone that's been involved in this Adams County team. You know, the airport folks, the consultant team, everyone else. I want to feel more comfortable about what I'm actually referring because because the implications go far, far, far beyond just the financial agreement between the two counties. I want to understand the long term land use and transportation issues surrounding this. I just can't I don't feel comfortable voting to refer it to the ballot tonight, so I will be abstaining. Thank you, Councilwoman Sheppard. Councilman Brown. Thank you, Mr. President. This indeed has been a long time coming. And I really wonder if our guest in the chamber this evening, the two county commissioners from Adams County, ever thought they would be sitting in this chamber and listening to this debate? And by the way, I think our benches are probably harder than yours. I am pleased to support this tonight, and I want to thank the two teams. On both sides that were involved in the give and take to make this possible. And I hope my colleagues would join me in supporting this this evening. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Brown. Councilwoman, can each. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to wait to chime in because I wanted to kind of understand and hear my colleague, Councilwoman Shepherd's, concerns a little better before deciding whether I needed to to speak. I will be supporting the agreement tonight. And it's not because I don't share some of the same questions that Councilwoman Sheppard does. I do think that a few things help me feel a little more comfortable, though, and not to change her mind because I respect her, her differing opinion. But we have a train that is going to the airport with two major stops. One is already planned and that one has the potential for significant residential. And so whether we do or don't approve this particular agreement, development is already headed into that corridor. So the question really isn't, is development going to continue to grow in the far northeast corridor toward the airport? The question is whether the airport land is in play for that or not. And, you know, we know that most all of this land is not really for residential. And so for me, the potential here is as a major city that's losing land along the I-70, in the 25 corridors and in some respects along the river as well for industrial and manufacturing purposes. Those areas, generally speaking, are slowly and incrementally being re zoned from industrial manufacturing type uses to residential. So if I, as a major city, want us to have a piece of that potential sector in the future, and I want us to be able to have some balance right the tax base that we need. Residents are more expensive to serve, right? They need libraries and they need all kinds of schools and services. And businesses are an important piece of the tax base to support that kind of residential service space. So if I see the trends happening, which I see happening then and I and I believe in having middle class working jobs in the city and county of Denver and not I mean, I love that our our region is interconnected. And I know many of our residents work in Commerce City and other areas in the region, but I want some of those kinds of jobs in Denver, too. I think it is worth the leap now to say that that's possible. I share your concern about the transportation network to get them there and all those pieces. But the thing that I have is the knowledge that this body, whether I'm on it or not, over the next 30 years that this all unfolds, will have a say over each of those leases. Because when we lease land and I just look at the city attorney, even if it doesn't, we have a $500,000 threshold for contracts. But we we vote on every lease regardless of the dollar value. Is that correct? The city attorney is nodding. For those of you who do not have video, he's nodding yes. But that is the way that I think this body stays very active in ensuring. And this is where. So how do we know that Adams County will continue to participate in a conversation about transportation? Well, they have a vested interest now in that development happening. So if we see a lease coming to this body that has a significant, you know, job base and we don't feel like there's local transit to get folks from the the rail station to there or there's not adequate roads. We can say we want to see a conversation about that infrastructure and Adams County will have a vested interest in participating because they won't see the revenue from that conversation unless they're part of the transportation conversation. So so I realize that what we're doing is we're making planning possible. We're not actually planning. I just want to make really clear, I'm not agreeing to development at the airport. I'm not planning development at the airport. What I'm saying is it's possible. And I think that like Councilman Brown, given the history, I mean, I think that if you go back here, the privilege of this airport was made possible by the voters of Adams County. That's that's a fact. And so to the extent that there is consideration in this agreement of $10 million up front, it is an acknowledgment of of who made this possible in terms of the enormous economic impact from the airport. At that time, they thought that investment would immediately result in significant commercial development, you know, outside the airport land and in their jurisdictions. That didn't happen. It turns out that the trend was that those developers want to be closer to the airport than we thought. So they made some assumptions, but they made some sacrifices. We're making some sacrifices of $10 million and we're making some assumptions. And so I believe that that it's okay to pave the way for that possibility, provided we keep lots of control over each of the steps along the way. And I'm sure that although they won't be ready in the next few months when the planning is progressing, this council does need to be a part of that conversation. It does need to come to us. Even if the zoning is in place, the plan should go through this body and I will, you know, advocate for that to happen. So sorry for the long comments, but I think that just kind of sharing some reasons why this is important that hadn't been mentioned previously. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right. Any other comments for or two is on the floor for publication, Councilman Brown. Sorry, Mr. President, but I just want folks to remember that this is not a final vote in terms of this agreement. This is up to the voters to simply refers this issue to the voters. Of course, they're going to be questioned. So we've had some good ones tonight. And guess what? That's why you have a campaign to educate the voters about the advantages or perhaps disadvantages of this agreement. So all we're doing is putting it on the ballot. We hope we have a good campaign. We hope we have enough money to run a good campaign. But this this is the first step of a long journey, which will end on November the third. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Brown. All right. No comments on 402. See? None. Madam Secretary. Roll Call. Shepherd. Epstein. Susman. Hi, Brooks Brown. Hi, Fats. I can eat Lemon Lopez, Montero, Nevitt Ortega. I rob I. Mr. President. All right, Madam Secretary, please call the voting. Now the results. 12 eyes, one abstention. One abstention. 402 is over. I'm sorry. Her vote or electronic vote was no. Is that what you wanted or to abstain? Abstain. It's abstain. Changes. It's chosen. No, on my. Oh, no, Annemarie. At 1212 eyes one abstention four two is ordered published. All right, one down, six more to go. If I were to go next. One 379. Councilwoman Monteiro, what would you like for us to do with this?

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, consider third-party appeals by Ann Cantrell representing Citizens About Responsible Planning, and Anna Christensen/Charles Moore representing Protect the Long Beach/Los Cerritos Wetlands, and uphold the Planning Commission’s recommendation and deny the appeals, adopt resolution certifying Environmental Impact Report (03-15), select the environmentally-superior project alternative (#5), and make certain findings and determinations related thereto; adopt a statement of overriding considerations, and approve a Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program for the Los Cerritos Wetlands and Oil Consolidation Project (State Clearinghouse No. 2016041083);

LongBeachCC_01162018_18-0029

Thank you. That concludes the presentations as well as the initial adoption. So we're going to go into our hearing. So we just need about a minute, 2 minutes to actually get everything set up for the hearing. I want to ask again, we have folks that are standing and I'm being told by, of course, our fire folks that we need to make sure that if we can be seated would be ideal if you're here for anything but the hearing. It's going to be a while. So please, if you're here for the hearing, which is on the the bond hearing, wetlands hearing, that's where it's going to begin in about 2 minutes. So. Thank you. Will transition and Madam Clerk will get everything set up and just give us a minute. Was it? Wrote my. That's a reasonable. Right. You see over. I like. Thanks. So. You know, that would be a. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Right. Yes. See that. But. Okay, we're going to go ahead and start. Let let me. Let me just go ahead and clarify and just make sure that everyone knows the order of the hearing tonight and we'll go from there. So obviously, we're going to begin the hearing in just a minute. There will be an oath required that the court will conduct. We will have the staff report, as is typical, and that presentation will go forward. And then after the staff presentation, the applicant will go first. Okay. So the applicant will go first. The applicant has 15 minutes after the applicant concludes their 15 minutes. Then the appellant, the actual two appellants. So each appellant group has a max of 15 minutes. If it can be between ten and 15 minutes is ideal, but up to 15 minutes you have. And then the applicant will have a opportunity for a five minute rebuttal. And then, of course, there's public comment and then we'll close public comment and then we'll actually go into deliberation from the city council. So, Mr. City Attorney, I think we have to correct that. Right. Okay, great. So with that, let me go ahead and begin and have the city clerk please read the item. Report from Development Services. Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing. Consider third party appeals by and Cantrell representing citizens about responsible planning. And Anna Christiansen. Charles Moore representing Protect the Long Beach, Los Cerritos wetlands and uphold the Planning Commission's recommendation and deny the appeals. Adopt a resolution certifying the Environmental Impact Report. Select the environmentally superior project. Alternative Number five. Adopt a statement of overriding considerations and approve a mitigation, monitoring and reporting program for the Los Cerritos Wetlands and Oil Consolidation Project. Declare Ordinance Amending the Zoning Code Amendment, read for the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. Adopt a resolution to submit a request to certify an amendment to the support of Certified. Local Coastal Program. Adopt an ordinance approving an amendment to the city's oil map and approved site plan, review and Certificate of Compliance to consolidate existing oil operations. Implement a wetlands habitat restoration project and provide public access opportunities. District three. Thank you. With that, we're going to do an oath for those that are going to be addressing the council. Madam Clerk, we can do the oath. Please stand. The appellant's appellants. Please stand. You and each of you do solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. I do. Thank you. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to our city management team who will be doing the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We have Oscar Orsi, our deputy director of development services. Christopher Koontz, Advanced Planning Officer in Kerry. Tie, our current planning officer are going to be conducting the presentation tonight for us. Thank you. Good evening. Honorable Mayor Eric Garcia and city council members. As mentioned by the clerk before you tonight, Cerritos, Wetlands, Oil Consolidation and Restoration Project. This project takes place over four separate sites, generally located near the corner of Pacific Coast Highway, Second Street and Studebaker Road. I'm going to spend some time on the project sites. So on the screen before you are, it's an aerial with a four color overlay sites. So the first site, the largest one we're going to start with is the synergy oilfield site. It's 150 acres and that's shown as green on the screen. This is the site that's behind the In-N-Out Burger there at Second Street and Pacific Coast Highway. The site is divided, divided roughly into two portions. There's a northern portion and a southern portion. The northern portion contains a steam shovel, SLU and wetlands. And the southern portion is an active oil field that currently has 39 wells on it. The second site is shown in teal on the screen. It's 33 acres that is owned by the city and it fronts Second Street and Shopkeeper Road. And if you're on Shopkeeper Road, you can see some oil derricks there as well. And this is a wetland site and it currently has 13 wells on it. The third site is shown in yellow on the screen, located at the southeastern corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Studebaker Road. And this is the Studebaker Road that is a stub. That's a seven acre site, and it's known as the pumpkin patch site because every year it hosts the pumpkin patch around Halloween and also the Christmas tree lot during the winter. The site is undeveloped and currently has one well on it. And then the fourth site is shown in amber and it's at the corner, the south or northeastern corner of Second Street and Studebaker Road. And this is the Studebaker that does go through. This is a five acre site, and it's owned by the little Cerritos Wetlands Authority, who is one of the project applicants. And currently the site, the site is undeveloped and currently it's used for a variety of industrial storage. You might notice stacks of corrals stored up there. So the project ultimately involves moving all of the oil operations off of the synergy site and the city sites and then consolidating or creating new oil facilities on the pumpkin patch and the CWA sites. So I'm going to spend some time on the project description for each site. So I'm going to start with the synergy site first. So as mentioned, there's a northern portion in the southern portion and and the northern portion would primarily it's wetlands restoration. And the applicant is pursuing this as a mitigation bank that's currently under review. The southern portion is the active oil field and it currently has the Bixby Ranch Field Office on it. The driveway access for that is off Second Street, directly opposite shopkeeper there. And that building is located in an earthquake fault at the moment. So as part of this project that would relocate the building about 400 feet to the southwest of its current location and convert that to a visitor center along with the public access trail for so that people can walk and see the wetlands. The entrance point is proposed to be the same as the current driveway. As part of the improvements, the applicant would also need to do frontage improvements, namely sidewalk and any bike lane improvements that are needed along the street frontage specifically here, Second Street and Pacific Coast Highway. So I mentioned a little bit about the mitigation bank, and this is just a graphic of the northern half of the site and the list, and it lists the different habitat types. So throughout the the plans as well as the air, there's detailed information on the wetlands restoration. And there's also mentioned the mitigation bank would need to be reviewed by an interagency review team, and that would consist of various federal and state agencies, but would include a U.S. Army Corps of Engineer, U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, etc.. And then I also will add on this is just the graphic for the northern half. The southern half does have restoration and it's phase two, and that's also located in the plans that are in the council's packet. And so this is a close up graphic showing the visitor center access from the current driveway and some of what it would look like once improved. So it would have landscaping along a a more traditional driveway. The driveway right now is meant for industrial use. It's got a gate on it, etc.. And this would be a paved surface accessing the visitor center and the public access trail is shown at the line starting from the edge of the parking lot. I don't think my laser's working, but it's up on the top of the screen and there's a little gathering of trees that's shown as a picnic area. So moving on to the next site, the second largest site is the city site. This site currently has 13 wells and the proposal would be to remove all the obsolete oil facilities. The applicant. However, the development portion of this would be that the city site would host a pipeline system to connect the LC site and the pumpkin patch site. So this graphic I'm just going to note is not oriented north like the other graphic is. And so the LC site is actually shown at the lower right hand corner. But the purpose of the pipeline would be to connect the two sites so that they do share some oil facilities. And I'll talk about that in a bit. The use of the city's property does require a surface use, release agreement and grant of easements, otherwise known as a surge. There is an existing surge on the site now, and that would need to be amended by the city to reflect the project. The amendment of the surge would reflect the ultimate configuration of the pipeline and also clean up any existing easements on there that are no longer being used. So that brings us to the pumpkin patch site. And this is the seven acre site that fronts PCH and Studebaker Road. The proposal for the site is a combination of office and warehouse, so a 5200 square foot two story office building, as well as a 9750 square foot warehouse. The back half of the building would be you. I'm sorry. The back half of the site would be used for the proposed oil facilities. The applicant proposes 50 new wells and that would be a combination of oil production, water injection and water source wells. They would be located in wells cellars below grade, so they would look a lot different from the current oil wells. On the Synergy Oil Field site, these are below grade and they would be behind a screen wall that's on the perimeter. So that essentially the view from the public streets as well as the bike trail would be generally of landscaping and a screen wall. There's a 30 foot setback, for example, along the PCH frontage and also at the corner of the site as you're entering Long Beach from the city of SEAL Beach across the bridge, there is a spot where the applicant is proposing to incorporate entry monument tation for for use as a city gateway there. So this next slide shows the building elevations of the proposed office building as well as the warehouse. As you can see, the building is designed in a modern esthetic with colors to generally reflect water and the incorporation of natural materials. The building does use materials that are durable, and so for the most part, there's a substantial amount of glazing, aluminum and metal. However, the the substantial overhang of the sloping roofline is, is clad with the natural wood. So it creates a natural wood soffit, which. Brings a sort of a warmth. Of warmth of appearance to the to the building. The warehouse itself is a multicolored concrete construction, and it continues on from the warehouse into a screen wall that wraps around the perimeter of the site in order to screen the oil facilities. And then the last site is the site with five acres. As mentioned, the site is currently undeveloped and the applicant proposes to improve the site with a 70 new wells again in a below grade sellers and there would be the combination as well oil production, water injection and water source wells. The project includes an energy microgrid, which is an energy system that essentially serves the the projects, the four sites. Electricity is generated through natural gas turbines that uses the natural gas that is produced as part of the oil extraction process. And this, combined with solar panels on the pumpkin patch site, will produce energy to power the oil operations. As you can see on the slide, there is extensive landscaping proposed on both street frontages. The setbacks range from 25 feet at a minimum to up to 50 feet. At that wide spot there on Second Street. And like the other sites, like the other sites, the applicant is required to improve frontage improvements such as sidewalks and bike lanes. And I should note that while this is not part of this next part, it is not part of the city council's approval. There is a land exchange. In other words, a low rate of wetlands authority would exchange this for the Synergy oil field site, which is being restored as wetlands. And so that is involved sort of in a in a background fashion. So we've talked a little bit about the project components, but I did want to talk about the timeline of the project. The project proposes to take place up to 44 years. And the way I like to look at it is it's it's four years of activity. And I'll walk the council through the activity. But then there's a 40 year timeline of basically decommissioning the existing oil wells. And there's also a threshold at which the oil wells must be plugged and abandoned. So the basically upon issuance of building permits for the pumpkin patch site. Oil production potential on the synergy site is capped at 25% of the oil production potential. So right off the bat, as soon as the city issues building permits for the office building, there will be an immediate reduction in oil production. But more noticeably within the first year, your first two years, there will be a substantial removal of obsolete oil facilities, including aboveground pipelines and tanks. For example, today, you know, there are quite a few storage tanks on the synergy site that just are marked out of service. So those would be an example of things that are removed and that would be similar to the other sites. Wetlands restoration on the northern portion of the synergy oil field would begin immediately. And then grading activities on the pumpkin patch and CWA sites would follow. So then to year three and four would we would start to see the construction of oil facilities as well as non oil facilities. So that's the relocation of the Bigsby Ranch Field Office and conversion into the visitor center, construction of the office and warehouse, public access trail and frontage improvements like sidewalks and bike lanes. At this point, a well plugging in abandonment of existing wells would also begin. So I did want. To talk about the the 40 year that comes after. So after the issuance of a certificate of occupancy for the office building begins a 40 year timeline during which the existing oil wells are basically put out of put out of service. And there's a there's two milestones that I'll talk about first, which is year by year 20, the existing wells would be reduced by 50% and by year 40, completely eliminated. And there's also a threshold in the project that if a certain well produces less than one barrel of oil for 18 consecutive months, that that well will also be plugged and abandoned. And so at the ultimate conclusion of this project timeline, the synergy oil field site will be completely restored. So this is the list of approvals. I'd like to talk a little bit about. Through. The entitlements that are before the council tonight. So first on the list, we have the zoning code amendment, which is an amendment to the sea dip. That's the Southeast Area Development Improvement Plan, which lists permitted uses for the different sub areas. The four sites are in three different sub areas and so the setup amendments are intended to ensure that the seated language is consistent with the allowable uses and also taking out uses that would no longer be allowed. The second portion is the local Coastal Program Amendment. All of our zoning documents in the city are for the coastal zone, are incorporated into the city's local coastal program, and as such, any changes to the zoning documents have to be certified by the California Coastal Commission. And so as part of this action, the city council would transmit a resolution of four, a local coastal program amendment . The next the next step is an oil map amendment. Currently, the city's oil code, entitled 12 of the Municipal Code, requires that only drilling can only occur in designated areas, and the pumpkin patch site and the alpha site are not listed. And so part of the action would be to add those two sites to the city's oil code as well as the map. And thus I'm going to cover the next two together, but the site plan review and the certificate of compliance. So the site plan review is to allow the development of buildings, the office and warehouse building, as well as the visitor center on the on their two respective sites. And then the certificate of compliance is to record a legal description certifying that the site is in compliance with the Subdivision MAP Act. The last on the list is a consolidated coastal development permit. As luck would have it to, only two of the four sites are in the city's local leading local permitting jurisdiction for coastal. The other two are in the state permit jurisdiction. And so in 2014, the city the city agreed to have the Coastal Commission process a consolidated coastal development permit. This allows for a more comprehensive review and an integrated review of the four sites, since this is one project that occurs on the four sites and so subsequent to the LCP amendment, the California Coastal Commission would need to take review and take action on a consolidated CDP. Next, I'm going to cover environmental review. An environmental impact report was prepared for this project. As you can see on the screen, the city released the initial study, a notice of preparation in 2016 about mid-year and also conducted a scoping meeting. It was during this initial study that it was determined that certain environmental resource areas would have potentially significant impacts and therefore an air was prepared that air went through a 45 day review period last fall. And then since then, staff did receive a series of comments which have been every single comment has been responded to. And so included in the council's packet is the draft IIR as well as the final IIR. And the final IIR is what includes the response to comments as well as any errata to the draft EPR and the mitigation, monitoring and reporting program. This is a list of the environmental resource areas that were studied. There should be 18 of them, with the exception of one, which is air quality. Every resource area was found to have less than significant impacts or less than significant impacts, along with incorporation of mitigation measures. And so I will talk about the one significant impacted resource area in a bit. But here's the full list just so you can see all the topics. So under air quality, the project is shown to have short term significant impacts as a result of construction during the air quality modeling for this project. The worst case scenario basically would be that all construction phases of the project occur simultaneously, and while it's unlikely that would happen, just in case it does happen, the project would exceed the South Coast Air Quality Management District threshold for nitrous oxide. Despite inclusion of mitigation measures that reduce NOx emissions to the degree possible, the project would continue to exceed the. I call it Squamish but south coast kms. The thresholds for NOx and. Therefore. The included in this Environmental Impact Report is a statement of findings and a statement of overriding considerations. And in order to certify the EIA, the Council would need to find that the benefits from the project outweigh the one significant impact in this case short term construction emissions. There are no there are no long term operational characteristics of the project that would result in air quality impacts. So again, construction only and then the next two slides detail all of the mitigation measure titles just for your benefit. But the full mitigation report is in the Environmental Impact Report that's been included in your packet. And so because this is not our everyday development project, I wanted to talk briefly about some of the the care we took during the E.R. process. So the E.R. was independent, independently prepared by the city and city secured consultants. These consultants are under control exclusively to the city and therefore producing a document that reflects the independent judgment of the city. All technical reports that were supplied by the applicant were peer reviewed and verified by city secured consultants. Tribal consultations were conducted in accordance with state law and specifically Assembly Bill 52. And also the process as a whole. Both the project and environmental review were were subject to extensive an extensive public review process with numerous opportunities for public engagement. Every comment, as I mentioned, was responded to. And basically the purpose of this extensive documentation effort is to protect the environment and the city's interests. As part of the preparation of an ER are alternatives are required to be studied. The alternatives are chosen in a way that have to reflect some realistic reflection of what could actually be done. And thus so the young studied five alternatives. The first is the the do nothing alternative. In other words, just leave the site the way it is. The second. Is to assume that development consistent. With the zoning would put today's seat up or would occur, and that would be construction of a commercial or industrial commercial on the on the pumpkin patch site. Construction of an industrial project on the CWA site, for example. So all of the assumptions that the zoning would allow. The third would. Be for reduced production, which involved the construction of the same level of equipment and infrastructure, but capping the production levels and therefore basically extending the timeline where oil wells would be taken down. The fourth would be to use the Southern California Edison system for energy rather than construction of an energy microgrid. And the fifth was an alternative pipeline location on the city site. Each alternative is evaluated with regard to all of the environmental resource areas that were on the prior slides and compared to the level of impacts that the proposed project would have. The air found that the other alternatives resulted in the same, if not greater, environmental impacts. But the relocated pipeline alternative alternative five would result in lesser impacts to biological resources, and I'll explain why on this next slide. So the two graphics on the screen compare the alternative, a number five to the proposed to the proposed project. The alternative five is shown on the on the top graphic and you can see that it it it's on the it's on as the service road is on the west again. So these aren't oriented north because of the way they fit on the screen. But the alternative five would be located on an Eastern Service road that is wider. It's already wider, which means it has been previously. It's been previously disturbed. Any biological impacts along that have been more previously disturbed than the other service road and placing the aboveground pipeline along this alignment would result in less biological impacts. And so overall, comparing the five alternatives to this one is the environmentally superior alternative because it has lesser impacts to biological resources. I do want to note that as we mentioned, the consolidated coastal development permit, the Coastal Commission will be able to review the all of the proposed improvements on the site and that includes the pipeline alignment . So I do want to make sure that we understand that the Coastal Commission will also look at this. So I want to cover a few topics that were broached on public comments in previous meetings. And just to clarify a few topics or a few project details. So the we've been asked by the public of whether the project in involves a process called fracking, otherwise known as hydraulic fracturing. And what hydraulic fracturing does is that it basically opens fissures in the underground structure to release additional oil. So fracking is basically the use of we have to use a lot of water, sand, chemicals. And most notably, an extraordinary amount of pressure to change the underground structural integrity of the ground. What the project proposes and that's documented throughout the air as well as the project description is, is not that simply the project needs to reinject the wastewater that comes out of oil production. And I should stop and explain that when oil is extracted from the ground nowadays, because oil production has decreased over the last ten or 12 decades, the 90% or so, basically the vast majority of what comes out of the ground is water. And that has to be re-injected back in in order to avoid subsidence. Furthermore, additional water has to be re-injected because you have to fill the void that is left when the oil is extracted out of the ground. And so the water the project will re-inject water into the ground in order to avoid subsidence and re-inject it in a place where the oil came from. However, it is done at a pressure which is monitored and which simply will fill the void. And it won't. It is not a fracturing operation. And so therefore the project does not include and is not approved for fracking. Furthermore, fracking has special permitting requirements through the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. It requires a special permit. There's a different notification process, and additional equipment would be needed because there is additional equipment that is needed. Any physical improvements on this site would be would have to be re-approved by the Coastal Commission as well as perhaps come back to the city as well. And depending on its configuration. And so we would like to stress that the regulatory framework of permitting oil wells is highly regulated. And not only do they control, does dogger control what is put in the ground, but it's what it is, how it's injected, the pressure. And that's demonstrated through regular reports that have to be submitted. Another set of questions we were asked What is the relationship between drilling and earthquakes and whether that was analyzed? This topic was covered in the air through the applicant teams researched. That was peer reviewed. Furthermore, various public and regulatory agencies have had the opportunity to comment. And the there is a lot of science out there about about the relationship. But in California, because of our regulatory framework and the method in which water is injected simply to avoid subsidence, there is no connection between the two. And I will go on. There's a second slide to this, which is that there is there has been in other parts of the country relationship between induced seismic activity and wastewater disposal . The most visible example of that was in a case in Oklahoma where water was being injected in in an area where they weren't even drilling oil. They were simply re injecting vast amounts of wastewater. And that created an instability underground. But that has not there's no connection of any of any of that in California, and that is documented by by scientific evidence. So I want to move on to talking about some of the risks from the existing equipment. The existing equipment on the site dates back to mid-century, the 1960s, and clearly no longer meet today's safety standards. The environment has also changed. There has been documented evidence of sea level rise and also climate change. And so without the project, the drilling equipment would basically remain there until something happened in you know, with the combination of sea level rise during a major storm event, the site is basically surrounded by water. So that could be this could be at risk for for some danger. And furthermore, the continued operations of an oil field in a wetlands does pose a significant environmental risk to the existing habitat and water quality. And this is an. Opportunity to get on a road to to clean that up a bit. So some of the project benefits the sign off of the building permit on the office building would result in a 75% immediate reduction in allowed oil production. The first two years would see the removal of the vast majority of obsolete pipelines and tanks, which would represent not only an important improvement to the just the safety of the site, but also the esthetic value of the site. And lastly, over time, the wells would be abandoned and equipment and the equipment would be taken out, allowing this energy site to fully be restored as a wetland site, along with a visitor center and a public access trail. So there will be some parts of the project that are more immediately seen and some that are going to take time. But there's a level of balance here. And so that's why the project timeline is, is what it is. I do want to talk about the appeal. The as I mentioned earlier, the city council has the final local authority on this project. On November 30th, the planning commission, which is the city council's advisory body on land use legislative actions, voted to forward a recommendation of approval to the Council to appeals were filed of the Planning Commission's action and they were filed by an Cantrell representing citizens about responsible planning and also Anna Christiansen and Charles Moore representing protect the Long Beach low cerritos wetlands. The appeals site various reasons pertaining to the process outreach and environmental review. Just to explain broadly the appeals themselves are attached in the City Council packet. Other than the actual appeals filed, there was no additional information to support these assertions, and staff recommends that the Council proceed as it would on evaluating a planning commission recommendation. Lastly, I want to talk about public noticing. So public noticing was distributed in accordance with the Long Beach Municipal Code that included publishing in a newspaper, as well as mailing to property owners and occupants. Within 75 750 square feet of the combined project site to date, staff has received nearly 400 comments and I lost count, I have to be frank. But there were about there were over 350 support communications. So the recommendation for the city council tonight is to deny the appeals and enact the Planning Commission recommendation to certify the Air Select Alternative five and approve this project, as well as forwarded on to the California Coastal Commission for Review. This concludes my presentation and we're available for questions of the applicant or I'm sorry, our environmental consultant team as well as the applicant team is also in the audience. Thank you. Thank you very much to the staff for that presentation. Appreciate that. We're going to move on to the next piece of the hearing. And so before we hear from the applicant, which is going to be here in just a minute, we do, of course, as part of this part of the presentation, we have some comments first from the governor Band of Mission Indians per per staff. Is that correct? That's correct. Somebody has to be in there. Hasan. Welcome. Good evening. My name is Andrew Salas. I'm tribal chair of the Gabby Leonard Band, the Mission Indians Teach Nation. My father. Some of our tribal members are here. My father is up above. He's our chief and leader. Spiritual leader of our tribe. We are a tribe, are many of us from the villages of the Ali Basin here. We're a tribe. Of people who come from villages of the area. We are direct blood descendants to the Long Beach area. In my hand here. I hold the documentation of my family and. How we are connected. And so if you can just address. Okay. Thank you. We are connected to Long. Beach, Pobeda and on my grandfather's originally. Developed and made in old the Bixby Ranch. This. These documents here I hold shows the proof of. Who I am. During the past. 216, 2016, we got a letter from the city to engage with concerns if. We had of this development. Or the wetlands. And we think. These guys. That are opposing and standing up because their heart is in the right place. We have concerns also. About this particular area of the. Wetlands, which was sacred area. Of our people. But we must learn today, today that we must work with the lead agencies and developers. In these areas of concern, we must learn to take a little bit or take nothing at all. We are for the removal of the oil fields that are there. We are for the rehab of the wetlands and bringing in trying to bring it to what it was before. We are for this project. We are. And that's why we're here to represent in other respect. Like I said, guys you guys are up there. I this project kingdom yet as we follow through the project there's going to be concerns. We're going to have to speak up. You could do that. You can't do. This. We're going to be there. That's what we're here for. I don't know why people don't understand and don't give us the. Ability as Native Americans. Of this area, descendants, blood descendants. Why they don't acknowledge us and give us the opportunity to speak and let us handle our tribal affairs in our tribal lands with refugees in our own land. We cannot speak on behalf of our tribal territories because there's other individuals that interfere. We have a code of honor. Native Americans. Throughout the continent. There no other native interferes in another native territory. Tribal territory unless called upon further out. No one has called anybody. They haven't even reached out to us. People that are protesting. Which is a no no in our Indian in our books is a no no. So I, I know that there's been some static. I've seen the emails. That have been going around and there's representatives who have represented my people and speaking on behalf of my people. Who have no right to because they do not have the blood lineage. That we do of the people that once inhabited this area. In the folder, I don't see them here today in this folder, but I hold over 13 individuals that are not here today that I had to hire. Not only for this project, I had a genealogist that works. In behalf of Office of Personnel Management, not only to prove so I could prove who I am, but so I could prove who they are. So that way they could start getting into tribal affairs. They hired scientists. To go against us to prove that we're not from this area. Could you imagine where we were? All of this just turning out instead of coming to us and speaking to us and reaching out to us? They don't do that. They laughed at us. But we're here. We're going to stand strong. And with me, I brought tribal leaders and members of other nations who are going to speak in behalf of me and themselves and how we are going to resolve and work alongside and with you guys. That's the way it should be. We understand we were at Standing Rock. We were there. But like I mentioned, we need to give a little or get nothing at all. And we want our weapons back the way it was long, long ago, historically, where our families were gathered in that area. Those areas, these representatives here that I represent, my people, they call the area the wetlands sacred. Yes, it is sacred. The water sacred. The animals are sacred. Everything is sacred. Everything is sacred to us. But yet these individuals allowed digging up at Long Beach, at the veterans hospital in areas of low. So they allow that these people in this camp desecrated more sites than you can shake a stick at. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. And everyone else, of course, will speak during their public comment. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I'm going to leave these for you. Actually, you can leave them over here with the clerk. Thank you very much. And then I know here before the of the appellant, we also have. Thank you very much. We're going to we're going to go to all the other public comment will come during during public comment and then Mayor Bob Foster. Mayor Garcia, members of the council. I'll be very brief. I just wanted to. Make the council aware of my involvement. In this project. I was it was probably about to year 2000. When I got a call from the then. City manager, I was at Southern California Edison Company, and I got a call from the then city manager to ask us if we would consider taking those five acres, the LC site, and donating it to the city of Long Beach to do exactly what this project does, which is to facilitate the removal of the oil wells, transferring it to the locations, and being able to facilitate the restoration of the wetlands. It's been nearly eight years since that phone call. It's it's it's amazing to me that it's taken this long, but that actually is the point. This project cannot happen without the imagination and the resources that the developer has brought to this. I've wanted this done for 18 years. Well before I was mayor. Ellison donated that land that eventually. Went to EL CWA. EL CWA. Loves this. Project. It's the right. Thing to do for the city. It's the right thing to do for the environment. And quite frankly, if this project didn't go forward, I don't believe these wetlands would be restored, certainly in my lifetime, and probably yours as well, Mr. Mayor. And I just wanted you to know how important this project is, I believe, is to the city, and certainly to me personally, it's gratifying. Finally, after 18 years, this actually may become a reality. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Foster. If I can, please have the appellants, the applicants. I'm sorry. Please come forward. There is an applicant presentation here again as we continue. And please begin when you're ready. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, Vice Mayor Richardson, members of the Council. I am Shana Shoffner, Chief Executive Officer of CAA Planning and I am representing Beach Oil Mineral Partners in this application. We are joined with our CO applicant Illustrious Wetlands Authority, who you will hear from shortly. I would like to thank staff before I get started for their very thorough presentation. I'm going to try to not be too repetitive from their presentation though. You will hear a couple of common themes. I note that I do not have a clicker up here in order to advance my PowerPoint. If I might get that, it would be very helpful. Okay. So to remind the council, we have four separate sites. We have the synergy site, the city site, pumpkin patch and LC CWA we are bound by. Oh, okay. So I have animations on this which are not working. Uh, is there a different way to do this? Other we can when we do this one, we're going to start the time. Thank you. We'll start over. Can you just make sure that we have our technical pieces here in place and for so we make sure they're working correctly and then we'll start the presentation over. Staff. Was this loaded as a PowerPoint? Well, it's okay. Just let's talk about the presentation. We'll go from there. Okay. So we had a list. Okay, that's fine. Oh, yes, I have a lot. That's fine. Okay. So it appears that this was not loaded as a PowerPoint presentation. And so all of the animations that I have provided to call your attention to certain things won't be here. I will try my best to do those in my allotted time, so I'm ready to keep going. Okay. So again, we have Studebaker, PC Age. And second, those are our main streets around the project sites. The project objectives are oil consolidation to upgrade the technology. To be safer and more efficient on a significantly smaller footprint, and the wetlands restoration to enhance the habitat quality, to create a visitor center and to allow for public access. The immediate actions associated with approval of the project or the establishment of a non wasting endowment, the initiation of wetlands restoration, the removal of invasive species from the restoration area, removal of 95% of the existing pipeline on the synergy and city sites which are shown in red. And to remove two of the out of service tank farms, one is shown in yellow on the synergy site, the second is shown below it on the city site. The next steps include the immediate grading to restore tidal flow within the wetlands, to create an earthen berm, to address sea level rise. A public access trail within the existing disturbed area, which is outside of the wetlands footprint and site preparation. Work on the CWA and pumpkin patch sites. Following that is the construction of new oil facilities. This includes tanks, infrastructure removal of the final tank farm on the synergy site, which is shown in yellow and the construction of a pipeline across the city property connecting the pumpkin patch and all CWA sites. Then we have well drilling, which will occur only on the pumpkin patch and all CWA sites. The final step is for a project operation. At the synergy site we see the visitor center and the public access trail and the purple. We also see the pumpkin patch and our CWA sites with the pipeline across the city property. I would like to go into a little bit more detail on the wetlands restoration and project components. As I have already stated, our project initiation, the wetlands restoration is the first step along with the establishment of a non wasting endowment for the future operation of the wetland property. This is not contingent upon the success of the oil operations. However, the transfer of the LC site is contingent upon the wetlands restoration, so we are assured of wetlands restoration by the transfer of those properties. In the yellow area we see the public access trail, which is within a disturbed area. Again, it's outside of the wetlands and we see the relocation of the visitor center shown here in red to an area outside of the fault zone. And we have a parking lot as well. Okay. Sidewalks and bike paths. The project includes another important component, which is the installation of sidewalks and bike paths on all street frontages. It also includes a bike repair station along Coast Highway at the Pumpkin Patch facility. And this is a great location because it's very close to the bike path along the San Gabriel River, which is a very heavily utilized bike path related to the existing oil operations. The project includes a provision to cap the oil production. At the existing wells. At 25% of their maximum capacity. That would be upon building permit issuance for the new facilities related to the removal of the existing oil facilities. Three important factors. The first is that four wells that produce. Less than one barrel of oil per day for an 18 month time period, those wells are removed immediately. Within 20 years, 50% of the wells are removed. Those locations are remediated and revegetated within 40 years. All. Remaining wells and any remaining infrastructure is removed and those sites are revegetated and remediated. These removal provisions are insured by an existing performance bond with dagger, which requires the removal and remediation of these wells. The project proposes the. Creation of a micro-grid energy system. This is state of the art technology. This is local source, local use. We are utilizing zero pollution, solar panels and natural gas. There is turbine cogeneration which reduces the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Over 50%. Well, microgrid energy systems are new. They are supported by the federal government, the state of California, and environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club. As California transitions from oil to renewable energy sources, low carbon oil is viewed as a bridge towards renewables because it is less polluting compared to higher carbon oil. This particular oil, which is referred to as SEAL Beach. Formation Oil, has a very low. Carbon intensity compared to the California average. Historically and currently, there are 12 locations. Where the. Pipeline crosses the Newport-Inglewood Canyon fault on the project sites. All 12 of those locations are within wetlands. Under the proposed. Project. All existing pipeline crossings would be removed and replaced with a modern pipeline, which would only cross the fault in one location and would be located outside of wetlands. The pipeline has been designed to flex and move in response to a seismic event, which is compared to the current very rigid pipeline that cannot respond to these seismic events and that does not have containment measures. The facility design and safety includes modern technology, leak detection and active monitoring, automatic shutdown, pipeline tank and well containment systems. Here we see old technology. These are inefficient. There's no requirement to comply with modern standards. We have a static glide and there are no containment measures. The new well, sellers you see are energy efficient, newer, safer design, enhanced esthetic appearance because they are built into the ground and they have containment measures. Now, the applicants have involved have been involved and engaged in substantial pre-application planning and outreach efforts. That means before they even submitted the project to the city, they engage with city staff and Coastal Commission staff to refine the project in meaningful ways. In addition, there has been substantial outreach with the community, including groups like the Arbonne, the Land Trust, Native American stakeholders who we've just heard from business groups and nature ways. There was a three day open house which the applicant hosted a scoping session on the air. Two separate study sessions at the city level and the Planning Commission hearing for this project. As you will hear tonight and we have heard during this process, there have been three main issues raised. One is related to sea level rise. This is an issue that was studied consistent with the Coastal Commission regulations and address in the air with no action. Without this project. The synergy site will be subject to. Future inundation because of sea level rise. This project includes an earthen berm to. Address those sea level rise issues. The next issue is the Newport-Inglewood Canyon fault. Of course. All oil operations. Are clustered around faults because that's where oil is accessible. There are great benefits from the project from a technological perspective, but also moving the structure, which will be the visitor center away from the fault zone, is a great benefit. And critically, removing the existing pipeline crossings, which again there are 12 across the fault in wetlands, will be a great benefit of the project. Related to Native American consultation, we have heard from Representatives tonight, so I won't rehash that. Now I'm going to hammer off to Mark Stanley, the executive director from the Low Street US Wetlands Authority. He's got a few slides for you and then I will briefly conclude. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Mark Stanley from the service as well as authority and also the executive director of the same cable and also addressed the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy. The lawsuit that's right now is authority as a Joint Powers Authority. It is made up of the State Coastal Conservancy. The RNC in both cities that. Are part of the lottery, those wetlands. So the city of Long Beach and SEAL Beach. Their mission level CWA is to provide a comprehensive program of acquisition protection, conservation, restoration, maintenance operations and environmental assessment of the illustrious wetlands. That is all in the protection of our habitat. Make sure we restore the area, improve the supply of water, its quality groundwater, recharge and water conservation. Since its inception in 2006, the CWA has acquired over 170 acres of land with the no less widows wetlands complex, which you see on the screen there. That represents over 500 acres. As you can see, there is multiple landowners we are concerned with not only what's before you tonight, but that entire 500 acres and getting. It all restored in the LC. LC Stewardship Program. We have been able to invite the public in to experience the wetlands. We sponsor tours throughout the wetlands. Thousands of citizens of the city of Long Beach throughout the region have been able to get out to the wetlands and see the potential of how it could be restored, but more specifically. The loss of this wetlands or consolidation. The Restoration Project will support the CWA with achieving its mission. So so will result in the public acquisition of 154. Acres of coastal. Wetlands property that has been. Privately owned for over a century. The restoration of title wetlands and buffer habitat of 77 acres. The consolidation and eventual full removal of antiquated all operations infrastructure that currently constrains 100 acres within the complex. The transformation of an existing Bixby Ranch building into a visitor center with Associated Trails, an expansion of our stewardship opportunities to a. Much larger portion of the weapons. The proposed project is. Consistent with the goals and objectives of the Conceptual Restoration Program. Next slide that shows the effort that we have gone through with the conceptual restoration program, several different alternatives that we have looked at, and the restoring of the 500 acres of the weapons area. Since this project is so well aligned with our mission. In August of 2016, they also had a board of directors authorize an operations agreement that outlines the terms through which they also. W-A would transfer approximately five acres. In exchange for the loss of those wetlands 154 acres. Since the signing of this agreement, the LC has been dedicated to tracking every aspect of this project. It is as it has progress through the permitting and entitlement process. CWA represents representatives who have worked closely with the applicant staff on the development of the project draft and in response to the comments. We've hired several consulting firms to perform peer reviews of the documents that most pertain to CWA is interested in the project and we provided the applicant with constructive feedback on how to improve these reports . We have reviewed we have reviewed the 31 public comment letters that were submitted to the City of Long Beach as part of the public comment process and recognized the numerous topics of concern that exist for this project. We have met with the applicant on numerous occasions since the public comment period ended to ensure that all reasonable stakeholder comments are properly addressed, that all necessary agencies are being consulted. All CWA staff has been impressed by their response enough responsiveness of the applicant to our concerns and even more impressed by the applicant's coordination. With those with those wetlands. Stakeholders. The applicants have met with the El Dorado Audubon, the Lost Widows Wetlands Land Trust on. Consistently throughout this project, these two organizations have identified themselves as the most significant proponents. Their perspective on this proposed project notes acknowledgment. Outside of these specific organizations, the applicant has presented the project at all the major home owner groups that surround the proposed project and for the public at large. The LCA was very impressed with the kids three day open house event that was held in August. Thank you. And we have to just wrap it up in October of 2017. This event showcased the. Applicant's dedication. In informing the community. Thank you very much. In conclusion. Yeah, time's up. Thank you very much. We are in support of this project and I hope to thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. And we'll be back for rebuttal. Yes. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you very much. Next, I have two sets of appellants. Which are the two? Appellants, because it's going to go first. It's control. Okay. So both get a total max of 15. So I'd like to ask for additional time since the appellants had the Native-Americans speak on their behalf. And also I think they went over their 15 minutes. So so actually, let me just clarify that real quick. So, Mr. City, translate. I asked you the same question. And do you want to clarify that? Yes, Mayor. Actually, the presentation. By the local. Indian tribe was not part of the applicant's presentation. They were invited by the city. To make a presentation after a couple of meetings with them about the project. So I think as a courtesy to them, as an Indian nation. They were asked to come speak. As part of this. As part of the staff presentation. Correct? Okay. And was Mayor Foster also part of the staff presentation, guys? Because we were going to have a civil forum and a civil hearing. And so that's not helpful. So thank you very much. So I believe actually that we have taken out, Mr. Mays, that you took off time from the rebuttal for the portion of Mr. Foster, is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Ms.. Cantrell. So may I have two extra minutes? So per the city attorney, everyone is getting 15 minutes. Is that correct? Okay, Ms.. Control. Good evening. And Cantrell, on behalf of CARP citizens about responsible planning, we are appealing the recommendation of the Planning Commission to approve the EIA Zoning and Oil Map Amendments, LCP and Site Plan Review for the Low Cerritos Wetlands and Oil Consolidation Project listed in the air as the Low Cerritos Wetlands, Oil Consolidation and Restoration Project. I am curious as to why restoration was left off the title in the staff report. Perhaps it's because this project isn't really about wetlands restoration or even consolidation, as the Coastal Commission staff has pointed out. It is all about oil expansion, 120 new wells on smaller areas with a great possibility for disaster. Historically, this area was the estuary of the San Gabriel River, fresh water from the Lower Cerritos Channel. And I'm sorry this doesn't work very well, but it's here. And the San Gabriel River mixed with tidal saltwater, creating a brackish tidal marsh until driven off the land. Native Americans lived along the river finding food and tools for their baskets, houses, clothes in these west wetlands. With oil extraction, tank farms, houses and power plants. The annual flooding of this area required the channel ization of the San Gabriel and the Los Cerritos Channel, thus reduced the freshwater input for the wetlands to stormwater runoff and occasional rain. Once more functioning wetland remains in stream travels through which the air admits may be public trust lands. At one time, all of this area belonged to the Bixby family. But as oil became depleted and the Coastal Act denied new drilling, drilling and building on wetlands, the Bixby sold this property to Tom Dean and Jeff Berger. The city acquired the surface rights for the part of the wetlands by the east of Trader Joe's, in a swap with Dean for a developer city land along the Los Angeles River. Another land swap where the city got the short end of the stick by not getting the mineral rights. When Dean and Berger were killed in a plane crash, the remaining wetlands became the property of synergy slash beach oil minerals. Oil extraction is permitted on wetlands. If the pumps predate the Coastal Act. But new drilling drilling is prohibited even with well enhancement, which includes pumping water and chemicals into the wells to remove the sludge. These old wells are not producing much oil. The Earth states that oil production from Synergy and city properties as being around 300 barrels a day. Synergy believes there is a large pool of oil to the east of their property but needs non wetlands for dwelling drilling. Thus the proposed acquiring of the Lower Cerritos Wetlands Authority's five acres on Studebaker and Second Street, along with the lion's property known as the pumpkin patch on PCH. The loss of Rita's Wetlands Authority five acres was mitigation from Edison for the San Onofre nuclear plant and at one time was planned as the site of a visitor center for the low cerritos wetlands. Although this land was once part of the estuary of the San Gabriel, the property has been filled, covered with gravel, planted with non-native, so as no evidence of wetlands left. However, it is uncomfortably close to the earthquake fault to allow drilling. The Lion property on PCH also has layers of landfill and has been used as a pumpkin patch Christmas tree, lot storage for Grand Prix tires, oil extraction and was once a lease term nesting site. Joanna Eagle Inglewood Finding John Joanna Ingle, the Coastal Commission biologist, reports that some of this property has the hydrology to qualify as wetlands . These photos of the endangered southern Tara plant are from her July 2017 report. She concluded there were not enough plants to qualify as ACIA environmentally sensitive habitat. This is not surprising as the property owners have been killing off all the wetland plants for years. In July 2004, Don may, as president of Earth Core and Most Serious Wetlands Land Trust reported at an MLP for the proposed strip mall in the pumpkin patch that there was a three acre dense cover of Southern power plants, about a third of the site and a thick mat of heliotrope and pickle weed over much of the rest. On August six, 2004, I visited the site with Don and took these pictures. We found about half of the plants had been scraped off, as you can see in the background behind Don. But there were still lots of tar plant there. Don wrote to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife on August 12, 2004, and reported that the rest of the plants had been sprayed with herbicides. On August 8th. On January 12th, 2018, I was alerted there were heavy equipment working on the pumpkin patch. When I arrived, there were no bulldozers, but I did find the area scraped clean of all vegetation, as you can see here. There were patches of very green, healthy plants growing inside the fence, but otherwise even the back of the property not used for Christmas trees was completely bare. After the recent rains, it would be reasonable to find some sign of plants growing in locations other than just along the fence. I can find no explanation for this perfectly level moonscape other than scraping by a bulldozer and destruction of all evidence of wetlands. Here is the steam shovel slew on October 2017. This northern part of the synergy property is functioning wetlands with obligate plants and animals. However, this is the area scheduled for, quote, restoration, unquote. Bond plans to enlarge their mitigation bank by breaching the current berm, separating the slew from the oil fields and flooding the uplands with more tidal flow. The problem with this plan is that the uplands have been indentified as being full of oil, sludge and toxins and require extensive cleanup. This is where the endangered building Savannah Sparrow now nests and forages. Because of the brief description in the A.P., the California Fish and Wildlife apparently didn't realize the significance of this project and made no comments. Their biologists have had a long involvement with these wetlands and should have been consulted. As a layperson, I believe this so-called restoration is going to have direct, disastrous effects on many species of plants, birds and animals that now call the wetlands home. An independent, qualified biologist is needed to make that determination, not one paid for by the applicant. Another big issue is the wisdom of oil drilling and running pipelines on or near a known earthquake fault. The red line on this map is the Newport-Inglewood fault, which runs right through the wetlands. In the argument for Alternative five pipeline through the wetlands, it stated that in the event of a rupture in the pipeline, only 30,816 gallons would be spilled, compared to 37,773 gallons, which could be released with the pool limit per parameter location. Further, the EIA eyes response to a possible oil spill or oil leak was that the oil will be all contained on the property by berms and will cause no harm to humans. What about the other inhabitants of the wetlands? Coastal Commission staff recommended an expanded annual analysis of the risk of the oil spill. As far as I'm aware, this has not been done. One of the project's objective is enhance gateway entry points to the city over existing industrial conditions and RMS control. Have four and a half minutes. I'm going to give you in an additional minute. So just to give you that additional a minute. Okay. So you have five, five and a half minutes. Thank you. Even the 18 foot wall, which is called a screen wall at the pumpkin patch, will not hide this 160 foot oil drilling rig, which will be what the public will see when entering our sustainable city. There will be another 160 rig at the corner of Second and Studebaker, along with collapsible 120 foot rigs at both sites. Although labeled temporary, these rigs can be in use for possibly the entire life of the oilfield. Plus, the public will still be looking at the existing oil pumps on the Synergy and city project for almost up to 44 years. Leave it in the ground. Ask the port to provide the restoration money for the degraded portions of the wetlands, as it did for Bolsa Chica and other wetlands. This may require some changes in the law, but as shown tonight with the sea dip amendments, nothing is written in stone. There are too many defects in this project to cover in one short session. Karp urges you to have at least one public study session to address all the impacts, including esthetics, air quality, biological contamination, cleanup, cultural, geological, oil, spill risk traffic, water and inadequate mitigations. This EIA is not ready for approval. Please be good stewards for one last remaining salt. What marsh in California and Joe Weinstein has some comments also as president. Of carp. As part of your your your time. Sure thing. Yes. Yes. Hello. I am Joe. Weinstein, president. Of Citizens. About Responsible Planning. Of course, we endorse the notion of. Restoration of these wetlands to something much closer to their former natural state. The problem is that while there are a couple of problems. One problem is that the air does not fully specify what might in fact be good news, what might in fact be components of an adequate project. But there is no specification there to guarantee that. And without specific. Statements. In the project description of the air, what you're really buying is a pig in a poke. We hope that's not true. But no matter how many verbal reassurances you have gotten tonight and we'll get afterwards, unless it's put into the EIA or project description, there is no guarantee to the public. We are concerned not only with environmental impacts of the project itself. But with the loosey goosey approach to the supposed restoration. The few details as to restoration methods are not reassuring. For example, plants are to be are to be wonderfully protected from any chemical treatments, but weeds are to be subjected to, quote, aqueous glyphosate. That is to say the probable. Carcinogen. Roundup, which we. Do not even want to see. Continued further in the Long Beach parks, let alone in this wetlands. And as and control mentioned. Simply flooding the uplands with tidal flow and then maybe leaching out contamination that is there and will be there without extensive operations that are not fully detailed or guaranteed is simply a recipe for contaminating what is good now. In fact, the Coastal Commission pointed. Out that there are no specific standards of the so-called restoration that has to be met. Who will carry it out. Which obviously qualified biologist will certify the success or mandate amendment of the restoration? Who will do the necessary long term monitoring so that it isn't just a flash in the pan one time success and then die off restoration. The air does not provide clear answers. There might be good answers, but they better be written into the air. We are concerned that there has been no comment from. The California. Department of Fish and Wildlife. I remember the concern is that, you know, there is a whole. Slew of mitigation measures and monitoring measures, but only two of them pertain to what would be done by way of actually upgrading and restoring the wetlands. All the others pertain to maybe mitigating the extra damage that this project will do to the existing wetlands. Thank you very much. Finally, if I may make one final point. We're concerned with the misleading. Treatment of the no build alternative. You see, this is a long term project. Therefore, there isn't simply a single no build alternative. Thank you very much. Many alternatives are possible, consistent with not building today. Thank you very much, sir. But getting. Your support tomorrow. Thank you. And we'll have our second appellant, please. Okay. We're going to set 15 minutes for the second. Appellant. Your first. We're splitting up our time into five minute increments. Sure thing. Okay. Okay. Sure. It was possible to get the clock up. It was up last time, but it was in the way of the presentation. But. Oh, do you want to. Do you want it up? Yes. Okay. So we'll do put the 50 minutes up there. Okay. Okay. Thank you. My name is Tasha Knapp Kristensen. I'm co-founder of Protect Long Beach, Los Cerritos Wetlands Group, along with Rebecca Rebecca Robles, a Harshman elder, and Anna Christensen component. So I'd like to start off by acknowledging that we are on the land, and I would like to thank the council. I appreciate those of you who took the time to meet with us and let us offer our perspective. And I would like to say I am also a member of the Omaha Nation. I'm indigenous as well. So we've been working with a shaman and talking about elders on wetland protection issues, along with Gloria Ioannis of the Anthony House Band and Rebecca Robles. I am an elder and this project is presented by the project and is actually part of a very ancient landscape. It's a bit about the tongue of ownership in peoples and has the potential for sacred site designation under the Native American Heritage Act. The evidential basis for this fact is that there is many unmarked archeological sites, either within a half mile of proximity or directly on the project site. The pumpkin patch is a work site. They found a skull there. Mean, we actually found the remains of individuals. Rancho Los Alamitos was a Chalmette Insite industrial site for processing the food that they ate, the shells, the shell meat, and probably remains a current ceremonial site. I'm engaged with the time again to Hodgeman people as I grew up in this community. I attend those ceremonies. And you know, Gloria, I am speaking for Gloria, Ariana in this timeslot. I do not speak for the Tongva or Hodgman people, but working with Angela Mooney Darcy of Sacred Places Institute, Rebecca Robles and Gloria R.A., they have, you know, given me permission to to represent that perspective. So Angela was in a car accident recently, couldn't be here. And Gloria has the flu, so I'm here. The high likelihood of findings on these archeological sites compared to, you know, what was said in the planning process, what the planning department hearing was that they had done 100% tribal mitigation, tribal archeological mitigation. They can't be true because you don't know what you're going to find until you start grading as and control has demonstrated. That's already started happening, apparently. You know, what are you going to do, find a skull there or something? Everything's within a half mile of the site. The you know, the remains. In addition, as I was told by elders, Gloria and Rebecca, that, you know, there are also these unique archeological remains called cog stones. They are not found in very many Tongo Harshman sites, and they're usually a cultural signifier of a like a large population of individuals. So they found called stones that along with burials of one individual, which they consider probably of a status of like a, you know, a spiritual leader, because individual individuals are not usually buried with stones. And the other one was like a very old dolphin that was like tens of thousands of years old, surrounded by these stones . So you're talking about a unique, unique heritage and a very ancient culture that still continues to practice ceremonies today. And how many times? Okay, I got to hurry. I just want to bring up the high likelihood of findings along with the SB 18 and 83 to California laws, which puts the onus on Long Beach City Council to develop an ongoing tribal relationship with the Tonga people, and that that includes all three of the bands, not just the one that we heard from tonight. And, you know, we need to develop an ongoing relationship with all three tribal bands on this band. You know, we don't know that he got a letter, but if that has not happened, by the time if this moves on to the Coastal Commission, just as in Banning Ranch, you know, the same tribes came forward and actually our perspective one on that one, these same issues. So not just the ones you want to work with or you know, but that are like pro project or whatever. But also the other ones like that I'm representing, they care about their culture remains undisturbed. And so, you know, we also need to have a type of monitor on site that represents all three of those bands and that's also under the state law. Okay. So those are my asks too to make sure and contact all three of those bands and and how those tribal monitor before the screening starts. Okay. Thank you. And I Christenson Part two the process required to ensure that the public was informed of understood and was able to comment on the low cerritos wetlands restoration and Oil Consolidation Project is flawed. Public outreach has been inadequate and inaccurate. Public presentations designed like See the picture by Beichuan Middle Partners describing the project as wetlands restoration or consolidation are deceptive. Both the Low Service, Climate Authority and Long Beach Development Services have allowed Beichuan Middle Partners to create and present a single , distorted and self-serving misrepresentation of what is essentially under the Coastal Act, a, quote, hazardous industrial development, unquote. Responding to the project, A.P., an initial study, California Coastal Commission staff has stated, quote, to characterize the proposed project as a wetlands restoration project. And first, any relocation of oil extraction and processing equipment. Second is a misrepresentation of the overall project and could be misleading to the public. The impetus, the reason behind the development of the project was the updating and more importantly, the expansion of oil extraction and oil processing operations at the synergy oilfield between mineral partners has continued to speak for all parties, making presentations and engaging in additional promotional outreach efforts and has not altered either either of those. In spite of these concerns by the Coastal Commission at the very beginning of public outreach, the public is being misled and sales risk are being downplayed and ignored. As they stated, they presented both the air and the air to the Planning Commission and no community meetings have yet been held on this project that were not presented from the perspective of beach oil, mineral partners. No other points of view like the ones you are hearing in our appeals have been presented. Tribal consultation required by law has not been fully attempted by project proponents, by or by the lead agency under. And I won't go into that given the tiny bit of time I have it more layer on that in your packets. Also, you have more detailed descriptions of these. More. Points to these issues, the involvement of public lands and public entities. So now we're looking at the that we started with the process we're now into the proponents. Who are the proponents of this project? Well, the main proponent, the one on the paperwork is beach or Mineral Partners. However, as stated by the Coastal Commission staff, this project cannot take place without the land swap, without the CWA being involved. So over a 30 year period the involvement of the LCA make this Wetlands Protection Agency a fully necessary and willing partner in quote unquote a hazardous industrial development and a for profit mitigation being, the LCA has compromised its own restoration plan. Let me see how we're doing here in favor of that design. My Beach Men, Mountain Partners, as they said, to build that berm, that berm is necessary and. That is brought to the. Attention of the LCA right in the beginning by a biologist, an independent biologist, that it was designed to protect their new oil drilling platform from sea rise. The road to this wetlands, I-40 and its to two of its members, the Coastal Conservancy and the IMC were created, publicly funded and have as their core missions the protection of water polluting groundwater, the groundwater that's going to be used to drill for oil preservation and restoration of habitat. A core value clean air, clean water, open space are a priority. They also promote green initiatives. Okay. So is is it even legal for them to start drilling for oil? The project itself, the final Environmental Impact Report, states there's no sacred sites, just a heads up to the tribal group that's here. Read the project. They say there's no sacred sites there. No sacred sites, no problem. All right. This determination is made in spite of the testimony and evidence that you're hearing tonight. So when you say what's in the air, what are you approving that you're approving it? It states there's no sacred sites. And you just heard the tribe here today say they are okay. Finally, you can look in your packet to see the many numbered issues in the Coastal Act. I'm submitting it. I don't have time to read it, but but the code that basically says you can't do this, you can't do a hazardous site like this in the wetlands I that. So thank you for the opportunity to present our comments and our investigation into the air tonight. You know, I'm a 70 year old, 30, 50 year, so I'm 70 years old. But I've been commenting on city council matters for 50 years. So I've had a chance to look around. And from my perspective, you are the best city council Long Beach has ever had. Really? Yeah. I'll tell you why. You've shown a willingness to embrace future friendly ideas like the ban on expanded polystyrene and even improve on it by adding foam coolers and filler foam pellets used in pillows and beanbag chairs. You think independently, but are capable of acting collectively for positive change. And that's all we're asking for tonight, that you act together to reject this foolhardy air that will give us time to work with all concerned, to truly think outside the box in order to create a project that is a win win for the owners and the proponents of wetlands restoration. You know, I enjoyed reading the sea air. I like to read things like that. I mean, did you know there are several ways other than the Richter scale to measure earthquakes like the modified McCallie scale is it's qualitative a says one is earthquake not felt seven is difficult to stand or walk and 12 is damage nearly total. The claim is made in the air that the use of modern equipment and procedures will eliminate the danger of drilling next to a fault. The published conclusion that the Huntington Beach oil fields deeper drilling was a probable causal factor of the 1933 earthquake is dismissed in the air. For this project, however, the project is going to be very close to the fault line there. As fact, it's just about two houses away. It's 200 feet away. So it's and it's going to go very deep. It's a layer cake of poor, thin and missing sediments, multiple pools of oil stacked vertically. And they're going to go down maybe over 10,000 feet to get at this oil. There's a brand new oil source and this is a deeper, not yet drilled zone, and that's the target of the proponents. What we need for the restoration of this potentially beautiful area is a beautiful project, something that combines modern technology that will remove the existing infrastructure and then restore the wetlands with a lower risk. Profitable project for the developer. You will note that in the proponents literature there are many pictures of the restored wetlands and the visitor center, but not much showing the actual drilling apparatus. But this this is this is what the drilling apparatus looks like. You can see it right now on Second and PCH. That's where what's going on right now is second and PCH. And you know what? They're doing a lot of building of. Well, it was I mean, this is the modern. Oil. Rig. This is the modern oil well, like what we had on Porcupine Hill and SEAL Beach. But this apparatus will be used for drilling and re drilling, you know, before you can do these below grade pumps that you say are going to be invisible, you've got to drill the hole so you can start pumping. And these are the things that are going to do it. And then you're got to have capacity for flaring. That's another problem that we have here. There needs to be. A better way than wasting natural gas and directly heating the atmosphere, whereas the modern technology to avoid this fiery welcome to Long Beach along our gateways along both Pacific Coast Highway and Second Street, we would like to make a few comments about the 1960 landfill on the Pumpkin Patch site. We really love it. Algolia. We think this is modern archeological site. We'd love to be part of excavating that and getting it out because it needs to be x ray. It will be excavated because it's leaching toxics into the San Gabriel River. And we're hoping to be able to use this as a modern archeological site. But, you know, today the budgets of major cities are being drained by emergency response to events over which they have no control. Increasing numbers of their systems are dying and their property lost due to the rapidity, intensity of the effects of climate chaos occasioned by the proliferation of greenhouse gases. The Long Beach Climate Action and Adaptation Plan is a work in progress. But Mayor Garcia and Mayor Garcetti both signed zero emission goals. And these are states that now I'm going to run out of time. So just let me say this, that there's a new constituency here. There's kids that don't see our future. They see business as usual, as suicidal. What we need is business unusual. This project is not unusual enough. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. That concludes the appellant comments. Both sets of appellants we're going to have now, the applicant will have 4 minutes of rebuttal time. We'll put the 4 minutes up on the clock. Staff me get my PowerPoint back up. Please create the applicant's PowerPoint. Presentation backup, please. If the PowerPoint presentation. No. Why it is if there's a phobia to chatting an audience, please. We just need to continue with the hearing. Thank you. All. We put the time up, please. The 4 minutes. Thank you. Good evening again. Shawna Shoffner, C.A. Planning representing the applicant. I'd like to start my rebuttal with what happens if the project is not approved. There would be no wetlands restoration, no public ownership of the wetlands. We would reinvest in the existing oil operations, some of which are in the wetlands without newer, safer technology. We need no additional entitlements or discretionary approvals to reinvest in these existing wells. That can be done by Wright and will be done without this project. There would be no visitors center, no trail, no sidewalks and bikeways. So we see there is great public benefits with the proposed project. Without it. We do not need new discretionary approvals. I'd like to address some of the issues that were raised by the appellants. You've heard that the Coastal Commission does not allow oil wells in wetlands and that only pumps appreciate the coastal sector are allowed in wetlands. This is incorrect. New oil wells are considered development and require CDP. Coastal Act Section 30233 allows oil production within wetlands. It's one of the very few uses that is allowed within wetlands. We also heard that there will be impacts to wetlands under Alternative five with the pipeline. This is incorrect. The EIA discloses that with the pipeline and Alternative five, there are no impacts to wetlands related to the wetlands restoration and the technical studies. I understand that you'll hear from several biologists tonight who have worked on the restoration plan, but the quality of those technical studies that made up the plan have been subject to multiple peer reviews, including by the Audubon biologists and more significantly, the IATA, which is the inter-agency review team, which includes U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the Army Corps of Engineers, Coastal Commission, nymphs and others have been engaging in review of this plan for more than three years. There's also success criteria built into this plan and five years of monitoring to ensure success. We heard tonight that the maximum spill capacity was a question asked by the Coastal Commission and that apparently was not answered. This is incorrect. That is a question that was asked by the Coastal Commission staff in their comment letter on the air, and a response was provided in responses to comments and as part of your final air tonight. Okay. I'd like to conclude this is a project that has substantial public benefits, the immediate restoration of the low street US wetlands, and the establishment of a non-Western endowment for the ongoing operation of the wetlands. A visitor center and a public trail. New sidewalks. Bike paths. A Bike repair station. A sizable increase in revenue generation for the city of Long Beach and a state of the art project with a micro-grid energy system and enhanced safety associated with new oil facilities , and most importantly, the removal of these antiquated oil facilities over time from the existing sites. We request the project approval consistent with the staff and the Planning Commission recommendation. Our project team ownership and technical experts are available tonight if you have any questions. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. Okay. That concludes the application, the appellant comments. So we are. So just just to make sure everyone's very aware we're gonna be doing public comment a few things before public comment starts. Public comment obviously going to come to the mic. You say your name you and you make sure you identify yourself. But also please make sure that when your time is up, your time is up and be respectful. And if the audience please be respectful of every speaker, regardless of what place you are or what position you're in or what you're for. Okay. So we're going to begin public comments. Okay. Bend down a little bit. Done. A good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is David Bright and I'm a field representative for assembly member Patrick O'Donnell. I am present today in order to make a comment on behalf of Assembly Member O'Donnell in support of the Illustrator's Wetlands and Oil Consolidation Project. Assembly Member O'Donnell was born and raised in Long. Beach and spent his childhood in and around the low street as wetlands. He grew up with an appreciation of these special lands and has always fought to protect and restore them. A Senate member, O'Donnell believes that the loss of Rita's wetlands, oil consolidation and restoration project is a good project with many benefits. He appreciates that not only will wetlands be restored and move into public ownership, the existing oil operations will be consolidated to two offsite parcels and are replaced with newer, safer and more efficient technology. Additionally, the project represents a substantial revenue boost to the city's general fund, which he feels is desperately needed. Assembly member O'Donnell believes. That this is a great project for Long. Beach and is happy to offer his support. He is looking forward to the area being restored so that he and future generations can responsibly enjoy these sensitive areas. Assemblymember O'Donnell feels that this is a unique opportunity and urgency to approve the project without delay. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. City Council. My name is Bill Thomas, a resident of Alameda Tates, living less than a mile from the property you were discussing. I can only say we've learned a little more history than I realized tonight. And my history only goes back to Long Beach to mid-fifties when I came out here. So many, many oil wells around here. And my goodness, they got a lot of oil wells. And now that I'm old and gray, I've seen the progress go. I was a Navy man back in the fifties, and we transitioned from a Navy town to a fantastic growing city. And I'm here to speak very positively on this project that I've watched closely for a number of years. I'm amazed that John McEwen has been able to have so many outreaches and talk to so many people and being active with the sea tip reconsideration. We thought we did a lot of outreach, but they've done a magnificent job of reaching everybody who's interested in this. And I see the future for the wetlands area being a great thing, and I just hope it moves faster than some of the numbers I've heard. I'm looking forward to having it. Thank you for it. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Honorable Mayor and City Council. My name is Ben Goldberg. I am a native of Long Beach, as well as a resident and homeowner at the neighborhood just adjacent to this project. I also work at the building that will be adjacent to the other part of the project, which is the pumpkin patch. So I feel I have a little bit of perspective here. I was the president of the University Park Estates Association for many years on the board as well for many years, and represent many of the residents there today. We've put all the communications up regarding. All the outreach on our Facebook page for our residents specifically. Everyone's been informed. It's been a well ran campaign allowing input from our residents directly in our neighborhood as well as surrounding neighborhoods. I will tell you that when Mayor Foster past Mayor Foster, I should say, mention that phone call 18 years ago. I was running for city council around that time as well, and this issue was front and center back then. And I am amazed it took this long to get here, but I certainly hope that this council will see fit to approve it unanimously and send it on to the Coastal Commission, which we know will be a whole nother set of circumstances to deal with. But this is a good project. There's a lot of residents here that were that have been here their whole lives that don't even realize that the wetlands is actually there because it has not been open to the public for all these years. The only way to get in there is through kayak or boat on one side, and otherwise it's basically private property and pretty much cordoned off. I mean, there have been a few tours recently, but it was sure would be nice after raising two children there, one who's now 21 and one is 28 who never visited the wetlands . I'd like to bring at least someday, God willing, grandchildren to this wetlands site. Re re rediscovered all that wonderful walkway and everything else. So please don't let the people from outside our neighborhoods come in here and tell you that we don't want this project to move forward. We do, and I hope that you'll approve the project as presented. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. City Council. My name is Wareham Lisowski President, Long Beach Citizens for Fair Development of a graduate of Long Beach Poly. So there's my Long Beach credentials. We'd like to support what all the appellant said. There's a lot of problems with the air. Namely, I sent you all a letter today describing some of the problems with the air. One of which is the sites currently producing 300 barrels of oil a day. And this proposal is up to 24,000. Barrels of oil a day. The Environmental Impact Report does not address the greenhouse. Gas emissions from that increased production. Also, there are environmentally sensitive areas like the appellant control said on the pumpkin patch area. In fact, yesterday and today there was workers over there scraping, putting, fencing up. Who knows what's going on over there now to obscure. Environmentally sensitive areas. So what we'd like is for this. Council, this body to while beach oil is extracting. Oil out of the ground. This council should be. Extracting from them. Concessions to make this a better project for the people of Long Beach. 40 years is too. Long to wait. California is making a move away from fossil fuels. We have regulations to where any new development needs, any new development needs, electric vehicle chargers. So we support the move. Towards non-fossil fuel energy, and we urge you to reconsider this project. It's just too much oil out of the ground in too environmentally. Sensitive an area on a dangerous fault line. Thanks so much. Speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Council members. My name is Kyle St Romain. I'm a resident here in Long Beach. I'm in support of this project. I think this is the type of forward thinking that our city needs more of where we have public and private interests coming together to create something better for all of us. I've often driven past the wetlands, wondering what it's there for. You see these abandoned tank farms, marginal production, idle wells. It seems like a waste in its current state, and I'm in support of it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor to City Council Staff Jeremy Harris, senior vice president of Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, here tonight to support this project. On behalf of our 800 members, our leadership and all those involved with the chamber, we believe this is a win win. For the community and also those folks that care so much about the wetlands. We believe there's several reasons why you should support this tonight in order to move it forward. One has been mentioned multiple times tonight, the wetlands habitat restoration and the amount that will be going into that to the new revenue, as pointed out by the report, is welcome new funding to the city's budget and finances as it's been estimated, and then three protections that have all been mentioned in and around the site as compared to what you see there now. For the interest of time, we just ended our comments in tonight in support of this project. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and vice mayor and members of the Council. My name is Lucy Johnson and I'm not a native of Long Beach, but I've been here longer than anywhere else. I've been so since 1980. I drove past the site virtually every day, both directions. And in this past October. Excuse me for reading this, but I wouldn't forget it otherwise. I toured the Synergy Oil site during one of the open house days after viewing a presentation of the restoration plan and walking around the site. I came away impressed with the plan to consolidate and modernize the oil operations and over time, restore about 150 acres of wetlands. From what I saw and learned about the project that day, and since this is a tremendous opportunity for the city of Long Beach and the LC, the trade of about five acres of CWA land near the project for the hundred and 50 plus acres in the synergy oil field and the commitment of Synergy and its partners to consolidate the oil operations into two parcels totaling approximately ten acres is a trade that must be completed. The air adequately addresses the concerns of the opponents regarding air pollution, fracking and pipeline leakage. Upon approval from the City Council and all the permitting authorities, the blight now seen on both sides of Second Street between Studebaker and Pacific Coast Highway will be eliminated over time. Just imagine the beautification of the site and the return of the native wildlife. The low cerritos wetlands will become one of long beaches, most treasured assets enjoyed for years to come by residents and visitors alike. This is a tremendous opportunity to ensure the future of the Lo Cerritos wetlands and one that the city of Long Beach cannot afford to pass up. I therefore urge the members of the City Council to unanimously approved the staff's recommendations for permitting and to deny the appeals. Thank you for your consideration of my comments. Thank you. And Speaker, please. Good evening. My name is John Burchill. I'm a senior vice president with Wells Fargo Bank. I'm based in Bakersfield. Hey, guys. Everyone gets respect to have their time at the mic, regardless of your position. So please continue, sir. I'm here as the lender of record to synergy oil. I have over 40 years of experience in commercial lending, including real estate, agriculture and oil and gas lending. But we can get into the economics of the oil and the underwriting and all that. But one of the most important things that we do as a commercial lender, first of all, is who are the people behind the project? I first met John McEuen and his team at Synergy in 2012. Every negotiation we've had with them, everything we've asked them to do, everything they told us they would do, they have done. And that's the first thing. Any type of a project like this, as extensive as this project is. You've got to look at the people behind it and their ability and willingness and desire to complete it. So those are my comments. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Yeah. Hi, I'm Marsha Lisowski and. I'm the on the stand committee of Long Beach Area Peace. Network. And we come from this from a kind of a different perspective. We are come from the idea that we would like. To prevent global warming. One of the things that happened in the last couple of years, of course. Is that there was a huge drought in Syria. The drought was caused by global warming. It caused. A civil war, a civil war that we're. Involved in that has taken thousands of lives and. Displaced millions of people. We say that we want this world to be left. In the ground. There's 200 million barrels is not worth the damage that it's going to do to our environment. So we would urge you to reject this whole project. Obviously, we support restoration of the wetlands, but we don't think that this project is really it's undercover project. For oil drilling, which is I think there's. Other ways to fund this. You know, one of the things is this. Is there enough pollution on the to make this a Superfund site? Nobody's looked into that. Is there money from the port. That could be swapped. For restoration? You know, we don't have to drill. Baby, drill. And Long Beach is supposed to be a green city. We're all talking about the port. We're talking about all the. Trucks and everybody, you know. Cutting the emissions and using gas and stuff like. That and electricity. But this project definitely goes. Against everything I think that our city really should stand for. So I want to thank you for. Allowing me to speak tonight. Thank you. Next speaker, please. So, hi. My name is Ines Educate. I'm the vice president of the Ridgewood Heights Neighborhood Association, the eighth District. I'm also partial one, Tony and I. I want you to really consider the appeals, because all. We're asking for is for due diligence. To have happened. And I'm not going to focus on all the environmental things that you've heard tonight. I'm going to focus. On just one aspect of the environment Environmental Impact. Report, and that's the cultural impact and that. The and supposed due diligence that happen there. Now we've heard from one and I know you guys invited the guy rellenos to come here and talk about it and I appreciate the government perspective. Yet there are Tonko and Hatch women local, truly local that live here that grew here. And there was no outreach to those people. None. And there still isn't. And though and you know, I know Mr. Christiansen came up here and explained to you how things have been found on the site. And instead of like actually having a tribal representative out there to actually do the due diligence, nobody's trying to stop the the the overall order of what you are trying to accomplish in hopefully mindfully addressing this this area. But just from a cultural perspective, I just want to point out to you how profoundly racist that is, because when you are when you are ignoring what you know, what you know, the due diligence is supposed to be, you know, what it's supposed to be. And instead, you're creating a situation where indigenous people have to sue an oil company in order to see justice served. You know, the last line of defense, you cannot let that happen. That is why you have to go for the appeal, because this was not done correctly. The local leadership was not contacted. Two of the 11 and one of them is up there. And you ask them to speak here in favor of this when you have not concluded your due diligence. And we are talking about sacred sites and we are talking about racism, this is systemic racism. If you're wondering what it looks like, this is it, this is it. So when you think about what you're going to do tonight and I urge you to vote for appeal to vote for the appeals, because we're just asking for the you look, there are actually they're scraping the land now, land where you where we found artifacts , land where it's documented and nobody's asked the Native America the I'm sorry, the indigenous Cal State Long Beach representatives. Nobody's asked the local representatives. And you're going all the way the same to San Gabriel Valley. Thank you for San Bernardino. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, mayor garcia and council members. My name is Anne Thompson. I'm a 40 year resident property owner in District three. The description of this project as a restoration and conservation of the low serious wetlands is misleading. Clearly, this project involves the expansion of oil extraction and processing operations at the Synergy Oilfield, the Long Beach Press Telegram newspaper. Yesterday, January 15th, addressed California's Green goals, stating California has earned the right to brag about how much it has clean up its environmental act. Fossil fuels are required to power. The state's economic engine have decreased by a third since their peak in 2001. So why endanger precious wetland area to go after more oil? I am proud of California and I want to also be proud of Long Beach. It's disappointing to me that the Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust supports the oil endeavor. I am also shocked that my council representative, Liz Price, is also supporting this plan. I therefore support the appellants in this project and will also support them before the Coastal Commission. Thank you very much from here. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Mike Murchison. I am a lifelong resident of Long Beach. I've spent the last 52 and a half years. On the east side within a stone's throw of where we're talking about tonight. It was only the last several months when I got married. I moved to I love the eighth. I moved up to Councilman Austin's district. I'm here tonight to tell you that I've represented most of the proposed developments in the last 15 years on the east side of Long Beach. And every single turn, we always went straight ahead and we never brought in the environmental community. This time around, the owners took a different stance. This time around, John McEwen, Peter Zak and Frank Serene took a different approach. They reached out to city staff, they reached out to coastal staff. Never heard of that before. They've talked with Jack Haynesworth on down for the better part of four or five years. So to talk about the fact that we haven't done extensive outreach, it's just a misnomer. We've reached out to everybody we could think of. We held, as you saw earlier with these presentations, three day offering to have the community come out. We had over 200 people come out there. We've reached out to the Native American Indians. We will continue to do so. I'm offering tonight so that you can hear and hear publicly that next week I invite carp, then full board membership, not just joining in their full board membership. I'm asking if Warren wants to come out. I'm asking any other opponents that want to come out next week. We will take them out there. We will sit down with our biologists. We'll sit down with third party biologists will sit down with our greenhouse gas emissions. People will sit down with anybody that wants to come out there to learn about what this wetlands restoration is all about. What it's about is the ownership is putting their money where their mouth is. They're going to restore these wetlands on the front end. That's what this is all about. This site has been a problem eyesore for as long as I've been alive. This is a unique opportunity for the city of Long Beach and for those that enjoy the wetlands. I encourage you to support it. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Evening, Vice Mayor and Fellow Council. My name is Tommy five. I represent IBEW Local 11. We have our members. I wanted to recognize our members that's here tonight. And some of you recognize there are women that's in our trade and some of them that are single mothers that, you know, have come out tonight. And the things the you know, they've got other things better to do. But they come out to a city council. Meeting because they know how important it is. For them to get and create jobs. All right. So this project. And we're wholeheartedly support this Bumpass Energy project. Because we know it's going to create good electrical industrial jobs. You know, we have a commitment with with the developer to do so when it comes to a labor agreement. But, you know, early on when we talked to. Developers and so forth, we like to see job creation. The city wants to see job creation. And that's what exactly what's going to happen here on this project. Thank you. Thank you. Next minute, please. Hey, give an honor to Jesus Christ, the one who deserves it. Okay, let me fix my camera. Okay. I don't know much about. I don't know the history of this. I don't know the biology. I'm sound like Sam Cooke. But I know in 2018, I'm gonna do more praying. I'm going to do more praying. I'm a show myself to be a good Christian, and I'm praying on it. So. Anybody want to pray with me? Pray to Heavenly Father in Jesus name. I thank you for everything you do. You know what's good? I don't. So I ask you to do what's good and right. Amen. Now, that being said, hey, it's a new year working together. Get stuff done. That guy that left out nobody. What he said in the paper. Mitt is not on this today. One on one with me. So I'm but I'm going back for the next one. I'm not going to even mess around. I'm not going to make you have to tell me to stop saying that today. So I said I'm turning off. I'm not turning over to the same person. Right. Take it easy. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Laura Harding, and my parents purchased a home in University Park Estates back in 1971. So that's where I. Grew up and I am excited about the proposal. I received a flier. And went to the open house and from. What they showed me I find it exciting. I've heard it said, you know, growing up there right now, you look at rusted pipe. And so to that's not. Standing up to any kind of code. So if there was some disaster, that's. Going to end up being a huge disaster. So the fact. That it would be re piped or realigned and then brought up to code. I think is a good thing. And I just really look forward to. Being able to go back over there in the wetlands again. Thank you. Thank you. Executables. Hi. My name is Aaron Foley and I'm a resident of Long Beach. I think it has been noted that the lawsuit shows wetlands is one of the most biologically productive places in the world and acts as a sanctuary that possesses an incredible amount of equal I call it ecological value. In fact, it has also been noted that before Spanish settlement on the Pacific coastline, Rosarito was wetlands, was home to the Tonga people. Tonga elders, like the late Lillian Robles, fought to protect sacred sites like the low cerritos, those wetlands, as have many other people here. Only about 7% of the original salt marsh habitat that once existed in Southern California has not been developed, and much of the remaining habitat is measurably degraded. So I definitely agree that restoration of the wetlands with native plants, etc. makes sense and is important. But no new pollution is ever a solution, especially in a city that has terrible air quality already and is on a land that is over a fault line. It feels par for the course of Trump's world to make deals, to get an oil company, to restore the land they desecrated for their own profits and fossil fuels by giving them other land to drill on, not to mention giving them 20 to 40 years to do so. The risks of the current old equipment, the ugly esthetics there are, lack of containment and other dangers that were discussed and admitted to earlier should be the hardest to resolve, especially due to their danger to us. Like if they're not up to code, why aren't they forced to be up to code without us having to give more of our land? How are they allowed to have such outdated equipment? They should be held accountable and made to restore the land because it is the right sustainable thing to do. We should not have to barter with them. To do so. We must let our voices be very loud and very clear in Long Beach and show that we will not perpetuate this backwards oil dependency type of thinking. We must move ourselves forward towards environmentally sound solutions and away from fossil fuels. We are not dinosaurs. We are innovators. We are creators. We are the people of the great city of Long Beach. And we can be better than that. We must do better because we are also humans intrinsically tied to the earth and our environment and our habitat, and we must shift to start acting accordingly, accordingly, any policy or ordinance, etc., that involves giving more land to oil companies to drill on, especially that which is over a fault line is not smart policy. Yes, dependency on this so-called black gold will not disappear overnight. But what if we took this first step, this right step? Let us not just give lip service when it comes to supporting indigenous rights and environmental justice from afar, as we did with the unanimous support for the water protectors of Standing Rock. Let us not only show support when it concerns matters in other states and doesn't require us to change business as usual, doesn't require us to have evolve. No matter the amount of doublespeak used here tonight, the air should not be approved. Thank you. Thank you. Next to the police. Oh, hello. My name is Wayne Murchison. Thank you for holding this and for opening your minds hopefully to what's happening. Man, these guys are selling this so well that they're what they're going to do as a benevolent thing of fixing the wetlands they're holding. Like she said, that is dangling. That is an incentive to do this. We need to divest ourselves of oil and oil extraction. It's going to have to happen in this city anyways eventually. Why not start it now? If you do this, you're culpable in just extending this, this oil extraction. What's killing us? What's killing our planet? These people, the oil extractors, their product is money. And believe it or not, money can be an addiction. So an addict will tell you anything. Bend over backwards. For you to go away and leave them alone. Let them do what they want to do. Any addict will do that. These people are going to fix your wetlands. Well, why weren't they fixed a long time ago? Why aren't the people that did it being held culpable instead of letting these people use it as a dangling good thing that they're doing? How benevolent they're going to even make it look pretty. But it's only pretty on the surface, not underneath. And you've got to stop these addicts from ruining our lives because an addict and heroin addict only ruins their lives. A shoe addict? Well. But these people, not just these people, many corporations. Their bottom line is money. They're addicted to money. And they ruined many people's lives. We have to stop doing. We can't. We can't give them a reason to pull out oil and say it's a good thing. No, it's not going to end tomorrow. But we can start by ending it and looking forward to the things that are going to make stuff for the city, money for this city, and a Greenway Development Research development you want to bring in. Make it a city that's. Third and advanced. Start bringing in research development towards a green city. You can't make speak of these. Homonyms you can always address on file. So I want to talk about something. I looked through the air and there was something that I found highly inadequate. I made an appeal before the Planning Commission. I'm asking the City Council to take this into consideration very seriously. Climate change is not adequately discussed in the air. There is a short, brief paragraph, and what they basically say is that because of all the the the oil and coal and everything else that's being burned everywhere else, what we're doing here in Long Beach is insignificant. You know, if you compare to what's going on in Russia and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, you know, we're just a small sliver. What I don't understand is how you can extract 200 billion barrels of oil and and tell me that somehow. If everything goes right, if there's no earthquake, there's no. Slippage, there's no incident. If everything goes right. We burn this into the air. How that's not going to increase greenhouse gases. I don't think that that is scientifically possible. I think based on what we all know, because none of us are necessarily experts, we got a few experts in the room. But the general public, what our. Understanding of of climate change. Is and this is a city council that accepts climate change, that accepts the truth and the reality of the situation. Climate change is real. It always has been real. Now, despite the. Oil companies big. Campaign to lie to us now that this game or industry is here to tell us more lies. I want us to just take one quick second to ask ourselves if this fossil fuel is extracted, we're not increase greenhouse gas emissions. And I think that that's a fact that we are going to have to deal with. I know that many members, in fact, all of the members of the city council accept money from oil companies. I have looked through all of your almost all day except for Janine Pearce. I look through all of your paperwork's on file and you all get money from Mike merchants and some of the lobbyists are in the room. I know there are a lot of families who have who have their family assets tied to these oil investments. But I'm asking. For you all to to. Think. 1/2 outside of your donors, outside of Mike Murchison and all your. Friends and our friend. The former. Mayor. I'm asking you to think about future generations, because, folks, we're here at California, which was on fire last year. I don't know if you guys caught that. We are a beach city. And the sea level is going to rise. Wall is go is going to raise worldwide. And where we're at right now is our hand is on the thermostat. And we have to ask ourselves the question, how much harder do we want to make it in here? It was 105 degrees last November. That's the earth itself speaking to us, Long Beach, what are you going to do with that? Fossil fuels and so. Are we going to listen to the. Earth or we're going to listen to Mike Murchison and the mayor and all of the investments that are tied up in Wells Fargo, all of the investments that are tied up against our future. I don't know about you all, but I have a future to believe in. And that means that we have to take our money out of fossil fuels. We have to act as if we accept climate change as real. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez. Next speaker, please. Good evening, city council and mayor. I'm Dr. Wendy Griffin. I'm one of Al Gore's climate reality leaders. I've owned a home and lived in Long Beach in the Rose Park District for 24 years. And I've had the privilege of kayaking through the wetlands. Like probably all climate activists. I want us off of fossil fuels. And when I first read about this proposed project in the press telegram, I had a letter to the editor printed to that effect. Since then, I've had the opportunity to learn more details about this project, and I now support it. And I want to tell you why. Then three reasons. First, much as I want to leave our fossil fuels in the ground immediately tonight. Realistically, I know. That there needs to be a period of transition to clean energy. Ideally, this is going to have to include using low carbon intensive fuel. That's exactly the kind of fuel that we're talking about in the project today. The carbon intensity of this fuel is about half of what the rest of California, the fuel, the oil and the rest of California is. And almost one fifth of what it is in many places in the world. So although no oil is clean oil, this is possibly less dirty oil. Ideally, this transition would also include cogeneration systems that capture and use excess heat generated during electrical production. And this plan also does that. Second, long term, it's estimated the microgrids, like the proposed system, will eventually replace extensions of the current dirty grid because the key advantages they offer in resiliency in response to local conditions. This is 21st technology that we should be encouraging. Third, if the options are to leave the wetlands polluted and riddled with outdated and potentially dangerous pipelines and wells, or have a fully restored wetlands return to the city in exchange for city parasols. Approximately 1/10 of the size that they're talking about being traded. I believe that the only rational choice is trade. The Last Surrender Wetlands Trust Board apparently agrees with me because I got that letter this morning, along with, I understand, the internationally known biologist, Erikson. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Carol Meyer. I am a homeowner and board. Member of the House of. A very little community, often unknown and forgotten sometimes of island village, which is in the very southeastern corner of Long Beach bordering SEAL Beach. We are. Very fortunate that this wetlands is in. Our backyard, literally, and we love it. Many of our homeowners are members of the Wetlands Trust. We participate. In a lot. Of the activities, and we're thrilled if this project gets approved and expands the wetlands. In addition to the fact that it will improve the. Entrance into. That corner of Long Beach, it's a major. Entrance from the south. And frankly, what someone else used a word tonight, an eyesore. And we believe that this will significantly improve that entrance. And I would like to thank our councilwoman. Susie Price, because she does know that island village exists. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Mayor Garcia and Council Members Vice Mayor Richardson. My name is Melinda Cotton. The project before you. Tonight is incredibly complex. And has a multitude of worrisome elements. You've heard a number of those. However, due to time constraints, I will focus on a serious concern about the financial viability of this project. Some of the corporate realities as it relies on the price of oil remaining at a profitable level for more than 40 years. However, oil prices are extremely volatile, as you've heard. Reliance on oil is fading. Oil prices were down at, I believe. 30 a barrel just in January a year ago. And while I'm sure the applicants. Are sincere in their efforts to combine profit with restored wetlands. What happens if that doesn't work out? What if the. Applicant finds that it is not a profitable endeavor and either abandoned said or worst case declares. Bankruptcy? It seems the area might be left in a worse state than it is today, and we see that the named applicant is not lion management, which owns the pumpkin patch property. Nor wetlands property owner synergy. Oil and gas. But a separate limited liability company, Peach Oil Minerals Partners LLC, which is identified by the Secretary of State as a Delaware entity. We understand limited liability companies are created for different projects to protect the partners and deal with legalities and financial arrangements. But when there are problems, we're also told it's hard to locate them and it's not lion. So that's a concern. I previously ask in letters to the to the attorney, city attorney two to the Planning Commission when I spoke there and to Assistant Manager Tom Mordecai as to shouldn't have this city to protect the taxpayers and the city itself have complete insurance policy performance bond. Something similar of that. Shouldn't there be specific goals, performance goals and measurements of progress? And shouldn't there be a bailout option? I'm a little confused. I never heard back except from Tom Oracle, who said that this was a. Private entity. And that they would look into the question. I've still not received answers. However, the applicant's representative mentioned some type of performance bond. So if the city has some protection, some insurance, some assurance that for 40 years this company is going to exist and be able to fulfill its obligations, I would. Like to know about them because I think it's really important. Thank you for your attention and I. Hope we can understand that situation more fully. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi. I'm cautiously and my address is on file and I'm a member of Carp. I'm the secretary of Carp. I'm here to speak on this. As opposing this project, I think we would all like to see the eyesore of the old oil wells removed. That's universal. And restoration is a good thing. And I saw a lot of things up there in that presentation where I thought the vision was good. But the question would be whether the market in place in 40 years is going to bear that out. Reportedly, there are only 3% of our wetlands left on our coast and precious little habitat remains that is natural to the area. As the stewards of this precious resource. It is our grave responsibility to protect it for future generations because of the damage oil does to our environment. We are moving towards solar and wind powered technologies. It seems likely that oil will be less in demand in the near future. The emissions make it not only undesirable as a fuel but damaging to our environment and a chief culprit in global warming. And this brings me to my main concern with respect to this proposal. And it's really the plan that this goes out 44 years. The first five years that I saw presented here looked appealing and looked like that's doable. They are standing up to saying, here's a deliverable and here's a timeframe on it. Now, there's no detail behind that. You know, I managed compliance for years in aerospace. And this is not enough information to judge compliance. You would need a plan, you would need detail, you would need dates, and you would need that commitment before you actually go into investing in this kind of a venture. I would like to see the cleanup front loaded into the schedule, and I did see some of that. Here tonight, although telling me that half of it will be gone and 20 years is way too vague. In 20 years, who knows if we're going to have oil as a major player in the environment? It's a very generous schedule to give someone 40 years to clean up. You know, the the pumpkin patch and the rest of it. A lot can happen in that stretch of time. Oil may become obsolete as a fuel. The price of oil may fluctuate, making it impractical to drill last may be enacted to force us to give up our dependance on oil. Cars may shift to solar power, and that's not a dream. That technology was successfully developed over 30 years ago. Any of these possibilities can lead this company to bankruptcy and abandonment of the site. And it seems there is a risk that the cleanup may never occur or occur. So the other thing I'd like to speak, I don't have no time left. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Mr. Mayor. City council members. Thank you. As a resident of Belmont Shore, I support this project. I attended the open house that was held in October and was impressed with the event and the transparency of the information that was shared. I have recent experience within the oil and gas industry and this project with respect to restoration. New facilities will. Thereby improve the quality of life for residents and wildlife by not only allowing the restoration of these wetlands, but by using newer technology to improve safety. And reliability of current oil operations. Newer technology and industry best practices within the engineering and design phases will improve process and environmental safety. Removal of the existing oil storage tanks and pipelines will drastically improve the esthetics of the area and reduce truck traffic through pipeline transportation. I also like the idea of funding it through private investment, the establishment of a mitigation bank, as well. As continuing oil and gas operations as an. Income stream for the city to hire additional police resources if desired, much like the thumb's facilities. This project will benefit residents and visitors of Long Beach for many years to come. I am excited for the wetlands to. Be restored and be able to walk out on new public access. Trails. As a Belmont Shore resident. I would suggest that a resident be permanently assigned to all has up and. Risk. Assessment activities throughout the design and engineering phase of this project. Please, I strongly support this project. Look forward to participating and hope for quick approval. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Elizabeth LAMB, and I'm executive. Director of the Lost Cerritos. Wetlands Land Trust. It took us a while, but we have come to a place where we support this project. Because it includes comprehensive wetlands and habitat restoration. Provides public access. Opportunities and. Consolidates oil. Operations offsite, and will transfer ownership of a substantial portion of low street US wetlands into the public domain. Those are all things for. Which we have long. Advocated over. The course of our research. The beach. Oil mineral has been a transparent and and. Has been responsive through our review process where we have. Asked them many questions and many detailed questions and. We always got back answers. From them. That helped us understand the project. In addition, as this project has implemented, beach oil Mineral has committed to involving us the land trust. In order to. Ensure we are fully. Updated and involved. As the project moves. Through its review. Process. Furthermore, as a. Result of. Our conversations. With the. Beach Oil Mineral Team and advice from our soil and water consultant, we have been promised a thorough and transparent process regarding the assessment and removal of onsite hazards and contamination. This will ensure there will be no site contamination of the wetlands as the land transitioned from oil. Operations. To conservation. One of the things I want to emphasize is. The role of us as a watchdog. In this process. We've been promised full communication, full. Access. To the information we need. To ensure that this. Project benefits the wetlands. And if I might say to everyone in the room, our role as watchdogs and advocates for the wetlands will never cease. And while there are people in this room that disagree with. How we view this project, we ourselves will. Remain committed to protecting the wetlands and restoring them as habitat for future generations to enjoy. As well as. Fragile endangered species. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Connie Warner and I live at Belmont Shores Mobile Estates. I'm here to support the wetlands restoration. I'm a native, grew up here and lived here 40 years. I moved for work and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, not realizing the importance of wetlands until I established myself a National Wildlife Federation certified backyard wildlife habitat providing food, water and shelter for wildlife in our area and a place to raise their young. When we retired, we came back home. We came back to Long Beach and I was pleased to see our remaining Lazaridis wetlands had not been developed. My husband and myself feel very fortunate to have our home overlooking the wetlands and steam shovel slew. We watch great white egrets knowing egrets, great blue herons, osprey cormorants, pelicans diving, diving for their food and many other types of waterfowl. Wouldn't it be wonderful for the local children and residents or whoever is visiting to be able to see these beautiful birds on a path going around the wetlands and an education center to educate and appreciate how important the wetlands are to our area and wildlife. If it wasn't for the oil production or remaining wetlands would have been lost a long time ago to development. I am a member of the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust and would appreciate and support their recommendations and would appreciate a yes vote. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. I thank you all for being here tonight. And I mean all of you. I guess maybe you've had this means you've had your flu shots. Everyone's here. And I appreciate all the audience behind me who is here tonight. So many citizens willing to take the time to come out and talk about and listen to this subject. A lot has come to light just tonight. I want to see the wetlands restored. I guess everybody here does. It's it's a great thing. And I hope that there's a way that it happens. And you've heard some of the concerns tonight. And I hope that this remains an open and transparent process. I hope that some of these concerns actually, all of them I hope all of them are addressed. But as is appropriate now and in the days following, rather than simply approve the plan and just wait for it to go to the Coastal Commission and be addressed there. There's no need to wait. And in waiting that would only invite delays and appeals. And I hate to see a delay. So I hope the openness and transparency continues and that these concerns are addressed. I'm here to report to you a factor that hasn't been mentioned yet tonight, I don't believe and that concerns new information and air deals with all the information presented at the time. But new information that comes after that air needs to be considered. Also, this new information concerns the Newport-Inglewood fault. And this was a report that I read in the L.A. Times in March 21st of last year. If people want to look it up and read it, it's a report of some research that was done by scientists at CSU Fullerton and also the U.S. Geological Survey. They did some research in the wetlands and took core samples and discovered that there was evidence of three earthquakes on this fault, all of which were bigger than the earthquake that struck Long Beach in 1933. These were so violent that they caused the land to subside as much as three feet in just a matter of seconds. Now, these were long ago, of course, these were ancient earthquakes. But as we all read from time to time, we're due for the big one. We don't know when it's going to happen. But their research indicates that really we are due and these large earthquakes can occur with much more frequency than was thought before. Well, this is kind of new information and should be considered, and I think this needs to be factored in again, rather than simply wait for it to get to coastal where it certainly will be considered there. So please address it now. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Dr. Gary Stickle, and I'm not here to talk about the merits of the project. I am here to talk about who the true indigenous people Native Americans are of this area. I got my Bama and to UCLA and I taught there as well. And I've been studying local Indian people for 50 years. So I know what I'm talking about. I've had my research verified by the major archeologists of Europe. Professor Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge, who got the London Times to announce our discovery of the oldest site in this area, the Farpoint site, which was in the Chumash tribal area on Point Tomb and Malabo. Also the Smithsonian. Our National Museum has verified my research, so I know what I'm talking about. I was asked to speak here tonight by Chief Ernest Salas, who graces this proceeding and is sitting up there. The true indigenous people of this area, called the Keech, spelled cases the age they were first encountered by the Spanish in 1771. What we call Whittier Narrows. And then they established a concrete outpost. Initially, the Spanish call them K'iche because the people call themselves Kage, but they have Spanish sides that you can't keep your nose like Angelina's. Then one day when the mission was washed out, they two years later they moved to five miles north to where it is today and San Gabriel. And initially there they were called Keech, which is verified by a book by a padre there in 1909, fathers who grant us, but eventually they call them gatherer lentils, which is not what the tribe likes because it's the name given to them by their conquerors. And so their name is stuck with them, unfortunately. But the name was first published in 1846 by Horatio Hill, the United States government, and then by the Smithsonian and other major scholars of that century. And what I want to announce to you tonight is that the state of. California only. Recognizes the Keech, and this is because vast areas, the Keech covered vast areas. I want to show you a map. Official tribal map. Investir is the whole top of the map is the San Gabriel Mountains, which is considered sacred. By the new American Areas. Commission. And all this area off your shore here is sacred to the case. It's called a sacred sea of Kish, recently approved by the state of California's Native American Harris Commission. No other tribe. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you. Mayor. Council members. Thank you for having me tonight. My name's Kyle, sir, and. I'm speaking as vice president of land management. I just wanted to address two comments. Briefly made by Ms.. Cantrell and others. First being the use of pesticides. In 2008, we acquired the property in 2011. So the use of pesticides in 2008 wasn't under our jurisdiction or anything that we had involvement in. Nor are we using pesticides, nor we use them since we acquired the property in 2011. So just wanted to make that you guys aware of that. And second being the use of grading equipment, I believe there was calls made to the city within the last week. I want to just confirm with you guys that there is no band, no work, no grading work done on the pumpkin patch site. And I'm here to speak to that on the record. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, everyone. Mr. Mayor, city council people. My name is Pedro Jose. Melendez, and I'm a Pueblo Indian. I've been living here in California for almost 63 years. I'm 70 years old. I went to Cal State, Long Beach, and I'm not here to debate whether you will approve this or not or whether you should or you shouldn't. But please consider the request of Chairman Salas. One of the things that's most important to me is because I've studied our culture and I've been working on the issues of identity theft, is to expose this so called Tribe Called the Tongva. I known for at least 25 years. I've seen the light through the created fake news out of Cal State Long Beach. I live with you are catching them. I am finished near to Kasztner. Yet to hear you. I am from San Juan Capistrano. Where they are catching them gave birth. There's a lot of lies going around. Fake news doesn't exist in Washington, D.C. Fake news exists here at Cal State, Long Beach. And you will see in the future how many of these people will be exposed, because we have a national effort to expose to all these fake betrayers of truth and justice. And one of them is the Tongva. Please vote with your heart as it comes down to this question of whether you should have these wetlands or not. To me, there's an interest because it's healing Mother Earth. But what's most important to me is that you become knowledgeable of what's going on in your own city, in your own Cal State, and act with consciousness. Because one. Thing we know as Pueblos is that we're living in an era of. Truth. This is the six generational text, the soul, where the truth will come above the lies. And you will see it. You will see what. Happens in the next few years. Thank you very much. And I know you have a difficult task before you, but I appreciate you giving us the time. Please, Mr. Mayor, read that folder that Chairman Salazar gave you. You will find all of these so created leaders of this Tonga group. And they can be exposed and they will be. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Message to congratulate Maldonado's Ibarra Karam Jeremie my retire retirement. He Garbarino. Good evening. You know, I saw things going on about the wetlands, and I saw the call to action that was put out there by several people. And at first, my first response or my first thought was to come over here, go to these actions. Say No pipe, no pipelines, keep the oil in the soil. Black snake killers. You know, I've been I I'm a great grandmother. And I answered one of the. First calls to Standing Rock. But I only answered it when we were asked to go there. I didn't take it upon myself. I know my first reaction was, no, this can't happen. And after taking the time to educate myself, read everything, read as much as I could. I have to say, yes, we need this project. We need to clean up those wetlands. And if this is a start, this is a baby step, it needs to happen. All this pollution and desecration of our lands didn't happen overnight, and it's not going to get fixed overnight. But we need to begin that process and we need to work together on it. We need to ask the city of Long Beach. We need to ask the oil companies. We need to ask all related indigenous people of this area and anyone else who has who's involved, who is here to preserve their land for future generations, for their children's and grandchildren's, for everyone to come. We need to work together. We need transparency in what's going on with this project. We need to support each other because if we don't, who's going to support us? We're all we have. This is the only world we have. Protect our mother. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Okay. Let's have a council. Have a mayor. Garcia, thank you for having me. Thank you for having all of us. And also, as one also addressed the audience and saving you, everyone who's here tonight for being here, I think. We can all agree that we really want progress. We really want. Progress in growth for Long Beach. I agree. I'm right there with you. I love my beach. Group in the same district. And I student went to college by high school, great school, great music program, great academic school. Anyway. I also got my B.A.. At UC Irvine and I was before that at Lumberjack City College. And you remember you coming Mayor Garcia. There and speaking. To our policy program there. And I appreciate that. That's great. But I'm not here to speak on behalf of my piece. I'd agree that. But I'm here to speak on behalf of this earth. Right. This Mother Earth. And we're just coming past this three day weekend honoring the great Martin Luther King Jr. And he was. A man that we honor. Why? Why? Why is it. Why is it such a special day to be on of that man? Because he stood up for what's for what's. For what was right in the darkest the. Darkest time in our history. He stood for what was right. And so in that honor and that spirit, I'm. Here to speak on behalf of this. Earth, this earth, this beautiful, sensitive earth. And as we know, this dark time, we're in it. Climate change is real. Thank you, Elliot, for. Everyone who's spoken and and brought that forth. Climate change is happening. We're seeing it in this globally, what's happening and in our nation with oil drilling, it's there so much information out there on the causes and the consequences. So I'm urging a council and mayor to really. And I agree the restoration. Yes, of course. The restoration. Yes. Or pipeline with a pipeline. Let's fix this project. Maybe this is not the project. To do that. Can we? I really I just really want to. Put that put that out there. And I hope that you hear us tonight. I'm with you, though. I'm with much progress. I'm all for that. And I. Plan to continue. Doing my degree in studying nutrition. And health sciences, public health, because. I know that's what's needed in our community. And I look forward to serving our community in that way. But anyway, thank you for listening. And I really hope that. You guys stand with Long. Beach in that light and that progression, that good progress. So thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Yeah, it's a shame Phenix in show. She needs some northern paper shushing, maybe negotiation. Okay. Good evening, everybody. My name is Cheyenne Phenix. I come from the neighboring Northern Paiute Nations. I'm representing the future generations. I am a part of the seven generations that are our native people, are indigenous people have talked about. And I want to ask for forgiveness for speaking in front of my elders who are here tonight. And I ask for the respect from them for what I'm going to say here. And as a the seventh generation who is rising in our stories have been told, but the old ways will will guide us. But at the same time, there needs to be the new the new generation that's going to come and they're going to speak out. And as my sister was saying and acknowledging that Martin Luther King Junior's birthday was yesterday and we celebrated his life. And whatever you all were doing, just know that he was there. He was standing up for our brothers and sisters who are struggling during that time. And one thing he said was that our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about the things that matter. So as you all become silent about these things that matter, the Earth is calling out our children, our great grandchildren that are coming. They're going to be crying out for clean water. They're going to be crying out for that clean air, for all the smog to go away, for the rain to come back, for the temperature to drop back to the way it should be. And as a as a person who who will soon be taking care of my elders, that that will be going on, but will won't be here anymore and that have that sacred knowledge of passing it down to me in our language and our ways. We won't have any of that anymore. We won't have any of that anymore. If there is the continuation of pipelines, if there's a continuation of funding these corporations, these people that only want that money and they don't care about your families, they don't care about this land, they don't care about any other thing but themselves. The money cause houses, things that are only temporary. But what's going to last forever is us as human beings, working together and building a future, building a clean future, a bright future for our children to come, our grandchildren to come. So thank you. Thank you. Next week, the peace. Good evening, everyone. My name is David de la Tierra. I've lived in Long Beach for six years now. And first, I just want to thank the Kitchen Nation for taking the time to dialog with me. Unfortunately, I have to say I disagree with them. I think we cannot trust these oil companies. We've had over 600 oil spills in California since 1984. The Dakota Access pipeline hasn't even been built for a year, and it's already leaked three times, to my knowledge. So we can't trust them. And you all you people sitting here, you're responsible and you're supposed a place of power for hundreds of thousands of people and kids that are being born today, kids that will continue to be born. I know people that are pregnant. You're responsible for their lives. And when that new pipeline and the new oil drilling leaks, you're going to be responsible for their sickness and their cancer, at least partially. So I urge you to vote against it. And in regards to the jobs, how long are you going to have those jobs for and that it's creating? Those are only temporary. If you want a job, as my class has been understaffed for months. No one's come to help us. So yeah, that's what I want to say about it. So I just hope you guys vote with their hearts like my sisters have said. Thank you. We have a we have about 45 minutes of public comment as well as obviously the beginning of the deliberations. So unless there's objection from the council, we're going to go down to 2 minutes. See? No objection. No 2 minutes. Thank you. Thank you, brothers and sisters, for having me here today. And this is my prayer before I speak. Thank you for being with me today and sleeping with me and my ancestors as they would be with me as I speak to these people who hold significantly power on the moon and my family resides in prayer. They may be with me today as I speak. Thank you. So I strongly urge against and I speak on behalf of the American community here in Long Beach. I speak on behalf of of Long Beach. I was born here 20 years and watched this place go and see what's going on. And I speak on behalf of my low income community, the children they were bringing the children to come here, the people that will visit the mental health community, the homeless community of only the minority. My urge I strongly urge against this project and I urge that you analyze, you understand that these risks are not worth taking. They're not not worth it. It's like seeing a bottle of prescription pills and you see all the side effects in extreme IT extremities, like heart attacks and seizures and hives and all this stuff. And you still take them. It makes some sense. And I strongly urge against this project just by having you have to prove you have evidence that is a gas and showing you what what this could do and even if it were to happen or not. And why why would you take that risk? Why would you put hundreds of people's lives at risk? And you have that decision. You have a choice to make. And I can tell you what you're going to do. I am not going to even in the reading to. But I pray that you make a wise decision today. Thank you. Speaker Hey, good day. My name is Matthew Cheatham, as I'm the son of John two, Thomas Elder, the coach, Gavilan O'Bannon, mission ends and muscle nephew to our chief, Ernie Salas. I also act as the biologist for the tribe. We are. The reason why our tribe is involved in this is because we participated through the AB 52 process, the 11 entities that were contacted. It was up to them to participate and it seems that only two responded and we were one of them. So that's some of the reasoning of why there weren't other tribal governments responding at this time. So to clear that up from our perspective, our tribal government perspective being this is our tribal area, we feel that the restoration of the wetlands is a something that we've been wanting for a long time. And we, too, have a distrust of how our land has been treated and how our land is restored. We truthfully don't feel it can be restored because it's already been degraded to a point of of just pretty much it's an example now of a wetland, not an actual functioning wetland where, you know, our tribe feels that we our generation needs to now participate in these actions so that we can provide information such as the Monitor, Pinoys, the Cisco turbines, all the flavonoids, all the components, the phytochemicals that are found in our plants that our families use for the medicines and for our foods, things that heal our land. And we feel that adding these components to the land, the healing components, will also help to heal our community together. So the allowance of the future communities to be able to interact with the creator's creation is something that we promote and then that we support, and that's what we feel is going on with this project. And so that's why we as a tribal government are bound to protect and preserve these natural resources as well as any cultural resources that may be uncovered during the process. Thank you. Next, please. Your Honor, City Council. My name is Jim Beebe. I'm from the Disney Nation. Oh, yeah. To hear you know. I'm not sure. The owner. Of a of the right buffalo film. Studio we. Do documentaries. Can open. Here in regard. To my friends or the Quiche Nation. And I've been hearing. All of this negativity. And what I would. Like to do and I'm saying. This in front of you. I would like. To donate. The cameras, the. Time and everything in regard to creating. A documentary. So that. The truth. Will come out. Oh, yes. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and councilmembers. My name is Eric, guys. I'm a resident here in Long Beach. I'm also a consultant to this project. My company develops and finances clean energy projects, and we were retained for that purpose with this project. I'm also a climate activist. So just to be clear with you guys, there's nobody that wants to control fossil fuel emissions and bring climate change under control more than me in this room. And I imagine many of you before me and certainly behind me. So I want to raise two points for you guys tonight that are worth highlighting here that tend to get glossed over in a project like this. One is the complaint. This is a precursor, but the company coming to us is highly unusual in the industrial corporate world, asking us to design an energy system that reduces pollution to the maximum extent possible. So this is corporate responsibility in an unusual way, and I wanted to highlight that. So how did that manifest? It came about it. It resulted in the microgrid, the design of the microgrid that you guys have heard about a couple of times. Well, what in the world is a microgrid? Why is that important? The end result. Is it reduces. Emissions by tens of thousands of pounds. And it's evidenced by this this book, an international bestseller vetted by experts all over the world, the solar system, the co-generation turbines and the microgrid system itself. The final point I want to make is we're sitting on low carbon oil here in Long Beach. This oil field is at about six. It's these are units of measure grams of carbon dioxide. It's at a six. The average in California is 12. The carbon that comes out of the tar sands in Canada is 24. So what I'm saying to you is the California Air Board has vetted this in great detail with a great deal of environmental input and support from multiple groups, and found that the oil here is substantially less in terms of its carbon intensity. And I apologize for going over my title. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and Counsel. My name is Bruce Bullock. I am also a consultant to the Beach Oil Minerals team here. I am currently a professor of energy management at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and also director of the Maguire Energy Institute. But I'm here representing myself tonight. I actually got involved in this support of this project at the encouragement of my students, several of which live here in Long Beach and are very interested in this project. I've been involved in urban drilling issues both in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma and now California. And I guess one clear message I have is there have been very few projects. That I have been. Involved with or seen that are as well thought out as this one is, and that is on a global basis. First, the eventual footprint of this down to ten acres and the engineering done in terms of the surface equipment to minimize that surface. I haven't seen that virtually anywhere. Second, all of the containment that's done in subsurface structures, that's a best practice that you won't see anywhere outside of California. Those kind of containment structures elsewhere are usually just walls around the wells themselves. Finally, I concur with most of the other speakers here. Of the. Environmental benefits associated with it the low carbon oil. The replacement of all unregulated. Equipment with new equipment that is actually new source performance standards were passed in 2015, all of which will be applied to the new equipment on this project. And I appreciate your listening to me here tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nick Speaker. Good evening, counsel. My name is Johnny Bloomberg and I'm actually currently a resident of Los Alamitos, but I'm originally from Long Beach near Long Beach State. And as a kid, I would always ride my bike from the summers area next to the wetlands on the bike path to SEAL Beach. And I also have a small boat and Syria is bigger marina directly across from the Synergy Property. I'm currently a student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, studying finance and energy management as well. And part of my study is includes understanding the science, economics and operations related to energy management or energy production. And with this education, I have a greater appreciation of the idea of updating infrastructure in order to promote safety and cleanliness. I also think it's a great idea to consolidate existing operations and minimize the impact of producing a resource that allows every single person in this room to live a comfortable and safe life. As there's been a lot of time hiking at the Bolsa Chico Island just south of here, and I would love to have something similarly right in our backyard. I think my whole life, wondering about the theory, those wetlands and the idea of finally bringing them to life really excites me. As a local resident and a student of energy, I strongly believe that the approval of this project will bring numerous benefits for years to come. Thank you for your time. The keynote speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Council. My name is Tina Phifer. I'm the president of Glen Lucas Associates, and our firm has had the privilege of working on this project for over five years with the current landowner. Prior to our involvement with this landowner, we also worked with the prior one, and our unique perspective on this project has always been on how to restore the wetlands. And so our objective was to create a restoration plan that was part of the Environmental Impact Report that looked at how best to do it, what are the best methods, how to restore it in such a way that minimizes the temporary impacts? All of these things went into our restoration plan that has been not only peer reviewed, but is undergoing the current review process with all of the federal and state agencies. And I bring this up because there are a couple of things I want to hit on tonight that were raised by the public as far as concerns go . Number one is. What happens to the restoration of the the funding for the oil operations goes away. And the answer to that is there is a performance bond that has to be posted by this applicant at the outset of the restoration. So whether or not the oil operations carries through as planned or goes away, the performance bond is in place to make sure that once it's kicked off, it doesn't stop. We have to maintain performance standards. We have to report to the IRS for five continuous years in order for the wetlands credits to be released. So that's the answer to that first question. The second one is how is this project going to fund the long term management of those restored wetlands? It's equally important to us to see the implementation. But once we're gone and off the site after five years, we want to make sure that these wetlands also stay in the high functioning habitat that they are once they're signed off. After five years. So the answer to that question is that the applicant also will be establishing and funding an endowment, and that endowment will be given to the low street as wetlands authority for the long term management. And those are just the two things I wanted to address. Thank you. Thanks so much. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and Council. I'm Tony Blomkamp. I'm senior biologist and wetland. Specialist at Glen Lucas Associates. And I had the great privilege of being part of the team that designed the Wetland Restoration Team and was just speaking about it. I actually want to speak to you. In a different capacity tonight. I'm a I've been an instructor in the Environmental Studies Program at Cal State Fullerton for the last 24 years. So I hope you don't hold being a titan against me. I am teaching at Cal State Fullerton. For the last 24. Years, I've developed three courses for the Graduate Environmental Studies programs. One of them is Conservation of Migratory Birds. I just finished it last semester. It's probably my favorite course to teach. And what you what I've learned in teaching this class is. How are the world population of birds? Continues to decline for many reasons. For many, many reasons. But we do know that the loss of wetland habitat has been a significant issue in that this. Is an incredible. Opportunity, a really unique opportunity to begin the process of restoring the whole Los Cerritos wetland complex. And we're starting off with, you know, the first 75 acres. Then there'll be another 75. And as you as you, you, I'm sure you're aware that it's just a matter of stepping stones. You know, the. Rest of the wetlands are in Long Beach and then over to Hellman, and over time, we're going to end up. With many hundreds of new wetlands that will be. Really important along the Pacific Flyway and will be significant in maintaining the populations of of our of our waterfowl, shorebirds, past rains, raptors, you know, across the entire suite of, of our fauna. So again, I just, just thank you for listening to everyone tonight and please approve this project. Thank you. Next speaker can we say resident of the first district and I've been appointed to speak on behalf of the Gray Panthers tonight who are supporting this project. Wendy Griffith pretty much said everything that we espouse in terms of the preservation of this land and supporting this project. What I'd like to address is the earth when I was little, although I always used to be open, and since when I had children, there became this thing of nature deficit kind of unawareness of their native environment. And the restoration of the. Wetlands is something we desperately need for our young people. I first met Erickson when I took a group of kids from the Boys and Girls Club out to one of his restoration projects. And the kids were so fascinated and engaged in what. Was going on with a natural environment, but many of them who lived in low income housing didn't have access to a yard. Or natural things to explore and parents. Working three jobs. Their parents had no time to take them anywhere. Our youth need a safe place where they can go and explore and learn. About our natural environment so they can grow. Up to protect our earth. And we can have a restful place that protects our birds and our ocean and wildlife that live in that area. So we encourage you to support this project as we do. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Andrew Carroll. I live in Long Beach, California. Thanks. I want to thank the council, the mayor, vice mayor for the time. I want to thank the audience. Everyone's been listening to both sides tonight very silently. I think that's very respectful and it bodes well for our community and our ability and our democracy. And I appreciate that. I think the city council has done a tremendous job in allowing equal time to both sides of divide presentations, and I appreciate that as well. It is in the interest of sort of being consistent with that ethic that I find it a little unfortunate that one native group was invited to speak, that they were given 5 minutes of official time in order to speak in favor of the proposal, and that I'm sure it didn't mean to come across this way, but that did come across as if they were representative of the entire native interest. So I want to speak to that ambiguity. I think that could have mainly been done a little bit better. There might have been some time to find some other native groups who clearly tonight showed up. And I also want to thank individual indigenous people for coming and speaking on both sides of this issue, and I hope to see more of that. And I just wish that there would also been time for maybe 5 minutes of a different group. I had one friend leave actually, because she she deeply felt after hearing the support from the during the 5 minutes that that she felt ethically ambiguous herself about where to stand on this issue. Because for a lot of us, it is a deep issue to hear indigenous people come out in support of this. We really respect that and we don't want to, even if we personally disagree, we give space for that and we want to say, do what you want because we respect that. So to have one group speak in support and make it look, and I'm sure with an intangible the ambiguity was there that it might be indicative of the entire community creates that ambiguity and creates a lot of it for us. A lot of us in this room, some tension. Lastly, I think during the rebuttal phase, there was a comment made by the speaker during her initial rebuttal that came across as very kind of threatening. I'm sure I don't need to recall it. I think we might remember it that if this didn't pass, that they would just keep using defunct equipment to drill and do whatever they wanted. I think that's a regrettable statement. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, Speaker. Good evening. My name is Steve Brothers. I'm live in Councilman Councilwoman Price's district, the third district. I want to frame my comments with a quote by a great man. I think you'll all recall excuse me, last June when President Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. So this is a quote. In a statement released Thursday, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia called the move a huge step backwards for America. I have joined mayors across the country to work towards adopting the global agreement on our cities, he said in a statement as a coastal city. We must fight for our future and the next generation. I mentioned that just to concede that I do understand that this is a council that cares about the climate crisis in earnest, that you the city does have a sustainable city action plan and tries to act in accord with A, B and SB 32. I acknowledge that my comments, though, are in opposition. I'd like to just point out that the plan's proponents downplay risks and dismiss concerns related to climate as insignificant. But if you read the draft Environmental Impact Report and the concerns put forward and the response by the Coastal Commission and other environmental groups, it becomes clear that this is all a giant and convoluted mitigation scheme. The word mitigation appears. Over and over and. Over again as the emissions from the project equal are the emissions from the project equal to 11,000 cars per day on our roads for the 40 year endurance of the program. The they respond, basically conceding that that's the case and say, yes, but this is they dismiss the issue because of cap and trade schemes. In other words, the problem is real. But they will buy pollution allowances to offset it per the COD procedures and guidelines. So another question, is bump going to finance the restoration with the wetlands mitigation? Well, sort of. It's a way of financing it with this mitigation back. And this allows developers to buy the right to damage or destroy natural functioning wetlands elsewhere. Remember, according to a Cal State University system study, 90% of California's wetlands are already gone. The scheme is a cynical shell game of shuffling destruction around. What about the Newport-Inglewood fault? No problem. Proponents assure us the drilling sites are not in the fault zone. Never mind that the LC site is only 200 feet outside the technical parameters of the fault zone and the Newport Inglewood fault does bisect the project area and they do plan to run a pipeline over it. So what about the spill danger? Well, yes, the worst case for the site would be 61,000 barrel spill. The worst case that the pumpkin patch would be a 5000 barrel spill. Worst case that the pipeline over the city property would be a 30,000 gallons spill. Thank you, sir, so much. In terms of please keep it in mind. Thank you very much. Thanks, Speaker. Thank you. Hi, Mr.. Mayors, the members of city council. Gary Shelton, 27 year resident of Long Beach. My address is on file. I've known all of you for a long time. I've known Ann Cantrell for a long time. I've known Joe Weinstein for a long time. I've known Cat and Chuck Moore for a long time. But I don't know a whole lot about is this project. But I come down here because I know these folks don't come down here on a whim. If Ann Cantrell and Joe Weinstein say there's something wrong with an air, that it has flaws, then you know something? The history at this diocese should tell you that it has flaws. Thank you. I wish I could reiterate what they might be. I don't know. I just trust that what I wish you folks will do tonight is discuss this not only on the merits of the project, which is what they always turn to when there's a flight air. You can discuss that all you want, but talk about the air and its potential flaws or its lack of flaws because we need to hear that from you before we'll trust your decisions and then make your decision wisely, which I know you will do. You're all honorable people. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Gonzales. Sorry it's late. I saw you keyed up, and I just read your name next. We're going to keep. So I. Apologize. Hi. My name is. We're going to we're going to go ahead and keep going. I'm sorry. Please continue. Hi. My name is Cindy Koke. Not related to the brothers, but our planet is worth more than oil company profits. Let me repeat, our planet is worth more than oil company profits. Let's put a Y in front of R. Your planet is more worth. More than oil company profits. Your planet. Our planet. We're all in this together. Do you think you could start making decisions that are environmentally responsible? How is it that you think we don't need clean air and clean water to survive? Our government is our worst enemy. In this country. So sad. All of you say we're here for you. If you have any problems, let us know. Well, we're here for you. We're here now. What are you going to do about this problem? Are you going to help your constituents and the environment or the corporations? Please, please, please stop being puppets for the corporations. They are not people. And they certainly don't need clean air and clean water to survive and they don't vote. I would love to ask each of you why you went into politics. I always thought it would be to make the world a. Better place, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Greed and power have taken over. So if you're hell bent on destroying our environment and cutting your life short, that's your business. Unfortunately, it can't be done without taking us with you. You are responsible for our lives. That's a big responsibility and hopefully not taken lightly. So would you could you please respect your life a little more so we can all live a happy, healthy life? I don't think that's asking too much. Stop this nonsense of trying to get every last drop of oil out of the ground. It's not going to happen. This planet, remember, years and hours won't survive. We will all be gone. I long for the day. We no longer have to fight our government. To save our environment. You live here too. Thank you. Next speaker. And before our next book goes up. So we're going to go and close the speaker's list. So we have three? Nope. Okay. We have one warrant. I'm going to close the speaker's list. If you're not in line, it will be closed. And. Okay, this is your last chance. So. Okay. So after this speaker's list is closed, officially, we have five speakers. Please. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for allowing this space to be shared. And it's time away from your families and other priorities. I want to encourage the Board to vote no without further review from the California Coastal Commission and other further detailed examinations of the Independent Environmental Review. I strongly ask for our future generations, for forgiveness, for what we haven't done to these wetlands, and ask for forgiveness for what we're about to do to these wetlands. This 20 year and this 40 year clean up project is great, but it's nothing that's going to help us now and it's not going to help our descendants. So I ask that everybody rely on the guidance, the wisdom, the fortitude of our ancestors. Black, brown, white, yellow, purple, orange. And then we asked for guidance and lessons from our descendants in whatever form and shape they may come. And so please let all love for this earth and all compassion for our community and let our courage for each other prevail. And you guys, I have a blessed decision. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. Thank you for hearing. Hearing me. My name is Winston. I've lived in Long Beach my whole life. I live in Belmont. Sure. I'd like to apologize. No, I didn't prepare anything. I wasn't planning on speaking tonight. And I'm not going to speak to the merits of the proposal. Other people have done a lot more research. Other people know a lot more than that. And we've heard from them. And we'll say, I'm inclined to trust folks who've done the research, and I'd be more inclined to trust experts who weren't being paid by a party to the to this proposal. I think there's a you know, a question of political principle at stake. I don't believe the public has been adequately informed. I mean, you know, for all that we talk about living in a cynical times and, you know, people joke about about, you know, not trusting politicians or public officials, I think overwhelmingly people do. I think people really believe that. You know, there are public officials with, you know, with state and local agencies. Their elected officials really do want what's best for them and are looking out for them. And so and so. And they trust those folks to frame the issues correctly. And so when they hear that there's this this great environmental restoration project being proposed, most of them will, you know, say, well, that's great news. And the issue I have here is that it doesn't seem to me that this is I think that's a very misleading way of framing this issue. It seems to me that this is a drilling proposal to be compensated by a restoration project. And I think if you told people that, you know, this is a drilling proposal to be compensated by some restoration, that would be having a very different discussion than, you know. Do you support wetlands restoration proposal? Proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Eric Zorn, lifetime Long Beach resident. And for the first 22 years of my life, I did not know those wetlands existed for the last 23 years of my life. I have dedicated it to seeing the wetlands conserved. I'm one of the lucky ones. I have spent tens of thousands of hours in those areas. Wetlands. I know every inch, every nook and cranny. I began to explore a wild land in my own backyard. Lucky me. Now I'm sharing with my two and a half year old. We drive down Second Street and he looked at the oil fields. He goes, wetlands. And he knows that just because I've made him aware. Not everybody else gets to be aware. And I plan to dedicate tens and tens of thousands of hours of my life to making all of us aware. I think what a great success. I haven't heard anybody say they're not in support of seeing the wetlands restored here tonight. So I know I've taken many of you on individual towards the wetlands and share them with you. What a great resource for our community, for our future. And I think this is an incredible debate. And thank you for hosting it tonight. And we hope to see more opportunities for more exploration of wetlands into the future. Thank you. Next figure, please. Hi. I'm from the land of the Tonga. I'm all for restoring the wetlands, but. I don't see how you can do that by putting in 120 oil and water wells. It just. I don't. Get the logic. All right. I'll be straight up. And I'm from a. Community where I'm surrounded by oil refineries. And I. I inhale all that crap. I can heal that crap. They might not inform me that they're having a flare up, but I feel it in my lungs. And I get my asthma inhaler and I just start inhaling in. Hello, Mr. Garcia? Yeah. And anyways. You know, I think you. Owe it to your constituents as well as the people who live outside. Of directly outside of Long Beach to vote against this project. You know. The refineries. I live nearby. There's always some sort of mishap going on. There's an accident, you know? How do you want to put your people in danger? I mean, a bunch of these. Oil drills and oil wells. You know, on an earthquake fault. And not to mention that. Intersection of second and. Of Second and PCH in Studebaker. I mean, it's just so there's already a lot of traffic there already. What's it going to look like when when there's all that construction there? So I so please vote against this. Do it for. The people of Long Beach. Also do it for the. Planet, because you keep saying how green and progressive long beaches show. Show us. Walk the walk, please. Thank you. Thank you. Next and our final speaker. We have too many open. Unanswered questions. They said this is going to happen. That's going to happen. Hey, like it said, 40 years, 40 years. You know what's. Going to happen. Just pleased to see your name for the record, please, Sir Arthur. 40 years. I you know, I'm Native American. I know we want our land clean. We want to do this. We want to renew this. We want to renew that. But we want to do it the right way. We want to do it with everything. Everything answered. Openness. We want openness. I want my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, their children to come out here. And see the wetland. But I don't want the oil. Ha, you know, pumping more oil, pumping more of this, doing this and doing that. How is that helping the land? How is that helping us at all? Yeah, but. Let me. Thank you. That concludes public comment. So we're going to continue the hearing. I want to go ahead and obviously close the public comment period of the hearing tonight. And we're going to be going into the deliberation and closing of the hearing. So to start off. Councilwoman Price, thank you. Well, thank you to everyone for being here this evening, for expressing your views both for and against the project. I appreciate the thoughtful consideration that everyone here has given to the actual proposal, and I appreciate the passions that have been expressed on both sides. I want to give a special note of thanks to our city staff. They have been working with me to understand and frame this project for over three years now, and I appreciate the guidance that that they have provided. And, you know, a lot of times we talk about analyzing the air and what's in the air. And tonight's the focus of of tonight's meeting isn't necessarily to approve or not approve the project. It's to consider the appeals and the merits of the appeals and to make a determination as to whether the Planning Commission's recommendation should be upheld. Having said that, I am very supportive of this project, but there are a few areas that I would like to talk to staff about. And I apologize in advance. I don't think the clicker is working. Unfortunately, I did this presentation during their go. Okay. During the during the comments from staff and the appellants and the public. So I apologize if there are any inadvertent errors or typos. But one of the things that was mentioned in the rebuttal of the appellants was that this is the appellant, the I'm sorry, not the appellants. The applicants are permitted to drill for oil at this site by right. So I'd like to ask staff to elaborate a little bit more on that. Thank you. Councilmember Price I can shed some light on that in terms of this site. So the project has has four pieces and according to the city's oil code of the only, there's a there's a portion of the synergy oil field site that is currently in the in the on the oil map. But quite frankly, the the the leasehold predates that. And so any of the oil drilling on hand is actually legal, non-conforming, and it doesn't meet today's oil code. But are they legally permitted to drill on the CW site? The answer is not right now, not unless a change to the oil code and the oil map are made. And same goes with the the pumpkin patch site. Okay. What about the synergy site? The synergy site, a portion of. Yes. And because they are allowed by the existing lease hold that was put into place prior to the city's oil regulations. Yes, they are. So so the answer to that question really there is there anything the city can do to preclude them from drilling for oil at their site? No. They are currently permitted to drill for oil on this energy oil field. One of the questions we've heard a lot from the appellants and I appreciate them raising this issue with me. I did have a very productive meeting with them yesterday evening. But the question is the esthetics of the area, the city's response. And by the way, I know everyone knows that URS are voluminous documents, but this volume here is just the volume dealing with the comments and the comment letters. And the Coastal Commission letter is in here. And the city's very thorough response to that is also in here. And it talks about a little bit of the esthetic features. And one of the things that we've heard is that the esthetic features will actually be more invasive in terms of the scenic visual that the public will see when they drive around the site. Can you speak to that a little bit? Sure. So the Environmental Impact Report did in a esthetics analysis as well as as well as visual simulations on all four sites. But I'm going to focus primarily on the site and the pumpkin patch site, because those are the sites of the proposed well sellers. So the actual well sellers are underground. But more importantly, the perimeter screening of each site consisting of a substantial landscape setback as well as a screen wall, would prevent passers by on the public right of way from seeing the oil operation. Furthermore, if you are on the site so the well sellers are in the ground, there are storage tanks on the CWA site toward the back. That again, would it be a screened by the wall based on the line of sight from where the person viewing the site would be on the public right of way and in relation to the position of the storage tanks at the rear of the site. And then lastly, I will mention that there are there's obviously oil drilling rigs that will be present on the site primarily during the construction. But there is a collapsible workover rig that would be visible during the maintenance of oil operations. But because it is collapsible, it will not be visible while it is not being used. So those that's a summary of the things that the public would see, essentially a screen wall and landscaping. So the the the rigs that you just mentioned, those would not be a permanent feature of either of these sites. The correct is that during construction, there is one that will be there for for the duration of construction. But the other one that's used for maintenance will not be visible because it is collapsible. Okay. We heard some questions about current risks of oil spills and what safeguards, if any, would be present in the new pipelines and the infrastructure. There's some concerns about that. Can you speak. To whether or. Not and I'm going to talk about this a little bit further, because it's actually very well documented in the staff's comments specifically to the Coastal Commission. But can you speak a little bit to this idea that this allowing this project to move forward will increase our residents and also the habitat to additional danger or risk? Sure. So in terms of when in terms of the proposed oil wells and I just want to make sure I understand the question, so please correct me if I'm going in the wrong direction here. But in terms of the proposed oil wells, there are extensive safety measures that range from whether it's its sensors, it's detectors that would have automatic shut off mechanisms during any kind of an event. So that's part of the modern safety requirements that new oil drilling facilities have to have. And if we need to get a little more technical in terms of detail, I can call on our consultant for that. With regard to the with regard to the existing oil facilities, obviously, I mean, the because they're dated, it would be hard to say what would happen during any kind of a any kind of a seismic event and how much would spill knowing that there are aboveground pipelines that that that would traverse the site that are applicant could probably also speak to the volume. I know there's been a couple of mentions. But in terms of having the new oil facilities constructed, they all have very extensive safety mechanisms built in, if you will. We talked a little bit about improvements and I appreciate Island Village who was here. They have been for years asking for sidewalks in and around their residential community. Can you talk a little bit about the bike lanes and the sidewalks and where those are anticipated to go? Sure. So an overall summary is basically that anywhere that's along a street frontage that does not already have sidewalk improvements and bike lane improvements, the applicant would be required to install those. So for example, along the Second Street frontage of the synergy oil field site, right now there is not a sidewalk, there is a compacted area where people might generally walk if they're not walking in the gutter. But they would that that would be improved. Similarly, on the south side of Second Street, where along the city property site now along the Pacific Coast Highway Frontages, there is in part already sidewalk and already bike lane. But anywhere where that needed to be improved or there was a deficient area, the applicant would basically come in and repair that to make it whole. So any frontage. So on the four sites there's if I count properly, there's eight frontages. Okay. So I just want to make sure that this project, the the approval of this project will include a sidewalk being built on Second Street from the location of the island village residential community to the Marketplace Shopping Center. But what? Because that would be along the synergy and city property. So the boundary of the city property along Second Street goes to right where Studebaker Road currently terminates. So I believe there is a gap on Second Street between that and Island Village, if I'm correct. So it would not extend all the way, but it would go all the way from Shopkeeper Road to the point at which Studebaker Road terminates. Excellent. Thank you. I think we're going to have some new city installed bike lanes that will be going at that location anyway on Second Street, Westminster. That's correct. Are there and this is a question that was raised by the appellants, are there going to be any chemicals injected into the ground as in addition to the water, the groundwater? As part of the applicants project description. The only thing injected into the ground is the waste water from that's pulled out of the ground during the oil extraction and any additional water that would be needed to fill the void of the extracted fluids from the from the production formation. There are no chemicals that are identified as being injected. Now, I know you mentioned or someone mentioned earlier that there are a number of regulatory agencies overseeing a project like this and allow and allowing for a review process before permits are issued. If there were to be an injection methodology used by an oil operation, is there a particular regulatory agency that would have to be notified and made aware of what is actually being injected into the ground? Yes. So the primary regulatory agency would be the California Department of Gas, Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. So Dogger, they require any well permit a well operator to keep monthly reports. They also permit the what it goes into the well they permit the what pressure it goes in and any other materials, if you will. So, yes, they are the primary permitting agency and they do regulate all of those aspects. Right. Is it possible for us to build in any sort of ongoing monitoring to make sure that the Native American archeological assets are identified and preserved should any exist at the site or any of the sites during this project? So, council member, I want to start by saying that's already a mitigation incorporated into this project and present in the mitigation, monitoring and reporting program. But in addition to that, we will be maintaining an ongoing relationship with the tribe that responded to the AB 52 notification and went through the formal consultation process. They will be doing the monitoring on site and then they will also be involved on the operations side because obviously the visitor center needs to give not only sort of European history, but needs to have native history and needs to give the full story of our relationship with this land today and across history. So but the formal monitoring is required within the mitigation monitoring program. But we also have that additional relationship where we're going to be working with those tribal officials on an ongoing basis to make sure that the operations of this location meet all of our our shared needs and expectations. Great. Thank you. And then are there any concerns that the methodology that is going to be used is going to expose the public or the habitat that exists at the location to any risks similar to what happened in Oklahoma. So that's a that's a good question. I'll do my best. So the what happened in Oklahoma was actually the injection of wastewater into a underground reservoir, if you will, that was not a part of the production formation. So basically, in layman's terms, what was happening was wastewater from other drilling sites was being transported to the name of the particular reservoir is is escaping me I'm sorry, but was transported to this location and then injected into the ground in an A in a manner that it wasn't filling the void. In other words, it was basically injected under pressure and creating the imbalance in the undergrounds, in the underground structural integrity. And that was what was documented as causing the induced seismicity activities in this situation. And this particular project, the water re injection, is back into the production formation where the oil came from, thereby restoring the stability in the underground. In other words, you're filling the void where you created the void. And so it's just restoring the imbalance. And so that the two situations are completely different. And based on that, we do not have concerns about this being like Oklahoma. Okay. And then there was a question raised. I don't know if it was raised this evening, but I know it's been raised with me on a prior occasion. And council member Urunga and I sit on the low Cerritos Wetlands Authority. So I think we both feel comfortable with the answer to this question. But there is a question about the ownership of some parts of the land swap properties, including Steam, Shovel, Slew, and whether or not Synergy actually has the right to swap that piece of land with LCA way. Do you have any information on that? So for any application, not just this one, the project applicant has to prove either that they hold title to the property or that they have the expressed permission of whoever holds title to the property. So they demonstrated to us that they do hold title to that property. So that's sufficient for a planning application. But as you mentioned, LCA is engaging and a land transaction and that will involve a title search which I understand has already been done and other representations such to prove the ownership. So the ownership is not in dispute from the from the staff point of view. I know there were public speakers that made other representations, but we don't have any documentation to support it being in dispute. And frankly, I'm definitely not a contract lawyer here, but I would assume that if they're purporting to trade property that doesn't belong to them, it would dramatically change the terms of the contract. So I think that's that's an issue that would be litigated further down the road. So based on what I heard from staff and some of the questions that were asked by some of the points that were made by both the applicant and the appellants, I think there are some undisputed facts that that everyone here can agree to that. First of all, there's multiple. Regulatory permits that are going to be required for this project. It's really an unprecedented project in some ways because the creation of the mitigation bank, the restoration of the wetlands and oil drilling, those three components together are kind of an unprecedented combination of factors to have. And therefore, we're going to have more regulatory agencies involved with the approvals and permitting of this project and oversight than we would with any other project of this of this character, the equipment that's out there now. Oil drilling began at this site in the 1920s. The equipment there is mostly from the 1960s. There are currently zero two little safeguards in place in the event of an oil spill. That is absolutely undisputed in terms of what's going on there. Now, the pipeline that would be installed would be updated and only cross the fault line in one location as to as opposed to multiple locations, which is the reality out there today. And these are undisputed facts. These are not these are not my opinions. These are just undisputed facts. Both the low. Carbon oil. Levels are lower. Than any compared to the California average of oil operations. So I think that is also an undisputed fact. This project does not include fracking. Water is injected into the ground to replace the oil that is removed and created a void, creating a void. The pressure is monitored and will fill the void. And. There is regular reporting on what is injected into the ground by state regulatory agencies. The methodology for water injection here is different than that which was used in Oklahoma in terms of the risks and associated factors. This project includes. A berm to. Guard against the impacts of sea level rise. The response to the Coastal Commission letter from the city covers the height of the levee and the extreme water levels of 5.5 feet in the year 2100. There is always a risk. Of oil spills. With oil drilling. That is a reality. However, the risk of oil spills is less with the alternative project that's being proposed than no project at all because of the safeguards that are in place, say everyone dies. We're going to be respectful of everyone's time. We'll listen. And so now it's time for the council deliberate. Thank you. Because of the new pipeline and the trench that will be built, there is a leak detection methodology and a containment system and an emergency shutdown procedure as part of the new pipeline system. There are also secondary and tertiary containment systems built into the project to contain the spill on site should a spill occur. And in conclusion, in terms of this point that city staff made in the event of a worst case scenario spill, the total spill could be contained within the containment berm and the impacts would be less than significant. And these are the opinions of our experts, and I know some don't agree, and I appreciate and I respect that . But these are the opinions of our experts with whom we work in the city in terms of outreach efforts. This project has worked very closely with the Third District Council office to direct its outreach efforts in the communities that are most impacted by the project. Thus far, we have had meetings with the Alamitos Heights Improvement Association, Belmont Shore Business Association, Belmont Heights Community Association, Belmont Shore Residents Association. Belmont Shore. Mobil Estates. Audubon Island Village. The Chamber of Commerce. Loews Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust. They had nine meetings, which I appreciate very much. Naples Improvement Association, Naples Island Business Association, University Park Estates and the Gray Panthers. In addition, we had open tour. Hours that they hosted for several days. They also did a study session at Planning Commission where many of the people who were at the podium saying that there was not enough outreach that spoke out. So there was an August and an April planning commission study session where some of the speakers who were saying that there was not enough opportunity for public comment actually spoke . And of course there was the LCA way presentation that was done several years ago. Getting private property into public hands through a land swap is one of the goals of the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority. There are 500 acres of wetlands that we want to get into public hands as best as we can. We have a limited amount of funding with which we can purchase that private land in order for us to be able to get public access and public management of some of these privately owned properties. It's important for us to have a public private partnership, and this presents an opportunity for us to do so through this land swap alone. The Lo Cerritos. Wetlands Authority will acquire 154 acres of private land in exchange for five acres of public land. And if the applicant and I want to thank my colleague, Councilman Aranda, for this, because this is something that that he and I worked very hard on with the low Cerritos Wetlands Authority negotiations, that if the applicant were to change their minds based on the price of oil or some other economic factor making this project unfeasible for them, the public will still retain steam shovels SLU, which is a huge, pristine property for the city of Long Beach. Additional project requirements that I would like to include in this motion are as follows. Within 60 days of receiving permits for this project, the applicant shall erect a decorative perimeter screen around the entire synergy site along Studebaker, Second Street and PCH. The plant. They must plant mature trees along the perimeter of all of the LC waste site along Studebaker and Second Street, where that site. Is located. And they must install hardscape, a decorative hardscape in the median area located immediately across from the LC site on Studebaker. I believe that's roughly a 200 foot or so median that we would like to be enhanced as a beautification project associated with this project. So that is my motion. I ask my colleagues to. Support this project. This is a project that many people in this room have worked for for years. It is a good project. It is our only way to restore these wetlands because they are privately owned. And but for this partnership, the owner of this property has no obligation whatsoever to restore these wetlands ever. And so the fact that they have come forward with this proposal is an opportunity. And will they. Profit? I assume so. I assume they will profit because this is not a charity organization, but the fact that they would profit anyway as an oil company but are willing to work with the city to create a win win situation where both they profit and our youth can appreciate this property as a restored wetlands habitat for generations to come is a huge opportunity for the city of Long Beach. So I thank my colleagues for listening and I ask for your support. Thank you, Councilwoman. The second on the motion was Councilmember Yanga. Thank you, Mayor. And Councilmember Price, as you're as you do an excellent job in terms of not only summarizing all the issues that are before us, but also giving some additional information in regards to the pros and cons of the project as a whole. As you were speaking, I was going down my list of questions and I just kept erasing them. Just kept marking a marker. You did such a thorough job in in describing it. One of the things that you said right near the end was about the steam shovel slew. That's true. What we worked a deal with them on that was that if in the event that they were, they'd be able to continue with the project, that it becomes permanent in perpetuity. It will belong to the lawsuit. Wetlands Authority. This is Mike. This it's going to be my this is my third meeting on this as individuals in the crowd. No, I'm also a member of the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, the Wetlands Authority here, and also the Coastal Commission. So there's another opportunity that I'm going to have to listen to this discussion again. At each time that I hear it, it seems like there's is and the councilwoman mentioned it about a win win when you're looking at 154, 159 acres total and you're looking at 154 being transferred to the Wetlands Authority for keeping those wetlands and restoration and five acres remaining with the with the owner. You know what part of that deal does not not fit. Now, I understand during the course of the conversation that we had that there's a great concern about oil. There's a great concern about carbon footprints. And there's a great concern about climate change. That's that's there. That argument is always going to be there. The point is, is that what this project is going to do is that it's going to preserve what we want. Well, it's it's going to preserve that. In fact, it's going to good it's going to have wetlands. And right now, we don't have there is no access to arena. It's not it's not public. It's soon will be. Let's hope. The bottom line is that when we look at talking about our future and our future of our kids and wanting them to enjoy what Mother Earth has to offer, it's it's going to be there. Now, there may be a price. Yes, there will be. But the the overall goal, I think what we have with climate change is to get away from from fossil fuels and to get more electric. And I think that's going to happen. And that's a concern. I could see that that's one of the major concerns that we have, is that if oil loses and it has last couple of years, I mean, it went down from, what, 99 to 100 or even $110. It was at one time went down to 35. That was a major, major hit. And in fact, a lot of our city projects in entitlements had to be put on hold because of that. It's making a comeback, but not as strong as before or as anticipated. So we're still dealing with that issue in terms of price. But what we have here in this landscape opportunity is an opportunity to keep these wetlands forever in perpetuity. There is amount conservancy worked out this deal with with synergy in addition not only to to preserve the wetlands but also the rivers. Miles Conservancy gave the authority an additional $300,000 to be able to develop the wetlands by creating some passages, some walking paths, bicycle paths, and an opportunity for people to enjoy the well as well once it gets restored. So that that's the positive part of it. When it comes down to the Coastal Commission and it is going to go up to the Coastal Commission. Excuse me. Cookie cutter. Mr. Crisp there were several mentions, several references to the council commission and its appeal or what are its looking at it. And there's reference made to a letter that was included in the air. Could you summarize just briefly what that letter says in regards to the city's application? I think you're a councilmember. Your own members of the council said there were several public speakers that referenced a comment letter that was received on the draft environmental impact report from the California Coastal Commission. It came from their energy unit up in San Francisco. Staff member Kate Huckleberry. So that letter was lengthy. It spelled out every conceivable issue that needed to be addressed during the permitting process for this project. So it was helpful both to city staff and to commission staff to lay out what all of those issues were. And those issues were all responded to one by one in the air. But it also gave us an important leg up on the analysis that the commission staff has to do and the city has to assist them with during the coastal permitting process that will continue at the Commission. Some of the public speakers may have mischaracterized that letter because there was not an opposition letter. It was not the Coastal Commission stating that they are in favor or are not in favor of this project. It was them laying out all of the issues that have to be addressed during the permitting of this project. We also received and the clerk included it in your your package and an additional letter from the Coastal Commission dated January 9th of this year from Kate Huckleberry Page. Also, it spells out the process that has occurred thus far and closes with throughout the process of reviewing this proposed project. We have enjoyed a very professional and productive working relationship with your staff and look forward to continuing our coordination as we complete the steps outlined above in the future. So the Coastal Commission is our partner on this project and they will continue to be our partner. They've laid out very thoroughly for us all of the issues that need to be addressed. We've addressed those issues and we'll continue working with the staff at the Commission as it continues. Through this. Process. Thank you. Well, that sounds very encouraging because obviously, as a member of the California Coastal Commission, it is its goal to preserve wetlands and s shape whenever, whenever it can and in all places. We've had a few victories. We've had a few losses. But the bottom line is that the goal of the commission is to preserve the coast and preserve wetlands when when it can. The issue that that it raises, which concerns me, obviously, is, of course, the the increase of sea level rise and what that will do to to not only this project, but actually projects up and down the coast everywhere. It's a it's a major concern. We're looking at the possibility of close to six feet of sea level rise within the next 50 years. The only concern that I would have with that, with this project is the fact that we have the proposal, the proposal to get half of the of the project cleaned up in 20 years and then the rest of it in 40 years. I think that's a little long, frankly, myself, because we're looking at sea level rise, reaching that level in 50 years. I mean, we're almost underwater already when it comes down to, you know, by the time you finish this thing. So I'm I'm hoping that maybe we could talk to the to the applicant making it maybe a little step up the timeline a little bit so it's not as lengthy, perhaps? You know, I would prefer half, but hey, we could do it within the next 30 years. So that would be I think would be wonderful because it would it would shorten the time that we can have people enjoy the wetlands and not be underwater. I'm not being facetious. So, I mean, that's one of the things that I would like to see. And now and I hope that we're able to work that out. But again, that's going to be a discussion that the city will be having with the Coastal Commission, and I'm sure that possibly the Coast Commission will probably bring that up as a as a concern because of the of the timeline. Other than that, I don't have much else at the Councilmember Price did a stellar job in summarizing all our concerns. Like I say, and I just wanted to add a little more and that basically that that the. Three years might be too long. But I can would say one thing about the course commission. There's always it's a barricade. It's just a if you want to call it that, you have the Coastal Commission staff, which works with the applicants, and then you had the Coastal Commission, the the elected, not the elected, but the appointed body that reviews which staff does. So staff's responsibility is to work with the applicant to try to mitigate all the issues involved with any project, trying to make sure that they're addressed, to make sure that if there are concerns regarding environmentally sensitive habitat or there's spills that might be available, I mean, might be happening. That's their job. Their job is to make sure that whatever project that's going to be going before the commission, the body itself is as thoroughly reviewed and and meets all the standards of review that needs to be taken care of before it comes to the commission, so that when the commission reviews it, they make their evaluation and determine whether it's a good project or not. There has been on several occasions where staff recommendations have been overturned or not overturned, but basically opposed by the commission and vice versa, where the commission has imposed even stronger restrictions on a project. So that's still available that might that might still happen. This coastal commission that's there now is is one that's very thorough in its work. There are individuals in there who are very highly sensitive to a lot of the topics that were brought up today. For example, the the the SCA issue, the the wetlands and also about the, the concerns brought up by our by our Native American speakers who came up here in regards to the type of land that's there and the and the concern that there may be some disturbances of some burial grounds. There is, as was mentioned before, some legal considerations for that. And that's going to happen. There will be some somebody there to review that. The only concern that's been raised and I agree with it to to to a great extent, is that the the whole work, if you will, wasn't done beforehand. I mean, there is no study at the present time that indicates whether there is a burial a burial sacred ground in that area or not. And you wouldn't know until you put the shovel to the ground. And you describe you discover any kinds of remains that would determine whether it was this area, a sacred burial ground or not. That's unfortunate. But there's I think at this point, there's no other way to to find out. So there there's of course, there is what, you know, an oral history that that would determine some of that. I understand that totally, completely. But in the long term, I see this project as a again, it's a win win. It was a win win when I heard it. And the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, it was a win win when I heard it with the loss of Edo's Wetlands Authority. And in terms of the city and what we have going here, I think it's a win win for this too. And I would also support that moving the motion forward so that they can continue on its path through the Coastal Commission where it would have another another opportunity to be heard again. So thank you. I would say thank you very much, guys. No, please, no, no. I'll push from the audience. Next up is Councilman Gonzalez. Yes. So I want to thank everybody for being here tonight. We're going on almost 5 hours. So I appreciate everybody's concerns and voice as I've been listening to everything. There's just many questions that I have relative to Coastal Commission discussions overall. E, R and AQ, M.D. memos. All of this, to be quite honest, still seems very unclear to me personally and not comprehensive enough for me to support just because newer technology and oil expansion can be done. I don't believe it should be done. And although I absolutely support a full actual restoration of the wetlands similar to what Bolsa Chica. Did, that actually was a true restoration. That phased the removal and cleanup of oil extraction from wetlands. I agree to half of the project, of course. Yes to bike paths, yes to jobs, yes to walking areas and yes to public opportunities. But again, I'll have. To disagree with the project. Overall. So many questions still remain. Sea level rise analysis seems unclear and incomplete. Our staff report, as it seems, only states that existing out of compliance infrastructure would be a problem for sea level rise, but not new infrastructure, which does not really does not give me clarity personally. And then, of course, as mentioned many times here, Native American outreach was not through enough to include all bands. Senate Bill 18, which includes the traditional tribal cultural places, and requires. Our local planning authorities to connect with California. Native American tribes. Plural and overall scenario. Planning to identify maximum potential impacts for a large earthquake have not been analyzed fully, but rather includes why issues occurred in other states not inclusive of the worst case scenario in our own state, per the Coastal Commission memo. And lastly, the South Coast Air Quality Management Staff Memo per September 2017 includes concerns about air quality and health risks and stated that the air underestimates impacts in both construction and operation, not just construction. Overall, 75% of immediate. Reduction of drilling, not production, will. Actually happen. And that is certainly an issue for me. And I know it's an issue for many of my residents, and this is why I will be voting no on this item. Thank you. Thank you. Got some repairs. Thank you very. Much. And thank you to my colleagues and everyone here for the hours. Of commitment and the time that you've spent leading up to this in the years that have come before this. And I have to be honest, the meetings I've had, I had meetings with the people doing the drilling. We had a very good meeting where they went over all the details with me. I asked lots of questions. I then personally reached out to Elizabeth LAMB and asked Los Arenas Wetlands for a briefing to kind of fill me in on where they were at. Believe my staff met with and of Christiansen, but besides that, I didn't have a lot of outreach from a lot of the people that I saw speak tonight that I consider folks that I would have liked to have heard from. And so my time, I have to say, I went out and I took my entire staff and we did a tour probably six or seven months ago of the Wetlands. And I am somebody that before I even moved to Long Beach, I would go to Bolsa Chica and watch the birds and go on walks and really have enjoyed that. And so the idea of restoring this area to our wetlands and putting in place walkways and a visitor center and lifting up our Native American history is something that, you know, was shiny and exciting to me sitting here tonight listening and really, you know, reviewing all the information that I have in front of me. And also considering that as a city leaders, we have to make sure that we do not have that moment where we see an opportunity to be swayed from our values. And through my campaign and through my time on council, I've always said that I'm committed to seeing us get off oil. And while I believe tonight this item will pass, I will not be supporting this item either and I will make sure that we engage with the Coastal Commission to do the following and let them know that what I would like to see out of the next steps is, is really a commitment, as they've said, to have clear standards for a restoration plan. It does seem like you guys have done a fantastic job and I applaud the work that you have done. It's a it's a fantastic vision and plan to say let's reduce the impact of where our our oil fields are. And I think it took a lot to get to where you are. And so I want to continue to applaud that and continue to applaud the participation you've done with those areas, wetlands. But knowing that if it's going to take 40 years and we still don't know where we're going to be with oil in 40 years, that I definitely have some concerns and the fact that. We have the A.D. letter and a couple of other things that I reviewed tonight just gives me pause. And so for for this. I want to work. With our coastal commission, with city staff, with the community members to reach out to the Coastal Commission and try to make sure that we have some real standards for the time when this potentially could get passed at that level. But it wasn't. It was one of those nights where I came in thinking I was going to vote one way and I'm leaving voting another way. And so I just want to applaud you guys and encourage you not only to do your outreach on the night of, but do your outreach ahead of time. That really helps me get my head around what we're voting on because we definitely have a big agenda tonight. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you very much. And I just want to say, usually when we have several hours of public comment, I'm exhausted. But I will say that, you know, the comment this evening on all sides were were were excellent. I appreciate hearing from everybody. I felt like I learned something not only from our staff's excellent presentation on the air and the merits thereof, but also from from the community, Native Americans, indigenous people here, and and all of the stakeholders. I did not come here this evening with my mind made up. I wanted to listen to public comment. I did review the documents before me and I had a couple of meetings and I will just say that I'm going to support this, this document or this this air and this project, because I think it it is something that is a I believe, a realistic approach. It is an innovative approach to to restoring wetlands, the benefits of getting 100 of, what, 55 acres of 54 acres back to wetlands restoration is is something that you I don't want to want to leave on the table. I believe that the benefits far outweigh the risk here and understanding that if we do nothing, which I've heard that there's favor for, there's still going to be oil drilling. I don't I don't see that that, you know, saying no to a a project that is actually going to add several benefits to the city of Long Beach and the community as a whole is is in our interest. And when I looked at the summary of environmental impacts, most or most, if not not all of them were less than significant with some mitigations. And so with that said, and I want to just say to my colleague, Councilmember Susie Price, and to Roberto, you longer have been involved with this for far longer than most of us. I trust their judgment on this because they have been in the trenches on this issue with most of the stakeholders. I trust the lows of Low Street as well as the authority. I trust the soil loss, widows, wetlands, land trust. I had an opportunity to to to tour that facility with my staff a couple of years ago and saw the great potential for restoration there. The the the neighborhood association came out and spoke in support of this. Our former mayor and the council member who represents the area, who is dealing with stakeholders and residents right there all the time. And so with that, I think, again, I'm going to going to go for a realistic approach. I think supporting this project is is something that that that's a risk that I'm willing to take as a as a city. I think we're going to have to be vigilant in watching this project all the way through, I don't think. But but I also think that the first two years give us tremendous benefits. Right. Again, if we're talking about taking out 95% of pipelines and and which you can see in terms of visibility is is a huge benefit, esthetically, but also to the environment. And so I'll be voting in support. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I wanted to add a couple other things to my motion actually that I forgot to mention regarding the building requirements for the visitor center and a few other things. So I know that once we talk about the wetlands wetlands restoration and this is really a question for staff will be working with LCA ways restoration of the overall restoration plan so that the restoration is consistent with that plan. Is that correct. Yes. Thank you for your question, Councilmember Price. Yes. The staff will continue to remain engaged throughout the applicants refinement of the restoration plan to make sure that it is consistent with the project approvals. Okay. Because there are things in terms of the size of the trials, for example, the number of trails, whether or not there's recreational space there for, you know, picnicking or passive use. All those things I'm assuming will be working with LCA way as we move forward on those details. Yes, that is correct. Although I would like to point out that in terms of the the the intent of the public access trail is to provide but to provide access. But because it's essentially a wetlands, it's a wilderness need native area, there's going to be relatively limited types of actual development for recreation. And I did want to point that out. But yes, we will be working with both the applicant and LCA. Okay. So as part of my motion, I wanted to also add for consideration by my colleagues that the project be required to use native plants and marsh plants for any of the specific areas that are planted as part of this restoration project. I know that's a few years out, but I'm I'm hoping that that's agreeable with my colleagues on the pumpkin patch site for the construction of the office building. I would, as a requirement of this project. Require bird. Friendly building techniques such as. Bird. Safe glass measures, shielded lighting those. The best practices in regards to safeguarding the building from. From bird. Impacts, native tree planting and landscaping are. All of the. Both the LCA site as well as the synergy site. And that's it for me in terms of the additional conditions. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mungo. Yes, good stuff. Talk a little bit. About why the the specific Native American tribe was invited here today. Sure. Thank you for that question, Councilmember Mungo. So Native American consultation is really governed by two specific laws known as AB 52, SB 18. And what happens is at the very beginning of a project, any project, but in this project in particular, letters are sent out to the tribes with information about the proposed project and asking if they'd like to enter into what's called a formal consultation process. And some of the speakers gave reference to the 11 letters that went out. So in this case, there were two responses to that notification that's prescribed under law. So from the Gabrielle, you know, tribe that we heard from at the beginning of today's meeting and from another tribal official which referred us to the Gabriel Llano tribe. So under the those two laws, what happens then as we enter into a formal consultation process with that tribe? And I was the city's officer in that consultation process. And we talked about the project. We talked about the history of the site and what resources may or may not be on the site and how we would do monitoring during the implementation of this project. So those tribes come from two places. They come from the Native American Heritage Commission, which is a state agency that keeps a list of those tribal authorities, or they come from a tribe proactively contacting the city and showing that they're not just an individual, that they're a tribal government, and that they would like to be consulted going forward on land use matters. So we complied with those laws and based on those consultations, prepared the project mitigations and prepared the summary of information that's found in the Environmental Impact Report. And the Environmental Impact Report also talks about tribal cultural resources. And when it does so, it's talking about a specific resource that has been identified on a list. It's not to say that areas are not held sacred or special or valuable or don't have important history to one tribe or many peoples that may associated with it. It's it simply as prescribed under law. Does it exist on a list or has the tribe that we're having formal consultation with identified it as being eligible for that list? So that's the formal, very legally prescribed process that the city is required to comply with. And we continued the relationship and the formal consultation project process with the tribe that. Contacted us and wanted to participate in that, and we asked them to provide clarity about that process at today's meeting. Now, that's contrasted to the secret process and the project review process remains open to any and all. So all of the speakers, many of them attended project meetings. Others did not. But all of the public meetings, the notice of preparation, the Environmental Impact Report, all of those documents and all of that public process commenting and being responded to is open to everyone. So well, the tribe that responded to the Abbey, 52, which is a prescribed legal process, that is the process we followed there, and that's the formal process that doesn't lock anyone else out. Everyone was open and available to participate in this project and comment, and all of those comments were considered and responded to and they were taken into account by the Planning Commission and I'm sure are being taken into account by the council this evening. Yes, they are. Thank you very much. I think that helps considerably in the discussion on whether or not the city continues to do outreach. And I know I look forward to the outreach item that was submitted by my office and three others in looking to formalize and better understand what those processes are. But specifically, I appreciate that there's specific law related to this that really helps guide our our path in ensuring that everyone's included. A lot of great testimony tonight. I really appreciate the level of respect that was here. I know that when this was before the planning commission, there were challenges and I appreciate how everyone is so passionate . This is a very important issue and I've enjoyed reading the many emails and letters that have been put into public comment today. In addition to your your speaking. I. It was great to see that through a process over the weeks that the different communications coming out started moving towards the middle. And I think that in the communication from CWA yesterday, it really showed a movement in where they were and where they came to. And I think that that's a really important thing. In government, it's it's hard to talk about a future. And in everything, there are costs and benefits. And for me, I really appreciated Councilwoman Pryce outlining the undisputed facts and specifically just going back in my mind to gaining 150 acres of protected land. And so for that, I appreciate both Councilmember Urunga and Councilmember Price's work on this for such a long period of time and keeping them engaged in the very minute details of the project. I only have one additional question. In the next few weeks, we're bringing back some ideas on ensuring that we're not going to have a deficit next year. And one of the things that I've been really diving into the details about are those ongoing costs associated with some of the infrastructure that we have. And so with every new sidewalk we add, every new median we add. Councilwoman Price, in your. Addendums. Would those also be covered under the endowment so that they would maintain those going forward as well to ensure that we don't add any additional ongoing maintenance? You know, I hadn't thought about that. That's an interesting idea. I, I would recommend we ask staff about that because I know there's maintenance issues, but then the liability is for the city. So I don't know how that works because if the liability falls with the city, then the city has to ensure a certain level of quality and work that's consistent with the rest of the city. So I defer to two staff. I see we have public works folks here and. Lawyers leaning in and discussing. Yeah, would that be something that the endowment could cover? I think Mr. Mays is going to answer that in a second. That's right. We were just discussing it. Currently, we do not have a procedure for implementing something like. That with hardscape. Typically we have projects that come before you all. The time where there is a requirement for the property owner to maintain soft. Scape plants and those sorts of things on their property. But we don't have anything in place that will allow city staff. To require ongoing. Maintenance. Typically we require an applicant if their requirement is to build a hardscape. To build it, present it to us for inspection and approval, which we do. Public works department does. That and then it becomes the city's for. Ongoing maintenance. Okay. Well, that's something for us to think about in the future and looking for a way that when organizations are looking forward to adding to a essence of a community, by adding in hardscape that we find some methods I which they would be able to take on that ownership. So I still believe that at this time I'm going to be supportive. I look forward to seeing a time where when I kayak through the wetlands, that this is all our land and it's restored because I think it's important for our future and for our children's future. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mayor. So, again, I well, I didn't I don't proclaim to be an expert on this project, but I, you know, took a look at it, you know, follow the Planning Commission project. I really like the structure of our city in terms of being broken in the districts because I proclaim to be an expert on most projects in Council District nine. And this this this project is not in Council District nine, it's in District three. So I would acknowledge the third district councilwoman for really doing her homework in breaking it down on this issue. Now, in speaking with the stakeholders over the last few weeks, listen to the testimonies. I formed some opinions on this. So I do want to just acknowledge. First, I want to acknowledge an effort, a very clear, intentional effort to try to be inclusive. I see nontraditional partners working together on this from business types, environmental types, Audubon Society, labor. It's not often you see bird folks and construction folks both saying the same thing about a project. So it's something that we have to acknowledge. I do want to also acknowledge. So some of the benefits that I see that have been articulated here in terms of that wetlands restoration and in Councilman Alston can attest we've we're working on a wetlands restoration up in North Long Beach and it's and it's amazing thing for our community. So I'm really excited to see that you're you're about to see this this take place in your community is exciting and it does a lot for for our the value that we place on nature in our community. I think it's important to acknowledge the old infrastructure, the outdated infrastructure that has been in place for years, to be able to to reclaim that and take it take it back and restore that. It's a good thing. I like to see that, you know, that the council member has extracted what she thinks is appropriate for her district. I think when projects like this happen, sometimes that's the only chance that you have to really achieve some of your public policy goals or some of the things that the community has wanted for a long time. That's good. I want to thank Councilman Turanga for engaging and helping me to understand, helping the council and the public understand the process with the Coastal Commission. So that takes a lot of work and a lot of time. And so thank you for that. I also want to acknowledge the concerns that were raised today. So we are a city in a state in California who publicly acknowledges things like climate change and the fact that we have a dependency on oil. So when votes like this come up in front of us, it is inconsistent with what people say. It is inconsistent. And I think it's also unfair to expect that projects that have been in the pipeline for so long have to be the burden to have to carry the burden on a project by project based for broader vision and a larger conversation. I think the question, frankly, is and this is a question I'm going to pose to city staff, if we want to be a city that does, you know, does what we say we're going to do and sets a vision to be environmentally responsible and conscious, what document? We're a city who operates and plans, but what document or what plan would help guide the city's decisions in terms of what we do in terms of oil? So I'm going to pose that to maybe our planning staff. Is there a document or are we working on something? Sure. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. So the city has a sustainable city action plan and it's a good plan. But we acknowledged a couple of years ago that are really just wasn't sufficient for the city to reach its green goals. So in the budget that we're now living under the last budget, the Council was good enough to approve a good amount of funding, just under $1,000,000 for a climate action and adaptation plan. That's going to do two things. It's going to allow the city through actionable steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and our carbon footprint. And because while our role is important, it is a worldwide phenomenon. And climate change is happening right now and will continue to change and sea level rise is happening and will continue to tend to occur. It will allow us to adapt and change our infrastructure and protect life and property as these changes to our climate and sea level happen. So when I talk about reducing emissions, that's not just drilling less oil. That's the responsibility of you and I and all the residents and all the businesses in this city. It has to do with energy draw within people's homes. It has to do with the energy profile of how we get around and whether we're using a gas powered vehicle that's an efficient or an electric vehicle, which is still powered through a power plant that's most likely run on natural gas, but is still allowing us to lower our our carbon footprint. It involves very hard choices and data analysis, including we all want to. Be. But does that mean, you know, requiring certain energy upgrades on older buildings, does that require some type of punitive steps for for higher emission sources around the city? So that can't really be done, you know, in the blink of an eye. So that's an 18 month process that we're over six months into. And we'd be glad if the council's interested to provide a written update on that effort to the full council in the form of a TFF memo. I think that would make a lot of sense. I mean, so my thought here is no one gets elected to city council to try to do harm to their community. I think when you acknowledge the conditions on the ground and you see the clear benefits in this project, you have to make a gut check, you have to make a decision. And a lot of people have done that. This project, from what you know, what's being presented here, it seems to be something very positive for the community. The larger question is, you know, how do we ask that broader question about the energy ecosystem? How do we begin to sort of measure these decisions we make? It can't be on a project by project basis. We're not going to change climate change on a project by project basis. We have to have a vision and a plan. And I think that's I think that, too, from power is going to go a long way to help put this in perspective. If we were to today ban oil drilling in Long Beach that alone will we were still going to have to purchase purchase oil from other sources because the infrastructure around how we cook is, you know , is on natural gas. So a lot of our cars are still on on petrol. I mean, the reality is there needs to be a larger, broader conversation. So we can sure certainly do what we can and we trust a lot of time city staff and your local council members to place things in the projects. But in reality, we have to have a broader conversation about our vision as a city. So I'm supporting this. I'm going to say congratulations to to the stakeholders here and to Councilwoman Pryce. And I look forward to enjoying those wetlands at some point. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to make a couple closing comments and we're going to go to a vote. We're actually going to take five separate votes. I believe your city attorney, they've got to be separated out. That's correct. Okay. By virtue. Of each of the five. Paragraphs in the staff letter. Great. Thank you. So just just a few things. I'm going to step out so we can put the project site map, I think, on the back there. That'd be great. Thanks. So a few things, I think. First, I think it's important to know, obviously we want to think this is I think the longest hearing I've been in since I've either been mayor or been on the council. So a lot of community interest and input. And so I do want to thank everyone for for being here, particularly folks that represented native peoples and folks and community members that live also just adjacent Lee adjacent to the site. And they're actually impacted by by the site. So I've probably been driving by or biking or walking by that site since I was eight or nine years old. And it has always looked the same as it looks today. If you think about what are the major kind of environmental projects that the city has had for many years, the two that stand out to me as being the most significant has been one around clean air and the ports and the re and to ensuring that we actually clean the air in and around the port complex. And the second has been the restoration and acquisition of the wetlands. Those are two big issues that not just us but before us have been advocating and fighting for for many, many years. I think that the proposal we have before us is an opportunity, obviously, to finally achieve the restoration of what was at one time a incredible and beautiful asset to this region, which were the wetlands. To me, there's no question of some of what the vice mayor said, what the city is doing in regards to the Clean Air Action Plan around the port, electrification of busses and cars, sustainability, solar. It is leading on, I believe, almost every issue around climate change. And I'm really proud of that work. I understand the concerns of the community and some of the concerns that are associated because of the issue around oil. So I do I do understand that. But when I look at this map behind me, what I also see is a once in a lifetime literally opportunity to acquire that parcel that is owned by synergy there in the green in the map above us. This is not an opportunity that we are going to get likely again in in in a generation or more. This is something that has been developed by a team. When I think about the opportunity to take that site, that millions of folks drive by and walk by and actually open it up to the. Public. And to wildlife and to restore that site. I think that's something very, very special and and important. I want to add also that I want to thank Councilwoman Pryce and Councilmember your particularly obviously I mean, the Councilman Price represents the area, but both have served incredibly with incredible distinction on the lottery as wetlands authority. And I think that that work has led them to this point of where we actually are today. So this just didn't happen in the course of a year or two years. It's been a many year conversation and and work to get us to this point. And so I want to thank them. You know, also, I mean, this is from the I've always believed I do believe that the council members within their area do always understand their projects best and obviously are doing their community outreach and talking to their their constituencies as well. Finally, I'll say that when you think about environmental stewardship in Long Beach, there are few groups. There may not be any groups that have more respect and admiration than what the lottery as well as trust does in this community. And so for me, when you look at. At the groups that are doing great work in Long Beach and in great environmental work. The trust has always been at the forefront of of that work. And so for them to come out and support this project in the way that they did, I know. Took. There is no one that provides a more critical lens or asks more questions or is tougher on questions around the wetlands than the trust is, and particularly that Elizabeth LAMB is. And so I have a tremendous amount of respect for her, for the board, for the trust, and for their ability to to evaluate critically this massive proposal that's in front of us. Now, obviously, if we deny the appeals today, there are still a long process ahead of us, including a extensive review by the California Coastal Commission. And having been a former member of that body, they are a different set of of of of critical eyes. And that will also put this project through a different process as well. And so I look forward and I hope that we can get to a point where we can look at that site in addition to the site the city already has acquired and be able to actually open it up to future generations of people in Long Beach and see wildlife flourish there and do something real special for the environment and the community. But I do understand people have different opinions and I respect those different opinions and I respect people's points of view on this topic. And so with that, I clearly look forward to the restoration of the wetlands. We will take the votes. There was a motion second on the floor, so please cast your first vote on the first motion.

A bill for an ordinance adopting a new Article XVII of Chapter 53, D.R.M.C. concerning property taxes dedicated for the purpose of purchasing services for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Amends the 2003 initiated ordinance that increased the “Developmentally Disabled Fund” by 1.000 mill to the dedicated property taxes to add Section 53-550 to allow for purchasing services for use of the revenues for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 12-14-16.

DenverCityCouncil_01092017_16-1071

State your name and note that you are available for questions of counsel. Speakers will have 3 minutes unless another speaker has yielded his or her time, which would result in a total of 6 minutes on the presentation monitor. On the wall you will see your time counting down. Speakers must stay on topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane and obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and refrain from individual personal attacks. Councilman Flynn, will you please put Council Bill 1071 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 1071 series of 2016 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Public hearing of Council Bill 1071 is open. May we have the staff report? Jay, Marine for Human Services. Come on down. Oh, Rafael Espinosa, come on down as well. Good evening. I'm Jay Marine. I'm the chief of staff for the Department of Human Services. Presenting an overview of the Council Bill 1071, which is in front of you tonight, is short background a voter initiated, voter initiated ordinance from 2003, established full mill dedicated to the community center board for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The Denver City Auditor just over a year ago audited and released his report of findings of the spending of the mill levy funds that have passed through the Department of Human Services and since the origins of the mill levy have been contracted to the state designated community center board Rocky Mountain Human Services, who's also doing business as Denver options in the auditor's report. The auditor made a series of recommendations which we try and address through the ordinance in front of you tonight. The recommendations the auditor made included determining whether to codify Initiative 100 in the city ordinance. Clearly, that's what we're trying to do today. Determine what constitutes questionable spending of mill levy funds. Limit administrative costs to 15%. Determine how best to address residency requirements and to monitor the contract on a quarterly basis. This ordinance that we're requesting today did come before committee on December 14th and is required to be prior to its passage needs to be preceded by the public hearing, which is scheduled this evening. The elements of the proposed ordinance include directing that the proceeds from the mill levy be deposited in the Human Services Special Revenue Fund, as it has been by practice, and it defines permitted use of the proceeds to include to contract for services and supports through the Community Center Board, to contract for services and supports through any other entity that provides such services. Authorizes the transfer of funds to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and financing for purposes of receiving matching federal funds to provide Medicaid approved waiver services. And sets an administrative expenses limit to less than 15%. The residency requirements have been aligned in the ordinance to that which appears in state rules and requirements. And the ordinance includes a carve out of mill levy revenues not to exceed 75/100 of a percent of the total collections for the Department of Human Services to administer and enforce . That's 70/500 of a percent equates to about $114,000 annually under the current mill levy revenues of roughly $14.5 million. And with that, I open it up. Two questions I've been joined this evening by Sheri PINSKY, the CEO of Rocky Mountain Human Services, to field questions as well. Okay. Thank you. All right. I'm going to call up. Let's see here. Yes. I'm going to call up the first. You can have a seat, James. I'm going to call up the first five speakers and you can just come up to the front and patent. Don Caldwell. Rob Hernandez. Marine Welch. Okay. All right. And Penn, first you have 3 minutes. Thanks. Hi. My name is Ann Peyton. I live in Denver in Councilman News District. I want to applaud the council for taking this issue so seriously and very much appreciate the questions you've been asking. I watched the video of your December 14th meeting and also want to seek clarification on the admin expenses. But I see this is a great opportunity to make things right for the people that desperately need this support. And I support a yes vote on this bill. I'm the parent of a 33 year old man with autism who lives in his own home with 24/7 support through the deed comprehensive waiver. He also lives in councilman whose district. My son has received services through Rocky Mountain since 2002 in various capacities, but now they just provide case management. Because I created my own past two and a half years ago to provide residential community and supported employment services to my son under a unique model that better meets his needs. I recently joined the Rocky Mountain Human Services Mill Levy Committee because as a taxpayer and supporter of this mill levy, I was horrified with the auditor's findings and want to help Rocky Mount and figure out better ways of supporting families with IED with this money. As a parent, I am very familiar with the support needs of families, but I also had knowledge as a service provider. There are many opportunities for ways to get this mill levy money into the hands of families. And I'm anxious and excited to see this happen. For instance, I had to pay out of pocket for Denver Parks and Rec summer camp for my son because the DPS school summer program didn't meet his needs. He wanted a fully inclusive experience, and he found that here at the Parks and Rec, this is a great example of how the mill levy funding can be used. My my son still has friends to this day, both peers and counselors that he often sees in the community. Today, in reviewing the six month mill library report January to June 2016, a concern for me is the amount of mill levy money that was spent on case management, about 56% across all waivers. This is based on actual numbers as denoted through the legend and not the pie chart. This 56% is over and above the case management amount. They already bill medicaid for. I appreciate that some of this goes to interagency team meetings and other valuable needs. However, in my opinion, mill levy dollars should be going to programing, not supplanting billable operating expenses to the tune of an additional 56%. In addition, I question whether some of this could be attributed to Adnan, but that is for the accountants to do to decide. Personally, for me, I wish I had access to dollars over and above what services I can build Medicaid for. I can barely make my payroll at $15 an hour and I do not pay myself anything. This better. Miss Penn, your time is up. Thank you. That's what I was going to say for your interest in diligence on top of all this. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Don Colwell. Hi. My name is Don Caldwell. I have a I'm sorry, I'm in Highlands Ranch, Douglas County. I have a 16 year old son who is on the way over and receives case management services through Rocky Mountain Human Services. I am a recently authorized pastor for my son and in my previous life I was a consultant that automated home health agencies. I came today to thank the Council for their leadership on this bill. I hope you will approve the bill. They're clear, and I appreciate your clear understanding of conflict free case management issues and understanding that the community desires to quickly open up the levy funds for competitive bidding. Opening the funds to all existing providers would level the playing field among all the agencies and providers and allow individuals and families the ability to self-determine the best use of funds to meet their needed services and supports. I respect Rocky Mountain Service, Human Services and all that they do. But I still have concerns that some of the issues that arose have not been resolved. And some of the issues with their Malawi sole discretion creates conflict because Rocky Mountain has sole use of those funds. At the December meeting, there was discussion that they would be withholding several million dollars this year from individuals that could use those services. That was without public comment or hearing or any kind of vote. They have a disproportionate amount of Malawi funds for case management. I myself have I have personally experienced two instances where case managers insisted on excessive and invasive case management meetings that were beyond Medicaid requirements. I am concerned that there's no substantive data in the middle of your reporting that explains how the funds are being used, in particular when looking at the residential program. It appears that Rocky Mountain is not a profitable passive home health agency in this program. They're able to bill 12% of all billable contractor units. They are able to build 60 hours of case management per customer. The existing pastors and home health agencies in the out in the market who do not have access to mill levy funds , are able to provide all of these services and meet Medicaid requirements while also being profitable. Rocky Mountain, on the other hand, appears to be covering significant losses, with 800,000 of m.y funds almost an additional $9,000 per each of the 92 customers being served. So my hope is that if you will, open up the military funds to competitive bidding, that it will create a more robust marketplace of choices. The reason I bring it up, I apologize, is that the December 14th meeting, Department of Human Services said that while it is in the bill, they're not looking to actually activate that. Mascolo Your tie, sir. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Rob Hernandez. Do you want to get? Good evening, council and members of council. My name is Rob Hernandez and in here I have with me tonight is Danny and Jo. And they received their case management services through Rocky Mountain Human Services. I want to touch a little bit on conflict case management. That's the federal rule that came out in in March 17th of 2014 that says that community center boards have to separate case management services from direct services. In other words, right now, Rocky Mount Human Services does both. They do case management services and they do residential, which is what they are, which is the program that Danny and Joe are under. So the beauty of this ordinance that that is before council tonight is that it's going to allow for robust competition. In other words, the types of services that aren't available under the state plan, which is the Medicaid waiver, which is approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This would cover those types of things, whether it's Joe needing let's say he wants to do some something, he wants to learn how to swim or Joe Danny needs a wheelchair ramp or some type of special services that aren't covered. When I campaigned for this in 2003 and went door to door and Joe carried signs, you know, in favor of it. That was the intent that they would cover those types of services that were not covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and that would complement those types of things. So I want to just thank Council for their leadership, because this fits right into what the state has said. They have said that is there that there may be more than one CCP after conflict case management occurs. And what they have said is that it is up to the local governments to determine the flow of these mill levy moneys. So I want to thank Council for taking the time to really consider this, because this is groundbreaking throughout the state. Other other local governments throughout the state will look to Denver to say, Oh, gee, Denver did it this way. Maybe, perhaps this is what we need to do with our mill levy money with our CCP. So thank you for your leadership. And any questions? I'm done. Thank you. And thank you, Joe and Danny. Thank you. Well, Danny, you didn't sign up. Well, I have a minute left. Danny just wants to say hello. Yes. This is Danny. He can't. He can't reach it. Just say hello, Danny. Uh Premiere. Oh, that's okay. That's okay. We should have known if I should have not. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Council members. I should've known that was okay. It's okay. This is why he's in a wheelchair. But is he okay? Yeah. What he's told you is that his mom died. Okay. So every time he relives that trauma, even though it was three years ago. Yes. This is one of the special needs that this this. Okay, Joe, I think our time is up. Okay. Thank you. Maureen Welch. Good evening. My name is Maureen Welch, and I have a son who is nine years old. His name is James and he receives services at Rocky Mountain Human Services for his case management. And he has Down syndrome. I wholeheartedly support Bill 1071 and urge you to vote yes. I supported Initiative 100 back in 2003 before my son was even born. When I cast my vote, my understanding was, was that the property taxes would be used to benefit individuals directly who had disabilities, but instead it seems like it's ended up funding the costs of running a large agency. I was incredibly impressed and happy to watch the December 14th video from the Safe Committee. I applaud and thank the Council for its clear understanding of the urgent need to codify this initiative by passing this initiative. Denver will be at the forefront of leadership in Colorado, and you will be the shining star for other cities and counties to look to on how to best use their local mill levy moneys. This ordinance addresses the need to reduce conflict while also increasing choice and accountability. Councilwoman CORNISH did an excellent point about wanting to have crystal clarity on what administrative overhead is, and I urge that there is some opportunity for public to have input during that process as well. It was so refreshing to hear you remind the committee councilwoman that the city council is the governing body for defining administrative costs and monitoring it, not a contractor. And Councilman Flynn excuse me, Councilman Flynn requested that we speak in this hearing to the effect of considering proposals beyond Rocky Mountain Human Services. Historically, the only contractor for these services. I agree with more choice. There's a need for more choice in this community. A robust menu of choice will reduce conflict of interest and is much more person centered. A monopoly is not. My pan ultimate goal is to have individuals be able to apply directly for these funds, cutting out the 15% overhead from a middleman agency. This would allow more money to flow directly to the individual maximizing the benefit of these taxpayers monies. Here are just a few examples that I could think of that could be funded directly. A second creator with cerebral palsy wants to attend Park and Rec Day camp with his friends from school. He just needs help paying for the camp fee and having a support person to attend with him. To a young lady with Down's Syndrome needs private swim lessons at a pool in her neighborhood. Number three, an older adult loves to ride horses and would love to do therapeutic horseback riding. But this is not allowed under Medicaid funding. And for a musician who wants to attend open mic nights located inconveniently for public transportation. So small funding for a taxi or Uber ride would allow them to participate. Swoosh. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I support this bill. Yep. Thank you. And this concludes our speakers now. Questions by members of council. Councilman. New? Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. My question was. Share your perspective, Sheriff, to come, please. My name is Sheri PINSKY. I'm the executive director of Rocky Mountain Human Services. First, I'd just like to thank Don Mars and Tim O'Brien and to doing the audit and doing the study. And also thank Sheri for pitching in to get things organized. The Rocky Mountain. I'm really proud of what you're doing and you're on the right track and Jay helping you along the way there. So I think we're on the right track. Can you talk a little bit about the provision of services and about services provider Rocky Mountain versus other providers? Yes. Thank you, Councilman, for the question. So leading up to this point, before the auditor's report. You know, we provide a variety of services at Rocky Mountain Human Services. The broadest scope of services that we provide is, in our case, management. We, you know, we are primarily responsible for individuals who live in Denver looking at their case management needs. So that's something that we've carried carried through here. Hearing, I think the discussions that we had in in your committee earlier this year, we heard this question around the middle of your funds being used for other providers, and we immediately started planning for ways to do this. We agree we agree that the military funds should be used to support other providers that do similar work that we do. Case management is a little unique because we are the only case management provider, at least right now, in Denver. You know, that may change down the road, but we have plans right now. We have already been funding services to other providers. We are in a good position really to assess what those overall needs are for Denver and to figure out along with the city where to prioritize those funds and how to to support other providers. So as an example, we have increased our are our respite services who are now serving. We're we're adding services to 400 families and respite and a variety of providers deliver those services. We're supporting residential providers. Any any residential provider that needs some help with some furnishings or some extra support. They have access to funds. We we do fund rec center passes now so that individuals can can receive rec center passes. So we have new new programs that we're developing all the time in the primary goal. One of the primary goals is to be sure that all providers have access to these funds. Right? And the transparency in communication with the community is much better, is it? So yes, Councilman Nu, thank you for that question. We have engaged in and put a lot of energy into our stakeholder process and we have had probably individual conversations with over 100 individuals, either in group meetings or one on one. We've done surveys. We've done a variety of ways to be sure that we hear the needs that families have. We are doing community forums every every quarter. I believe that we have a pretty good communication back and forth. I'm sure there's always room for improvement, but I'm really proud of the work that we've done, just to be sure we're listening. We really wanted to listen this year and understand what what individuals wanted. That's so important. I'm glad that you're improving. That's wonderful. Thank you very much. I just want to I'll be supporting this audit tonight and encourage my colleagues to also support it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman new councilman Flynn. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. Rob, can I ask you a question? Could you detail a little bit more force the issue regarding the separation of case management from service provision and how that looks? Yes. Councilman Rob Hernandez, speaking for the record company Case Management was is a is a federal rule that came out in March 17th of 2014. And it is it applies to every single state in the union. Colorado is probably right now one of the few states that is not in compliance. And there are plans that the state is trying to do to bring us in compliance with basically what it says is that all KBS within the state of Colorado have to separate their case management from their direct services. So just think case management over here. All other services to this population over here, they cannot do both because that's where the conflict occurs, because right now everything is within one local CCP. So the trouble is, is that that's where the conflict comes in. You have a case management, a case manager that has the potential to steer services towards their particular their particular entity. And in the case of Rocky Mountain Human Services, I don't have an example where that's happened recently, but in the past there's have been other cases that have actually done that. So what this says is that there will be once it's implemented, there will be case management agencies. And so rackmount human services, like any other CCP in the state of Colorado, can choose to either be a large case management agency or they can choose to be a large direct service agency. My observation would probably be that because the money's in direct services, there's not a whole lot of money in case management. Matter of fact, it only amounts to about 38. O8 Is that right? Cherry About 3808 for each individual. So there's not a whole lot of money in case management, but there are organizations that want to come into Colorado and provide those services. And not only that, but they want to be able to pay their people well enough and and provide continuity for services for this population. But let me ask you, are you suggesting that one single agency cannot do both? When you talk about separating case management from service provision, can the same agency do that? Councilman Flynn? Rob Hernandez You're exactly correct, is that they cannot do both. The rule is very explicit that they cannot do both. And I'll give you an example. In the state of Ohio. State of Ohio, at that particular point in time, John Boehner was speaker of the House of U.S. Representatives. He signed off on a letter asking for an extension from case managers from CMS, the Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services. They were told that they needed to comply and that they told that they were needed to comply. They got no answer. And six months later, they were told that you have four days to comply, to come into compliance with conflict case management. And imagine in the state of Ohio, there are 84 community centered boards and within four days they all had to come into compliance. And we don't want to see that happen in Colorado, but that's why this is really a very far thinking. This ordinance shows leadership. And I want to thank counsel for introducing this. And thank you and God bless you for what you're doing. Senator, thank you. J Could I ask you to explain to us why the city does not plan to take advantage of the ability to seek other providers for certain service just for competitive reasons? Why we would not do that immediately under this new this codification. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Jay, Marine Department of Human Services. When the department drafted or worked with the city attorney's office to draft the ordinance, we had built into the ordinance the ability to contract with someone other than the community center board. Really with our eye on what Robert has just spoken to the event at which we would have conflict free case management in could no longer contract with just one entity. So just to expound a bit on what Mr. Hernandez had said, the state legislature will need to act to bring Colorado Revised Statutes into conformance with the state rule or the federal rule that was passed a few years ago. And as I shared with you a couple of weeks ago, the Joint Budget Committee, which had been briefed on the conflict, three case management had been presented with some options of adopting conflict, three case management in Colorado with a time vector that went out as far as 2022. So this isn't a quick fix that the state will be doing. Certainly won't be doing it in four days. We hope so. Going back to to your question, why why did the department not consider bidding it out? We saw the efficiencies in having a single agency that's already administering the state and federal Medicaid funds, which support the preponderance of those services as being the most efficient way of continuing to administer the mill levy funds as well. From my last recollection, the middle of you funds comprise between 20 and 25% of all of the funding that Rocky Mountain Human Services is administering. Again, the greater share moneys associated with the federal Medicaid waivers. Thank you. Thank you. That's all, Mr. President. And I intend to vote for this. I'm very much in favor of this bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it also. And thank you very much for those clarifications. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilman Espinosa. One more clarification, sir. So is there a shot clock of some sort for the state to to get in conformance with the federal rules? I'm not aware of a specific date by which they are to be in effect. From my conversations with the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and financing, what I had been told is that the leverage that CMS was using to encourage a more timely response at the state level was that they would not approve any changes to the existing waivers that they currently are operating. I haven't verified that with the Federal Center for Medicaid Services, but that's what I had heard from health care policy and finance. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Councilwoman can. Thank you, Mr. President. JAY So we have heard that one of the speakers tonight was on an advisory board, the Mill Levy Advisory Board for Rocky Mountain Human Services. Is that a board they operate or an advisory group they operate. Thank you, Councilwoman. Rocky Mountain Human Services does operate that military advisory board. Okay, so the department does. Thank you. And so my follow up question is, what is our city mechanism for receiving ongoing input and receiving? You know, for example, the questions about this this question of bidding services and or the questions about, you know, defining administrative administrative expenses more precisely, do we have a mechanism why where as the governing body responsible for this contract, we're taking input? What's our mechanism? Now. Thank you. The department doesn't have a mechanism that we're actively soliciting input. Our mechanism for affecting the relationship with Rocky Mountain Human Services with respect to the military funds is through the contract that actually ends at the conclusion of 2017 annually. We negotiate the scope of work and the distribution of the funds commensurate with what the mill levy generates in revenue. So to the extent that we specify within that agreement and of course have accountability through the both the quarterly reports and semiannual reports and annual report, which is actually presented to council coupled with our internal auditor who's been hired full time to review and check how the expenditures are traced through documents, boards, and how Rocky Mountain Human Services is spending their administrative costs. That's the extent to which the department has been. Trying to develop its relationship with Rocky Mountain. Thank you. If I may, just I guess the follow up comment with I mean, maybe there is the question is, I think that those steps for financial accountability, closer monitoring, are really important. And I commend you for all of them. And I apologize for not raising this at committee, but this is what public hearings are for. They raise new things that we learn about. And so it seems to me we are missing a piece then, which is that we, as the governing body, do need to have some mechanism to be getting feedback from the customer base of the contractor with whom we do business. And so I don't know that you need to invent that method right now at the microphone, but I guess, you know, whether you have an annual public hearing, whether there is an ombudsperson who takes complaints, the way that we do for cable franchise, for example, when we have cable franchise agreements , we don't just have a contract to monitor it. We also have an office where people who have issues can alert us so that when we are dealing with them through the contract, we're aware of what the customer experiences. So I guess I would like to ask if you can do some investigation into the best practices for that kind of input to us as a government in an ongoing way? Because I do think that there are important policy questions that we as a city are going to face. And they're not just about did the books balance there about what should we do going forward and what should we look for in our next contract that is different than this contract? And I guess I feel like we need some mechanism and I don't know if there are recommendations from the auditor with that regard, but I would like to know that the department is aware of the need to fill that gap and collecting feedback from this customer base in an ongoing way, particularly before key decisions are made about future contracts. I appreciate that comment and even more appreciate you not putting me on the spot to respond with the plan going forward. But we certainly will bring that back and we'll work with Rocky Mountain Human Services to effect something that isn't redundant to what they're already doing. And I would like the opportunity in the next month or two to come back to committee and share with you how we would effectuate some type of public input into military spending. I think that would be great. I and I'm all for efficiency. I just want to be really clear. Our purpose for collecting feedback is different than their purpose for collecting feedback. And just as long as you keep that in mind, you know, efficiency is not the only goal here. It's also about our role is different than their role. But I'm open to I'm open to that. And I don't know, we can figure out. This bill came through the Finance Committee because it deals with taxation. But I think, you know, the human services issues tend to go to Councilman Lopez's committee so we can figure out which committee you come back to. But thank you. I appreciate that commitment. Thank you. With that, I'm happy to support this tonight. Thank you. Councilwoman, can each councilman now. Back. One last question on Jay. To support what and affirm what councilwoman can say. The contract for Rocky Mountain expires at the end of this year. All right. And so you'll be negotiating. So we should be addressing a lot of those issues at this time with the new contract, which are extremely important, what Castro conditions brought up. So, Jay, you also have that opportunity as well to defend all these issues we've talked about tonight, is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. And certainly your city council will see that contract and will have its opportunity to wait. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Seeing no other questions, the public hearing for Council Bill 1071 is is closed will now start comments by members of council. You all can return to your seats. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Your first step? Yeah, I. Sort of second what council, the ideas that Councilwoman Kennedy was putting out there, including I just want to put it out there, a sort of random survey where you engage the clients and get the feedback. And then if anything sort of surfaces as a potential repeating pattern to pursue that, the, the this need for conflict free case management is important. And so I just I'm glad to hear there's a plan, but DHS, DHHS needs to follow through to meet the intent of this ordinance and align with the latitude that's already been granted meaning or expressed at the federal and state level, and do the best job they can for their constituents. I want to thank Honorable Rob Hernandez for being a champion in a persistent and sort of watchdog in the issues that had gone on for a long time at Rocky Mountain Human Services. And I want to thank Danny and Joe for spending some time with us this evening. And so I'm happy, I'm glad that this has come before us and that I can act. And I'm happy to support this bill. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Councilman. Looks like we don't have any other speakers. Madam Secretary, Roll Call. Black Eye. Clark Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. Hi, Gilmore. Herndon Cashman. Carnage I Lopez. I knew session I. Mr. President. I. Please close the voting. Announce the results. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes Council built in 71 has passed. Congratulations. Thank you, everyone, for your conversations. Councilman Flynn, will you please put Council Bill 1125 two on the floor?

A resolution for a resolution approving and providing for the execution of a proposed grant agreement between the City and County of Denver and the Colorado Health Foundation concerning the "Denver Healthy Corner Store Initiative” program and the funding therefor. (BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT) Approves a $660,932 contract with the Colorado Health Foundation through 6-30-17 as part of the Denver Healthy Cornerstone Initiative to increase corner stores’ capacity to sell healthy, affordable foods to residents in underserved areas (2015223490). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 10-26-15. The Committee approved filing this resolution by consent on 9-15-15.

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Airport 678 Resolution of voting post contract between City and County Derek Troutman and Shreve Cooperative or Concourse B BCA replacement at Denver National Airport for Governance Charter Review 658 Bill A Resolution for the Mayor's Reappointment to the Career Service Board 665 Resolution Approve the Mayor's reappointment appointment to the Denver Housing Authority Board. 666 A resolution approve any post special counsel agreement in City and County Division Allen and Currie, P.C. to provide legal services or conflict cases, overflow delegation, workers compensation, subrogation actions and other legal matters as needed. 667 A resolution approving the Mayor's reappointment at Denver Commission on Aging. Six From Infrastructure and Culture 664 Resolution Professional Service Agreement Ground Floor Media, Inc. for Professional Services for Adult Development and Implementation. Emerald Ash for Marketing Campaign from Safety and Well-Being 662 Resolution seven Oppose Site Use License Agreement between city and County Division Empowered for one on one's financial coaching. Two Denver residents at the Denver Human Services Castro Building, a Denver Human Service facility in the Montebello Building. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Now time for the bill for introduction. Let you please read the bill for introduction. From Business Development 668 Bill for an ordinance authorizing Director of Excise and licenses to issue retail marijuana store licenses to applicants without the requirement of a tax bond infrastructure and culture. 504 Bill for an ordinance proposed design services agreed between City and town different dig studio Inc. for Architecture and Engineering Design Service Package Sanchez Park 653 Bill for an ordinance approving and providing execution for intergovernmental agreement. Twin City Encounter State of Colorado Department of Transportation Concerning Traffic Signal System Improvement Program Denver two ZIP 2015 Signals Project in the funding therefor 669 A bill for an ordinance approving and providing an excuse to impose intergovernmental agreement on city and county. The State of Colorado Department of Transportation Concerning Traffic Improvement Program Denver Tip 2015 Signals Project and the Funding Therefor. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Councilmember, this is your last opportunity to call out any bills or resolutions starting at the top. Under the resolutions, no resolutions called out bills for introduction 668 called out by Councilwoman Each. And Bill's on final. Nobody was called out. So we got one 668 call out by Councilman Kennedy. Did we miss anything? Think we're good? Madam Secretary, first one's already teed up. Councilman Kenyatta, would you like for us to deal with this? Thank you, Mr. President. Just a question, please. Go right ahead. Thank you. So this bill, 668 is a policy ordinance and I am part called it out because we typically have policy changes heard in committee so that there's a lot of transparency for the public. In this case, we have two weeks of budget hearings that kind of forced us to put some things on consent. And I just wanted to ask someone from the department to please explain what this bill does. Is it actually we previously required marijuana centers to pay a bond to the city upfront in order to do business so that if there were any violations, the city had a place to go to pay for any fines or penalties that may be incurred, unpaid, unpaid fees, etc., where we are going to be removing that bond requirement. And I just wanted to ask the department if they could step forward and explain that just so that all of the public is very aware of this policy change.

A bill for an ordinance establishing an excise tax on electricity and natural gas for commercial and industrial customers to fund the office of climate action, sustainability, and resiliency, subject to the approval of the voters at a special municipal election to be conducted in coordination with the state coordinated election on November 5, 2019. A Bill for an ordinance establishing an excise tax on electricity and natural gas for commercial and industrial customers to fund the office of climate action, sustainability, and resiliency, subject to the approval of the voters at a special municipal election to be conducted in coordination with the state coordinated election on November 5, 2019. Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-13-19. This item was postponed to 6-1-20 at the City Council meeting of 8-26-19.

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13 eyes. Bill seven. Seven six has been postponed to September 23rd. Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? And, Councilman Hines, will you please vote council vote 803 on the floor. Mr. President, I move that council bill 803 be taken out of order. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. This one's mine. So I'm going to make some comments on 803 and 805 together, if that is if that works. But we'll vote on them separately. Thank you, Madam Secretary. So 803 and 805 are our climate bills that of that we have been working on? And you know, I just wanted to bring everybody up to speed. Today, we'll be asking for a postponement of these bills, one to June 1st and one to November 3rd. So we have been working hard on on addressing climate in the city and addressing the emergency, the crisis that we have for our planet, for our people, for our environment. And we were able to work with the administration and get to some areas of agreement. And so I want to read that in that where we're headed and why we're postponing that today, so that today we announce the the administration and the seven sponsors of this bill. But today, in conjunction, we'll work on the following. Establishing a new Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. That's one of the bills that we were taking up. And this office will be established by ordinance with the city council. We are going to work on it a little bit more with the administration and bring it back before October 31st. And it will be fully functional and stood up by July 1st of 2020. It will combine personnel from the existing Office of Sustainability and the Denver in the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment and also the Climate Team. And in addition to that, the mayor also has agreed to in the budget proposal that he brings forward. The city council proposed an additional $8 million in 2020 funding to expand efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And we are jointly immediately launching a formal process to examine Denver's current climate work, identify gaps, analyze funding needs, and engage experts, interested stakeholders and a wide range of community members in a process to look at how do we tackle this? And it will conclude by the end of May 2020, giving this Council ample time to consider a referral to the ballot for November of 2020. And in conjunction with that will be delaying these bills since the beginning of working on this. And, you know, I want to say first and foremost, thank you to my colleagues who put their name on this bill and sponsored this and stood up and said, hey, this is really important and we need to do and we need to do hard work, but we need to do that hard work now. I also want to thank there are a lot of members from the resilient Denver team and also from the broader community who have honestly been pushing the city and pushing all of us to do better and to do more and to really put our money and our efforts where our mouth is not just stand up and say , hey, we are still committed to the Paris climate accord but continue to show slides where we are not on that glide path, but to actually engage in the tough conversations and the tough work to get us where we are aligned with all of the scientific standards that have come forward when it comes to climate change. And also, I want to thank, you know, all the stakeholders who pushed back and said, hey, this process is moving really fast. We get the urgency, but we also want a seat at the table who promised to come and join that conversation over the coming months to work hard as we work together to tackle, you know, an issue that is unlike any that humankind has has faced. And so I really want to thank everyone for coming together in that. And and so the essence of what we're doing, what was important from the beginning was we needed to elevate this work. We needed to make sure that our climate team was well positioned within the city to be driving all of us as leaders to make sure that we're meeting these targets. And and so this new office where we were going to put our climate and sustainability efforts will do exactly that. We knew that we needed to take more aggressive action now and as soon as possible. And so the commitment to new dollars in the coming budget for 2020 are those dollars that come now and then. We need to really take a hard look and have tough conversations about how do we transform the way we live, the places where we work, the places where we play, the infrastructure of our transportation systems and how we cook food and have those tough conversations and come with a robust plan on how we're going to get there and how we're going to fund that. And this allows us the time to do that while still taking aggressive new steps with new money to take action now and really bring everyone together. So to be back and with us with proposals and solutions coming forward. So I really wanted to thank everyone. And again, we'll be pushing out the first bill. 803 We will be postponing until June. First, because again, the commitment is that we will have a stakeholder process to come forward with these solutions and these ideas that will wrap by the end of May. And so leaving this on the table again sends the message that we up here are committed to solving this and to finding the funding that we need to solve this. And we're going to engage in this stakeholder process with this, knowing that this is not just a fake deadline, this is a real deadline that this bill will be coming back. And similarly, with the commitment to get this an ordinance to for this council to vote on, for this new office moving the bill that proposes the office in 805 to November 3rd, because we have a commitment, a shared commitment between us and the administration to do that hard work and get that in front of council by October 31st. So these allow us to continue to push for the change that we need. So I see a lot of people lining up to talk. And again, feel free to talk about 803 and 805 as we did last time. But we will vote on them separately on the motions to delay. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I when I ran, I talked about the planet. I talked about how my mom's a hippie and how I grew up around the five national forests and rural East Texas. And it feels really weird for me to live in District ten, by the way. Perfect ten is perfect, after all. But it's really it's interesting for me where I came from and being so connected to nature and then where I am now living in a condominium, high rise, having a view of another condominium. High rise, well, an apartment high rise, but whatever. Climate change is real. I've said that many times. I said that the first day I was here. We got inaugurated on July 15th. That night, the I think the first thing I said was climate change is real. And I am committed to working with with everyone who is willing to to join the coalition to make sure that we make bold, meaningful steps now. And and I'm I'm glad that there that we can work with the executive branch and the mayors. So thank you. Please relay the the excitement of working together with the third floor. And and and, you know, the rest of the administration. I'm. This isn't the end. So we're certainly going to work it with, you know, hand in hand with the administration in this stakeholder group. But we need to keep pushing. And and this isn't this isn't it? We're going to keep going. So thank you for coming here tonight. Resilient Denver. Thank you. For all of those who care about climate change. And and thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Councilman mechanic. Thank you, Mr. President. I have a quick question about the timing. It's my understanding that the agreed upon date to kind of report back is May. And then if this motion to defer is only till June 1st, it doesn't allow much time for the council process and interaction before you kind of have to make a decision on this one. We might not have had any time to debate the report, so I'm just curious why June 1st versus like August 1st, so that we actually have time to interact with what comes back before this vote comes up again? Great question. Again, the commitment is to engage in this deep process and get there. I'm hoping that at the end of that, we will have something new to file starting then and starting through our council process in June. And I don't want to wait all the way until August to have that, because I do want next time to do a better job of making sure that we have all the time. And so I would like to get through the process, having a stakeholder input that informs what we then file as soon as possible after that stakeholder process to again also keep an eye on us to say, hey, if, if the stakeholder group has come to something that is bigger and broader and bolder and better at that point, we will have this in front of us to make sure that it's top of mind and be able to file a new path forward and start it through the process. Okay. I guess I'll just comment that I think what that really means then is that if the idea is that a bill is done by the end of May, in fact there then needs to be a lot of council interaction from, you know, not every member will serve on this work group. And if in fact, your goal is to have a bill before this June 1st date, then in fact you need to start engaging us like in April so that we have a couple of months to interact. So I just want to point out that by making the bill deadline June 1st, it means you actually have to have the analysis and engagement stuff done then in time for the bill discussion to emerge rather than plopping a bill at the same time as the report. So I'm a little concerned about those two things happening on top of each other. I think the goal here is to separate them out with some space. But I will continue to listen to the discussion and I appreciate the parties having stayed at the table to find some common ground and some immediate action in terms of the $8 million additional investment, which I think is not the net dollars, it's just the new dollars. There would be probably the base dollars as well. So I look forward to the budget process as well. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. I'll just also add that on that June 1st date, we could decide at that point that, hey, this isn't ready for a full bill. We could further delay or we could say a bill is imminent and we could kill this bill entirely at that time to create that space. But it again, puts a very real end date to the commitment that both sides have made to having that process completed. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, I want to thank you for. Your leadership on this issue. I want to thank the mayor for coming to the table. In what were. Not easy negotiations on this. Everybody was on the same page, I believe are real close to the same page. On the need to aggressively address climate change. We just needed to do a little bit of wrestling on exactly how we were going to get there. And I appreciate. Not only. The the other co-sponsors of the bill, but this was truly, from my view, an effort of virtually this entire council. I know Councilwoman Kenney played an invaluable role in. Not only. Urging us towards. Compromise, but at the same time. Working hard to to offer amendments to the bill in the in case it does move forward at some point. Councilman Ortega was busy as well in that type of regards. I had great discussions with with our other council members who were not fans of the process that we were involved in, but worked hard to move that move this forward. I find it extremely interesting that as we if we meet the timeline that this proposes, that will be coming to our proposed solution on perhaps funding streams or additional processes almost are right on the heart of April 22nd, 2020. That will be 50 years from our first Earth Day celebration that the former the late Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, spearheaded. So I'm extremely excited the direction that we're heading in. And thank all involved for getting us here. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman, Councilwoman Joyce. Thank you, Mr. President. Just so that I'm understanding is the process next to use the existing bill language as a starting point for conversation or to start this from scratch? I think the commitment is to go in with, you know, again, an open mind on where we go from here to really dig deeper into what do we really need and how do we fund it. This was the catalyst for that conversation. But that, you know, as we heard, there were people who didn't feel that they were at the table from the beginning and had their voice. And so to start from ground zero with the shared path that we need to be able to get to a place where we can do the work and fund the work that needs to be done as set by the science. Okay. Thank you. And just so I can mention, I appreciate the fact that a pause was taken to collect more input and engage District three stakeholders. I have a number of small businesses, art and business districts who reach out to our process, our office. I'm sorry on why they couldn't been couldn't have been part of that process, not that they opposed the goal, that they recognized the impact, but that they didn't want to be rolled over. So thank you so much for the courage to bring this bill and to both through this pause. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Sandoval. Thank you. So I would just like to also share my sentiments that. Thank you, Councilman President Clark, for being a bold leader on climate change. During my campaign, I often talked about the next seven generations. And oftentimes you'll see in my office or in my house, I use seven generation products. And I think that a lot of times when we're making decisions, we're not making decisions based on the next seven generations. We make them based on what's going on in our current climate. And I just want to say that my sister, Kendra Sandoval, who had worked for the. Administration, had talked to me. Often times she has her. Master's in sustainability and from Naropa University. And she sent me a beautiful text this morning when I was talking to her about this compromise. And it said government should protect people and regulate corporations, not protect corporations and regulate people. And so I just thought about that deep today when I was thinking about this bill and moving forward on a compromise. And I think that this is shows that we can all work together, even though there's five newly elected members here sitting here with you, and that we can work with the administration and the mayor's office. So I applaud the mayor for taking this bold step as well. And I look forward in the next year to coming up solutions for the next seven generations of Democrats, for the world and for my kids and for my grandkids. And I just want to thank the co-sponsors. I don't think it was easy to make this decision. And I just want to say that I don't think it was taken lightly for you all to come to a compromise. And I just want to say thank you for doing that. I really just honor that. And I respect where you came from. And thank you, John, for your work on this. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right. Any other comments on this one? I will just add again, thank you to the administration for continuing to work with us as we were barreling down on this deadline. I'm so excited about how we move forward. Thank you to all of the citizens and the groups that have been involved so far and will be involved from here on. We're going to have a lot of hard work to do, but I'm really excited about that work. I also want to give a shout out because I think in the midst of this and talking about how we're not doing enough, I don't want that to seem like that is a criticism of our current sustainability staff or our current climate staff, and they do amazing work. And I hope that you all will hear this as a renewed statement that we have your back and we are ready to push with you and for you to do the work that you all know and keep telling us that we need to do and that we're here to to help make that possible. And thank you for the amazing work that you have done so far on that. So with that, I believe, Madam Secretary, first we need to just vote to take it out of order so that then I can propose this postponement. Is that correct? Okay. So this is just the vote on taking it out of order so I can propose the delay. Madam Secretary, call. Black Eye. CdeBaca. Eye for an Eye Gillmor. Eye. Herndon Hines. Eye Cashman. I can each. Ortega. Sandoval. Sawyer Eye. Torres. Eye. Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary. Please close voting in US. Results 1339 as council zero three has been taken out of order and now I move that council bill 803 be postponed to Monday, June 1st, 2020, and that has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black Eye. CDEBACA No. Flynn All right. Gilmore, I. Herndon, I. Hines. I. Cashman Kenny Ortega. I see an evil eye. Sawyer No. Torres, I. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting and notes results. Two days. 11 eyes. 11 days to nays. Bill 803 has been postponed to June 1st. All right, Madam Secretary, if you put the next item on our screens and Councilman Hines, will you please put Council 805 on the floor?

A MOTION proposing the allocation of future lodging tax collections to support arts, culture and heritage programs, workforce housing and youth services, and capital or operating programs that promote tourism.

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All in favor, say i ii i any post those are approved. Okay. We'll turn now to item five proposed motion 2018 0266 and asked Jeff Mumm and Andrew Kim, our central staff analysts who have been analyzing the legislation and related issues to come before us and make their presentations. Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you. For the record, Andrew Kim, the counsel central staff, the staff report for this item begins on page 19 of your agenda packet. However, I would begin my briefing with some background information actually starting on the top of page 20. In 2011, the Washington state legislature passed. I'm sorry, the Washington State Legislature amended RTW 67.2 8.18 to allow the county to allocate the county imposed 2% lodging or hotel and motel tax revenues that will become available in 2021 for the following at least 37 and a half percent for arts museums, for art museums, culture museums, heritage museums at least 37 and a half percent for nonprofit organizations or public housing authorities for affordable workforce housing within one half of a mile of a transportation transit station, or for services for homeless youth and the remainder for capital or operating programs to promote tourism and attract tourists to the county. In 2015, the Washington State Legislature again amended RTW 6728 180 to give the county the ability to issue either general obligation bonds or revenue bonds to help finance the affordable workforce housing allocation of the lodging tax revenues. The bill requires that debt service or revenue bonds pledged against these revenues can make up no more than half of the 37 and a half percent of lodging tax revenues. It's one of just two episodes from the rising taxes think center jeff man counsels. Just to emphasize on this revenue stream, this is a credit against the state sales tax. So if the county the county technically opposes it, but if the county were not to impose it, the funds, a taxpayer would not see a reduction in tax. The funds would wind up just going to the state and the county would not receive any funds. Thank you. And I may have missed it, but did you specify the actual source and rate and on which transactions this is imposed. That it's a 2% credit against the state sales tax on hotel stays in King County? Is that all hotel stays, Jeff, or are there certain sizes in terms of property? Yeah, I think there's a 60 room limit, but I have to get back to you place of it. Thanks, Jeff. Now, if I can direct the members to table one on page 25, that provides a good summary of the proposed motion in alignment with the with the state law. So on page 25, there's a table. Table one provides a comparison between the state law and proposed motion 2018 00266, which is before you today. The table also references past council actions taken by Council in lieu of the state legislation action and in anticipation of future lodging tax revenues. So I'll go through. So the first column of the table one provides the allocation guidelines as per the state law, which I just brief the members. And the second Collinwood specified the allocation as proposed by the current motion before you. So the proposed motion would state the county's intent to allocate the lodging tax revenues that will be available beginning January 1st, 2020 for the following. 137 and a half percent shall be transferred to Fort Culture to support art museums, culture museums, heritage museums, the arts and the performing arts. This okay, I'm hearing some folks having trouble hearing pull the microphones and I sometimes talk softly myself. So Andrew and Jeff, both of you, pull up those mikes real close and Mark, crank it up to 11. Make sure the second allocation would be 37 and a half percent shall be allocated to Department of Community and Human Services to support transit oriented development development, including projects that preserve or develop workforce housing and ongoing services or projects that support homeless youth. And the last allocation, 25%, shall be allocated for the following one building for culture, bond, debt service and of the remaining 60% remaining to the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium, Public Facilities, District for capital projects, and 3% of the remaining amount to the Kent Special Events Center Public Facilities District to support capital maintenance of the Acesso Show Wear Center. The proposed motion would also require the executive, in consultation with the Council, to develop a countywide strategic arts, heritage, historic preservation and Culture Plan. And the Strategic Plan is required to be sent to council by December 31st, 2019. Section C of the proposed motion would require the Council, the executive and the county visitor and tourism organizations to work in collaboration to set up a tourism promotion fund. And lastly, S.D., of the proposed motion request executive to develop and transmit legislation to support identified plan allocation as specified in the proposed motion related to the employment. Back to table one on the third column shows past Council actions related to this particular proposed motion related to the Affordable Workforce Housing allocation. In 2016, Council adopted a motion acknowledging the receipt of a transit oriented development bond allocation plan, which plans to issue $87 million of bonds revenue backed by lodging taxes for transit oriented development projects . The plan also specifies that remaining lodging tax proceeds not allocated for debt service payments would be available for annual funding awards for other TOD projects or transit oriented development projects. The 2017. Transit Oriented Development Annual report states that approximately 16.2 million have already been awarded or set aside as specified as specified by the allocation plan. And Andrew, if I can jump in on that, on the 16.2 million of the $84 million, does that include the $10 million allocated to the Northgate Project? The the the 16.2 million that's already been set aside is actually part of the all county allocation, the 30.2 So the 10 million for the Northgate Project has not been allocated. That would be on top of that. That's correct. All right. And members could jump in with questions as they're going along. Councilmember Gosset. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Were you reading from the ordinance or the state law and rise to this measure? So initially, Councilmember Garcia, I recited the provisions of the state law and then I so if you look at table one on page 25, the column one provides the provisions of the state law. And then I recited the allocations, specify the proposed motion on column two. And then now what I'm doing is I'm reciting some references to past council actions that you've taken in lieu of the the lodging tax revenues. And okay, then can you could you reiterate what just very briefly what the state said about how much money should or shall, I don't know what language they use, go to culture and how much would go to housing like for homeless? Oh, sure. So the state law states that at least 37.5% of the lodging tax revenues beginning they'll be collected starting January 1st, 2021 would go for arts and then at least 37 and a half percent would go to work for the federal housing. Okay. So my interpretation is that the other 25% could go to these two items if the legislative authority and the county king wanted it to. Yeah, that's correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Continuing on, Mr. Chair. And then lastly, related to the towards the MAP allocation, in 2015, the Council adopted a motion which established the Building for Culture Program to fund capital projects that supported arts, culture and heritage using the future lodging tax revenues. Various ordinances effectuated the motion to implement the program and issued $29 million of bonds for 102 capital projects. As council members are aware, the full council will take up proposed Ordinance 2018 0257 to reallocate $1.7 million and modify the adopted list of projects this afternoon. I would also like to note that the the allocation is specified in the proposed motion complies with the guidelines of the state law. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Mom. Thank you, Andrea. Now, I'd like to take the committee to page 22 of the staff report. And this is where I've done a draw down on the provisions of the PFG. This is the this is the end of the proposed motion. 60% of the of the tourism allocation would go to the public facility district starting in 2021. So in 1995, the state legislature authorized the county to impose three new council magic taxes to finance construction of what's now known as Safeco Field. It was a half a percent restaurant tax, 2% car rental tax, and a 0.017% sales and use tax, which was a credit against the state sales tax. So again, this is a situation where the taxpayer wouldn't see an increase, but normally state dollars are coming back to help build the facility. In October of 1995, the county enacted Ordinance 12,000 to oppose these taxes and then also to create the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facility District, which we had been calling the BFD . And and that it was the BFD was was formed to build and maintain and operate. They've got the party is governed by a seven member board, four of whom are appointed by the county and three of whom are appointed by the state. The county can then land associated with the ballpark's construction to the BFD issued 336 million in bonds to be repaid with the revenue stream stated above and the bonds repaid back in October of 2011. And those taxes expired with the bonds. The. Legislature also authorized the FDA to impose a 10% parking tax and a 5% admissions tax on ticketed events at Safeco. These taxes are still in effect and go to maintaining and operating the facility in as a part of the financing package, the Seattle Mariners pledged to contribute up to $45 million for the ballpark's design and construction , as well as they pledged to cover cost overruns associated with the ballpark's construction. The final costs for the ballpark amounted to 517 million, with the county and state contributing 372 million, and the Mariners contributed $145 million. The the Mariners entered into a 20 year lease, which expires at the end of this year. In 2015, the Mariners and the PFG began discussing new lease terms and hired BND venues and populous architects. This is a consulting firm to investigate future capital costs over a 20 year period. The consultant team issued its preliminary report in 2015 and updated it in May of this year and identified 385 and a half million dollars worth of necessary improvements to keep the ballpark in first class condition through 2021. The report also identified proposed upgrade improvements and these would enhance the ballpark's economic vitality through that same time period. The report did not include cost estimates with these upgrade improvements. In May of this year, the PFA adopted Resolution 18 004, which identified the $385 million in necessary improvements identified in the consultant's report, and also cited the Mariners estimate for upgrade improvements to cost an additional $160 million. No specific upgrade improvements were identified in this resolution. However, the Mariners have provided a list of potential upgrade improvements to council staff totaling $180 million, and have stated that this list represents a minimum of what they believe would be necessary. Upgrade improvements. The merits of also stated a council staff that expansion of the current parking facility may also be necessary in addition to the upgraded improvements . However, executive staff has confirmed to council staff that the proposed funds to the city would only be used to support major maintenance needs at the ballpark and would not be used for upgrade improvements. An attachment A of the staff report shows the list of proposed upgrade improvements. On May 23rd, 2018, the Mariners agreed to new lease terms in a term sheet for use of the ballpark from January 1st, 2019 through December 31st, 2043. However, no final lease has been executed. Attachment seven of the report includes a copy of these terms of this term sheet. So just to make thing boiled down, boil some things down for the council members. We included a chart on page 26 and the report to show a roll up of the funds proposed under the fund allocations proposed under the motion. And as you'll see that under this proposal a over the time period under lease and the motion, 476 million would be allocated to arts, culture and heritage at 476 million would be allocated for affordable workforce housing near transit. And we show and this is the council has already allocated some of these funds and then the remainder that's 25% would total 318 million, with 22 million going for a past debt service on the Building for Culture program between 177 180 million going to the PFA, 1.3 million going to show Showa center in Kent and then the remaining being is unallocated. And then just to sum up, I wanted to briefly just feature four for future actions by the Council on Friday, the executive transmitted to the Council staff into the Council and a proposed agreement between the city and the county to transmit the funds as proposed in the motion we received on Friday. So me all review is still ongoing on that. But the Mariners have indicated to council staff that that they won't be able to start lease negotiations with the BFD until that INTERLOCAL agreement is adopted by the county and the Council also will need to take if they approve. The motion also need to take take legislative action to to approve the funds for the show work center and then the executive which would need to transmit the two reports, the strategic reports regarding arts and heritage funding and tourism promotion to the Council. I believe the next I think the council chair at the of the committee chair at the beginning of the meeting stated that the committee will take this issue up again in on August 29th. And with that, that is our our staff report and we are happy to answer any questions. Okay. Councilmember Up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair, of a couple of questions. And thank you, Jeff, for the presentation. You noted that the parking and ticket tax revenue will go to support stadium upkeep. Do you have a sense of how much money that those public tax dollars will generate for the stadium over the duration? If there were 25 year lease. Approximately $175 million. That's it. And you mentioned the different categories of funding proposed in the consultant's report that were identified. There were some maintenance upgrades. And you characterized I don't know if these were your words, but there is 160 million in optional I'm calling them optional upgrades or the nice to haves separate from the necessary required maintenance and upkeep. And would there be anything preventing the 160 million that are being proposed in a financial plan for the optional upgrades from instead being spent on the necessary upkeep and maintenance? No. And last one more, if I might, Mr. Chair. That's. I don't. Know. Only have three. We have three. I'm sure that we have another hearing coming. That's the. You talked about the well, Andrew talked about what the state law says about spending or what have you talked about what the state law says about how we have to spend this hotel, motel money that at least 37.5% on arts and culture, at least 37.5% on housing and the remainder on tourism. I guess what is the bare minimum required by state law that we have to spend on housing? And how does that compare to this proposal? So as per state law, there isn't a bare minimum I'm sorry, as per state law, at least 37 and a half percent would be spent on affordable housing. So I guess that would be the bare minimum for affordable housing, at least 37 and a half percent for arts and culture. And based on the past council actions of for the building for a culture program, I would say that based on that motion and legal analysis still ongoing on this, but the funds dedicate it for the debt service payments are the Building for Culture program should be dedicated for the tourism portion of the lighting tax revenues. So to clarify, this proposal does spend the bare minimum required by state law on affordable housing. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember up and remove other questions or comments. Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Andrew and Jeff. I just want to clarify that what we're talking about is if this proposal were to go through or some version of it, that some amount of funds would go to the public facilities district for use at a publicly owned stadium, not to the Mariners organization, which is the key tenant of the building. Yes, that's correct. Okay. So the public facilities district makes the determination in entering into contract with the Seattle Mariners and how it would be the funds would be expended. Is that accurate? Actually, I believe that. And I've only I've only been able to read the Interlocal agreement between the county and the PFA. And so in that agreement it specifies that the funds have to go to and upkeep. Big. Yeah, big maintenance. Yes. Yeah. Not for brewpubs or anything. Great. It says it can't it cannot go to those types of things. That's right. Thank you. And secondly, do you have any information about the revenue that comes in to the county that can be used for affordable housing and other projects because of the Safeco Field? I know there are other tenants besides the Mariners. Are there other other programs going on there? Concerts and all sorts of events at Safeco Field? You're looking at me quizzically, Jeff. So we have revenue coming to the county because. We know. The hotel motel. Oh, okay. Are you asking about hotel stays? That would happen because of events at Safeco Field that are not the Mariners. Yeah. Any money that is spent for people attending events. I can try to find that type of information for you. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Clarifying. Sure. Guzman broke the rules. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That last question confused me a little, I guess. Are the Mariners the sole tenant, and if somewhat other activities are taking place there? Don't the Mariners keep the revenue and the ticket and stadium taxes generated also go back in there? I mean, I guess it is the are the Mariners the sole tenant or are there multiple tenants? Yeah, the Mariners are the total tenant and then they and yeah. And then they I guess, I don't know, but the proper term means. But they sublease that tether to concerts and events and things. The ticket tax revenue for any of those events goes to the the D imposes that tax and so it goes to the top of the ticket tax revenue. Thank you. A few other questions or comments of staff. I have a couple of follow ups in your staff report. You indicate that the updated report you're talking about the body and populous architecture report, that the update report indicated 385 and a half million dollars worth of necessary improvements would be necessary to keep the ballpark in first class condition through 2041, where the county is not being asked to fund all of those, quote, necessary improvements with the hotel motel tax. Are we. No. The county is being asked for approximately 870, $790 million. So a significant portion, but not not the entire. And do you have any understanding of where that number came from? Why is it that. Number, that 385. 177, 290 million? It's my understanding that it's the me, the delta between what under the new lease, there are there's specified contributions from a team to a maintenance fund and then, you know, had to get back to you. But the short answer is it's sort of what the what the what the team believes it needs to make the upgrade improvements . It's the. It's what's left over in the budget. What the team's going to contribute to the the facility with the can contribute through its taxes and then to make all of the necessary improvements and then $160 million worth of upgrade improvements to keep the ballpark relevant through the terms of the lease. Well, the upgrade improvements here, the rationale is and there's $160 million of those to enhance the ballpark's economic vitality. Does that mean make more money? I can read from you that. I mean, I'm trying to understand we're talking about. I think it's to make. You know, to get 500 and some million dollars over the 25 years here. What is the purpose? We've got some purpose for basic maintenance and some purpose is for upgrade enhancements to enhance the ballpark's economic vitality. If I understand the base of the proposal, the Mariners will pay for the upgrade improvements. Based on your answers here earlier, those dollars could also be used otherwise to pay for the basic maintenance and necessary improvements if they weren't going for the upgrade improvements. So the consultant report on page 94 of the consultants report when they talk about the upgrade improvements and this is the consultant's words and for reasons maintaining or approving upon the patron experience, expanding or maintaining revenue streams, attracting new demographic groups to the facility, and maintaining Safeco as competitive position within the market. Okay. And is there any quantification of the additional revenues that those investments might generate. And have been provided. With respect to the timing of these dollars currently? What is the use of these proceeds? Where are they going to today? Right now, they're paying up bonds for CenturyLink. And are those bonds paid off? When are they expected to be paid off? 2021. When under the proposal, would these dollars be transmitted to the BFD if the Council were to approve this legislation? The revenue stream would become available for the tourism in 2021. So that's that's the soonest that the county could transmit to the update. I'm not remembering that the terms in the alagoas is precisely, I think, annual transfer, but I don't know the precise date. But it can't happen until 2021. All right. And so is there can you help me understand, is that just the expiration of the current lease that brings this issue before us today? It sounds like we're being asked to spend money today that we don't quite have yet coming in yet. Yeah. It's probably best answer by executive staff, by the proposals before us today. Okay. I think we do get I want to if she's here, I think Rachel Schmidt, the executive's chief of staff, was going to be present and members should have a chance to ask her questions. If she is. I don't. She's. Oh, she's here. Okay. There she is. Thank you for being here, Rachel. We might have a couple of questions for you. Are there a couple other questions, Jeff, if you might, or Andrew? Does every jurisdiction in King County collect this hotel motel tax and transmit it for disposition by the county council or other jurisdictions that keep it and spend it on other purposes? So the tax is imposed by the county and county wide. However, in the city of Bellevue, the city of Bellevue retains the tax that is collected in Bellevue and hotel motel stays. All right, Mr. Chair. Councilman Bell. The 2%. Not all of it. That's correct. The 2%. The county imposed tax. Thank you. And we're just talking about the 2% here. Or are we talking about something else? We are only talking about the county imposed 2%. I see. So I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of this. So hotel stays in the city of Bellevue would not contribute to this fund. That's correct. And what do they is that for maiden power? Is that what they use? As my understanding? Okay. All right, counsel. Sorry, Counselor McDermott. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, I'm interested in delineating the affordable workforce housing portion of the funds, the 37.5% or greater that would be dedicated to housing. Can you walk me through what has already been announced or invested from those funds and what remains and whether and I believe there's been an announcement from the executive about part of those. I can take that one. So on page, on top of page 22 provides a list of the allocations as the Council adopted in terms of the transit oriented development program. So that's the work we did a couple of years ago. That's correct. Okay. And and so that would allocate that would total approximately $87.87 million, which would be funded to fund those projects. And the revenues would pay the debt service for those bonds. The allocation plan also states that any portion, any remaining portion of the Affordable Workforce housing allocation would be used for annual funding awards for other types of transit oriented development, housing projects. So we've already bonded. We've already announced and bonded 87 million, the details of which are at the top of page 22. And then there's another 360 million available for annual awards or potentially to bond for a larger investment upfront. That's great. We haven't bonded yet, but but we're anticipating to start with the bonding process in 2021. And the remaining, as you said, would go to the annual funding awards. But you mentioned 60 million that you mentioned. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Could I. Do you mind if I follow up on that? The 360 million has over what time period? So that's if you go to table two, that that would be the time period from 2021 to 2023. So there isn't a there hasn't been a time specified in the total allocation plan. But if we're using the time frame, as we've provided through this analysis, it would it would total approximately 316. Okay. And I think I understood. Would you confirm for me with respect to the executive's announcement of another $100 million in bonding from the 37% for housing fund? Does that consume that entire revenue stream for this period of time, or would there be additional housing designated resources available. If it doesn't consume all of it? It consumes a bunch of it. I've done some initial work on it, but I don't know. I haven't compared notes with the executive on things like assumptions of interest rates and things like that, but it's a good chunk of it. We've spent we don't like we've announced all the allocations, in essence, it sounds like, on that. And there could be some right here. I think finding an additional $100 million would take up a significant chunk of that stream. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Coe Wells. Used to chair for either of you on page 25. Table number one and the first column number two. So the the allocation that could go in terms of a guideline of at least 37.5% for affordable housing, has some constraints to it. That's correct. Which are delineated in A, B and C. Hmm. Is there any provision under the statute that would allow some other type of funding or some other type of allocation? Or does it absolutely have to be one of those three categories? There's no other delineation, Councilmember. Those are the provisions as per state law as you read it. And could you just re go over number C here again? Because it's kind of convoluted. I'm trying to figure out what all could be possible within that category. Sure. So provision C was a provision that was amended by the Washington state legislature in the second round of amendments to that particular provision. So initially, the at least 37% was to be used for affordable housing. But Provision C allows that portion to be bonded using either general obligation bonds, which we wish the council members have already dedicated to do so through the bond allocation plan. And it also allows it to it also allows some of the revenues to repay any bonds related to projects authorized by the Community Preserve Preservation and Development Authority, which is another entity. If they were to propose a project that that those funds could be used to repay any bonds that they would have authorized. And there is a provision about housing, affordable housing or sustainable workplace opportunities near a community impacted by the construction or operation of tourism related facilities. So for that particular provision where it says community impacted by the construction or operation of tourism related facilities, that that particular provision is related to any project that would be authorized by the Community Preservation and Development Authority. So it's a bit independent of the Affordable Workforce housing provision that we generally know for that particular application. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Performance Councilmember Up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This one is probably for Jeff. It's a two part question. Under the terms of the current lease, the one the Mariners are currently operating under, who's responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the field? The Mariners are responsible for day to day maintenance and upkeep and and also a lot of major maintenance. If there's some unanticipated expense that is associated with the design of the ballpark or something to that, then that the parties are responsible. The Mariners, I think in practice and I can get back to you. More details on this minor stand ins then in practice the Mariners have gone in there and fix would have ever had to get fixed right away and then are reimbursed by the by the PFA for those and the PFA uses its its funds, its ticket tax revenue and rent to reimburse for those types of expansions. And what do you what have you been able to discern from public sources about the any profit or revenue made by the team during the time the terms of the first lease? And also, what do we know about the growth and the value of that business? And I guess what I'm getting at is, is it possible for a business to be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep and still generate wealth? So I guess it's a two. It's a two. Do we do we know what what do we know about it? From the research we've done about the so the finances. And I think the region grantees are getting excited back there. Hold tight, let us do our work and we get to Austin. And I know we don't have access to the private financial records, but I know there's been some reporting about the growth in the value of the team and in the revenue generated by the business. Under the terms of the current lease, there's a profit sharing provision in it that if the Mariners have a profit in the year, they are to contribute 10% of the profit to the to the BFD. However, the lease also recognizes that the Mariners incurred a $200 million operating loss between 1995 and 1999, and so that every year when they do their profit sharing or when they report to the FDA their profits, they if they have a profit, they credit against the loss that they incurred. So over the over the last 20 years, according to the last profit sharing report in 2017, the Mariners have winnowed that $200 million loss down to a bit over $5 million. And the second part of your question on valuation, the team, I have no way to provide that information. There are a bunch of different news outlets from time to time provide that information. In 2016, a portion of the team, the team bought out one of the majority owners and I believe they bought about 40% stake at $600 million. So you can maybe come up with some sort of valuation. Somebody thought that that was worth $600 million. Thank you. Councilmember Von Bauer, then Councilmember Lambert, who's on the phone? Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just picking up on some of the concerns or questions from the previous speaker customer, Goss and I have had the privilege of being through this process before. And we understand that there's a lot to be said, not only for the major issues that many of the people in the audience are here to discuss. But also we recognize we have we're partners in this, and it's important to know about our partners in terms of who are getting into an agreement with. I think it's also important, Mr. Chair, to recognize that Major League. Attendance is the lowest in 15 years. Across the board. Attendance is down in Major League Baseball, and we're very fortunate that we have a winning team here that's been very successful. But we have to recognize that they're also facing some of the changes in today's economy. So looking at these figures, I don't want to be confused about the reality. And we're not operating in a vacuum here because the agreement we have here with the Mariners is not something separate from what's going on in Major League Baseball in. Particular, in sports in general. There's a lot of changes taking place. Flat screen TV is very attractive to a lot of people who are no longer attending. Games at all levels. And so it's very important to recognize that some of the dollars that we are talking about may not project forward. As much as they have been something out of the past. I also recognize that this is an opportunity for us to get some issues. Reviewed, and especially during this. Month that you've asked us to come up with. And I think it's important to see what's happening and other teams around the league. And Jeff and I hope that you have a chance to see what's happening with other negotiated contracts, how this contract stands in. More recent contracts around the league. Again, we've been through this process before. We almost watched this team. I don't want us to get into a nose to nose battle where we find ourselves faced with a potential loss of a major factor in this community, one of the best sporting events where families can still attend. And I'm hoping that we recognize that this is still a financial challenge for everybody across the board and that this is not a golden goose that's going to lay all the. Golden eggs for all our. Problems. We have to deal with a lot of problems as members of the King County. Council not too long ago without. And I guess about. Five years ago we had the anniversary of the time we said we'd end homelessness in ten years. And money does not answer all our problems. But hopefully today that will begin a serious discussion and our due diligence on the campgrounds process of this contract and recognize that we're working as partners in this with the mariners and not adversaries. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. And then we'll move on to public comment pretty quickly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Interesting that parking fees are back again. That was the last item in the negotiations that did originally and in Olympia. So I think said he was here on the council. I was in Olympia when they were working on this before. So I would like to know more. And I remember earlier they were talking about the package. I'd like to hear more about that plan to vacate that amount. I'd also like to know what you believe is the condition of the building. We think that it's been well maintained as there have been some deferred maintenance. And my last question is, if we were to pay the bonds up early, how much could we save? And over again what the bond interest rate is that we are still paying. Thank you. Thank you. So some follow up information on the parking revenue and condition of the stadium. Maybe you could touch briefly on that, quote, applicable standard, end quote, in this column for here. And then the interest rate and potential for early pay off is what I heard. So that under the terms of the current lease, there's something called the applicable standard and we'll have more on the leases in the next briefing. But basically the team needs to keep Safeco up to a first class as a first class stadium compared to stadiums that were built between 1990 and 1999. And it's my understanding and I think the PFA and want to speak for them, but in conversations I had with them, they were very satisfied with the condition that the that the stadium has been it is in right now as far as paying off the bonds early, even if if the bonds were to be paid off early , the state law, I believe those funds wind up going to it like a youth sports facility, like a statewide youth sports facility program. So they're already spoken for. So paying them off and it's just we can't control the stream. We'd have to we'll have to get more get back to you on that one. But the funds are spoken for under statute from now through the foreseeable future. Thank you, Councilmember Kowalski. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Another question. With regard to the upgrades and maintenance needs that's identified by the Mariners or by the PFG, are those included in the lease requirements? Are they something that the Mariners, for example, are required to do to maintain the lease? I don't know if I'm asking. Yeah. They are required. They would be required to. The facility needs to be maintained and I'll have to get that direct the exact. I can't remember how specific the consultant's report is identified in the in the there's no new lease yet. But in the resolution adopting the term sheet for the new lease, it calls out the $385 million and presumes that those will be done. That has to be done. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? We do have a representative, vice president, general counsel for the mayors. Fred Rivera is here and is available, has made himself available. If members have questions, he's going to speak during the sign up time. But does any member have a question for the Mariners organization at this time? Exactly. Sure. And we have Rachel Smith here as well. I don't want to put them on the spot if there's no questions. So does any member have a question or would Rachel, do you have anything you'd like to offer on behalf of the executive ? No. Councilmember one right there. But I make sure I understood what you said. I want to make sure that we have an opportunity here from the public here. Yes. I also want to make sure that if anything were raised in the preliminary discussion by our staff, the Mariner Organization, to respond or clarify or add. To the fair, they have that opportunity. Okay. And I'm see a nod from Mr. Rivera. Now, come on up here, Fred. And the BFD, our public facilities district was invited. I don't believe they're here, but if there is a representative from the public facilities district, would you make yourself known? No. Okay. Thank you, Fred. Welcome. Go and introduce yourself. Thank you. Fred Rivera, executive vice president and general counsel. All right. You heard the dialog there. Is there anything you want to add to or clarify? Yeah, I want to I want to summarize the overall expenses over the next 25 years that we've determined and also addressed the upgrade capital improvements that will be required. First, the overall anticipated expenses over 25 years is $800 million. That includes $250 million for operation and maintenance, which the Mariners will pay 100% of. There's the capital upgrades that were referenced before, and this is necessary. These are not discretionary. This is not discretionary work that needs to be done under the applicable standard and the term sheet. For the next 25 years, the ballpark will be judged against the top one third of ballparks and Major League Baseball in order to keep it relevant. Those upgrades or those concepts at a minimum will need to be required. And so that estimated $180 million is the minimum for the upgrades to meet the applicable standard under the new lease. The last component is the necessary capital improvements. That's the $385 million for which the allocation would, would would go towards. And that's the only bucket of maintenance that this allocation would address. Thank you. Councilman up there. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for being here this morning. That's the question. That's part rhetorical, but it's an honest one. If you're to believe Forbes magazine and I don't that hasn't been independently analyzed that the their valuation of the team shows the value has increased by $1,000,000,000 over the last seven years. Given that, why couldn't the owners finance these upgrades rather than drain public resources that could be used for housing? Or I'll repeat what I just said, and that is the Mariners are paying for the upgrades. We're paying 100% of the upgrades we've negotiated for over a year with the public facility district that owns the stadium. We are the tenants. These are the terms that we negotiated. I think both parties think it's fair for members of that body are confirmed by by by the county. And these are the terms that overall we think represent a fair allocation of responsibility for a publicly owned asset. Other questions for Mr. Rivera. I'll say if they happen to listen or watch this. You mentioned that four members of the party are appointed and confirmed by this county. I'd like to hear from them. There they are. They are looking out and running the public entity for the public. And to be honest, Mr. Rivera, I don't I'd like to see a little bit more of them to make the case. And I haven't. Just to for two more questions, then we'll open up to public comment. Mr.. Jeff. Mr. Mom, you indicated it was a range hundred 65, $190 million with respect to hotel motel tax. Under this agreement, is there any cap or any limit or is it a percentage of the receipts? Yeah, under the end of the ordinance or I'm sorry, end of the motion. It's a percentage. It's 60% of the that the tourism of the funds that would be available for tourism for 60% of the 25% of the 99 estimate. So it could be higher if we keep growing and have more rooms and stays. There's no cap. There's no cap. And can you help me understand why? No. All right. Mr.. That's an open question that maybe something can help in like next month. Mr.. Garrett You've indicated that the Mariners do generate tourism visitors here to the region and hotel motel nights stays. Can you tell us a little bit about the studies that have been done in terms of the dollars of this hotel motel tax that the Mariners believe that they generate? A third party report. That was commissioned by both the PFO and the Mariners identified $3.8 billion in economic activity during the 25 year lease term. I believe it's 2.8 billion of that is right here in the county, including 3300 full time equivalent. Jobs per year. Inside and outside of the ballpark in the area, which you may be familiar with, Silver Cloud in Hoover, Bill Bar, those type of areas. And over the term of the lease, that'll generate $2.2 billion in wages, according to the third party report. And with respect to the hotel motel tax receipts, what is the study show that those are generated from Mariners days? I don't know. I'll have to get back to you. I don't know that it's specifically identified that portion. There's not a number of $50 million. I don't know, off the top of my head. Okay. Mr. Mom, have you seen anything on that? The consultant report. It says that the folks who come to Mariners games, 5% of them would need hotel stays. And I think that's 100,000 stays a year something that in that nature but I can get more information can. Be helpful because we're on our guard. Well, just a question relative to what I raised earlier, Mr. Rivera. You know, I've been reading the. Same Fortune magazine that my colleague has been reading, and it's pointed out that Major League attendance is down. Can you speak to that and some of the concerns? Because obviously that's a. Financial concern for the organization. It's a major concern across the league. The commissioner addressed that at the All-Star break just a couple of weeks ago. Attendance is significantly down and that's because people are watching games in a different way. They're not going to the game. They're watching it on devices when they come to the game. It's not necessarily a sit and watch experience. It's a social experience, a social gathering experience. There's one ballpark design in the works that will only have 24,000 seats in it, and the rest will be social space. And that will have a significant impact on revenue and the ability to operate a team and to operate the stadium. So it's a paramount concern in in Major League Baseball that we're keeping our eye on and will sure to impact us in the coming years. Again, as I pointed out earlier, Mr. Rivera, Guzman, Gossett and I were involved. With. Baseball brinkmanship when we were going to lose the. Team and we were had threats. And I personally was raising questions about the ability of the organization to meet the construction and the financial plan. And I was criticized very strongly by the then chairman of the Seattle Mariners. So I hope I have some credibility in raising the questions today to make sure, because I was ostracized and criticized and front page of the Seattle Times or raising questions along with my colleague, Councilmember Larry Phillips, Councilmember Cynthia Sullivan, and then Councilmember Ron Sims. And the four of us were. Lambasted because we dared raise questions. But we have to raise these questions because this process is so critical. The people behind you have a particular issue. We have to look at the broader issues. I think, again, that you have a venue that is family friendly. It is the last place where people can take their families and don't get hit by. Too many of our sports today are suits. Only people can afford to do it. They can write off the expenses. So I want to thank the Seattle. Mariners publicly. For providing that resource for so many families around the sound. We're going to go through a question period. I hope you can work with us, because I know there. Will be some hard questions for my colleagues, but in the end, I think the solution will be a a conversation that I think will bring about a resolution of some of the issues that we raised here today and we raised by some of the audience who I hope we can start hearing from. And I want to thank you and I thank the chair. I got to leave this anecdote because my my colleague, Larry, and I will understand, there's a previous county executive negotiated with the then president of the Seattle Mariners. His name is Tim. And Tim raised, you know, finished his his negotiations. And then he said, oh, by the way, then the council is going to to be involved. And the then president of the Mariners said, council, what's the council you're finding out about the council today? The council is is a process. And in our process of county government, we hope to be a deliberative process, one that's. Going to look at the long term. Not the short term. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And for one clarifying follow up, Councilmember Up the Grove, then we'll get the public come out, Councilman, for a. Well, no, thank you. I the I've heard this this fear that as people attend games less and watch TV more, it can have an impact. But didn't you don't you own the TV station that airs? The airs, the Mariners. We have an interest in those articles. I'm sure. You. Read mention how that's that's a dying business again folks folks are not watching and those in those ways and so the deliverable people are watching through what's called over-the-top methods of television. Exactly. And so that that is a that is a dying that is a dying business. And I would be happy to share with you a number of articles that mention that. Thank you. And Councilmember Cole to bring us home. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Speaking of homes, so let's see the signs around here, homes over home runs. I don't think anybody would deny that that is critical, that people have homes. And it's you know, we're in an enormous situation here in Seattle, King County, the state all over the country with regard to this. And rather than arguing over why that's the cause, we have to have more homes built and have homes affordable, which is what Claudia Bowdich, his task force that's working on. But for me, it doesn't have to be an either or a mutually exclusive situation. If we can have a sports team here, a safe field that is well maintained so we don't have roof tiles falling off as we did with the kingdom, but also have the revenue that's needed for building homes that are affordable. And I think we can find the right balance. And so at some point, I would really like to see some more numbers about what the revenue limit and what the revenue level is that we gain by having the Mariners play at this publicly owned facility that go. Into. Housing, human services and so forth, because I know that that is taking place. It's just where is the right balance? Maybe we have a lesser amount than is in this proposed ordinance, but we have to find that balance. So I don't know if you have any comment on that. I agree with you 100% on on the on those topics. I think we did try with the four years we negotiated the term sheet to come to the correct balance of of cost sharing of of those items. And I'm happy to try to provide, along with with staff, additional information beyond those I referenced in terms of economic generation so we can get that information to you. Thank you. And I should have said proposed motion not or in the thinking that. No, thank you very much. Thank you for being here, Fred. And thank you to our central staff for your work on this. You've now heard some of the questions, concerns from members and got some time before this next comes before the committee to work on that. I think I said in my opening remarks about opportunities for public comment that the general public comment is heard the third Monday of every county council meeting. And I made a mistake. It's the fourth Monday, so August 27th at 1:30 p.m.. The full King County Council takes public comment on any topic, and you're welcome there. This again will be in committee on Wednesday, the 29th at 9:30 a.m. Here is an opportunity to provide public comment, and then it'll either be in committee for one more hearing for comment or up to the full council. And whenever it's heard it full council, there's public comment opportunities. So I want to clarify those prior remarks. We will now open the public comment item on this agenda. I do have a number of folks lined up. We are going to set the clock on either podium at a minute, 30, you'll have a 32nd warning with the

A bill for an ordinance exempting feminine hygiene products from the collection of sales and use tax in the City and County of Denver. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-5-19.

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Did I miss anything? All right, Madam Secretary, if you please put the first item up on our screens, which is 137. So this is a bill to repeal the sales tax on feminine hygiene products in the city and county of Denver. And it's not called up for a vote today because it's going to be a unanimous repeal of that tax. So I just wanted to call it out real quick to make a few comments to thank a few people. First of all, my co-sponsors, Councilwoman Black and Councilwoman Sussman, looking very dapper with your pins on tonight. Thanks for that. Also want to give a shout out to Representative Susan Latina of the state House who tried to repeal this on our state taxes last session for her giving some guidance and background on this. And then Jeff, Ashley and Melissa from period kits who were very supportive and came and testified in committee. For anyone who doesn't know, period Kits is a local nonprofit working to end period poverty. And you can learn more at period kits, dawg. Our treasurer, Steve Ellington for helping guide me through the financial impacts of the bill. Emily Lapel from our legislative team and Troy from our legal team, helping with the drafting and the presentations, getting this through council. And to Maggie Thompson, who works in my office and who brought this to my attention and helped champion this along the way. So thank you, Maggie. We talked about this before, so I'm not going to go deep into it, other than there was recently a study that showed that in the United States, one out of five girls is kept out of school every month because they lack access to these feminine, feminine hygiene products in this country. And I think that that's something that not a lot of people know and that that is not widely talked about. And certainly repealing the, you know, the city part of the sales tax in Denver is not going to solve that. But I think that this is an issue that we have to continue to work on. And I was glad to see that there's also some stuff happening at the state level and hopefully other communities will follow suit with repealing their local and state taxes. So that is my comment for that one. And that concludes the items to be called up. So all bills for introduction are ordered published and we are now ready for the black vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you'll need to vote. Otherwise this is your last chance to call an item for a separate vote. Councilman Herndon, will you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in a block for the following items. All series of 2019 222 to 20 3 to 24 155 to 18 112 113 to 10 to 13 to 14 to 15 to 16 to 27. 118 171 181 137 195 198. Thank you, Councilman. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black Eye. Espinosa, i. Gilmer i. Herndon, i. Cashman I. Carnage I. Lopez I knew. Ortega, I. Assessment, Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting. Announce the results. You have a nice 11 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass since there are no hearings. And if there are no objections from members of council, we will not take a recess. Seeing no other business before this body, this meeting is adjourned.

A bill for an Ordinance authorizing and approving an amendment to the St. Anthony Urban Redevelopment Plan to add the Sloans Block 7 West Project and to Create the Sloans Block 7 West Sales Tax Increment Area (FINANCE & SERVICES) Approves an amendment to the St. Anthony Urban Redevelopment Plan for the Sloans Block 7 West Project in Council District 1. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 12-16-14.

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Thank you, Councilwoman Shepherd. All right, ma'am. Secretary. Can you tee up the next one, which should be 1099, called out by Councilwoman Fox? Thank you very much. Councilwoman Fox, what would you like for us to do with this? I would appreciate your taking both 1099 and 1100 as a block. Certainly you want those on the floor. I do. I would like a vote on them. All right, Councilwoman, I'll tell you what. You make the motions for us. Be happy to. Could you please have ten, 99 and 1100 on a block to be ordered published? Absolutely. I move that council bills 1099 and 1100 of 2014 be ordered published. It's been moved in. Second comments. Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. In committee, there was discussion about the Saint Anthony redevelopment plans, and I'm very supportive of having that area redeveloped and have been supportive of almost everything that's gone in until I heard plans to give TIFF benefit to the Alamo Theater and Draft House, and I decided that maybe when you're looking at I think it was about 1,000,003 was the price tag there that maybe that wasn't what the general taxpayer would see as the very best use of taxpayer funds for a theater and drafthouse. And so I know we're going to be having a public hearing on this. I don't need to go into this in doubt, but I had enough discomfort that I decided that with these two ordinances, which both relate to the same thing, that I would like to cast a no vote in the interim. Thank you, Councilman Fox. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. And all due respect. To Councilman. Fox, I absolutely. Disagree. I think this side of town has been neglected for so long. There has been a process, our community members behind it, and they are tired of having to go across county lines to do shopping. Most folks in west Denver go west of Sheridan to do their business. It's time that they stay in Denver to do their business. This is part of that puzzle and this is part of that that vision. So I fully, fully support it. And plan on voting for it as well. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Any of the comments on 1099 or 1100? See none. We're voting on these in the black, Madam Secretary. Roll call. Flats. No, Ken. Each Lehman. All right. Lopez. Montero. Nevitt. Hi. Ortega, I. Sheppard, I. BROOKS okay. And, Mr. President. I. Now Secretary since. Can you note. That he said. I said. That? Yes. Okay, we go. Thank you. Please close the venue. Announce the results. Ten Eyes one name. Ten eyes one no. 1099 1100 had been ordered published in a block. We have one more bill for introduction. 1124. Councilman SHAPIRO, would you like for us to do with this?

A bill for an ordinance designating certain property as being required for public use and authorizing use and acquisition thereof by negotiation or through condemnation proceedings of fee simple, easement and other interests, including any rights and interests related or appurtenant to properties as needed for the Platte to Park Hill Stormwater Systems Project. Grants the authority to acquire through negotiated purchase or condemnation any property interest as needed for the construction of a detention area as part of the Platte to Park Hill 39th Avenue Greenway Stormwater Systems project including easement interests, access rights, improvements, buildings, fixtures, licenses, contract rights, permits, and other appurtenances located at 4141 East 35th Avenue in Council District 8. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 12-5-17.

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All right. All right. Thank you. Okay. Let's move on to 1396. And Councilman Flynn, I want you to put this on the floor as well. I'm sorry. Councilman Cashman, please put us on the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 1396 be ordered published. All right. It has been moved and seconded. Councilman Flynn, your comments. Several. Mr. President, thank you. First of all, as we discussed at committee, I wanted to request a one hour courtesy hearing on this council bill, which is the Land Acquisition Ordinance. I related to the plant to Park Hill Project in the Park Hill Golf Course and seeing as how it's related to 1395, I don't know what you're as president. I don't know what your direction might be or what your decision might be, but it might be possible to do them combined and allow people to, since they're related projects, to entertain comments on both of them. I think that's an excellent suggestion. That's why I made it make only excellent suggestions. Calm down, calm down, Councilman land until I know this is the last this is the last one or 17. Madam Secretary, will you will you please put these together for one combined public hearing? Yes, Mr. President. All right. And Councilman Flynn, do you want to offer an amendment? Yes. In relation to the land acquisition ordinance. I wanted to I wanted to propose an amendment. And some of you might not think this is the most excellent suggestion, but I hope that you duly consider it in reading the draft of the ordinance. It struck me as being somewhat different than the impressions that we got out of Finance Committee in that several weeks back. A month or more ago, the administration gave up on the on the notion of acquiring the Park Hill golf course, 75 acres and then lease purchase the remaining 75 because of some complications and many complicated issues that arose because of the ownership and the conservation easement. And just so many questions with the concessionaire that runs the golf course. So the administration decided to to procure the property needed for the drainage project through a system of permanent easements where the where the the detention would be and then temporary construction easements of up to 90 acres. And and that passed unanimously out of the committee. And when I read the draft ordinance, it contains a language that's pretty boilerplate and probably necessary, but I think needs to be clarified. And that is that if the administration is not going to acquire in fee simple title the actual full ownership rights of the golf course, only the easements, the the ordinance as it's written gives the administration the authority nevertheless to go ahead and acquire at least up to 90 acres in fee title, which is not what we intended, not what the administration intends to be frank, but in the interest of transparency and in the interest of of being very, very open and transparent about what is a truly probably one of the more controversial projects going on in our city right now. I think we should I think I would like to offer this amendment that clarifies that any acquisition of fee interest fee title interest is only for those portions that are that come up in relation to the acquisition of the easements and not the full 90 acres. And so I if you would entertain the motion now, I'd like to make them put on the floor. Okay. Thank you. I moved to a man accountable 17 Dash 1396 in the following particulars on page two, Line 40, insert the following new sentence. Notwithstanding the foregoing, City Council does not hereby authorize the Mayor or his duly appointed representatives to acquire the entire property in fee. Simple title from any third party, not including interest currently owned by the city, provided that authority is hereby given to acquire lesser portions of the property in fee. Simple title as may be necessary or desirable to provide for the project. Thank you. All right. It's been moved and seconded now. Comments by members of Council on the Amendment. Councilman Sussman. Thank you very much. Mr. President, I would like to have somebody from the administration come and speak to this because it's the first that I've heard of it. And so I'm not I'm not sure whether what effects this might have on their ability to go forward with this project. Are you and Councilman Sussman, are you asking for the legal team that's working around this? Sure. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilwoman, I'm John McGrath with the City Attorney's Office. Mm hmm. So this request came up recently and is. Something that is not typical in a land acquisition ordinance to be seeking to acquire rights lesser than for title. It is correct that we currently anticipate a need for permanent and temporary easements on the property. But this is this particular piece of property has a fairly complicated history and the ownership structure. And so we felt that it was the prudent course to include kind of a full slate of potential acquisition interests to protect the city. Because as we currently sit here today, we don't know the particular boundaries of the property we may be acquiring. We know we have committed to it being less than 90. Acres in total. It could be significantly less. We have not designed the project beyond just a very preliminary design and we have not done an appraisal of the properties. So there are a lot of unknowns. We also have not examined title to the property, so we don't know here today what we might encounter when this process unfolds. And so it would be our preference. And what is included. In the original draft of the agreement was. Fee title and any lesser interest, which is very. Typical for a land acquisition ordinance. In the city. So that's the reason it was drafted that way. And again, I agree with Councilman Flynn that. Sitting here today, we anticipate it being interest in the nature of an easement permanent and temporary, but we don't want to impose that limitation on ourselves, only to find six or seven months from now that we don't have all of the rights we need to be able to deliver the site to our design build team and have to go back to Council for additional rights that could introduce a risk of delay and potential damages to the city if if it unfolds in that way. Damages in what way? I mean, liability damages. Damages for delay under our contract with SEMA. And there are other potential damages for see that is expecting us to deliver pieces of this infrastructure at certain times. And so the city has made commitments there to deliver this. Program according to that schedule. So this kind of amendment you've never seen before when you're trying to do this sort of acquisition, is this an unusual amendment that is being asked for? It's my opinion that this would be an unusual amendment. To our regular process. And unusual limitation on the. Scope of. Rights that we would typically seek to to have as we go into the process of negotiating for an acquisition. Okay. Thank you very much. I think I have only heard about this as I was walking to my chair this evening, and I think it bears a lot more discussion and thought by the committee or someone before I would be able to vote on this. So thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Sussman. Councilman Castro. Thank you, Mr. President, sir. So if we end up with the feed, simple option, we don't take ownership of that land. When we're done with the project for to create the the drainage element. What happens to the title to that land as it would then stay with the city? Because as I understand it, we need to return the course to Regulation 18 hole golf course to protect the conservation easement, correct? Correct. And so the answer to your question depends on what type of interest we acquire. If we acquire as anticipated easements, then the remaining interest would remain with Clayton. And if it was a temporary easement after the duration of our temporary easement expires, full title would revert to Clayton. As to the permanent easement, we would have permanent rights there and Clayton would retain the underlying rights. But what happens to the conservation easement. Unless something else happens to impact the conservation easement which is currently actually incorporated into the agency agreement? But assuming nothing changes from the status quo today, the agency agreement and the use restrictions would continue in place throughout the project. Regardless of whether we took fee title or some lesser interest. So the intention remains to return the golf course to playable condition, which is what's needed to protect that easement. Is that correct? Correct. Don't want to get too far into the weeds, but is there any scenario by which we lose control over the conservation easement? If we in what you're talking about. We believe not. It will depend on our ability to return the golf course to a playable 18 hole golf course. And we've taken. Steps throughout the process. To ensure that we have that ability based upon design, etc., and as we move forward, will continue to ensure that we have that ability and the budget in dollars to. Deliver it. Thank you. And the last question I have is so we're facing a deadline set out implode imposed deadline in the IJA? Correct. Yes. Okay. And if we missed that deadline, what penalties do we face? I believe the penalties under the current C9 agreement are $5,000 a day. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Councilman Katherine. Councilwoman Ortega believe is next. Thank you. I'd like to ask you to come back. I have two questions for you. The first one, going back to the six penalties, I thought those were specific in terms of timelines were tied to having the Globeville landing outfall in place by certain deadlines, that it wasn't as much tied to the Park Hill golf course acquisition and improvements that are needed there, because we're not going to even begin to get to the improvements until some time, I'm assuming, in 2018 or so. So correct me if I'm wrong there. I believe that there are more than one deadline that are set forth in that agreement, but it's been a while. Since I've. Reviewed it, and so I would have to get back to you. But my understanding is there are dates into 2019 and potentially beyond for certain elements of the program. But acquiring what we need for the. Drainage that needs to be done at that far northeast corner of the Park Hill golf course. I guess I'm struggling with the fact that we had identified somewhere in the ballpark of 20 acres when this overall project was brought to us back, what, two and a half years ago. So I don't understand how it is that we now need 90 acres. That doesn't make sense to me. We should be looking at what we actually need. And I'm just questioning whether this is, you know, kind of getting back and tying us into the conversation about the acquisition of the golf course from Clinton Land Trust. And this is just the first phase of that. So, you know, I mean, in the interest of transparency, it's why I asked for the budget of the overall project of all four of these to ensure that, you know, because if we're buying 90 acres versus 20 acres, doesn't that put our budget out of kilter? I mean, so I appreciate the fact that Councilman Espinosa has postponed that other one for a week so we could try to get that budget information. But help me understand whether or not we actually received the information on the title when we did the conservation easement back in the 2000. Did we not get that? How would that have been have changed since then? Well, stats and I want to change on a daily basis. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I wanted to let you know that Steinberg is right behind you, too, as well, because I know you guys are probably yeah, you guys are a team. But but certainly there was a title there was a title examination that happened back in the year 2000. And there have been examinations that have happened since then. The city doesn't control the day to day happenings on that course it's that's those rights are owned by Clayton and so what might have happened to title between 2000 and today is unknown. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. And and Jeff, I saw you want to jump in there? Is there anything that you wanted to say to that exchange? Before I go to Councilman Herndon. If there's further clarification, I'm happy to give it. If the answer satisfactory, then. Okay. Great. I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm just going to point out that this census bill for introduction. We're going to have the opportunity to hear from. The public and go through questions and comments in two weeks. So I felt as if it was a little redundant to kind of dove into that now. But I was just going to speak on the amendment that Councilman Flynn offered. I walked up here and I see this sheet of paper on my desk without having any understanding behind it or any conversations with Councilman Flynn. So this is not. Something that I'm comfortable doing right now. I certainly think there are unintended consequences when we try to get involved in the weeds. And so I would hope that my colleagues. Would vote down the amendment so when we could have the opportunity to hear a little bit more of the reasons behind it on second. Reading next year. Thank you, President. All right. Next year. That is correct. All right. Councilman Herndon, Councilman Flynn, I'm going to skip you and get to some of the folks who have not gotten a go yet. Councilman Espinosa, have you gone yet? No. Okay. Councilman Espinosa. So to me, it seems pretty self-evident that the per the intent behind the the amendment was to continue to keep council somewhere somewhat engaged in the process of land, take down acquisition over in the golf course the Park Hill golf course in. So I a why would you ever want to remove council when council is asking for that? I don't understand it because we're that much closer to the constituents that we all serve. I would I would like you to confirm what I was shown in the briefing, though. I was presented a a layout that shows a restoration of a fully regulation compliant 18 hole golf course. Is that true? That is true. Okay. So I want it on record that we can in fact accommodate the storm water needs that we're attempting to put in and restore a fully regulation compliant 18 hole golf course. That's correct. Okay. So then what is the delay? How many hell how long does it take for a bill to be filing for you guys to file something for council consideration and it of approved. I'm not sure. What type of bill are you referring to? A land acquisition ordinance bill or. Correct. So the process from the decision to acquire a real estate interest. No, I'm not talking about the decision to acquire. Once you finally decided announcement. Just when the sky's right here. I mean, it's got I don't know if you can just real quick so I don't not interested in the process. I want to know exactly once you decide to go to council. When we how long does it take from the time you file to us taking action? Well, a lot of that depends on the action. Sky Stuart Mayor's office. A lot of that depends on the actions you take. If everything goes on a normal course of action, it take five weeks. Five weeks? Well, we could do it in as fast as two weeks. Is that not correct? Or three? That would assume filing things out of order and taking actions that are not the normal process. Okay. But when you say up to five weeks, you're including the entire 30 day or. No. No, I'm not. It's seven week or an eight week delay. Correct. So my point is, is that I actually have a ton of confidence in the team that is working on this. Both yourselves, Jeff's office and every and public works that they're looking at this very comprehensively and have a very stout understanding, especially at the seam a contract goes through . I think there's also ample time for everyone to proceed with design and recognize any sort of concerns about land use issues. The process that you would have to undertake to acquire land and to do all that, most of that would occur regardless of whether you actually filed something for council or not. That is the same process. Legal process that you have to do to acquire land doesn't change just because you have to go to council. The only difference that results from this amendment is that it does come to council. And yes, does that create a pocket of uncertainty because council then could in fact deny the request? Yes, but I think that I think that you either have a I have the confidence that you're either making that decision and you won't come to that point where council would be in a situation where they wouldn't approve it. And so I don't think there's any real risk because we're ultimately all on the same team here regarding stormwater needs and open space needs. So, Councilman, the risk would come back to this if there had to be a new filing of a land acquisition ordinance. It would start the entire process over again in terms of providing notifications of intent to the operator or the owner of the golf course. It would entail acquiring a new appraisal. And generally speaking, from the point that a land acquisition is put into place until the complete acquisition process is completed is 12 months. So if there were a delay and let's say it was three, five, six months into the process when design was further along and there was an anticipated outcome of what exactly was needed, in addition to a determination of how was to be taken, if we had to go back and file land acquisition ordinance, we'd have to start the entire process over again. And it would add between a six and nine month delay to the construction of this aspect of the project. So just the thing that I struggle with in your response is this is this sort of concerns that are being addressed by such an amendment are in fact, in part due to the original land acquisition deal that was being struck with with Clayton regarding the entirety of the property. And at that time at Safe House, I asked you specifically if if you had seen the if you had either performed, had an appraisal performed or seen the appraisal that Clayton had done. And you confirmed in that meeting that you had not and you did not. And so this is sort. Of not conducted an. Appraisal, right? So it's difficult for me that you would be willing to move forward on that deal and then now here say that it would be it would be prohibitive for us to put in this thing, because you'd have to go through that entire process to to acquire land. My expectation is that you would be doing that on any land that we're looking to acquire. And so I now I'm even more in of the opinion that we should be we should be putting this in here so that we actually go through the full vetting process on whether or not we should take down additional land as it comes up in this situation. So, you know, I just it is a very complicated bit of moving parts. And so I'm glad that we're actually postponing it for a public hearing till next year. Thanks. Mr. President, can I offer a clarification? You got not a comment or question just to clarify some of the discussion. Okay. Very quickly. Thank you. Two people. My amendment includes the provision provided that the authority is hereby given to acquire lesser portions of the property in fee, simple as may be necessary or desirable to provide for the project. So a lot of the answers that are being offered here about having to start all over are not entirely accurate. And I'm afraid that the answers are kind of poisoning the intent of my. Okay, my amendment. Thank you. Well, let's make sure we get to all the members of council and you can go back and clarify that. Councilwoman Black, you're up. Thank you. A lot of my questions were just answered. So thank you. For those of you who came up to the microphone. Like others have said, I'd really like to have a full discussion about that. I don't feel comfortable with that, really delving into any unintended consequences that might be associated with this so we can learn more about it the next few weeks. That would be my preference. All right. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you, Mr. President. Unfortunately, we are in the weeds, so I'm just going to stay there for a moment. John, I'm going to ask you so if I understand the premise of Councilman Flynn's amendment. The premise is he's trying to protect against the city, purchasing the entire property, exceeding what is needed for the drainage project. I don't read the ordinance as me allowing for that as written, so I just want to go to section three of the ordinance. Do you have it in front of you? No, but I'm familiar with that. Okay. So it says that they they determine that the interest in the property is required for the following public uses and purposes to construct, locate. And it's all about the drainage projects. So I just want to clarify under that language of the section three of this bill. Could the city legally acquire anything beyond what's needed for that section three anyway? Not under that language of the ordinance? No. Okay. And then I just want to ask Kirsten. I don't know if you have the language in front of you, whether you concur or if you haven't had time to review it. That's an understandable answer as well. But just do you concur that Section three operates as a limitation on what the city can buy? Excuse me. So in talking with Mr. McGrath and I have to defer to him on this, that that section was added specifically to address that concern. But my understanding from also speaking with Councilman Flynn is he just wanted to make it more transparent and clear. So I have to defer to Mr. McGrath on this. So, yeah, and I apologize. I try to use a light touch when I when I'm thinking with my lawyer brain because I don't practice law in the same way that you do. But I think this is one of those areas that when you're writing policy and you're writing something like you're regulating the public, I think it's okay to sometimes dumb down the language and try to make it even doubly clear for the public to understand what you're doing, even if you're legally covered with the language that you have that's drafted by a lawyer. I don't feel that way about contracts. Right. So here's the thing. And this is this is why. So if we somehow fail to pass this amendment or there is some problem, the fact that we had done so might make someone interpret this agreement more broadly than it was written. Right? So you can actually change the interpretation of other sections of the agreement once you start tinkering with the language. And so I just I believe that the current language currently limits the city. And so I don't think it's a good practice to dumb down language. And I don't mean that as a pejorative. I just meant putting it in plainer words. Right. To just be clear, I don't mean that as a pejorative term, but I just that is that in my mind is not good, you know, contractual writing that if the ordinance has already limited my repeating it in different language only creates the potential for more confusion and a potential for a court or someone down the road. And clearly, we do have challenges floating around in this environment, so I don't want there to be any confusion. So I'm going to go on the record and say this current bill, as written, already completely prohibits the city from buying any land that isn't needed for drainage period. And so I stand by that language. I assert it in there. You know, in the record, the attorneys have now asserted it on the record, which makes the amendment risky and creating confusion. That's that's my so I think I share Councilman Flynn's good intentions and his intent, but I fear the unintended consequences of duplicating, but with different words, something that's already covered under the way. The whole agreement is structured. So I will be voting no on that basis tonight, but I understand the good intentions. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Kenney. Each new passes. Flynn, you're up. Okay. Thank you. I thought I thought Councilman New was in. There are some other unintended consequences. And one of them is. And first of all, I apologize to all my colleagues I wasn't able to reach yet. But when I. I saw I was reading this on Friday night, we had some weekend email exchanges and the amendment was actually only drafted at about 3:00 or 330 this afternoon. And I didn't have a chance to talk to everybody, but I was told that if we were going to act on the amendment, it would be better to act on it tonight. Because if we were to adopt an amendment on final, it would cause us to have to do republication and delay it by yet another week, which had its own consequences. That's the reason I was pushing it tonight, and for no other reason I would gladly take it on. On January 2nd, after the public hearing, if it were more clear that we wouldn't have to republish it and take it up again a week later. The unintended consequence that I'm trying to avoid is that we told the public a couple of weeks back or a couple of maybe a month and a half ago that we were not going to buy the Park Hill golf course. And in this ordinance, it allows us to buy up to 90 acres as long as it's needed for the drainage project. That was always true, but we were told in committee that we were going to do this by permanent easement and buy temporary construction easement and not by purchasing . But we still, nevertheless, in the amendment, leave in the provision that we may acquire by fee. Simple if that is the necessary way of acquiring the land for the smaller pieces and parcels, lesser portions if they are needed to provide for the project. So I believe that it is that the objections that were noted by the folks who say they're going to vote no is addressed right in that last that last clause of the amendment, Mr. President. So I would ask for support for this in order to keep faith with what the public has been understanding that we were not going to buy the Park Hill golf course at this point. We were just going to get easements. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. The amendment is on the floor right now. We're going to vote on the amendment. Or what? Would you like us to vote on the amendment? Okay, great. Council members, given the debate we are voting. It has been moved in second it. Madam Secretary. Raquel. Flynn I. Gilmore No. Herndon No. Cashman I don't know. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Sussman No. Black No. Clark No. Espinosa. All right. Mr. President. No. Please close the voting. Announce the results. People haven't voted. Yep. We have another vote. Hanging fire. Couple voting power. Okay. Great. 67 days. Okay. 67 days. The amendment fails. Let's pull up 1396. We are. But this is actually going on to the floor for a publication. A publication? So do we need to. Madam Secretary, do we need a vote on this? We can vote on the motion that was put on the floor by Cashman and Herndon. Okay, great. So voting on the on the floor here at Home Secretary, roll call. Flynn No. Gillmor, I. Herndon, I. Cashman No can. Lopez No. New Ortega. Sussman I black Clark? Espinosa No. Mr. President. I please close the voting. Announce the results. Eight eyes, five nays. All right, ayes. Five nays. 1396 moves on and will be at a public hearing on the second. All right. I think this is this concludes all the items I need to be called out. All of the items for introduction have been ordered published, were now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote or you will need to vote. Otherwise this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilman Cashman, will you please put the resolutions for adoption on the bills for final consideration on final passage on the floor? Yes, I move that the following resolutions be adopted and bills be published and placed upon final consideration and do pass, including all series of 2017. 1141. 1371. 1381. 1386. 1387. 1388. 1361 1362, 1363, 1374, 1375, 1377, 1378, 1391, 1392, 13, 93, 13, 98, 1399, 14, 1814, 2014, 51, 1166, 1277, 1298, 1352, 1376, 1379 1380 1385 1406 1407 1424 1401 1397 1340 1365 1366 1333 1335 1269 1350 1351 feel like I'm in training to be a council secretary here. I'll see you in 2017. Yes, sir. Madam Secretary, you try and take your job. You can have. It's been moved into China. Please tell me you did not get that. You did not get that. It's been moved. And second man Secretary Roll call black. All right. CLERK All right. Espinosa. Flynn All right. Gilmore I. Herndon. Cashman. I can each. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Susman. Hi, Mr. President. I please call of voting. And as a result. 3939. Resolutions have been adopted and bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass tonight. There will be a required public hearing in council about 12 to intensity zoning classification at 3944 North High Street in Cole. And there will be a one hour courtesy public hearing regarding minority and women owned business enterprises and small business enterprise legislation . Anyone wishing to speak on any of these matters must see the council secretary, receiver, speaker, card and fill it out and return to her during the recess of council. Madam Secretary, 10 minutes. 15.

A resolution approving a proposed Third Amendatory Agreement between the City and County of Denver and Integral Recoveries, Inc. to amend provisions, extend the term, and to expand the scope of collections. Amends a contract with Integral Recoveries, Inc. to add two years for a new end date of 2-1-2024 and expands the scope of collections to include cases owing less than $300.00. No change to contract amount (COURT-202261912). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 4-18-22. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-15-22. Pursuant to Council Rule 3.7, Councilmember Torres called this item out at the 3-29-22 meeting for a one-week postponement to 4-4-22.

DenverCityCouncil_04042022_22-0278

No items have been called out under bills for final consideration. No items have been called out under pending. No items have been called out. Madam Secretary, please. But the first item on our screens. Councilmember Black, please put Resolution 278 on the floor for adoption. I move that resolution 20 2-0278 be adopted. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments by members of council. I do have my own comments first. And soon there's no one else in the queue. I will go ahead and ask those. Kristen Wood from different courts. I know you're here to answer questions. If you'd like to respond to these points afterwards, feel free. Okay. So this particular bill to 78 was proposing to begin a process of sending debts owed under $300 in Denver court to collections agent that we currently use into role forgive me, integral recoveries. I appreciate Ms. word your responsiveness to all of the questions and I asked a lot after the last meeting, but I remain concerned about how the contract would perpetuate or exacerbate poverty in Denver nationally. Fines and fees disproportionately burden low income people and people of color and make it harder for low income folks to afford basic services and goods. But I think there's still an opportunity before creating a new category of collections referral for us to ensure we have a full picture of who's impacted and what the consequences can be, and if there are more innovative and just ways of addressing fees and fines owned. My areas of concern were that there hadn't been an equity assessment done to identify, benefit and burden scenarios that I didn't know based on the responses. How many cases or what proportion are actually referred to integral for collections? And although fees can be waived for those who are found indigent, it's an onerous process that not everyone had the resources to know how to navigate. As an FBI, the Office of Financial Empowerment in the City is currently applying to join a cohort for cities and counties for Find and Fee Justice Leadership Network. Denver would join nine other jurisdictions in advancing fee and find policy reform, including Seattle, Sacramento, Philadelphia and Dallas. Given this, I think it would be a prime opportunity to allow the Court's time in the Office of Financial Empowerment to come together and address unanswered questions and create a more robust proposal. So I will be voting no this evening. Councilwoman Ortega. You, Madam Chair. No. I didn't want to be in. You. Is your mike on, Councilwoman? Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, that's better. Sorry. Can you repeat your question? Yes. My question was whether or not this is one of the contracts that came through the Crime Prevention and Control Commission. Not that I'm aware of. It's been the court. Can you pull the mic down, please, and introduce yourself? Kristin Wood, Court Administrator for Denver County Court. And to my knowledge, this contract since my time as court administrator, which is February of 2020, has come through twice before council and it was on the courts, whether it was originally part of the CP. CC we've had this contract since 2009. To my knowledge it did not, but I could confirm that if needed. Okay. I just as as a seated member of that body, I don't remember this one coming through and just wanted to clarify if it is CPUC funded or if it comes out of the general fund for the courts. There is no associated funding with this contract. The city does not pay anything on the front end for this contract. So it's revenue generated from the referrals? Correct. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you. I don't have any further questions. Thank you. And we've got Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I read all of the answers that you sent over, so thank you. And then, councilman. Torres an email not too long ago, but. If this bill fails, what does that mean for in its managing the courts? Sure. In its current form, we are expanding the scope to include collections under $300, but it also extends the term of the contract for collections in its entirety. So if this bill fails, it would terminate all collection efforts across the board, even for amounts. Mr. Bailey. $300. And so if that were the case, I would inquire as to whether or not it would be reasonable to proceed with an amended contract to exclude that expansion or if it was reflective of a failure on collections in its entirety. And Councilwoman Torres mentioned this. Cities and counties, fines and fees, workgroup or something. Are you aware of that? The Office of Financial? Yeah. I am not aware of that office. I did correspond with Councilwoman Torres after she sent the email and stated that we would be happy to participate in any study with respect to data that would assist them in their in their assessment with respect to impact. With respect to court customers and how that office could potentially benefit them. We are also happy to provide resource referrals and are you aware of other cities that are eliminating these kinds of fines? I know that there are ongoing studies with respect to fees and fines the state courts in Colorado currently use. I believe there's three different vendors for delinquent accounts where fees and fines are owed with respect to our assessment as a court. It's all defined in statute and ordinance. So any efforts with respect to a study or perhaps reducing or eliminating certain fees and costs, I'm not a part of that are aware of that currently. So if it was the desire of City Council or the Office of Financial Empowerment to eliminate these fines would require changing state statute as well as as part of it. As Denver County Court is a hybrid model of state cases and municipal cases. And so with respect to any type of amendment to what is currently defined, an ordinance would not impact state fees and fines on those types of offenses. And so just to clarify, this bill would continue the contract of collecting fees and fines over 300 and then add the additional task of collecting under $300. That's correct. And so, Councilwoman Torres, is your issue with the fines that are less than $300 or all fines? I would say all fines, but I think the original issue was with those under 300 initially as a new category that we would be sending to collections. And so is your desire to completely stop collections while the Office of Financial Empowerment participates in this program and then go on to change state statute? Well, no, not state statute. I think the Leadership Network for the Office of Financial Empowerment, those cities don't just outright eliminate fees and fines. They assess which ones could potentially be unnecessary, overly burdensome. They do an assessment. It's basically what they do. So it isn't a proposal to eliminate everything, but it is a proposal to involve them in a conversation to have about what an appropriate evolution of sending fees and fines to collections could or should look like. And I'm sorry I have so many questions, but a lot of the information I just got a couple hours ago, but. So all of the money that's collected goes into the general fund that doesn't fund the courts, is that correct? All the the fight, the fines, as Councilwoman Torres pointed out, are punitive in nature for the offense. So some of the the cases that are brought before the court, the only type of punitive outcome they would be, jailable offenses or probationary eligible offenses would be a fine. Other types of surcharges or cost generally go back to the general form or are dispersed out to other agencies for programs, for instance, the drug offender surcharge, a portion of those those costs go back to awareness, education, treatment and are targeted in that in that regard. Okay. I have one final question. Councilman Torres in an email said that people are prevented from renewing their driver's license if they don't pay the fees. I didn't think that was true. Is that true at present time? The there are no driver's licenses that are suspended for nonpayment. There was an outstanding judgment warrant fee that was previously ordered by the court, which, if left unpaid, the DMV could administratively suspend a driver's license. That was since repeal of last legislative session in the in the state. Okay. So that is not that's not an issue. So what if someone owed $147? What you said was the average. What if they never pay the. They're usually purged from the system with respect to collection efforts. Honestly, they're not reported to a credit bureau, and they're certainly not going to be they're not going to receive a higher punitive sentence than that. Fine. With respect to previously going back ten, 15 years, they used to jail people on failure to comply and warrants. And that obviously is not something that is going to serve either a punishment or a rehabilitation effort in any regard. And it doesn't harm someone's credit if we do not report to the credit bureaus. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Madam President. Pro tem. This is to extend the contract with integral for two years, correct? For an end date of February one, 2024, so that this contract end February one of 2022. Are we out of contract? You're correct. So are they not doing collections? They're currently doing collections. So if we vote this down does not mean all of a sudden collection stop. That means we would have to go back to take over. Right. Draw that. Those efforts. Yes. Right. And so would you guess from since they've continued. That we'd had some time to work out, that they'll continue to collect because they make money. And we will then address you will then address a new contract provision to keep them going for some length of time. I guess I think that's the important thing of understanding, whether it's a $300 threshold or collections in its entirety. If it if we were revamping the contract simply to extend the terms, if that was something palatable, then we could certainly do that. Are the reason for expanding it is because we've always collected on delinquent accounts and didn't have a definitive threshold in which we did it right. It was a programing effort in 2020 that we undertook to revamp our collections process with integral. So in the past. They collected all dollar amounts. Correct. Only since 2020 was the three. Were the 300 and below left out. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to welcome Councilmember Herndon to the meeting. Councilwoman Sawyer. Thanks, Madam President. Pro tem. Thank you for that information. Just a quick clarifying question and I apologize. I read through the email that you sent, but I don't recall seeing this in there. How was the $300 threshold arrived at? So in in city ordinance, there is a flat rate that is assessed depending on the amount owed on the case, $300 and less is a percentage of the balance of what is owed, which took extensive programing efforts by our I.T. department and integral in the interface that we use. And so we decided to hold off on doing that in an effort to revamp our collections process, which we originally revamped it as part of a budget reduction process because the city used to advance an allocation for us to pay integral, to do the collections, to then recover it and recoup it once the costs were paid. Okay. So if we are no longer jailing people who are not paying this fine and we're currently not collecting on anything under $300, have we done any sort of I know that there wasn't any sort of impact analysis done, but are we sure that that $300 threshold, let's say the conversation was on the table, that we were considering no fines at all or some sort of different level of fines, recognizing that there is a an impact to particularly, you know, a lower income or no income group of people when it comes to those fines. Have we? Are we sure $300 is the right number? Have we studied kind of the specifics around that at all? Yeah, but the the court, in all honesty, has not done a study with respect to fines and costs. Our role is simply to assess them based on the offense and what's defined in statute in the ordinance. So an equity study of those cases that owe 300 or less has not been evaluated. Okay. And so that is something that potentially maybe this is a question for Council President Pro Tem Torres is something that potentially the Office of Financial Empowerment could then do to provide more information on whether that $300 threshold is the right way to go. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks for your thanks for your interest. Yes. Thank you, Councilwoman. So your Councilmember Black, your backup. Okay. I'll go to Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Brian, for your time. Christian. First of all, could you pull the mike down a little closer? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. In your response to the questions from last week, there were two things I want to make sure I understand. Unpaid fines and fees from court judgments are you said, are not reported to credit rating agencies, credit bureaus. They are not. That is true. That is true. So the fact that someone in this category would be subject to collection by integral would not become part of their their credit record. Correct. And then the other thing that I was trying to clarify was about driver's license. Correct. And you said that Colorado statutes were changed so that fines and unpaid fines and fees no longer result in an inability to renew your license. Or is that not true? They won't suspend the license. But can you renew a driver's license if you have unpaid court costs and fees? Not that I'm aware of. No, sir. It was only on outstanding. If you owed an outstanding judgment warrant fee with the DMV, that is what allowed them to administratively suspend a license and what they require payment of in order to renew it. Those are no longer assessed cases. So you can renew a driver's license if you owe, even if you are. On the list here being pursued by integral to pay court fees. Some find you can still renew your license. From the date the legislation passed when that legislation became effective. Yes. Four cases that occurred prior to that date. No. Right. Okay. And what was that? What was the year? What was the session? It was last year. Legislative session. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Ortega. I think I'm on. Yes. Okay. So I just want to kind of probe a little further into this. You made mention about the state courts and in the role that the courts have in being able to impose a fine. How does that differ from this contract? It doesn't. Okay. So that's. Any any cases that are within county court's jurisdiction, which could include a felony case that has been pled down, a misdemeanor case, which is a state level misdemeanor or a municipal. Okay. So I want to ask first of all, what is the annual amount generally that is collected that comes back to the city? Uh, I can run that information for you. I can tell you in traffic. It is generally around $13 million. Okay for criminal cases with respect to fines, fees and costs, the fines, I would have to run a query to find out the annual average amount on those cases. So if we did not pass this tonight, any of the people that are in the process of. Gathering together the amount of money they owe on their fees, what what happens to them versus new people that come to the door from the time. If if this doesn't go forward. So we have collections investigators on staff who work with individuals. I think when you look at fines and fees and costs that are imposed overall. Part of that is also restitution. Right. I'm going to ask you about that. That part of that is restitution. The fines, fees and costs. If an individual is found indigent at the time of sentencing, those fines, fees and costs are or can be waived based upon a finding of indigency. Our collection staff work with individuals to establish a payment plan so that someone can make a good faith monthly payment. Even if that is a very nominal amount. It's only when they're in noncompliance do those cases get referred to collections. And I believe that is after 90 days when an account is no longer responsive to our collections department that works with the courts. We have three collections staff that that currently work with individuals who have open accounts with the court. And help me understand, is this the only collection contract the courts have or are there others right now? Denver County Court only has this one collections contract. Okay, so if this fails to pass, then all fees that are collected from restitution to traffic fees, etc., etc. all would just come to a halt. Is that correct? With integral recoveries? Yes. Okay. Well, since they're the only one collecting. We do have three internal staff that work with individuals, but not on delinquent accounts. So those collections will still continue with staff, but not with this contract. Right. So what's the percentage difference between what staff generates versus what? This company generates in terms of the outreach to the folks that meet that 90 day collection. And I would have to get the information for internal or internal collection staff. I have the information provided to you by integral recoveries. I think they have over the period of of five years, I think 149,000 cases that have been referred to them with an amount of, I believe it was somewhere around $12 million. With respect to our current ongoing with those that are at our engaging and and meeting their established monthly payment plan, I can certainly query that information for you. Okay. Madam President, pro tem, I'm a little concerned about if council votes this down tonight, not having sort of an interim plan. I think it is important that the Office of Financial Empowerment can look at this and help us, and I would hope that it's looking at all our fines and fees. I have a list going back to I want to say 2011, looking at all the fees that we've collected over time. But I would hope that it's not solely limited to the courts so that we have a way to look at over time which fees or fines have continued to increase and are they disproportionately impacting various segments of our community? And I think that could then inform how we then move forward with this particular contract. What I don't know is if the two years is a one year contract with a one year renewal. Is that how it's written? We're asking for a two year contract so that we can continue our programing efforts to expand to this under $300 amount, which will take some ramp up time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Pro tem. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Thank you. So I did have the same question as Councilwoman Ortiz about what percentage is delinquent versus those that are paid on time. And you were also talking about restitution. So that's restitution to victims of crime, correct? Is that correct? And the other penalties you mentioned that they were there were penalties instead of someone going to jail. They are part of the original sentencing disposition on a case, and those vary by the offense level. Some do qualify for probation. Some might face a period of time in jail. Other individuals, the only punitive like a traffic ticket, would be a fine and court costs. That would not be a jailable offense or a probation eligible offense. That is, several municipal municipal offenses also include those where a cost is the actual punitive outcome for disposition in the case. All right. And Councilwoman Torres, I guess this question is for you. If if this bill either passes or fails. Is your intent to work toward and I think you already said this I was clarifying not to totally eliminate fines and, you know, restitution to victims, but to assess people's ability to pay. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that question. And I think what's important to note is that this is happening around the country where municipalities are assessing what's the status and why are we assessing particular fines and fees. We just have the courts in front of us today, and that's why I think your fines and fees are before us . But the Office of Financial Empowerment would be doing this as a citywide assessment. And so but if a judge is determining what a penalty is, what gets what? I get where you're going. This would not supersede judicial recommendations. Fees for restitution. This may be just looking at what are we charging as the city for administrative process. I couldn't tell you for sure because they're not part of the cohort yet. And I think that's part of the difficulty here, is that what we're asking about and what's being proposed isn't quite matching up or fully understanding one another. And that's why I feel like this component of the 300 and under proportion just isn't ready for approval. Okay. Thank you. I think whether it passes or not, I think. You and the Office of Financial Empowerment and Others Council woman are taking me to this too. Are interested in really taking a look at fines. And their appropriateness, whether this passes or not? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Madam President. Pro tem, I I'm wrestling with something that Councilmember Ortega mentioned. I think Councilmember Black mentioned it as well, just about the, um, the extension and whether yet, you know, whether we could do a contract extension. I mean, I guess what I'm thinking we can only deal with what's presented to us and, and the courts are presenting to us a contract extension for something that's already expired. So in some ways, we're. We're we're working with something that is already doesn't have a contingency. So I recognize it's not ideal to not have contingency. We're kind of where we are now with no contingency either way. So tonight we can either vote yes or no. We can't amend it. So at this point, I am I agree with Councilmember Torres. I will vote no. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Your mike, please. Can you hear me? Thank you. Not a question, but just a comment for my colleagues. If you recall the Reimagining Policing Report under strategy two, which was minimizing unnecessary interaction of law enforcement and the criminal legal system. With the community. This is one of the strategies that was. Called out as a. Recommendation from community to partake in this process. That Councilwoman Torres is talking about. And to make sure that we're absolutely not pursuing people for. Fines. Especially below. The $300. So just putting that on record and it is in. Alignment with many of the conversations that have happened in the PCC as well. Thank you. Thank you. No other members in the queue. Ms.. Woods I would just say that Councilman Hines, I think, hit on a point that I had been struggling with, that we're already operating past the due date of the current contract, which means I think this should have probably come to us much sooner so that we could have a dialog in committee about what might be appropriate to do now versus wait until some other conversations with other city partners could be available. Unfortunately, I still don't think this contract is ready for approval. I don't think we lose in asking you to come back with maybe a perforated proposal for contract which separates out the under 300 versus what's currently being assessed. But I don't feel I have the confidence that we know the full impact of what the under 300 given how many individuals are tied up in that particular proportion of fines and fees to approve this. If it does pass, I would like to get your commitment that you'll still work with the Office of Financial Empowerment before any of those cases are referred to integral recoveries. I know you have you do work with them as it is. And if they get past that 90 days delinquent that those get held and not sent over. So I think we're really trying to get in the middle of what could potentially be a really negative impact for residents that we may not necessarily need. So I would just ask you for that. If it does not pass, I would then like to see if the courts would offer a separate separated contract for the two sections. I appreciate. That. Okay. Councilwoman Ortega. I just had one quick question for actually two questions. One. One for the. CORDES How how quickly and I know this involves multiple agencies. Could you turn around if this vote is voted down tonight, how quickly could you turn around an extension with an amendment that would address the $300 threshold? And then if this goes down and we're looking at an extended time frame, I just was going to ask a guy from the mayor's office what would get cut, because we're talking about a sizable impact to either the courts or the general fund if some of that money ends up coming to the general fund as well. I don't know. This is something that you guys have thought about, Skye, but I just wanted to ask that question. So first of all, what would be that turnaround time? If this went down tonight and you all could amend, amend and extend the current contract knowing that you're continuing to function under the existing contract, even though it's expired? Sure, that would be my office. Obviously amending the language and removing that expanded section of that contract. And then it would go to the city attorney's office for review and approval, and then we would file a new resolution with council. Any idea on timing? That's what I'm trying to get. Clarification. I would say. But. And if you can introduce yourself, please. Good evening, Steve. John, Denver City Attorney's Office. Approximately 6 to 8. Weeks. So. So if this. Goes. Mr. Bailey, you've been asked not to have outbursts. You can leave if you're going to continue. Thank you. So if it's 6 to 8 weeks, that means for the interim, this company could not continue to collect anything set. Correct. You're out of contract right now. Okay. But they have been collecting even though they're out. We have not told them to cease. Okay. We would be obligated to do so if this sort of thing. Yeah. If this went down. So we'd be looking at, you know, at least two months before this would come back. And so those are collections that I think the city has counted on in some of these agency funds that we would be losing out on. I think the the policy discussion is an important one. But we also want to make sure that we have the ability to collect, you know, some of these key fees, restitution fees are always part of a court order. Right. It's part of what is being mandated when somebody finally gets their day in court and it's part of their, you know, what they're expected to do to be in compliance. And if this completely negates all of those and there's an expectation that the victim is supposed to be getting something, and now we've just said, nope, that's not happening anymore. I think we're sending a mixed message here. And I'm a little concerned that we're trying to do this without really having something else in place that ensures that we can do that. And if we can do, you know, a contract amendment, an extension that allows the time for this work to happen with the Office of Financial Empowerment, I think that then gives us a clear picture of moving forward into the future with not just our courts, but many of our other agencies that charge fines and fees. And then I think part of that big picture is what is the financial impact to the rest of the city's general fund? You know, we're in great times where we're enjoying the benefit of some federal dollars that we have not had in our coffers. But that's that's not going to last forever. And that's not always been the case in terms of how we are able to conduct business. So I think that all needs to be part of a big picture that we look at moving forward as fines and fees are reviewed across the city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilman Hines. I'm sorry. Cashman. Thank you. Sorry, colleague. I'm. So trying to clarify that $300. Figure. Was it simply? Pulled out of the air by programmers saying, we have this much time, we can only get to this level. Was was there any philosophical element of that discussion? Why that number? Because this is my first thought was that this is a new element we're adding. But what I'm hearing is it's not. It was done for years and years at that 300 and under level. And because of the programing involved in the new system, you just couldn't get the work done in time. I guess it was it was really during the budget reduction process in 2020 where the ah budgets were to be reduced by a certain percentage. And as we looked at ways in which we could reduce our budget when 10% of it is only operating, we looked at our existing integral contract which required an upfront about a $600,000 a year allocation from the general fund in order to pay integral to do the collections, work on the front end for the general fund to recoup it on the back end. And so that was a decision we made in a in a way that we could revert some money back very, very quickly. So to do that, we really had to re-engineer our entire collections process, which meant a lot of programing because we would no longer be receiving these dollars and depositing them. It would be integral doing that. And so that required a lot of programing. And as you look at the asset recovery fee that is allowed by ordinance, they are flat rate fees for amounts owed up until that $300 amount is a flat rate fee underneath that $300 amount, it is a percentage calculation which required much more time of our programmers to program for all of our current cases. Sure. And so we decided to hold off on that so we could meet our budget reductions in 2020. Okay. A couple of things. When we get contracts like this that have expired. It really stretches our ability to do our job to give important topics the consideration that they deserve. I think the points that Councilmember Torres brings up are extremely valid. That should be looked at. I'm enthusiastic about the study that that's been talked about to see really how all this plays out and what a number would be since it appears 300 was an accidental number. But the thing that I'm kind of mystified by and when you said you would feel obligated to tell them to cease collections , I can't imagine why when it wouldn't be in the best interests of the city and county of Denver and this body. I'm not wanting to put words in my colleague's mouth, but what I'm hearing is that those who are considering voting no on this would like to see a bill. Continuing as integral has been previously doing collecting above $300. I understand and I completely appreciate that and have no problem drafting an amendment amendment mandatory language to exclude the expansion of the scope and only request to extend the term if that is how council felt. I do feel if I had a final if if this bill failed, it would be a formal failure. And that is where I would feel obligated to contact integral recovery services collections. I'm happy, though, to submit a new bill that excludes that expansion request. I would make it clear I want to make it clear that I would think that would be a terrible decision. It would not be what I think anyone on this body would want. I won't see any, say anyone. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't think that's a wise move. But you're in your position and I'm in mine. Thank you. I appreciate all your answers. Thank you. Councilman Cashman, Councilman Hines. Thank you. Council president pro tem. I just for quartz. Just so you know, we have I have personally talked about safety multiple times, bringing expired contracts before us. So this just happens to be a court's contract. But I want to I want you to know that that I'm trying to be consistent and and I've mentioned to safety that and that I also feel uncomfortable working with contracts that have already expired. And some of those, to Councilmember Ortega's point, have had financial impacts. But but I think it's important that we that we notice that that this is something that that the body has voted down multiple times in the past, expired contracts that have financial impacts . So thank you, Council President Pro Tem. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Seeing no one else in the queue. Madam Secretary, roll call on resolution 22, dash 278 black. I see tobacco? No. Clark, I. Think. I. Herndon High? No. Cashman? No. Ortega. I. SAWYER. No. Torres No. Sorry, Madam President. You have five eyes and five knees. Five Eyes Resolution 22 dash to 78 has failed. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens. Mr. Bailey, you can leave Page.

A resolution approving a proposed Purchase Order between the City and County of Denver and Sill-Terhar Motors, Inc. for new Ford Interceptors for the Denver Police Department. Approves a purchase order with Sill-Terhar Motors for $803,220 for the purchase of twenty-two new Ford Interceptors to support Denver Police Department operations, citywide (PO-00084550). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 4-20-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-17-20.

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Nine eyes, three days. Council resolution two through two has been adopted. Secretary, if you please, put the next item on our screens. And Councilmember Gilmore, if you please. Council resolution 260 on the floor. Yes, Mr. President. I move that council resolution 0260 be adopted. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of council. Our council members say to Barker. Thank you, Mr. President. Same critique here. I want to go on record as a no thank you. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I recognize that we're all obliged to vote. How we feel is important. I do want to mention, and I should have mentioned this in the last resolution as well, that that our public safety officers are are still working and they're still working around the clock. And there they have to get to to all of these perceived infractions where people are not doing social distancing, where businesses are not are open, when they shouldn't be. And and for all the other larger, more pressing issues, when people call 911, they expect a response. And and when we repurposed officers in 2019 to try to traffic, we didn't have all of the vehicles available to repurpose them all. So. So some some of our officers used motorcycles and they weren't able to use the standard police issue motorcycles. So I support this because I want to make sure that that when when when someone calls 911, when they have a real issue, they get a response. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Madam Secretary, roll call. See tobacco? No. Black I. Flint. I. Gillmor and Herndon Heights High. Cashman. Kenny Ortega. Sandoval. Yeah. Torres. Council President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. Announced results. Nine eyes, three nice. Night eyes, three nays. Council Resolution 260 has been adopted. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens in Council Member Gilmore, please. For Council 262 on the floor.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4735 North Quitman Street in Berkeley. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from U-SU-C to U-SU-C1 (allows for an accessory dwelling unit), located at 4735 Quitman Street in Council District 1. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 3-16-21.

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All right. Well, thank you and thank you, Councilmember Torres as well. And it looks like we have one hand raised here. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President, I. I don't want to prolong it too long, but I wanted to thank my neighbor. Councilwoman Tavares for bringing us forward when she reached out to us just a short while back that she was intending to do this. When I when I read that, I was immediately struck by how profoundly moving. This this is this donation to the tribes was and I could feel it and I just I just think it's just a really profound and a fitting way to live up to our our words and our commitments. And I just want to let the councilwoman know how much I appreciate her bringing this forward. It's rare that I open an email and then get emotional about it, but I could I could feel it as a as a person. And I just want to let her know that. Thank you. Very good. We'll thank you, Councilmember Flynn, and likewise. Thank you very much. Council Member Torres, Council Pro Tem Torres for your leadership in this area and your steadfast commitment to making sure that this was going to go forward and that this would not only be a one time opportunity, but ongoing. And I think the ongoing piece is so important because it's not just for show. It's to really make this meaningful and to create an important precedent that this is how we do things in Denver. And so thank you, as again, Councilmember Pro-Tem, for all of your support and leadership during this time to make it happen. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and move forward. We've got a couple next items up that we need to take care of. And these are council bills, 20 1-0257 and 20 1-0258 Council Member Sawyer Will you please put council bills 257 and 258 on the floor to take out of order this evening, please. I move the council bills 20 1-0257 and 20 10258 be taken out of order in a black ink. It has been moved and we've got the second from Council Member Hines comments by members of Council Council Herndon. Yes, Madam President, when we get to the appropriate point, I need to postpone the public hearing date and I'll explain why. But first I need to take them out of order and blocks. I ask my colleagues to support that effort. Very good. Thank you, Councilmember Herndon. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. And I. Hynes i. Cashman. I can. H. I. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I Torres. I black. I see tobacco. I. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce results. 13 eyes. 13 I count. 13 I's council bills. 20 1-0257 and 20 1-0258 may be taken out of order. Council Member Sawyer Will you please put Council bills 257 and 258 on the floor for final passage. I move that council bills 20 1-0257 and 20 10258 be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a. Thank you. It has been moved and I believe we got that second from Councilmember Herndon and Councilmember Herndon. Your motion to please postpone. Yes, Madam President. I move that final consideration of council bills 20 10257 and 20 10258 with their public hearings be postponed to Monday, April 26, 2021, in a block second. Very good. I've got the the motion and I believe that second was from Councilmember Ortega. Comments by members of Council. Councilmember Herndon. Yes, Madam President. For those who are unaware, both of these bills do with adding new accessory dwelling unit and council district one. This is an administrative change. With the cancelation of our meeting previously we needed to push back the date for the public hearing. So in our agenda it says April 19th and that has to be pushed back one week due to that cancelation we had earlier this earlier this year. Thank you, Madam President. Very good. Thank you. Councilmember Herndon. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. Herndon. I. Hines, i. Cashman. I. I. Ortega. I think we might need to get your eye again. Council member Ortega. I. Sandoval, I. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Black. I see tobacco. I. I. Flynn. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 30 nights. 13 Ies Final Consideration of Council Bills 20 1-0257 and 20 1-0258 with their public hearings has been postponed to Monday, April 26. That concludes the items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published this evening. Council members remember this is a consent or a block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilmember Sawyer, would you please put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items. All 21 Series 02640265034403550343034503200335033603370340034103510326 and 0324. Thank you. It has been moved and I got the second from Councilmember Herndon. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. Black. I see. Tobacco, I. Clark. I. Schwinn i. Herndon High. Hinds. High. Cashman. High. Commission. I. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. 13 eyes. 13 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Council will not take a recess this evening. Our pre adjournment announcement on Monday, May ten Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 21, Dash 0308, changing the zoning classification for 2000 West Virginia Avenue in the A4

Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2020 Budget for the following Departments: Police, Fire, and Parks, Recreation and Marine.

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we get through these hearings, but we're going to get through those first. And so hearing item number one, of course, is our hearing on on fire and police tonight. And I believe we're also doing one other department. And so I'm going to and turn this over to Mr. Westminster Modica and the budget team. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council members tonight begins in earnest our budget hearings. So we're going to hear from three departments. They're going to make presentations on their budgets. We're going to hear first from the police department. Next, we're going to hear from the fire department. And then we're going to hear from the Parks Recreation and Marine Department. These are part of our continuum of public safety departments that help keep our communities safe. And with that, I'm turn it over to our chief, Robert Luna. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and members of the city council. The police department performs a variety of public safety services. Our core services are delivered through the work of five bureaus and 17 divisions. Our core services include 24 seven response to 911 emergencies and general calls for service. Investigating Misdemeanor and felony crimes. Homeland Security, including protecting major critical infrastructure such as the port, the airport and Metro Blue Line. Providing contract services to city partners such as. Long Beach Unified. Long Beach. City College. Long Beach Transit. The Civic Center and the Pike outlets. Our department also trains, equips and plans for response to natural. And man made disasters, including recent examples such as earthquakes and mass casualty shootings. I want to sincerely thank all of our employees and volunteers who do amazing work. Our department has many accomplishments to share. The men. The men and women of the Long Beach Police Department are committed to excellence. I am pleased to share that through their hard work, we responded to over 208,000 dispatch calls for service. We have a year to date average response time of 4.4 minutes to priority one calls for service and a 4.2% reduction in total Part one crime for 2019. In Fy19, the police department funded 50 public safety operations and event action plans through the Neighborhood Safe Streets Program. These funds have supported collision reduction, school traffic safety, property crime suppression, homeless outreach, fireworks enforcement, prohibited firearm operations just to name a few. And I really want to thank the mayor and all of you sitting at the city council for your support in this program. I am proud to share that. Out of 507 17 laboratories in the world, our Long Beach Police Department crime lab was the first internationally accredited forensic laboratory to meet the strict standards of the and see Askew Accreditation Board. Forensic analysis supports our ability to investigate crimes and is a vital law enforcement tool. Thank you to our crime lab employees for their amazing work this last year. The police department has made huge strides to implement smart policing methods throughout the department to make our processes more streamlined and efficient. We are nearing our first full year of stabilized body worn camera technology with 250 cameras deployed in the north and south patrol divisions. In December of 2018, the Department successfully implemented a mobile application to comply with Assembly Bill 953. This legislation requires all police officers to record their demographic perception of all individuals who are detained or stopped. The Department began collecting this data in January of 2019 and will officially submit data to California to the California Department of Justice in April of 2020. We are also in the procurement stage of acquiring a modern, modernized records management system, which is typically, typically called arms. Nearly every police department employee uses the arms system. Arms is a core technology that helps our department operate. We look forward to choosing a modern solution that streamlines our data entry, data storage and overall records management. Responding to homelessness and quality of life issues are top priorities for the police department. We have increased our original Quality of Life program from two officers. Currently deploying six quality of life officers today. Two are funded by measure MJ revenue. Two are funded by Measure eight and two by L.A. Metro. Additionally, through the use of prop funds, we are working to increase our Met team from six officers and six clinicians to eight officers and eight clinicians. The police department supports restorative justice efforts, including warrant clearance and expungement opportunities. Our department is held for workshops partnering with City Prosecutor Doug Halbert. In total, we have helped clear 167 warrants. Building community trust through relationships. Transparency and accessibility is a foundational principle supported by the Long Beach Police Department. Year to date, we have attended over 150 community meetings and trust dialogs over the past year. We have strengthened our working relationships with the Lee Human Relations Commission to discuss potential policy and procedural changes. The BPD management team also participated in eight trust dialogs led by the Long Beach Interfaith Community. Under this effort, we met with many diverse community groups to understand their perceptions of law enforcement and to share our policies and procedures related to hiring, equipment, accountability and training. Recently, we have taken proactive efforts to meet with our community groups to have open conversation on the Long Beach Police Department's stance on immigration enforcement in our city . Long Beach Police Department team has also chosen to prioritize wellness for both our community members and employees. We onboarded an employee wellness coordinator to help guide injured employees to a pathway of recovery, allowing them to return full duty more quickly. Thank you. And we want to thank the city attorney's office, human resources and financial management departments for helping us accomplish this effort. We are proud to share that. We have partnered with Counseling Team International to provide short term and emergency mental health services for our employees. We are optimistic that this partnership will allow our first responders to have long, successful, successful careers despite the trauma they see on a daily basis. The police department is also working on a collaborative partnership to on board a program that provides personal, immediate trauma informed care to members of our community who who have experienced traumatic situations. That's you. And that's why 20 the proposed police department budget totals $264 million. The total full time equivalent count is 1251 FTEs, which includes 851 sworn and 400 civilian employees. In addition, our operations are supported by over 250 volunteers. The Police Department's proposed Fy20 budget reflects many notable changes required within our department to comply with new state legislation and new programs. Roughly $870,000 is needed to support our body worn camera contract. This will increase the number of cameras from 250 to 875 cameras. These cameras will be deployed to nearly all sworn in the four geographical patrol divisions and two specialty sworn units and Investigations Bureau, as well as Field as well as the for the Field Support Division. While expansion is planned to include contract services groups such as the airport, port, Long Beach Transit and City College. Deployment to these operations may take a little bit of more time, a little bit more time. Cost sharing and infrastructure details need to be finalized before implementation. 850,000 is proposed to add nine civilian full time equivalent to support the full implementation of the body worn camera program. These positions will provide our department with basic resources to begin the initial compliance with Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748. Both bills require full release of documents, audio and video files within a timeline set by state law. The Justice Lab will be fully implemented and funded by the police department budget by converting to existing civilian positions to support this program. The Department proposes to add a public affairs officer to assist with strategic communications funded by the Special Advertising and Promotions Fund Group. And as I have mentioned earlier, add an administrative analyst to position to serve as a department's wellness coordinator. Funded by the Insurance Fund Group. Structurally measuring is is is a huge funding source for the police department. It has helped us maintain 86 sworn position positions and enhances police operations by supporting 21 additional police positions in FY 20 or the FY 20. Budget also includes one time measure funding for the Neighborhood Safe Streets program at 2.2 million, which is an increase from 1.9 million. Measure eight will allow us to continue to fund jail our jail, mental health, clinician services and one time costs for the body worn camera program. As the police department looks ahead into Fy20, there are also many challenges. Unfunded legislative mandates are a serious concern for all of us in the city. As you can see in this slide, the police department has been impacted by multiple state legislative mandates that place new and extra responsibilities on the department with no funding. Most of the legislation targets information sharing, which, while important, is very technical and cannot be done without a combination of new technology, staffing and vendor contracts to comply with these new laws. As highlighted on this slide, the police department is in the process or has already implemented a solution to comply with the laws that require us to report race based information and produce public records within an expedited timeframe, including audio and video data. Assembly Bill 953 Senate Bill 1421 and Assembly Bill 748 alone have an estimated minimum financial impact of approximately $2.5 million annually, and we are still exploring the full cost that's going to impact our city. As I mentioned earlier, Assembly Bill 953 places additional workload on police officers required requiring that they enter multiple perceived data points for entry stop for every stop and detention that is conducted. On top of cell phone costs used to capture this data officer time spent on detention and stops have increased due to this additional task. This takes officers away from doing proactive community based police work. Senate Bill 1421 An Assembly Bill 748 have brought in the types of document, video and audio records that must be released under public record release laws. Specifically, Assembly Bill 748 requires that all police video and audio footage of critical incidents be released within 45 days of a public records request act. As previously previously mentioned in the FY 20 budget, we have requested additional civilian staffing to assist with the review, gathering redaction and data extraction of these files. I must emphasize that it is unknown whether these new resources will be sufficient to meet the new state law. For legislation where implementation is still pending. The police department is working with a variety of partners to understand how to comply with these new and potential laws. Senate Bill ten Cash bail reform is on the ballot in California as a vital referendum on November 3rd, 2020. Senate Bill 978. While Chapter has an effective date of January 1st, 2020, this provides the department some time to adjust to this new law. I would like to emphasize again that these new and proposed laws do not include any additional funding for local law enforcement agencies. However, despite these challenges we are optimistic for. F1 20. I am pleased to report that the police department has had no intentional officer involved shootings in the past 16 months. I want to repeat that I am pleased to report that our police department has had no intentional officer involved shootings in the last six months. I don't know if that's ever happened in our history. We accomplish this by improving our internal review of department operations. We have issued a variety of moderate force equipment options, such as 40 millimeter projectiles to our field officers. We have expanded our training and do more life scenario based training with the use of our simulator at our training facility. We also train officers to use de-escalation techniques whenever possible and using time, distance and cover when officers interact with suspects in high risk encounters. We are also appreciative of the support to convert existing resources into key management positions, such as the Assistant Chief and the Professional Standards Administrator to help navigate the police department through these legislative, legislatively challenging years. Our department is committed to promoting diversity among all levels of the department, and I am pleased to share that increasing diversity is reflected in our police recruit, hiring supervisory ranks and command staff. The Department. The department is also looking forward to the construction of a new training facility and public safety parking structure, which will help support our current operations. Lastly, city wide an investment in our technology, infrastructure and fleet has benefited our ability to serve our community well, providing a safe city for all people. This concludes my presentation and I'm going to be around to answer any and all questions at the end before I turn it over to my partner at the fire department. Thank you. I think we're going to be moving on to the fire department presentation. I'm going to hear all the presentations and we'll come back and do all the other questions. And just as an update also. As the rules were adopted. So because this is a hearing and hearing hearings, the limits that that were adopted as far as speaking time and questions from the body, I think are are do not apply on hearings because of their usually extensive and and they're sometimes legal in nature. And that's something that the city attorney and I have talked about as well. So. Fire Chief Javier Espino. This evening, I'll be providing a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's fiscal Year 20 proposed budget. Our presentation will highlight the services provided by the Fire Department. Some of our key accomplishments for the current fiscal year. Notable changes in the fiscal year 20 proposed budget and some of the major issues and opportunities that we foresee for the upcoming fiscal year. The Long Beach Fire Department delivers fire rescue, emergency medical services, marine safety responses, hazardous materials response and non-emergency response services to residents, businesses and visitors in the city of Long Beach. We provide a 24 hour operation in which all first responders must be prepared at all times. Additionally, we work to ensure the safety of the community and to prevent fires through proactive fire prevention and code enforcement programs. We also provide training and education that is essential to the delivery of our core fire and search and rescue services . I would now like to present some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for the current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, we've responded to over 72,000 fire, emergency medical services, marine safety and other emergency incidents. Since many incidents require multiple units to respond, these 72,000 incidents equate to more than 140,000 unit responses. Included in this number are over 51,000 medical calls and over 5700 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous materials responses, airport responses and other non fire responses. A major highlight of the current fiscal year is the expansion of the Homelessness, Education and response team to two units. Together, the two units completed over 2500 interactions comprised of 1800 proactive contacts and 700 dispatches to incidents involving persons experiencing homelessness. The heart units have improved the fire department's response capabilities and would not have been possible without Long Beach measure funding. Working in partnership with UCLA and supervisor Janice Hahn. We've recently incorporated a mobile stroke unit into the city's emergency response profile. This unit enables the potential to diagnose and treat stroke victims in the field, thereby increasing our ability to provide specialized lifesaving care to stroke victims before they even get to the hospital. Fiscal school year 2019 was and continues to be a very successful year for the Long Beach Fire Department. We realized great success with our Fire Recruit Academy. The Academy attained designation from the State Fire Marshal as a state accredited local academy, and the 2018 Academy graduated 22 new firefighters. Our Fire Prevention Bureau promoted community safety and economic growth by conducting over 8000 residential construction and business related fire safety inspections. Our training cadre has developed and is currently conducting the department's first ever Engineer Academy. The Academy is due to graduate candidates within two weeks and is anticipated to be highly successful. This year, our Long Beach fire ambassadors have impacted more than 4000 students throughout the Long Beach Unified School District by providing fire safety demonstrations and instruction. And finally, our Strike Team units received the Red Cross Hometown Heroes Award for their response to the Woolsey Fire. Their efforts positively impacted the residents of that area and were responsible for the protection of many residences and structures. The proposed fiscal year 20 budget for the fire department is $130.8 million. We comprise a total of 533.86 full time equivalent staff consisting of 405 sworn PhDs in the fire ranks. Another 25 full time year round marine safety first responders, over 180 seasonal lifeguards and 26 full time ambulance operators. Additionally, the fire department is supported by civilian staff in fire operations, support services, fire prevention and administration. 76% of our budget is in the general fund, which supports most departmental activities. The proposed fiscal year 20 general fund budget for the fire department is $99.2 million. The Long Beach Airport provides support in the amount of 5.9 million for fire and rescue services provided to the airport. And this is included in the fire department's general fund budget. Additionally, the Tidelands Fund supports marine safety activities as well as our fire operations in the Port of Long Beach, which include specialty programs of urban search and rescue, hazardous materials and marine firefighting. The Harbor Department provides cost reimbursement for the services provided in the port in the amount of $18.9 million, and that is included in the 26.6 million Tidelands Fund budget for fire. Proposition eight funds from the oil production tax continue to provide additional support for fire staffing in the amount of just over $1.5 million annually. The fire department, together with the Health Department, provides environmental protection services that are supported by the Cooper Fund. Krupa stands for Certified Unified Program Agency and through permit fees, provides funding for inspection services and business emergency plan reviews to ensure hazardous chemicals are handled, stored and transported in accordance with current state and local standards. Notable changes. The fire department's proposed fiscal year 20 budget includes several notable changes that I would like to highlight. First, Missouri has been a significant source of funding for the fire department, providing financial support in the amount of 6.3 million annually to maintain 35 sworn fire positions and providing an additional 3.8 million a year to restore 20 additional positions . The Marine Safety Bureau will receive structural funding to provide additional lifeguard staffing for the city's Bayshore Aquatic Playground facility. By all accounts, this has been a very successful program, and we look forward to supporting it on an ongoing basis. The proposed budget includes staffing adjustment to our cannabis inspection program to better align with current service level demands. The annual inspections for sanctioned businesses and enforcement activities related to illegal or unsanctioned businesses have not reached anticipated demands. Conversely, the clerical demands created by the medical marijuana program have exceeded our capacity to manage. We have responded to these findings by shifting staffing from inspections to the clerical staffing necessary to maintain a reasonable turnaround time for the inspection process. And finally, the proposed budget includes additional staffing to manage our electronic patient care reporting or PCR processes and emergency response data. Implementation of the p c. Our system has streamlined the patient reporting process, improve the efficiency of patient billing, and increased our collection percentages. Looking forward to fiscal year 20. The department has several significant challenges and opportunities. The Long Beach Fire Department is committed to serving the Long Beach community and wants their personnel to represent the city's diverse population. In recognition of this priority, the Long Beach Fire Department, in partnership with the city manager's office, undertook a study to proactively review their entire recruiting and selection process and identify best practices for strategically recruiting a more diverse pool of firefighter applicants. Our intent is to implement identified diversity, recruitment and hiring process strategies for entry level and promotional positions in our fire department. Consistent challenge is to improve response times and response capabilities and continue to meet the expectations of our community while expanding the quality and capability of our emergency medical services. Our addition of a second heart unit and the recent addition of the Mobile Stroke Unit will assist in meeting this challenge. The most basic service infrastructure of a city is its public safety functions. The city of Long Beach has been operating fire and lifeguard services for over 100 years. Although the workforce and equipment are evolving to meet the needs of the growing and changing population. Its buildings and structures have not kept pace. Because public safety facilities are utilized by and support our personnel and the public. 24 hours per day, seven days a week. Public safety facilities deteriorate more rapidly than a typical office or commercial building. In addition, since a service the needs of the city have changed, some buildings should be considered for redesign or relocation. Finally, a significant challenge and opportunity is to prepare the next generation of firefighters to step into positions of leadership. To that end, the fire department continues to mentor potential future leaders in the areas of supervisory skills and management development. These succession planning efforts are critical to our continued success in the years to come. The opportunities for our department are encouraging. Our desire to develop a strategic plan was based on the recognition of a need for clear, unified direction for our fire department. In this collaborative effort, our overall objective is to ensure that we create a safer community for our residents and visitors to the city. This document will serve as the roadmap that will provide focus and direction to ensure we fulfill our stated goals and define strategies. We will we will utilize PCR and other emergency response information in collaboration with other city departments to enhance data driven initiatives such as adult adult fall prevention and other high frequency utilizer programs. Recent changes in the state billing system for emergency medical services will allow us to leverage increased state funding to make long term investment in operational capability and service delivery. And finally, we continue to work to identify funding to enhance our citywide response capability by supporting the restoration of Engine 17. That concludes our presentation. Thank you for the opportunity to present an overview of the Fire Department's Fiscal Year 2020 proposed budget. Thank you. Thank you, fire chief. And we're going to move on to the next presentation, which I believe is for Parks, Recreation and Marine. Park Structure Recreation Marine Director Corrado Mowat. Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present to you the proposed fiscal year 20 Parks, Recreation and Marine Department budget. The PRM Department is very wide in scope. 170 parks, six and a half miles of beaches, a marina, recreation programs and animal care services. The prime budget was developed by leveraging existing resources so that the strategic, modest enhancement goes a long way. This budget will allow your prime staff to continue passing forward their passion of bringing joy to all from infants to older adults and our companion dogs and cats. Your prime team does this knowing that it is strategically, that it strategically needs to be nimble in order to be effective in responding to the diverse needs of a diverse community. Our core services focus on parks, recreation, beaches, marinas and homeless dogs and cats. We aspire to develop and maintain a vibrant park and recreation system. The urban and diverse Long Beach population deserve a park and recreation system that is calibrated to the specific needs of neighborhoods with sensitivity to environmental friendly landscapes and environmentally sustainable maintenance methods. We aspire to keep our marinas well-managed and to maintain our beaches clean and safe for all to enjoy. The beaches are for our residents, no matter what part of town they live on. With your support, we develop a winning approach to take animal care services in a positive direction. That approach is Long Beach Compassion Saves, model the and commitment to our core services and mission is based on the knowledge that we deliver services that so seeds of joy and health and prevents urban discord and helps develop community unity and harmony. It is the upstream part of the local government business. Is an honor to share with you accomplishments delivered by your PRM team. We are now the 18th best park system in the country with a top notch marina, which is the largest public marina system in the country, a parks and recreation system that provides over 1.5 million participation . Days of recreation programing at our 27 community centers. Three pools, five teen centers, six senior centers, an aquatic facility and a nature center. Because of your support, we enhanced our senior programing by offering expanded programing and are boosting our volunteer program. By leveraging our needs, impact fees and Citi measure. In many ways, we have been able to make major improvements in our park system. PRM staff in partnership with the Public Works Department have worked intensely to upgrade playgrounds, community centers, sports courts and began efforts to improve our irrigation system. We made investments in water conservation by implementing a data driven irrigation controller program and improve the management of our ground maintenance services contracts with which permits us the opportunities to operate our vast park system in open space more efficiently and effectively. Our enhancements in our beach maintenance operations support beach and sand maintenance a cleaning device. Barbara the rake, as shown on this slide, was recently deployed on our beaches, which helps keep our beaches safe, clean and fun for many residents, for our many residents and visitors. Animal Care Services continues to improve the live release rates, reduce in pounds and supports spay and neuter efforts. The compassion saves implementation further, promotes our goal of having positive outcomes for all animals in our care. Currently, we have an overall save rate of 92%, 88% for cats and 96% for dogs and are heading towards ending the year with a very good with very good rates of saving animals. We provide local teams from our teen centers with new experience, opportunities and personnel development and personal development. We are partnering with Workforce Development to provide training for team participants to increase prospects of obtaining good jobs and are linking our participants with resources for job placement. We have also had great opportunities to partner with our local major sports teams with with our youth such as the L.A. Kings, L.A. Dodgers, and have a wonderful partnership with the school district that helps us offer free recreation swim to local youth. We have other partnerships, such as the one with musical Theater West and an overall partnership network with Partners of Parks. We developed Community Beach Week, which includes free events on the sand and in the water each day for children and adults. This is on top of the many beach related programs offered this summer, including last Friday's All-City Beach Day, where 2000 youth had great fun, fun and got to know and got to know youth from every corner of the city. For fiscal year 20. The PRM budget totals over $60 million across all funds, with nearly 35 million from the general fund, which represents a 7% slice of the city's general fund. Prime also has substantial tidelands funds used to support our operations in the marinas, beaches and waterways. This budget provides for 44 445.6 full time equivalent positions during our busy summer months, which we have one in which we have one and a half weeks left to go. Our staffing grows to well over 800 people. We employ hundreds of seasonal staff and are proud of our role as a workforce development engine. Notable changes expected in PRM with the adoption of the budget is the permanent addition of an animal care services adoption coordinator and support staff to develop to help drive, increase adoption rates and improve life outcomes for shelter animals. We are also excited about adding a prime volunteer program coordinator. The coordinator will recruit more volunteers, train them and deploy them in all the prime areas of need. Long Beach is very giving is very giving when it comes to volunteerism. And Prime is a great opportunity for wonderful community building volunteer work. We also are excited to receive one time funds to develop support and launch launch fundraising efforts for our Long Beach Animal Care Services. As we face the coming year, Primo will continue to face challenges. But with those challenges, opportunities can be explored, such as taking a creative approach to bringing in more grant funds for park projects. The key is leveraging funds such as park impact fees and telling unique stories that meet the needs of grant requirements so that we succeed in bringing more capital improvement progress. With the help of your leadership, the task force and dedicated back staff, animal care services will continue to deliver on performance with a compassion saves model. Leading the way we play. We plan to bring to you the bag strategic plan in the spring of 2020. We are passionate about exploring how to use nature to benefit the impact of our recreational programing. We call that approach restorative environmental programing. This is a strategic launch that focuses on clean water, sustainable park landscape, clean beaches and wetlands that align with the city's climate action and Adaptation Plan. We will continue to advance the development of the PRM strategic plan. The existing PRM strategic plan is six years old and things have changed substantially. We plan to bring to you the prime strategic plan in the summer of 2020. One of our challenges is how to sustain the Be Safe program. We do not have sufficient monies in the budget to support all of the B save sites. We will be exploring different avenues to increase our chances in maintaining this important summer evening recreational programing in key areas that benefit from this targeted prevention program. As you can see, the PRM team provides very diverse services. We what we do provides joy to a large, diverse community. Our parks and recreation system is considerable, with 170 public parks, six and a half miles of beaches, 27 community centers, dozens of athletic fields and playgrounds, 67 tennis courts, five municipal golf courses, three city pools, and over 3300 marina slips and animal care services. We have been recognized for our award winning programs, but the biggest satisfaction is the millions of positive contacts, PR and staff does each day of the year. Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council. Thank you for your continued investment in the Pride team. Your support helps us meet the needs of the community all across the city. Our dedicated employees and I thank you for your support. This concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much, Mr. Malloy. And let me there is a motion in a second, but let me start with Councilman Price. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to all of the department heads that presented this evening. I really appreciate all the presentations and the thoroughness and the overview of the changes. That's always the most helpful part of budget hearing nights. So. I have a question first for police, a couple of questions. So for Chief Luna. First of all, the stats regarding officer involved shootings are fantastic, and the efforts by the department to focus on that area should really be acknowledged and applauded, because I know that's an area that where my colleagues have a thank you. Yes. Let's let's applaud. Yes. That's an area where the police department has received a lot of feedback from this body. And so I'm glad to see that we are moving in a good direction there. And I'm really pleased that we're finally implementing a body worn camera program that's going to go throughout the department and outfit most of the officers. I think that's fantastic and I think it's great. Given where we are now, would you say that the full implementation would be about six months out? If this body approves this item in the budget the day it approves, it will. We have letters ready to be sent off to with the organization that we're going to contract with. And I would estimate with the delivery of the items that are needed, the infrastructure has already been built thanks to our team here. And I would estimate sometime in the beginning of 2020 that we would have the nearly 800 plus cameras deployed. And the reason I ask that is because I support this program a lot. I mean, more than I can convey in words. I think it's fantastic. I think it's great that we're doing it. My only hesitation with the dollar amounts that are proposed in the budget is that one. You know, I don't think we're going to be prepared to utilize all nine of these positions on the first day of the budget cycle. I think there's going to be some time before all nine will need to come online. And as Chief Espino was talking about rerouting some of the marijuana positions because of the actual need versus the anticipated need and that that that actuary having to result in shifting some of those positions. What I want to do is think about what do we what do we think we're actually going to need for the body worn camera program? And could we maybe not allocate all nine funds, all nine positions now, and come back in six months if the reality is that we need an additional person or two? And the reason I say that is because I'm just I'm just putting that out there because I think there's other priorities that council members might have in regards to city wide issues like gun safety, gun buyback, things like that that might be of more immediate relevance to us. And I'm wondering if these the body worn camera positions are of immediate need for the police department. You are asking an outstanding question, a question that I posed to our state attorney general in a meeting that we had with other police chiefs. And it was this situation that we're were encountering with unfunded mandates. I would love nothing more than to divert a lot of these moneys elsewhere where I absolutely believe they're needed in our community. But unfortunately, we're looking at a bill of we're estimating $2.5 million of unfunded mandates because of Senate Bill 1421 and 748. We have no option of skirting that at all. We are targeted by the media. They're getting frustrated with us because they're asking us for specific documentation that we to date are starting to release but are unable to because we don't have the people or the technology to do so. So yes, that is an option. But what ends up happening is I have to go into the department somewhere and look for bodies to comply with all the unfunded mandates that we already have. One way or another, I have to provide at least nine bodies, and I think we're being conservative in what we're asking for. I actually think it's going to be more and this is where I challenge us as a community when we're hearing about all these criminal justice reforms and social justice reforms, somebody needs to start asking who is paying for this? Because right now every citizen in the city is paying for these social justice changes that we're mandated to do. We don't have an option. We didn't get $0.01 from the state or anywhere else to comply with these, but yet we're under the gun, literally, to present these documents to the media, to the public and everyone who is asking for more way behind already. So I sound a little passionate about it, but I'm frustrated because this money can definitely go elsewhere and each of you have great ideas of where that should go. But I think we need to we need to regroup and start looking at our state elected officials and saying, hey, what the heck are we doing here? Councilmember to you is a very good question about timing. And can we knowing that that workload is coming, can we phase it in? The reality is, is we are experiencing that workload right now. So we are currently rotating in police officers who were able to pull from other areas, whether they're injured on duty or others into that job because that workload exists today. So this is actually one that we need to speed up rather than slow down and actually authorize them very soon in order to meet our deadlines. And I get that. And I completely I mean, Chief, given what I do every day, there was no money that came with Prop 47. So I'm very mindful of the realities of criminal justice reform, where we have unfunded mandates. The thing, though, Mr. Modica, is we have 200 something body cameras that are currently deployed, and yet we don't have allocated positions for those to do the redactions and the discovery. Right. We are going to be and right now we have zero positions. My question is, can we phase in the 0 to 9? Because if we had three bodies right now to help with redactions, praise and criminal discovery, that would alleviate the need of having to put officers into that position. The way I what I'm suggesting and nine may be a conservative estimate. But with the police agencies with whom I have worked, I have found that. The redaction requirements have not been as onerous as people once thought, especially if we're using software like evidence dot com. So there is an ability now it takes a lot of time to watch the video. Redaction of the videos is not that complicated. I'm just saying, maybe once we implement it at full, we realize, you know what, seven positions is great, but we won't know that. So if this if these positions are funded starting October the first and we know we're not going to have 800 cameras deployed until, let's say, March, then from October to March, we have nine positions that we're not really needing for this program. We may need them for other things, but we're not really needing them for this program that budget savings could fund. Let's say we take 200,000 of that and we find some sort of a program that is more of a bigger need that I know the chief is also very supportive of, like taking guns off the street so we can use that instead of taking that at the end of the year. Now, police department has a budget savings because even though they were funded on October the first, they didn't fill those positions until, let's say, March or April. Now that budget savings are going to get rolled back into the budget, which I have no problem with more money going to the police department. Let me be clear about that. But I'm just saying, why can't we use that budget saving what we know is going to be a budget savings for something that we might need now , like a prohibited possessors program, task force or you know something, I'm just putting it out there. I want to hear what my colleagues have to say, but I'm just putting it out there because I don't know. You know, when we do criminal discovery, a lot of the redactions are going to happen at the prosecuting agency. When we're doing press, the redactions are going to happen with our police department. When we're doing 1421 requests. The redactions are going to happen at our police department. So how much it burden is the crime? Is the prosecuting agency taking that might relieve us of the duty? I don't know. I'm just saying perhaps we'll know as we roll out the process more. Just something to think about. So the other question that I had that I wanted to ask about is, I know Commander O'Dowd is the Commander for East Division. He, by the way, he's doing a tremendous job for the record. He has done a lot of great work using Tidelands money with specific equipment on the beach to address camping tents, you know, illegal activities, syringes, things of that nature that we have had issues with on the beach. And and I think that was a great use of tidelands money. And I'm wondering if it if I'm interested in finding out what our options are in reallocating one time dollars from Tidelands for additional enforcement at the chief's discretion along the beach? Because the beach is an area where thankfully this year we did not have any junior guards step on syringes. But we want to make sure that we keep the beaches clean. Certainly so. As part of the budget in front of you, we haven't really gotten to this part in the cap yet, but there's about $2.6 million worth of Thailand's one time investments that we were recommending to put into certain projects. If this is a higher priority, we can certainly work to carve out maybe a little bit of extra funds and dedicate that. So we can certainly work through the Budget Oversight Committee if that's an area that you'd be interested in pursuing further. Yes. Thank you very much. And I want to thank the chief and, of course, our director of Parks Rec and Marine for the amazing efforts that have been taken to ensure that the beaches stay clean and free of debris. It's not just it's a beyond a beautification issue at this point. It's a public hazard issue. And so I thank you. With the equipment that we've purchased to both patrol the beach, enforce the law, and also to clean the sand, it's been fantastic. So thank you. The other question that I have, the final question that I had is actually for our PRM director. So thank you very much. She flew and I really appreciate all of your comments for the PRM Director for Director Mowat. I had a question about the budget item for replacement of trash containers. What is the anticipate it in the beach. I think we're using. Is this tidelands money that we're using for that? Yes. Okay. And what's the plan for that? Because let me just say that one area where I think there's an opportunity for improvement as a city is to have trash cans that match in parks and beaches. Like, I'm not sure how expensive it would be for us to have just trash cans that match. So I'm hoping that whatever trash cans we get for the beaches are somehow similar to the ones we might be able to put in the parks and and so on. Well, that's a good point. And that's something that we will strive to make sure that they match. Our these big bellies. I'm. No, they're not. Do they have covers? Yes, they do. Okay. We cannot invest in any more trash cans in the city that don't have covers. It's a huge, huge problem. Things blow out of the trash that go into the water. Terrible for the environment. Not to mention people who go through the trash cans looking for items. So I just want to make sure. Are they going to all be the same? Yes. Okay. And by the way, I see Corey shaking his head. Corey Forester, that guy should get an employee of the Month award. Pat, before you leave, can Corey get an award? He's amazing. He's wonderful. So thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Council member. Council member. Austin. Thank you so much. And, you know, many of my talking points were were actually. Cover with Councilmember Price's presentation or questions. And so I will be pretty brief here. This first question is actually for PD chief. The Neighborhood Safe Streets Initiative. Are we? We plan to put 2.2 proposals to put $2.2 million in one time funds toward this initiative. Can you elaborate on some of the programs and initiatives that were undertaken this year with the funding you received in FY 19? Yes, sir. We did everything from gang enforcement, prohibitive. Possessor, which has been mentioned up here, is we spent about $100,000 this year on prohibitive possessor enforcement. And that is something that I think is very effective when we're talking about gun challenges that we're facing, whether it's on our community regionally or the topic of conversation across the country . And I do want to thank you specifically, because you talked about trying to bring a program that would reduce gun violence in our community several years ago. And I know there's been talk about gun buyback. And you and I had had a conversation about switching those dollars to let's focus on individuals who shouldn't be who shouldn't have guns, people who have been convicted of domestic violence, people with mental illness. The list goes on and on. And our detectives, our officers have done an amazing job. And just to share a quick statistic with you about where some of that money has gone this year, so far, we estimate that 201 weapons were recovered as a result of our prohibitive possessor operation, along with 50 arrest and 13 search warrants. That's significant because those are people who could have caused a mass shooting potentially if our detectives and officers weren't staying on top of it. So thank you all really for allowing us to have that money that is going to a very effective program. And Councilmember, I did want to correct something from last week. So there was a question last week about was it the same amount we had done, 2.2 million in the past. Actually, last year, we had a little bit less in terms of funds. We were down to 1.9 million. And this year we're able to go back up to $2.2 million. So it is an increase over last year. Okay. Well, it I think that when we first funded the Prohibited Possessor Task Force, it was funded to the level of, I think, 250,000. That is, anybody would recall that was a few years ago. And so the to the fact that you're still using funds toward doing that, I do appreciate it. And it sounds like it's effective, particularly if we'd taken 200 guns off the streets in our city right now. Yeah, just for that operation, we've taken over 700 guns off the street thus far this year. Okay, well, I want to get to 1000 and or more. And and obviously, there are there are concerns in the community because shootings are being amplified throughout the city. We we need to do more. And I think there's an opportunity, unique opportunity with this this budget to to focus a little bit more. And so my comments regarding the Neighborhood Safe Streets funds, I'm glad that there is a portion of it going toward prohibited possessors. But, you know, I'd like to make sure that we are dedicating at least a certain amount in more than $100,000 of that toward that that effort, because obviously there's some still challenges that we're still facing . I agree with that. And thank you for your support in that area. And that that money, those moneys we're talking about from 1.9 to 2.2, you got to look at that money as each patrol commander gets a portion of that. So for us, from a community policing perspective, we are very visible and accessible in the community, just like each and every one of you are. We go to these meetings, people tell us what the issues are that could be traffic related. Going back to your original question, school traffic, it can be fireworks, it can be violence on the street, it can be auto burglaries, it can be people stealing packages from porches. It could be anything that the community's telling our commanders, this is a problem. And this money allows us the flexibility to put people where the problems are, whether whatever day of the week, time of the day, whatever that may be. That's the the great part about the money that all of you have approved in the past, and hopefully you will this coming year. Which if I'm confident that you will use these funds wisely, but understand that that this councilmember and I think you'll probably hear from others, are really, really concerned about guns and gun violence. And that that is I wouldn't like that to be a focus. Yes, sir. You've lit up my phone plenty of times. I'm fully aware of how you feel about gun violence and. Yes, sir. And and I think Councilmember Price spoke briefly about it. But the the the structural funding for the body worn camera implementation. Now, did you say March? There were you felt that you been able to be fully implemented? We would anticipate if it was approved and we are able to acquire the equipment. We believe that by the beginning of 2020, closer to January or February, we would have those cameras out in the field on the officers. Okay. So there was a pilot. Program in North Lawn Beach or the North Division last year? Correct. And as I recall, that the cameras and equipment were were provided at no cost to the city. What happens with that equipment, with this new program? Do we absorb that or. Or is that program, that equipment given back to the so under. That's an excellent question. I do want to highlight that the first year of this body worn camera project, the young lady sitting next to me from a financing perspective, an administrator, Jason Campbell, who's in the audience, did an outstanding job of reaching out. And we got this camera system or the equipment and storage for free for an entire year. And it was in South Division and north division are the others that have the cameras on them now. So with the additional cameras coming in, we would outfit the rest of the patrol bureau, including our field support division, and and that's what we're talking about doing. But right now, currently, every officer in North Division that contains your district, Councilman Richardson's district and part of Mr. your Angus district have body worn cameras now. Okay. So those cameras won't be replaced. They will not. Okay, well, they will. I'm sorry. I'm being corrected. They are going to be replaced. Okay. So we'll have one system? Yes, we will have one system. Okay. And and I know citywide there are citywide cameras installed under the COPS program. How are they maintained? And is there an assigned staff to handle the installation, maintenance and replacement of those cameras in the department? Yes. We currently have staff that manages the logistics of the 250 cameras. But but I do want to reemphasize excellent question that was asked earlier, that the bodies that we're talking about are not necessarily for body worn cameras. It is for the unfunded legislative mandates that we have to comply with with 1421 and 748. So when we're talking about these additional bodies, they are primarily coming in to manage the information that we're having to release, information we're having to redact. Well, I think in the summary in this big giant book that I think I hurt my back. Karen And today I think it mentioned it was going toward support in body worn camera operations and it didn't emphasize the rest of that. And so, yeah. It's the majority of the bodies that we're asking for are for the other unfunded mandates that were required. We're obligated by law to fulfill and we're already behind. We are constantly being critiqued specifically by our local media that we're not releasing information quick enough. And our response is, Hey, we're going to be in front of our political body. We're asking for more resources to comply with this, and that's why we're asking for those bodies and that money. So in my last question for you and thank you. The in the proposed budget actually concept templates, the possible reduction or cancelation of a contract with L.B. USD for Saros as negotiations are pending. So with this focus on school safety, is there something that the school district is discussing with the PD as a possibility? We are currently in negotiations with Mr. Steinhauser and their staff. And King, I guess sounds like negotiations. Can you give us an update, any status on where that's at? And we're currently negotiating at least one position to remain. We're trying to push for a second and and they're having some of the same budget challenges that we're all talking about tonight. So I don't want to say too much publicly. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I think there's still a lot of a lot of compromise to be reached on both sides. Duly noted. Thank you very much. I do have a question for the fire chief. You know. We're just say thank you for all the great work you do in your department. The men and women department keep our city safe and respond to some very extreme circumstances. Thank you. But my my question and this actually was mentioned at our community budget meeting for District eight last week. Can you please explain the current status of Fire Station nine and what the long term plans are and whether or not we are considering that in this fiscal year budget in any way? Okay. So at at the current time, we're out of station nine, Engine nine is at station 16, which is on the airport and rescue nine is at station 13, which is Adriatic and Willow. Pretty much they've been out for a number of months and we've met with public works, with health, with city management. And we've determined that we're at an all stop right now on any further work on Station nine. At this point in time, we're trying to identify different parcels of land that we could go to as a temporary quarters for engine nine. We would probably leave Rescue nine at Engine at Station 13. And then the long term goal is to eventually find some property and build a new station nine. How far is a station engine 13 from? From Station nine. Well. Mile, mile and a half, probably. Okay. And for miles or miles. Jerry And how does having a fire station nine out of place impact response times in a big city knows not Long Beach area. Having both of those units out of place has increased response times. They they do patrol during the day. They're out of the station. They've been making a good play of staying in the night area. Okay. Well, I would just say to you and to our city manager and staff, we have to to to rectify the situation quickly. No, it's not something that can be done instantaneously. But I'd like to see a plan in place as quickly as possible to make sure that we we're delivering the services to to the residents. And response times are important. Yes, sir. I do want. To highlight for those that aren't aware and the council is all plugged in, but we have had major infrastructure challenges at that facility. So that is one of our older fire facilities. And we were having, you know, safety issues and we investigated them and eventually got to the point because we've not been. Able to invest. The infrastructure dollars that we've needed to over many, many years that we had to shut it down. So we're now at that point where we are investigating the alternatives. But yes, we realize that that is a critical facility and we need to devise a plan and come back to you on that. Okay. Thank you all. Hold my questions for now. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And a number of my questions were answered. So if we could just have the director and both chiefs just come up and I don't think you're going to need your additional staff. I just have some general questions for you. I didn't want you all to have to sit down and get up and sit down and get up. Right. And I'll start with the fire chief since he's already sitting down. So, first of all, congratulations on all your accomplishments. And just one thing. And I know we'll have a conversation a bit later about some of your ideas around diversity, and I'm looking forward to that conversation later on. I noticed that you named as an accomplishment the heart team that you have to hart teams deployed. How are they deployed. Where are they are they anchored at a station or how are they deployed? They're not anchored at a station. They deploy from headquarters and they're on different schedules. The one Hart unit goes from Monday through Thursday, the other goes from Tuesday through Friday. And essentially they patrol and sometimes that occurs because of need. Well, we'll hear from the different council districts stating, can you please visit a certain area? And they will. I think predominantly most of their contacts are in the downtown area, but they do basically travel the entire city boundaries. Okay. And I'd be curious to know and we can, you know, continue this conversation offline. But I think it's appropriate to raise. If in the next fiscal year the plan is to open up bridge housing, a shelter, homeless shelter. I would love to see if this is going to create if we're going to have a new system on how is deployed, does it create new demands and is there a need for additional resources to the heart theme program? I'd love to see a good relationship between the heart team and the shelter, the bridge housing that that's proposed. Thank you. Just moving on down the line, Chief. Congratulations on your accomplishment in terms of what you raised up as. With respect to the officer involved shooting. So what would you attribute your success to? Fantastic people working for the Long Beach Police Department. And I say that honestly. One, paying attention to the environment we've been in for the last 5 to 6 years. And when I say that, it's not just watching something on on TV or a video, but I mean, actually visiting other police departments, looking at best practices where people have succeeded, where people have failed. What training is working? Our training staff has done amazing to really research best practices, bring them back. And at the end of the day, it's not just about standing in a classroom and teaching, but running people through life scenarios of of doing things over and over. And it's we've taken situations that have actually happened here and then translated them into scenarios. So we just go over them and over them again. There's I could sit up here for at least 30 minutes and talk about it, but it's our fantastic people absolutely willing to to look at what's going on around us, try different techniques . And at the end of the day, it's the numbers are working out for us right now. We have a fantastic police department. It's good. I'd like to you know, I think that's good. And the more we can sort of pinpoint what best practices we're doing so that we can continue to support those efforts if there's training, if it's the new training staff and although we've talked about your efforts to boost your training staff, those are the things I personally like to know so that I can know how to support you. Yes. To continue to have that level of support. By the way, you've done that partially. When all of you decided to support Measure three, we were able to put nine police officers out at our academy where they're able to do exactly what I just described. So you're already on the path there. Thanks. And I think doing the the shooter training, going out and understanding what goes into it, the training that many of us participated in, it certainly helped open my eyes to what all the sort of nuances that police officers have to deal with. Moving on to a different topic. So I know that so every summer, you know, having worked for the city for nine years, every summer, I know that there's typically a some sort of elevated levels of of violent activity. And we you know, a lot of times we come together and we talk about what we can do to prepare for it. You know, we've a lot of great programs come out of that, like be safe. And we've ramped up things like summer youth jobs. Nonprofits have stepped up like the YMCA Summer Youth Institute, located in different areas to sort of just get the whole community prepared for whatever happens every summer when, you know, youth get out of school and there's just a lot more activity. My question for you is, this year just seemed a bit more elevated than most years. And and is there a is there more is there a need for more resources during the summer months within our police department to make sure that we adequately are staffed up to respond? We constantly keep up. We're data driven. We're looking at data to see where the spikes are. There are 4 to 6 times during the year that crime, specifically violent crime, will go up. It's not always in the summer. A lot of it revolves around the school year, beginning of school and the school. Those are two of our are highlighted areas. So we make sure that a lot of the moneys we are talking about earlier that the previous 1.9 now hopefully to point to that money is instrumental because we do save it for those times where we believe there are going to be spikes. So we'll go out. If we look at two weeks, for example, and that's spiking up beforehand. We'll go out and do probation searches will do prohibitive weapons searches, will do all these things to try and prevent some of these things. But there's a lot of great programs going on in the city during the summer. I'm we talked about negotiations with Mr. Steinhauser. We are actually talking about a program for next summer. Like our partners at the fire department are doing this summer to take youth off the street, people who are interested in fire will now be interested in police and able to to really connect with the youth like we haven't in years from that perspective. Okay. And, you know, along that same line of discussion, you know, we used to have the Police Athletic League here in Long Beach. And I know there were, you know, budget decisions, but that was something within your department and it was a good interaction between law enforcement and the community. Has there been any conversation about taking a look at a new model of the Police Athletic League? We're constantly trying to research best practices. Police Athletic League Once Upon a Time was a very effective program. As you know, during the recession, we lost over 20% of our staffing, and that's one of the programs that went away. Our partners at Parks and Rec do an amazing job, so maybe the model looks through Parks and Rec with maybe. Us. Having a part in that. Those are constant challenges that we're looking at. We're talking about and figuring out a potential way of doing that. But as we talk about some of these reforms that are going on, and that's the unfortunate part, Councilman, a lot of our moneys are having to go to these unfunded mandates and not look at these creative programs that we should all be looking at. And I think we all need to take a hard look at that and discuss this at the state level to see what our priorities are or should be. I understand. And, you know, and they're connected to the decisions that we made as a as a council like the body camera program. I think it's positive and inevitable, the body camera program. But if we're going to do it, we need to comply with all the laws that that that align with it. So that's something that we know will have unknown costs and we should be prepared so that you don't have to come back to the council to fully fund the things that we request you to do. So I support that program and helping fund the program. The last thing I'll bring up with you is, is some of the, you know, something I brought up with the fire chief. So, again, we're having a conversation about the shelter, the bridge housing that we're working on doing in the next in the next year. I know that the police department in the last budget established a quality of life officer. What I'd like to see is for us to be proactive in thinking about what the relationship is between the community, police, the, the quality of life officer, the heart team, you know, our and we have some bike patrol and we have a neighborhood resource officer. I'd like to see some relationship of like a community policing team operating somehow around the shelter operation to make sure that the community really sees and feels that we're really all hands on deck and on this the shelter and and that public safety is a part of the continuum we put in together to make sure that the shelter plan works. So I really don't have a question for you on that. Maybe, maybe your thoughts. But that's something I love the conversation I love to have over the course of the next year. It's an excellent point. And I'd like to share just a quick story. The mayor and I traveled to South Carolina about a year ago where we spoke at the U.S. Conference of Mayors because Long Beach is seen as a leader in in handling the homelessness challenges. We definitely have some work to do, but a lot of what you're describing is already happening with the multidisciplinary team that our health department leads with our fire department, our police department, city attorney, city prosecutor. We're communicating and coordinating like no other city. And I'd like to invite you to one of those meetings and to see what goes on there and there. They discuss challenges and priorities, not only individuals, but locations. And I think the location you bring up is a great idea and that can be brought to this team. And I think you'd be very impressed with what the with the employees being part of that team do. Great. Fantastic. I'd like to take something like that model and sort of replicate it specifically for this, but we have time to talk about it. Thank you for responding my questions, chief. So moving on, the Parks and Recreation. So first of all, Harold Gerardo, first of all, thanks for being so easy to work with you and Steven Scott. You know, the Parks team is just the best folks to work with. I you know, my questions generally are about sort of where we're going. I love that you're working on a strategic plan. I believe in planning your work, work, your plan. I also think that every time we bring a budget, we should be able to point to what plans, where we're addressing or what gaps we're closing. We've had a lot of conversation about closing the open space gap. And, you know, and, you know, and I can reference my district where 1.1 acre, 1.2 acres of open space per 10,000 residents. Right. Which is is, you know, significant. It's it's low. And so we took the steps of establishing a plan, creating a plan uptown open space plan to help identify creative ways to expand open space. And I love to make sure that we're taking incremental steps as needed every year in helping to close that gap in every budget. And so my question for you, and it's okay if you don't know it, it's kind of on the spot. But over the course of the last year have. We applied for any grants or anything in alignment with that plan. I don't think you're I don't think it's on. Specific to the the the north Long Beach. Town obviously. No, there hasn't been any particular grants other than grants to supplement the existing projects like. But with regards to adding adding more space, the only planning that we've been thinking in is, is the possibility of joint use, because that is one way of increasing open space and identifying schools in certain areas that would be too expensive to to purchase land in that area. That's the discussion level that I've been having with staff. Sure. And just just a nudge, if you will. I would I would say when the community goes through a process and, you know, the councils sort of reinforce this, when the community goes to these planning processes, we get input and we we we we talk about how we can close gaps and achieve the things the community needs. I think it's important that we immediately follow up by identifying resources, grants and those things that help, you know, give a little momentum before the plans become stale. Mm hmm. Right. So I think this plan received American Planning Association Award. It was very well received. And so to not have submitted and I know there's been multiple rounds of grant applications for not have shown up to the game, you know I don't think is acceptable. So I think we over the course of the next year, we need to show up. We need to step up and submit some applications so that we can say with each budget, here's the steps we've taken to help close these gaps. Right. Balancing of providing a balanced budget is a good step, but it's not enough. We should be a city that can every year talk about our efforts to close the gap. And then the last thing I'll say is, I know we talked about investing in like a mobile spay and neuter sort of animal health van. And I know this thing is expensive, but just curious, have you had any conversations with, you know, partners of parks or other potential funders about this mobile spay and neuter? With staff. We've had discussions and hopefully leveraging the funds that you are being proposed in the budget with regards to raising money. Right now there isn't. It's the same thing with discussion with partners of Parks. As you know, there's a one time only money of $100,000 to help develop a momentum for fundraising for animal care services. And so those monies, as we bring in more private monies, we will be identifying the high priority areas. And as you know, the as I mentioned, the the El Bax strategic plan is coming back to you in in the spring. Sure. Right. Thank you so much. I think that satisfies my questions. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Yes. Hello, everyone. I want to first say how proud I am of every single department, every year that we come to this budget meeting. There are issues that are important to the council, to our community members, and we've really been able to see progress in all three of your departments. So I would just want to start by saying that it's an exciting budget to know that while we're on a tight budget, we're doing what we need to do to continue to move the city forward. And so for PD. I guess I'm trying to decide where to start. My first question would be, with the attrition rates that we're facing right now, do you feel like this budget is helping us kind of fill that gap? I know that we've had some discussion around some retirement in the department, so I'd just like to hear about the plan to kind of address that. Yes, ma'am. Very good question. I feel very comfortable about where we're at in regards to planning ahead recruiting, hiring and training. A new Academy class is a significant accomplishment. It takes a lot of work to get there. A lot of commitment from all of you to fund it. We estimate that a class cost approximately $6.5 million to get through. Currently, we just hired another class that's anticipated to start on August the 29th. It has 72 recruits that we were able to recruit and hire into this class. A very diverse class, by the way. And that'll help us stay ahead of of the anticipated higher than normal attrition that you're asking about. And we have been concerned about in planning this. And I believe we're well ahead of the curve. And one of the biggest reasons is your guys's commitment for the funding. It is a significant commitment and it's there. And thank you. Okay. I support the new the new class, so long as you can get Commander Lewis to stay on for another ten years. I don't know if he's here, but Commander Lewis is the man. Commander Lewis is there and he's here. He's awesome. Okay. And one of the reasons and this leads me to my next question, one of the reasons that he's awesome is because he's out of his car a lot. He's building relationships with our neighborhoods, with people that typically might not have a relationship with PD. And so I like to just echo the conversation around community policing. I know I brought it up last time and I know whenever we're short staffed, it's difficult to have our officers out of their cars. But I do know that we have some members of of the second District here today, that community policing is really important to them. So if you could maybe elaborate on when you guys decide to have officers out of cars, how much time do they get to do that? And then also talk about the bike program that we have. I know that we voted on that last year and it's just now seems to be kind of rolling out. So in regards to community policing, it's a foundation of the way we do work. It's the standard we expect that all of our patrol officers that are in the field for a portion of their shifts will get out of their cars and do what we call walk in talks. I don't have the statistics right here in front of me, but it depends on the day. There's days where they're going from called the call and it's a little more challenging. But we do ask them when they see kids playing in the street, in the park, get out, throw the football around. As a matter of fact, if if you follow our social media, we're finally getting officers to to take pictures of themselves. That was something they didn't want to do. And I can see why. It's it's it wasn't easy for them, but we are transitioning to a little bit more of a marketing mindset. And so we're doing that a lot. And the officers know it's part of who we are and it's part of building a partnership and trust with the community. So it's we ingrain it from the minute we hire people, through the time we train them to get out there and do it. So I appreciate the fact that citizens want to see more of them as opposed to the opposite, not wanting to see them at all. So we'll continue to to in our efforts to get people out there. In regards to the the bike unit that was funded. We're not quite there yet. The funding wasn't made available at the time, and we're still kind of trying to work through that. But what we're doing is we're augmenting it with the safe streets money that we've talked about. So, for example, if you're as you communicate, I know you are with Commander Lewis or Commander O'Dowd. If you tell them there's an area that needs a little bit more, maybe bicycle patrol or foot patrol, that may be something that they put in, then action plan together and put people out there to do just that. So in regards to the people in the money, we're we're actually, I think, doing a very good job of putting them on the front lines. It's great. And I do know that that both commanders are working at Bixby Park. I believe they're putting their bikes in this next week into our field office so that they can do patrol out of there. So just when that kind of gets into full swing, it would be good to have a report back around the areas that had bikes. And if we saw a reduction, I know we've got a lot of chop shops in my district and so making sure that that we're kind of looking at those numbers and saying, does it help? Do we need more so that we can have that conversation with the next budget in relation to. I mean, you guys already know it. I know that I've probably been the most outspoken around reducing some of our instances with with PD and our community members. And so the statistics that you shared at the beginning of your presentation, I am thrilled to hear and I'm thrilled to hear that the answer is, well, we have more training, we have more hours, I mean, more resources to be able to really invest in our officers. And I think that that's what I've always committed to our constituents, is that we would always have the resources available to our officers to make sure that we're doing training and that we're able to look at the data that we have. And so I want to take a moment just to echo Councilwoman Price's comments around whatever we have to do to get staff in there early on to be able to do the redaction and kind of try to do some of that unfunded mandate is important. Whether it's unfunded or not, it's important to our constituents. And it's something that we as a council have to prioritize as well alongside all those other police programs. And so it's something that I wholeheartedly support trying to figure out. And then last comment for Tidelands. Every budget year, I always say that I support spending more Tidelands funds on public safety on our beaches. I know we did a lot the two years prior. So as you take that conversation, Mr. Modica, to the Budget Committee, that's something that I do support as well. I just wanted to to go on record with that. And then just could you elaborate briefly on the gang unit? Because I do think that that we are seeing crime, that that really affects our neighborhood. And we know it happens more in the summertime. And I know that it's part of some of the funding that you're already doing. Is there a I mean, I know that we've kind of talked about how much spending we have on our gang unit. Is that enough? As like. Does this budget get you what you need with that? I know we don't have fluff in this budget, but it's something that I think is timely for us to talk about. So from a perspective of needing more, I don't think any department head would ever sit up here and say, We don't need more. I'm really proud of the city family, the employees for every department because we're working our tails off to make this city safe, to make the city function. But at the same time, I'm very cognizant of the fact that when I'm talking about gang enforcement, for an example, you have to have intervention and prevention. You have to have parks and libraries. Those are all functions we absolutely need to have in order to to get to where I think we all need to get to. I believe we have a very effective gang enforcement section. Yes. In years past, it was reduced as many specialized units in our department were. That just meant that we we do have to work a lot harder. We have to communicate and coordinate like we never have. And our gang enforcement section people are constantly passing on information or intelligence to our directed enforcement teams that are assigned to each patrol division, and they're responsible for the front line enforcement that's taking place. And there are times when they are busy or some of the the the questions that Councilman Richardson was asking about certain times of the year. We're trying to maximize our deployment. And that's where I'm telling you that the the the the neighborhood safe streets money is absolutely critical to what we do and how we do it because every time we get flare ups, that's essentially like putting more police officers in specific geographical areas at specific times where the data's telling us that we think this stuff's going to happen. And at the end of the day, it's about saving lives. It's about preventing these shootings from occurring. Thank you for that. And I know I think I said that was my last question, but the one thing we can talk about in the future, though, is that connection between jobs, our workforce development, our city prosecutor. When we have people that come in with low level situations, what are we doing with the prosecutor's office or with our workforce development to make sure we're connecting those people back to jobs? And that's really where we're going to see the biggest reduction in our crime, not just policing, but making sure that we're investing on that front. And so those are my questions for for you police chiefs. So thank you so much for all the work that you guys have done for our fire team. I have just two questions. It was great to hear of the progress of our Hart team. Obviously, it's something near and dear to my heart. And you guys are seeing a lot of the times in our district, so really appreciate the team and everything they do. Are we anywhere closer to being able to have? I think there's some changes that have to be made at the state level to be able to have the Hart team respond to 911 calls for homeless. Is that still an effort that Janice Hahn and others are working on? Do you know? We do have one of the heart units as a certified, and the other one is not at this point. Okay. So we do have one that's certified. Yes. And I thought that last year we had talked about adding a third heart team. Was that not part of that conversation last year? That has has been part of the conversation. But at this point, we're not looking at it in this budget. But it doesn't. Okay. And then one. Has to remind us, we used to have one heart team that we formed as a pilot. And then last year we added a second using measure. So that was the addition. Great. Thank you, Tom. Obviously, the downtown we've seen, you know, over 3000 new units in downtown. It's an area that's that's extremely important to me, particularly with all the high rises. Will you be able to share with us in the next time that we bring up the budget, the number of calls for station one and station to increase from last year to next year? I know that's a year out request, but it would be helpful to kind of look and see. I know that the increasing fire in our downtown is low on the list, but since we've added so many new residents, I think it would be helpful to make sure that we as a councilor are being mindful of that change. Sure, we'd be happy to give that to you. Thank you so much. And Parks and Rec. I am so thrilled to have you and the team really partner with us on a lot of our key areas. I know Bixby Park Parcel one has been key. I want to thank your team for the role that you've played there. Thank you for helping us in downtown try to figure out the cover around the park. Park. But I wanted to just give big applauds to you for really taking compassion saves to heart. It was great to open up the budget book and see the new positions that have been slotted, and I think I don't have too many questions. I just really wanted to say how much I appreciate that. I echo Councilmember Richardson's comments around Park Equity. We've spent I know you came in at the tail end of Park Equity conversation, but we spent a lot of time talking about resources. And as a second district resident with the seven year old, every single program my daughter's in is on the east side. And it is frustrating not to be able to have something that's close to have some of that park programing. So urging you to take that park equity conversation serious not only in greenspace, but in programing whenever you're doing your your strategic plan, because it is a real issue that we have and we have parks like Miracle on Fourth Street that don't have open programing that people aren't aware of. And it's not listed in our parks and rec books. So making sure that we are activating those spaces that that needed the most. So thank you all department heads and city manager. I'm very pleased with where this budget is at and look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues for asking all the questions I was going to ask. He stole my thunder. And then so basically the one the one question I was going to ask for both the public well, both the public safety heads is it's a recruiting and academies. Chief, you mentioned you have a Chief Luna. You mentioned you have a class currently in place with over, what, 72 recruits, I think you mentioned in the class. Yes, sir. When is that class expected to graduate? Six months from August the 29th. And doing the math in my head, I'm going to say about February of 2020. Is there going to be another class coming immediately after or what's the plan for the with a budget year with the academy where this year. Our goal was to hire to this last year for 2019 and budget permitting. The goal will be to hire two more in this coming year. So we're already recruiting for the next one, even though we're just starting one at the end of this month. And I realize that it's all peaks and valleys when it comes to attrition, promotions, people who don't complete the academy. So I know that that's a big part of the the process with personnel, and that's a challenge every year that you face as well with the Chief Espino, that you both have to deal with those issues in regards to that. Where are we with the idea? I know you're going to want more because we need more police officers to be hired to get us at least that a closer to a place where we want to be a police officer per thousand. Where are we at right now in terms of our representation of police officers to the population that we are at the 480,000, the last census? Where are we with that in terms of a deployment? Our current ratio stands in about 1.8 per thousand. And what's the national average, you know? You know what? It's all over the board. And we're consistent with departments on the West Coast, the average and maybe just a little bit beyond us or below us. And on the East Coast, it's it's closer to sometimes three per thousand, but their policing is very different than it is out here on the West Coast. Understood. In regards to the item that Councilmember Richardson mentioned in terms of the power program and I know we used to have there, and that also went away with all the budget cuts. Just to give you a heads up. I have been approached by a community group to look into reestablishing Pell. And so I'm looking forward to working with them as well as your department. You're represented that I'm going to be working with is obviously it's the Commander McGuire that I'll be working with and hopefully we can bring something forward that will be workable for not only the police department but for the community as well. I think it's a it's a program that was very successful and one that we should probably bring back. So I'm looking forward to having discussions that and of course, with our city manager and and the mayor to see if we could re-implement or reinstitute such a program. I think it's very successful. We know that they have the search and rescue, which is there, which is very helpful, as well as promoting future firefighters and future public servants. And I want to commend both of you for all the service that you've done for the city. Both of you have been with the city practically your whole careers, and it's been phenomenal. So the same question to Chief Espinal in regards to recruiting, and I know we're going to hear the presentation a little later, but in terms of academies, what do you have in mind for this this budget year in regards to hiring? Well, we currently have an academy that's ready to start on August 19th, and they should be graduating December of this year, mid-December. Right now, that number is right around 30 and I say right around 30 because we're in competition with everybody in the region for the same candidates and they're getting swooped up left and right. So hopefully we start this academy with right around 20, 30 candidates and we have 28 new firefighters by the end of the year. The follow up to that is we'll start recruiting. In November for the class that's scheduled for 2020. That class, by the time they go through the entire process again, they'll start up in August of next year and graduating by about mid-December, about the same number of candidates. How many recruits do your comedy class? Ideally 28, right. Is a starting point. Right now, I think we're right around 2830 and we have a week to go before we actually start. Would it be unheard of that we lost one or two in the next week or so? It's happened before. So just anticipating that. And Mr. Moy, I hope that we've spoken before, and I know you have a great grant writing team, great writing team, and I hope that we are able to continue to look at grant opportunities to enhance not only our parts base, but to make them much more enjoyable and and make them more able to be welcoming for people to come to the park and play. And those those playgrounds that you put out there recently have been very received. I hope that we can do more. I know you're working with Park with Public Works in some of those projects, so I hope that we are able to continue and put more out there. So those are the only the only two questions that I have for each one of you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just one thing. It's just got to be right now because I saw it right here in your budget. Chief Luda, I noticed that you were going down last year. You had a higher number of SS O's in your budget and this year you have about four less. Is there a reason for that? What's what's taking place with your. I'm looking at SS. So three. Last year, you had adopted NAFTA 101. And this year you have a budget at 97. That's for lessors. Are they being re reassigned or promoted or what's the what's the status of that? I believe there are two positions. I'll have to get back to you on the four. Does it sound familiar? I know there were two that are being shifted around and a lot of them the moneys that we have in order to fulfill some. I keep on repeating myself about these unfunded mandates, trying to figure out how to get stay with 1421 and 748, because those are things that or positions that we have to do to get the work done. So but I can get back to you. I'll follow up with you on the four. I think it's two. Okay. Well, it says four in a bunch of books. Okay. Just following up with that. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, excellent. Excellent presentations from all three of you. As always, we're really moving in the right direction, and I appreciate all your work. A couple of things I know that I sat with. I can only think of the joke right now, Mr. Emergency. Right now I can't think of Master of Disaster. Thank you. The Master of Disaster. Earlier, there was a notice that went out today, about $12 million available from at the state level for 911 modernization. I know that currently we would have to be a recipient from the state and I don't think we're eligible, but I'd love us to keep an eye on that. I think that that's something that's crucial in the next few months. And if if possible, if there's any legislation that we could look for to help modernize the way that the the legislation was written. It would be great. The state has 12 million coming our way, and I hear more to come as our 911 system is is important to the work that both of you do. Actually, all three of you, quite honestly, a little bit about unfunded mandates in my prior life. We used to package up the unfunded mandate costs on an annual basis and send them to the state. Is there a process for that? I can't think of the acronym right now. Yes, we still do that. So every single year we record it's financial liability, we record those and we send them to the state. And every year they don't pay. But every couple of years, probably every 5 to 6, we get lucky and there is a settlement and they end up cutting us a check. So it's really important that we track those and that we submit them every year. If you don't submit them, you don't get paid when they do actually pay their unfunded liabilities. Yeah, I want to say that I recently heard that a settlement from like 2009 came in. So they're very, very far behind. But I do appreciate that we're still doing that because it's crucial to the work that we're doing. Finally, there are. Governments. Across the states that have looked at getting sponsorships for their trash cans. Many of you may remember when there was a radio station called The Wave. And while we don't have waves at our beaches currently, the wave used to sponsor all the trash cans for the departments of beaches and harbors up and down the state. And so in exchange for the cost of the cans and the cost of emptying them and maintaining them and paying for the trash contract, every single trash can up and down the county coastline said 94.3 or whatever the radio station was. I'm sure one of you know the wave. And so thank you of 94.7, the wave. Another piece of advertisement for them. For there, there are many years of financial support. I'd be very interested in seeing the Parks and Rec program better utilize the Peps program that this Council adopted that does allow for sponsorships, as Councilmember Orange discussed . I think that it is important that the trash cans at the. Beach have lids. And I also find that it is crucial that the trash cans in our parks have lids. And I know that we've been working hand in hand with the Friends of Eldorado Park. East. I was confused sometimes on East and West on their desired park trashcan lid that we could put on the park trash cans so that our vermin population and our birds aren't diving into the trash cans, getting tangled up in wire and other such things. I'm also quite interested. In knowing a little bit more about our senior programs that we took a lot of effort. I know that the Parks and Rec Department really took a strong lead on that. Do you have any? Short update that you could provide on the initiative that we supported last year that came from Council Member Austin. Yes. So the the senior program at the expo, which is was 40,000 of the 100,001 time, only minutes is going very strong. It's three days a week and it's very, very popular. There's about 40 to 50, sometimes more participants. So it's very, very strong. And then the we're creating a mobile program to move around senior programing, and that's in the works and being developed with the the $20,000 a one time only. And then the 30,000 is to develop a robust volunteer program for our seniors and for people that want to provide volunteer services at the senior . And then the last 10,000 is we're working on just promotional material. So the the the moneys are going to very good use. And we appreciate that those resources. Well, I really appreciate the hard work that you put into that and the numerous stakeholders that you brought to the table. I know that it was Passion of Councilmember Austin, something that his staff really volunteered for and put his money where his mouth was in terms of the effort. And I think that for you to have led that so successfully, we're just really proud of the work that you did. I know you were new at the time, and I just think that that was fantastic. Another initiative that came out of budget oversight and the full council last year was the postings related to park utilization. Are you able to give a short update? I know you'll give me updates at our staff meetings. But the on the website, the the permits. Yes. So are daily posting of the athletic field sports permits is going very well. People from the public can see who has an actual permit for the sports organization. And we're very close to them now, putting the permits for park events. And that's the second part to our plan. Hopefully we'll be able to do that fairly soon. It's the same software as you know, and we're just developing the training to be able to do those reports and put it on the Web. And do we think that will be before the end of the fiscal year, before the end of the calendar year? I would say around the fall, it may be early October, but we will definitely we are able to do it. It's just a matter of training staff to do it on a regular basis to to to update that information. And hopefully that that plan would eventually be automated. That's something that was advocated by our friends of Wardlow Park. And I think that, again, the department has really embraced working with the friends groups and their initiatives. That was a park that was consistently used in violation of the city policy. And this allows for the community to be our eyes and ears and support us knowing and understanding when mass gatherings are happening, when additional potential public safety or other things are not scheduled because they were not permitted. And finally, I just want to give a big round of applause. And I know the mayor is very supportive of this as well. We are now accepting credit cards at Eldorado Park. I think that is just a huge, huge change and an ability for us to reduce the wait times for the number of individuals who used to have to make U-turns because they did not have cash. And I look forward to phasing in a more comprehensive. Documentation of the utilization of park users as they go into the park and what that looks like over time. So thank you very much for your hard work. I think that we are moving in the right direction. All three of you. Any other questions I had? My colleagues have already answered or asked. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Supernanny. Thank you to all three departments. Excellent reports and very comprehensive. I just have one question. And it involves body worn cameras. So it's either for PD staff or our chief Luna. Great response that that will get things implemented possibly the first month of 2020. I just like to approach the question from the opposite direction because I'm sure there are a lot of variables and in getting these things up and in place. So council does its job. Let's say we approved this in this budget and I think the first meeting in October would be October 1st. That falls on a Tuesday. If you were to get the go ahead that night, what's the soonest that a contract could be executed? I'm being told October. Okay. So if we approve this October four, sometime within that 30 days, that a contract would be executed? Yes. Okay. And in terms of the point that Councilwoman Pryce brought up about ramping up for personnel and whatnot, it just seems like you have a pretty short window there. That's my impression there, that if you're going to get this thing implemented and in place the first month of 2020, and this contract is, let's say, executed November 1st. That seems like a very short window to get everything going. So. So you're you're telling us that that's that's all doable and and no real issues there. I will never say there won't be any issues. We will do our best to get there. But again, I do want to clarify. I don't know if I've done a good enough job of communicating this this evening. And by the way, if I didn't say this, I do have through the city manager's office a24 from memo coming to all of you regarding our legal obligations with 1421 and 748. It is pretty complex and. Please remember that the the people in the moneys we're asking for today are to comply with the law that's already passed and we're already behind. So even if we started. Two weeks from now, we're already behind. So I need people. And one way or another, those people are going to have to do that job. I already have people doing it now. I don't have enough people. So what I'm asking all of you to do as your chief is I need the money and people to comply with the law. And it just doesn't involve body worn cameras. We tied it in together, but it's it's all the legal mandates that we have a legal obligation to fulfill. So at the end of the day, hypothetically, we don't approve the moneys. I'm going to find the employees somewhere in this police department to complete those task. And it's not going to be pretty. But at the end of the day, we have to get it done as a team. Okay. I appreciate that. I just wanted to give you that opportunity or I just want to make sure council is doing everything that we need to do to make this happen. So thank you for that extra explanation. That's it. Thank you. Council member Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. As minority. Fine. Thank you. You know the end. I thought I would wait it to the end because the fact that I knew how the questions would be asked, but not the ones that I want to ask you. And the biggest part about all of it is that with the chief fire and police. And Parks and Rec. Yeah, I just can't really commend you guys enough for the work that you do here in our city, especially with the fire and the police department. Because the fact that I feel like I live at the fire department, yeah, I'm 17, but station ten, you know, they're so quick and fast, I don't get a chance to sleep at night. That just goes to show you how busy they really are. And Chief, I'd like to commend you and your staff, because the fact that every incident that happened in my district, I get a call from one of either your commanders or one of your sergeants, and it's excellent. Only at the time when it's like four and 5:00 in the morning, I still get a report. And that's why I give everyone in my district my phone number. So if I do get a call from one of those individuals, I will have an update on it. So I really appreciate that. The only question I have to ask an individual and then in the patrol bill, I see that the traffic safety in the proactive role of traffic stops are listed as there, you know, as a key service service. And these officers based out of are these officers based out of, you know, our regular station, are these individuals who are solely responsible for these kinds of tasks like the motorcycle officers? Every uniformed police officer is responsible for traffic enforcement in the city. So if you if you're working a beat, say, in the area where you live and either, A, they observe a violation or they get complaints of a violation, somebody's running a stop sign, maybe driving too fast. Part of their job is to be proactive and make a traffic stop. They don't have to site all the time. It's their discretion. They cite or warn. We do have officers on motorcycles who primary function is traffic enforcement and there are out of our field support division, which is located on Lakewood Boulevard. But they have citywide responsibilities. And any time we get community concerns about traffic, whether it's coming from a community member or one of you, your officers, your staffs, they're the ones who get assigned to an area to enforce a speeding or maybe it's traffic around schools, specific traffic enforcement, and they can get around traffic a little bit easier. And they're the ones you don't want to see in your rearview mirror. Thank you, Jane. Also, I'd like the last question. How many more officers do we have working in the department? How are they assigned throughout the city? We have approximately I want to say it's 16 or 18 motor officers and there's we try to have coverage on multiple shifts. We get a lot of, for example, overtime or grants from the Office of Traffic Safety to specifically focus on people using cell phones, impaired driving, seatbelts and things of that nature. So they'll get assigned to the grants on overtime. But generally they are focused wherever the complaints are throughout the city. Thank you, because I haven't really had a great response when we're having our problems over on Magnolia and Pacific and they were there and they really have to tighten up a lot. So I want to thank you officers for that also. And that's enough. I don't need any more from you, Chief, on this. Thank you very much. Now for the fire captain, I'd like to I'm very happy to see that we have the Fire Corps, you know, program because under way, because it's really like, you know, to offer, you know, the help. And if there's any help that we can offer you, you know, and to recruit in, you know, at risk kids, you know, we'd be interested in being any part of that upcoming class. And I want to thank you for that. Also, you know, Chief, on that one and the like. I think it's a terrific program. It's a wonderful program. And thank you so much. And then regarding to the budget, looking at it, I learned that about the the limestone program targeting the city, the Latino community. And I am interested in my office having an outreach and in the material for this program, if it's possible. On that, and I don't really know much about it, but I'm seeing that that's in it. So how do you pronounce that? Yeah, you definitely go and get together with our community services. Thank you. Thank you. And the last I'd like with Parks and Rec, you know, in our recent community budget meeting, I heard in the ask for the continuing to be say program during the summer and the feasibility of establishing Mecca. This park is one of our sites. You know, I'd really like for us to look at this if possible. And I know that the meeting, the staff mentioned it, it costs about 25,000 would be safe season. So let's please keep this as a priority for my district cause I only saw that be save mentioned once in the budget book. So I'd really like for, you know, the Parks and Rec to really keep that as a priority, especially MacArthur's park there, because we have a lot of situations, you know, with homeless there right next to the park. So we could really keep some of those things possible. I really appreciate that. And last. And last. I know that lately in the budget hearing, we were heard from the Health and Human Services. But since both PD and parks are here, I think we need to work on an after hour and weekend homeless outreach program, especially around our parks. So I would like to meet with any of you and discuss this. You know, we get a chance to Y20 and that's the end of my report. Thank you very much asking. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. Everyone has spoken already, so I'm going to make comments. And then if there's additional comments, we'll go from there. A couple of couple items. The first is, I don't know that I that we had publicly said yet that we have the live release rate is at 92%. So I just want to congratulate you on that, Mr. Mouat. And if there's anyone here from the Animal Care Services team that that's actually really going in the right direction. And if we if our if our total number for our total live release number is at 92%, that is showing some significant improvement. And we've been improving every year. But I want to just congratulate you on that. I know that was kind of in a slide, but I wanted to point to that and thank you for your work. And let's give our animal care team a round of applause because they work really hard. In addition, I just want to echo a couple of comments. One is I'm also an esthetics person. I want to agree with Councilman Price on the trash cans any time we can. As you know, Mr. West, I always talk about stuff like this, but any time that we can ensure that everything looks, matches and looks the same and there's a quality to it, please, on those trash cans before we purchase a whole bunch, make sure they're quality and they look similar. I want to lift up something the vice mayor, Andrew said, which was I am also very interested in our homelessness efforts around weekends especially. I find that because we don't have the Multi-Service Center open on the weekend and because we don't have staff, obviously we have quality of life and our other folks out there doing the work in the fire department, but we don't have as much dedicated folks. Oh, they don't. I thought they were on weekends. Okay. So also quality of life and fire apparently are not a weakness, but I have found that we are doing as best we can during the week. But then on the weekends it becomes very apparent that a lot of folks out there need support and that there is not any sort of resources. And so and it also has an impact, quite frankly, on on the way we respond to needs and folks that are out in the community. And so I would just I would just concur that that's something that we should do. And I would hope that the council would look at that as an issue. The third is I notice that all everyone talked about measure in their presentations, and I just want to uplift that again and certainly think and talk about the impact that measure has had on the city. And it's had an impact on every department, but especially on police and fire. And then the last thing, Chief, I just wanted to I know there's been some discussions about violence and some of the councilman mentioned our needs for policing. And I want to just ask to ask you a couple of questions, and I think they're important as well. The first is on the officer involved shooting number. I, too, want to commend you and the department and the leadership. I think that you have you all and our rank and file have done extensive amount of of training and thinking about how we how we work on this. This is a very complex and difficult issue. And it's it's something that we want to make sure that all of our officers feel safe. And the fact that your you have implemented just some different different tactics and different ways of dealing with incidents. Incidents I think is very commendable to you. And I just want the whole team to know that it's it's very impressive. And it doesn't mean that there aren't going to be tragic incidents in the future. But I just want to commend you on that, Chief. And I also want to note something that was alluded to earlier. I think we know there's a lot in the in the in the media about about crime or violence. And I think every single crime that happens is very serious. And certainly every single homicide that happens in our city is very serious. And every homicide, like the one we had recently, impacts families and people and loved ones. Our homicide number rate this year up to now is is what number. And before I answer that, you're right. Every number I'm going to say is is something we look at very seriously. Each one gets investigated fully. As of today, we are at 19 compared to 19 last year, which I wish it was at zero. And we fight really hard to try and do everything we can to prevent all of them. I know and I know that sometimes I'll read that the homicides are dramatically up this year. There's a lot more than last year. And I think what you're saying is that there's at this point in the year, there's a same amount this year or was last year, is that correct? Yes, sir. And then I think that I know that obviously we know that the homicide rate in the last few years has been some of the lowest that we have recorded in the city's history. I know that every single one is a is a tragedy. A few years ago, we were averaging I think I know now we're averaging depending on the year, it could be 30, it could be a little more, could be some, some less. I know that we used to average 50, I think maybe 20 years ago when we were averaging 80. Before that we were averaging we've averaged over 100 as well. Has the overall crime rate decade to decade gone down over the last 40, 50 years? Drastically? There's no comparison. When I was a young homicide detective in 1992, we had well over 100 murders, and that was the average right around that time. So when when people ask me out in the community, it sounds like things are getting worse today. I've been here 34 years. And I'm going to tell you, we the city has changed drastically when it comes to violent crime. Is it safe to say the city's safer today than it was ten years ago? It's a lot safer. Today than it was. Absolutely. But the changes that it's social media, 24 hour news cycle, everybody knows everything that's happening on these devices. So they feel like there's more of it happening. And that's not to downgrade the seriousness of the events we're still responding to. And I know I also have looked at the media reports that you post online that are that are for public consumption. I think they're for public view. And I notice that that the media reports for for this year that if if the things stay on track, in the end they certainly could change. But that overall crime this year at the six month at the six month check in is lower than it was last year at the six month check in, is that correct? A little lower overall crime? That is correct. We we are as of the the end of June for the 3010 that we report to the FBI, we have a 4.2 reduction in overall part one crime. And I know that. And I know that in the last few years, we've been recording the lowest levels of part one crime that we've ever recorded in the history of the city of Long Beach. Is that is that true? That is well within range. We are much better today than we have been in the past. And I certainly think one of the things that's important, obviously, is looking at data and sometimes I say this to uplift the work that you're all doing, but all our partners across the city, whether it's in parks or in libraries or across the city, violence of any kind at any time is serious and is involves real families and real people, and they're incredibly tragic and heartbreaking. I think everyone feels that. I also I also want to just commend you that every every single one of those is is serious. But the fact that they continue to decrease and that we are experiencing right now lower levels of overall crime that we have in the last 40 , 50 years, I think is also important to note. And and I also want to be clear that when I when I read that, you know, homicides are shootings are up dramatically over over the last few years, I think the numbers and the data is the data. And and so I think that's important as well. So I just want to I just wanted to add that I think that you all are doing a fantastic job and I'm really proud of our police department. It's a tough environment to work in, but these numbers and your work show just some incredible progress. And I just want to thank every single member of the rank and file. And then and then lastly, I'll just say again to the finance staff, you guys have done a really great job. So thank you again for this presentation, Councilmember Pierce. And thank you. I want to talk about trashcans again. I left it off my list and it's one of my pet peeves. I believe correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Modica, didn't we in the last two years purchased some big bellies out of the Tidelands funds for our beaches? We did, yes. So we have a report that we'd like to give you. We've done additional big bellies. We also, I believe, put something like several hundred additional cat trash. Hands out on the beach. So we will get you those stats. It's important to celebrate what we've done and we know we need to do more. So and we agree things need to look consistent and tight. And and and the and the trashcan caps help as well. Yes. And I brought that up because of the conversation is can we match our trash cans? I don't know. I know there's an additional cost associated with emptying big bellies. But they keep our streets so much cleaner and our parks so much cleaner. And I feel like every budget I'm a broken cycle, a broken record with whatever we can do to get whether it's big belly or different trash can. The trash cans we have on Broadway are probably what I'm thinking are the trash cans that they want to put back on our beaches while they have a lid. You can put your hands in each side and they dump over while they have sand in the bottom. Every Sunday I drive down Broadway and there are empty trash cans. And so whatever we can do, it's just like my biggest pet peeve. Those trash cans make our streets look filthy. They're disgusting looking. They're not clean. And I know they're cheap to to empty. But what's the cost? Whenever we think about how much pollution we're putting back in and the cost to those businesses, when you go down a corridor, that's beautiful, except for their trash cans. I never thought trash cans would be my issue, but trash cans, whatever we can do to make sure they have solid lids. And then I had one question for Parks and Rec, our mobile adoption van, which I'm very happy to say I adopted Jojo out of. I know one of the challenges has been cost to try to get them to be more mobile and to be at places. Do we expect an updated plan on how to get the mobile adoption van actually out and being used more frequently? Yes. So that's that's very much part of the Elma strategic plan. And also, I'm excited because of the opportunity of now being given the tools to raise additional monies to be able to do these extra things that will make a big difference. Awesome. Thank you very much. And Councilmember, I actually do have some of those stats right here if you'd like them. Over the last probably six months or so, we've deployed about 100 of the blue barrels throughout our parks in the Tidelands, and we've done additions on 60 of the 95 gallon rollout receptacles along the beach bike path. We've done a number of other big bellies and just this step blows me away. We have a two person team that empties every day, 350 trash receptacles in the Tidelands area along our beaches. So we definitely have a crew that's doing that. We can continue to do more and we hear you loud and clear. And I think I speak for Councilmember Price and myself. We hate hate the blue barrel trash cans. We just we will take out a campaign against those trash cans if we have to. But also, I know that we've used resources in our Tidelands funds in the past. Whatever we can do is we're having the conversations around the Highlands to make sure that if we're talking about consistency, that we go towards the best. I know that the Mr. Beck had talked about. Maybe there's something in between those mushroom top ones, the blue barrel and the the expensive ones to empty. So I thought we were going to get a report back on that last year, I guess is really what I'm saying is that we haven't finished our trashcan conversation and I want more trash can conversation. We will certainly follow up on that. Councilman Monk. Councilman Mongo. That work now. Thank you. I really want to reinforce what the mayor said about statistics and misinformation about crime. Are we on a pathway or trajectory to start integrating the crime statistics in a more user friendly manner through our open data portal? Is that a better conversation for T.I. or is that a police conversation? We are putting it out through our website. But yeah, it's probably better answered by T.I.. Okay, I'll work on that. And then I don't know if you'd have this available today, but perhaps for your recall to the Budget Oversight Committee, if we were to add either through a position or through overtime, a quality of life team for our weekends, I'd be interested in knowing what that would cost and potentially some sources that we could pull it from , because I completely agree. The homeless population needs to be able to be served 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And if they become accustomed that we are not on duty on the weekends. That's when we have some of the challenges. I know I've also met with the city manager on this and I plan to meet with Park Public Works as well. But we have Muse with Caltrans to do maintenance on their property. We need a use immediately to do quality of life. Support and enforcement on. Both our waterways that are. County facilities. DWP has some land behind Steve Lee that we really need to be able to access. And furthermore, on the Caltrans properties, we cannot wait for their process, their postings there. It's just too long of a process and the residents cannot rely upon it. And so I'd be interested in a report back. Within, I don't know, 120 days on what our options are and or a draft. And I will also take my time to meet with the department heads city attorney public works to help form that because it's crucial. Well, thank you very much. That concludes questions for hearing out of number one. And we are going to try to comment on the budget if there's. I think we have folks lined up for coming on the budget, so please come forward cautiously. Robert Fox and Control, Gary Shelton, Ramon Vana and Carlos Avila. Please come forward. Mr. Mayor, before we hear from the public, we have a there's been some questions from council to hear from different departments. So here's the schedule. So next Tuesday, we plan to hear from public works and the capital improvement budget. Also development services. Then we had September 3rd. We can hear we've had our requests for health and civil service so we can have health and civil service instead of the harbor and the water department. And I think there was a request for ID. So on September 3rd, we can have health, civil service and technology. If that's all right with the city council. We'll work on the schedule. Thank you. Courteously, please. Right. Carelessly. A number of things to thank you for here. But with only 90 seconds, I'm going to skip those. You have you don't have 90 seconds. Oh, you. Don't? Okay. You have 3 minutes. All right. So in terms of the budget, I'd like to talk about the parks budget first. And I want to thank Corrado Mackay for being I'm very encouraged by his willingness to listen and consider alternatives. I've been really pleased with Stacie Mungo's program of Friends of Parks that has the promise for working together with the community. Each park is unique. One is an ecosystem with wildlife, and another can be a sports center. So the friends of those parks are all different, have different frameworks on them. My my greatest concern here in Eldorado Park is the fact that there has been a lack of maintenance for a number of years, the long term maintenance. I used to ride my bike around the lake in Area three in the 1980s, and that would be a death trap to do that today. If you go along that there's chunks of cement six and eight feet or six and eight inches high every few feet. It's broken. And we've talked about that and that it requires capital dollars and a lot of money. But we can't ignore that because that's an ADA compliance issue. And if you'd rather pay for a lawsuit, I mean, that's just where I don't want to go. You know, the first time somebody stumbles into that. So I'd really like someone to take a look at that. I appreciate the talk about trash cans. We have spent a year on trash cans and our friends at parks groups. And I can only tell you that I am concerned about the discussion about esthetics because we don't have toilets, funds where we are. We don't have the money to go out and buy all new trash cans. We have trash cans without bottoms in them, so we need trash can lids. And I don't care what the trash cans look like and I don't care what the lids look like, but those animals are being hurt. Every week I am given reports of animals that are taken to emergency and I see them in the park and it's heartrending to see their little foot cut off. And, you know, how do they get away from a coyote if they don't have a foot? So I'm really asking that instead of focusing on esthetics, we focus on getting trash can lids and I don't care what they look like. The third thing I'd say about the budget is coming from the private sector. In the budget meetings I've been in, there's always a discussion about reducing budget and headcount, and I don't hear any of that in the city ever. I always hear about adding headcount and adding budget making giving raises. So I'd like to see industrial engineering brought in. Thank you very much, Mr. Fox. Good evening, city council and mayor. It's working. It's on, Robert. I would like to speak on a few subjects. First one is for the police department. I hope we can include in this budget enforcement for E-Scooters. It's a new program that we have here in the city and we have not planned for any kind of enforcement mechanism on e-scooters. And we've had several accidents in the Broadway area, and we don't have any options there. We don't have anybody to call or any kind of monitoring whatsoever. So I do hope that we can set aside at least some portion of our police budget to address that relatively new addition to the mobility of Long Beach. Also bike enforcement. Since we have such a combination of things happening at this point in time, it's imperative that we have people that actually stop at stoplights or stop at stop signs. The resultant accidents are tragic for everyone, and that's going to take enforcement. That's not going to be done voluntarily. I would also, of course, like us to record any dispatch call. I know. That's really. Minutia. But if we don't record the minutia, we don't have a pattern of what happens. This was part of our problem on the Broadway corridor, was trying to figure out what actually our stats were. And so I applaud your great work and I hope that we can add on. I mean, that may take a staff person to record all dispatch calls. But particularly if we know we have a problem in a certain area, I think that becomes terribly important for us to make a decision. As for the fire department. I know you're into the idea of adult fall programs. Unfortunately, the addition of will anchors on the Broadway corridor have accelerated the falls of individuals, particularly the elderly. I myself happen to have two hip replacements, and I don't really want to fall. And I've already fallen once. And I think I have pretty good eyesight, even though I have to wear glasses to read. It occurs to me that we really need to take a really serious look about our infrastructure if in fact we want to preserve people's health and prevent the tripping falls that are happening. So I'd like us to look into that as a fire department and give a recommendation to the city manager as to how we might mitigate that. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Also, it seems to me we need to in some way notify the public that there is a $250 charge for any kind of emergency services, like an ambulance to them. I have so many of my people in the area complaining to me about they got a bill for $250 because the paramedics showed up. And I think that if we don't tell people about that, they get irritated afterwards. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Miss Cantrell. I was glad. Good evening. And Cantrell and I have just been reading a fascinating book by a retired librarian, Long Beach librarian Claudine BURNETT, called Prohibition Madness. And I found this interesting. Statistic about the police department. She says that when the town was about 18,000 people, there were 23 men on the police force. And then in 1933, which is the year I was born, there were. 200. Members on the police force. And this was for a population of 145,000 people. Today we have the number of sworn officers as being 1.6 per thousand. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, there was one for every 750 people. I am very concerned about the fact that you are not replacing the police that we lost in the last recession. We no longer, as you said tonight, have the Athletic League. We no longer have the. Field anti-gang unit. That go out in the field and see what's going on. We do not have visible patrol people. We don't have the car, the patrol cars in our neighborhoods that we used to have. And I think that this even though you say crime is down. People that are in the neighborhoods don't feel this way. So I would like you to use more of Measure A's money to hire more policemen. I think that this will be. A better use of the money than some of the other things that have been mentioned tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Cantrell. Mr. Shelton. Hi, everybody. My name's Gary Shelton, and I'm going to try to draw a nexus between the budget that you're looking at tonight for public safety and Parks and Rec to a couple of other items that might not seem that obvious at first, but the first is that I would hope that you would ask the department heads to work to control overtime expenses. And the second is that I would hope that you folks would work to identify available funds for the city's housing trust fund. Now, I'll try to explain to you how I get to those two items from tonight's budget meeting. We do have public safety on the docket. We have a lot of homelessness. It was discussed tonight, even homeless dogs. But a lot of money goes to homelessness. I think one thing that we didn't hear and I think we would discover if we asked is that the fire department probably has more calls for service toward assistance to homeless people than the police department does. Just a wild guess. But I think that they're they're out there in the streets dealing with homeless people who have fallen or for whatever reason, need their assistance more often than the cops. If we were to start now and we have to start now somewhere, and why not now to create the housing that's necessary to put those people into housing where they really belong in, to services where they really belong for their own benefit. Then what we would look at would be reduced calls for service and reduced expenses and reduced workload on the public service people. Now we have to start somewhere. We might not get to that point this year, but we do have to start somewhere. So the reason I mentioned the housing trust fund is because that's one of the local sustainable sources of. It has a local sustainable source in the transit transit occupancy tax for up to $500,000 a year to come out of the general fund, which is earmarked. And a couple of years back and I've been here many times when we had the periodic budget reports expressing that there is funds available, but we lost money never going into the housing trust fund because it was always never available. The funds were not available. Now I would ask you folks to work to make sure that those funds are available every year. Okay. And the one year that came down here and it was so disappointing because the funds were clearly available, they had all been spent all $500,000 for police overtime. So if we reduce overtime, we can help create housing. If we create housing, we can host housing homeless people. We can reduce the calls for service to those homeless people. Now, I don't think that's a far shot, but we have to start somewhere. Okay. So it's up to you folks again to try to work to identify the available money in time that it can be put into the housing trust fund. And also to ask your department heads to work to control overtime. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shelton. Ramen Vesuvius. Have your oats close enough. Ramon? Yes, that's fine. Hey, I'm going to be quick. I see you guys are kind of. Falling asleep, so I'm not going to keep my. My talk to too long. I support all of these departments. I think all of you do, too. And here in District five, we're just noticing that it looks like things are just falling by the wayside. And so all I can say is that from the perspective of the residents, we've never seen the parks in worse shape. Right now, I applaud the. Mayor when he he said the same thing when we. Were running out of water for our parks. So I applaud you for. At least admitting that to some of the people you'd never seen them that that bad. Since we've gotten the since we've gotten some water back, our. A lot of our parks have improved. Right. So I can say that. At least one of the problems that we've had for about well, for a long time are the the piping for the for the reclaimed water that we have. It's all of their pipes are about their way past their their lifetime. And so it's a matter of time before they just burst. And all together, there's about $212 million worth of of, you know, an undone maintenance that needs to be done on these pipes just replaced altogether. So that's the main thing that I have. I'm going to, you know, put my my head to the grindstone and I'm going to look for some some grant funding. And I'm going to work with the parks like I was doing. With with Marine. And we're going to see if we can get get some money to to help the parks. And I've also secured I got some quite a bit of money that I have secured from private funding to help our parks. But it's going to take an effort from the city to to prove to me that they care about our parks. I haven't seen any evidence in a long time. The part that water was a good, good reason, a good. First start. But that was a very minor, minor effort. So I can secure money. I can help you, help you get what you want to go, but you have to at least. Meet me halfway. I have approached I've approached my council person, haven't heard anything. So all I'm saying is I'm bringing this to you, and if you want to ignore it, that's fine. We we all know that. The police, in the way that they are making the statistics every year seem to be changing. So and that's that's easy. That's publicly, you can see the way that they measure the crime statistics. So I'm just letting you know that. Have a great. Day and I'll see you out. Q Mr. Carlos of Ibis. Good evening. I want to address a couple of things. The first has to do with the police department recently. A few months ago, I ran into something called the police scorecard. Those are the statistics in the police scorecard are from 19 I'm sorry, from 2016 to 2017. And they don't really present Long Beach in very good light. Out of the 100 top or largest police departments in California, Long Beach ranks number 96. Now, I know that things have been changing. I know that Police Chief Luna presented some some really encouraging statistics, and I applaud that. But at the same time, I would like to see the chief's response to the police, the items addressed in the police scorecard. Now, I know that during the campaign for Measure A, there was a glossy flier that came out kind of putting the fear into us, telling us that that we really needed to get those 200 police officers reinstated. That hasn't happened yet there. I mean, it looks like we barely are able to keep up with attrition. And I know that all the overtime that the police are working must be pretty stressful and must be leading to some not not very good situations. Let's see. Parks in the western half of Long Beach where I live. We have a. A tiny amount of parks in relation to the site of Long Beach with Eldorado Park and with all the golf courses. The parks and the urban forests are really the lungs of the city. And in the west side of Long Beach, where I live, where we get the direct results from the four or five freeway, the 710 freeway, the refineries, the port, the incinerator, we really need more parks. Now, this was sort of interesting, the joint use of as a means to increase open space. That's a little bit of a stretch because it doesn't really increase open space. It allows use of school facilities as parks, but it's not increasing open space. Thank you. Thank you so much. That concludes the comments for our budget hearing. We will continue the budget hearing at the next council meeting and continue with the different presentations. So thank you all for participating in the budget that was hearing item number one before a hearing item. The second hearing on the agenda, I want to ask Mr. Patrick Lavin to come forward if he is if he is here. Ms.. Mr. Mayor, there's two people queued up on this one. I'm sorry. Is this for public comment? Responses are. Councilman Pearce? Yes. I just wanted to clarify two things. I know from talking to our commanders that PD did receive a grant to start enforcing the scooters and the bike program and that that enforcement is supposed to be starting sometime soon. Is that correct? So in the FY 20 budget, we are actually proposing that we add positions as we formalize the ordinance for the SCOOTER program. So there will be enforcement positions as well as administrative positions. Great. And then I also just wanted to clarify, we do record all of our dispatch calls in a911. Yes, we. Do. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to just refocus and thank you for bringing up the point about data. I think it's important we do look at data. You know, my conversation with my line of discussion with the police chief was really focused on those months where we get out of school and get back in school. And in fact, the data shows that we had a 50% increase in violent crimes in North Division, 18% in West Division during that period. That spike that we were talking about and when I said it seemed like it went up. I'm not saying across the whole city or smoothed out across the whole city or for the whole six months, talking about that period of time when kids get out of school where we all sort of brace. And we saw that. And so, you know, sometimes we we need to it's okay to talk big picture about the data, but our job is to really focus in. And so I really wanted I really wanted to have that. Where I wanted that conversation to go was, what can we do around those months to really boost our response or prepare for it? So thank you for bringing up the data. The other thing is the way we break out our data is not really reflective of the way people communicate in the public. Right? So when the public's on our reports, I'll say part one, part two, aggravated assault. But what you'll see in the press are the dramatic things. A shooting here, a shooting there. We don't really report in that same way in shooting. So we do need to probably think about how we sort of engage and talk about it in a way that actually responds to the needs of the community. So I want to just make sure, you know, I didn't want to be I want this to be misunderstood the way it was last week. I'm talking about a very specific thing. When we get out of school, when we get back into school, I think we should I'd love to sort of talk about that period of the year. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. With that, we've concluded our budget hearing. I'm Mr. Levin. On our end city council members, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and our organization. I'm Pat Lavin. I'm the IBEW journeyman lineman from IBEW 47. We represent 12,000 IBEW members throughout the state of California and Nevada, and we recently have filed an affiliation with the Association of Long Beach Employees. I want to take this opportunity to introduce us that through the hard work of my assistant business manager, Dick Reed, and the members of the association and the other members of our staff that worked on that. So we look forward to a long and productive relationship with the city of Long Beach, not only for our 477 new affiliated ALB members that are now part of IBEW 47, but also for about the 2000 members of the IBEW of our local union and other local unions from the Southland that live and work and also vote here in the city of Long Beach. Thank you for your time. She'll have an thank you and welcome. And we know we'll be we'll be talking. So thank you very much. And we are we're going back to our hearings. This is something we were discussing in closed session and we didn't get a chance to do it earlier. So I brought that comment forward. But that's related to some of our closed session discussion. Now we're going to hearing item number three. Second. It's the second hearing, but it's titled the hearing out of number three.

A resolution approving a proposed Amendatory Agreement between the City and County of Denver and Environmental Hazmat Services, Inc. to provide trained personnel to collect discarded and abandoned solid wastes, including putrescible wastes, medical waste, used syringes and drug paraphernalia. Amends a contract with Environmental Hazmat Services, Inc. to expand the scope of work to include additional rapid response services in the collection of discarded and abandoned solid wastes including putrescible wastes, medical waste, drug paraphernalia, and other materials in alleys, sidewalks, parks, and other public spaces, citywide. No change to contract amount or duration (ENVHL-202053184; ENVHL-201844158). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 3-16-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-12-20.

DenverCityCouncil_02242020_20-0068

All right. Thank you, Councilmember. Seen nothing else on this item? I'm sorry. Did you put this on? I'm sorry, ma'am. Secretary next item, 68. Yes. Councilmember Hines, you just had your comment. QUESTION You're good. Yet? No questions. Thank you, Mr. President. Sorry. Okay, Madam Secretary, next item on our screens. And this one is the one that we want a vote on. Council Member CdeBaca. Yes. On six. Okay. So, Councilmember Hines, if you please put Resolution 68 on the floor. Mr. President, I move we consider and do pass resolution 20, dash 68. All right. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Councilmember CdeBaca. I am calling this one out. We've had extensive conversation on this expansion of really the authority under this bill, and I am calling it out because I want to go on record as a no vote, but also wanted to call up somebody who can talk to us a little bit about what is happening with our government dollars during these hazmat cleanups. Is Brandy is it possible for me to call up somebody? I believe there's no reason you can't. I mean. It's. Proper you to call somebody in the audience. Here she comes. And and while she comes up, I'll just explain a little bit of background on this has met this $6 million that's encumbered for emergency cleanup which is also known to the community as the homeless encampment sleeps sweeps. When this happens, people's property is taken, people are pushed along. We've witnessed them. We've participated in watching what happens to people, whether they're offered shelter or not. Often they are not offered shelter, not taken to shelter, only pushed along and possessions confiscated. And so while I recognize this is not an expansion of the $6 million, I do think it's important for my colleagues to recognize that under no circumstances should we be expanding the authority of who gets to draw down on these dollars. And in fact, in the midst of a housing crisis, we should be reallocating these dollars toward the solution rather than a reactive response to the symptoms of a problem. We are participating and exacerbating. So. Go. Go ahead, Brandi, and tell us a little bit about your experience. Can you hear me? Hold it close. Close. Close me. Closer. Can you hear me now? Yeah. All right. I'm just going to read it to you real quick and I'll be really. Brief and say your name and who you are. Yes, my name is Brandi Majors. I am currently homeless and what you call urban camping. I'm outside. I'm just going to read this real briefly because it was just easier to organize my thoughts on $6 million contract with DHS. Off duty police officers paid to take on extra shifts for $68 hour above time. Enough. That's crazy. I'm currently homeless and like I said, and urban camping. I personally have lost over 10/10 in ten different suites. I'm disabled. I can't take care of myself. I always had a can't meet. We lose tons of things such as valuables to our warmth, shelter from the elements. Danger. I've been arrested three different times during sweeps, harassed, threatened by the police. But he just. And the police crushed my chair in the compactor and felt no remorse for it until outside advocates donated me a new one. They had also confiscated this chair that I'm actually in now and didn't alert me as it was as I was in the hospital. But for weeks I had no idea who had it. They returned it damaged. I now, right now could really use just 800 of that 6 million to get a new chair and bring my husband home from a detention center asleep earlier in the day. Your mike went out. Earlier in the day was the mike. Yeah, you might. Should be. Testing. Testing, testing. Yeah, I'll do it, she said. I did a sweep earlier in in this last week that I wasn't in, but I was it over there off of a I believe it was 2015. I would say, well, killed went across from, um, sunny Lawson Park. Uh, my husband had, I was actually in the hospital for hypoxic respiratory failure admitted in and my husband had to go ahead and pack down our campsite and move it away from all the other campers just due to the chaos. He wasn't the it was just too much for him. He has epilepsy and has seizures. A little later on that evening, I am released from the hospital. We're just trying to figure out where to camp because he had actually moved our stuff all the way into more towards Downing in 30th, but kind of far away. And we you know, I kind of forgot where he put the seizures. So we're looking for it. He actually had was riding his bike. He had a patch I had a seizure in front of the police. And they happened to be the night the the night officers who constantly come later on in the evening and basically say , you guys aren't welcome here, you're violating the the camping ban and whatnot, and you have to move. And they recognized him. They looked at his pockets, ran his name. And I took him to the hospital and then took him to jail. Because of this, I only lost all my things, you know, because I have no way to take care of me. But also my my sole caregiver, I got my chair back is, you know, it's it's not working, right? It's hard enough already out there. But people like myself have to go through extraordinary, difficult circumstances with nobody to help. And we're outside, let alone begging for sort of resources and not knowing whether or not we're going to be able to be blessed with a motel voucher due to whatever circumstances we have to currently live in being disabled, being sick and being having to be urban, camping and banned from all the the the resources that help people like myself, especially women bed from the only woman shelter here forced to camp outside and okay keep everything going. You know and and the fact that here Denver is my secondary home I spent my entire life here to know that you guys would quit and just say that it's okay to get $6 million for for all this harassment, the loss of things that we already have to go and gather everything that we have to do just to keep ourselves warm. I have no internal thermostat. I require like eight or nine blankets plus a make in. I'm still cold, it's horrible. And I keep working, losing things. We keep having to bail ourselves out or figure out a way out. And people like me are suffering because of this. Please, you know, $68 an hour for off duty officers who are me and would threaten us on any given basis, harass us, whether being homeless, disabled, black, any sort of anything that's not with them. And their belief system is wrong. It's wrong. And we shouldn't we should not give them this much money where we can allocate this. I live in a gentrified five points now and I can't even enjoy that gentrification. And I am a U.S. citizen, born in this airport in the United States, and I can't even enjoy it. What was it given to us for? What was gentrification for? But for us initially, yeah, we leaned it for remember that it was to help the poor people, I think poor and you know, can we, can we take a portion of that? Can we do something for us, please? Thank you. Thank you so much, Brandy. And that was just one story. We've worked with multiple people throughout this entire process, our office, case managers, situations like this intensively and very differently than our colleagues. And so we've walked with people from the moment that they're encountering the hot team two weeks after when they're supposed to be getting the support they need to get into housing. And what I can say is that this $6 million could be used so much differently, especially if we if it is indeed true that they're not drawing down on the entire $6 million, we need to reallocate these dollars and not expand the authority of who can draw down on these dollars. In fact, we should be limiting who can draw down on these dollars and not implementing contracts under one department's name and letting another one draw down. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Sandoval. Yeah. Can someone from Denver. Denver Department of Environmental Health come up and answer your question? Is anyone in the high? Good evening. My name is Paul Bedard with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. Good evening. Thank you for being here. So she just mentioned off duty police officers. Does this contract allow after the payment of off duty police officers to be used or are we using on call police officers who are not getting paid time and a half? I'm not sure I can answer that question directly. I understand. That this. Contract is only to pay third party commercial contractors to pick up solid waste. So in the power. So I'm looking and you don't have access to this but on the in an on our site we can look at the document. It says that it's for Denver Department of Rec. Parks and Recreation. Yeah, Parks and Rec. And it says safety. So that's two agencies that this contract also does. So. The fact that you can't answer if there's off duty police officers being paid is a little bit concerning to me right now. So I understand that in the power point. Excuse me. Can I. Help you? Yes, please. Can you help. Charlotte? Solid Waste Management. We do utilize some off duty police officers to support staffing our storage facility hours. When that storage facility is open, we have an off duty officer there to support that team. So can I ask you one more question? They're not the they're not the officers that are going out and actually like assisting with Denver Parks and Rec. Those cou it's it's the officer who's who basically is keeping the the pride, the the personal property safe. And the staff. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. So no other questions or comments. I just wanted to add, first of all, it was Brandi, right. Thank you for sharing your story. I think certainly I can't imagine that there's anyone up here who thinks that we are doing enough. We have a lot more to do when it comes to better serving people experiencing homelessness in our city and drastic and dramatic levels of what we need to increase. And we've been we've had our homeless retreat. We have been touring shelters. And that doesn't mean that we have all the answers or that all the answers are legislative in nature. But I think certainly you will continue to see a lot of of of work and effort for us to do much better up here. I think I just want to on this contract specifically take out of the the PowerPoint presentation that we had in committee that this contract allows for the collection, inventory and store and secure items that people leave behind on sidewalks or in parks, as well as items that people choose to store with the city manager and oversee the storage area and maintain open hours for people to retrieve their belongings, address the collection and disposal of household hazardous waste and items that are illegally dumped. Identify, manage and dispose of household hazardous waste, drug paraphernalia, unidentified substances or substances in unmarked containers and items that are soiled with bodily fluids. I think these are critical things. We have to be able to store people's personal belongings. Well, they may be somewhere doing whatever they're doing, working or whatever. When the when we come across them, we have to be able to manage that area so that people can have access to that. And, you know, on Broadway in my district right now, there are a lot of small business owners that are picking up a lot of tab cleaning up hazardous waste so that they can get in and get to work so that they can have deliveries at work. All of those things that they shouldn't be having to pay for, that the city should be helping to handle and manage. And I think that those things are critical. And so for that reason, I will be supporting this contract today. Madam Secretary, roll call. CdeBaca. No black I. Flynn I Gillmor. I. Herndon. I. Hines. I. Cashman. I. Kenny Ortega. I. Sandoval. I swear no. Torres, I. Council President. I am secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. Tonight. Two days. Ten days, two days. Resolution 68 has been adopted. All right, Madam Secretary, if you please, for the next item on our screens. And Councilmember Hines, will you please put Resolution 182 on the floor?

Recommendation to adopt Specifications No. RFQ PW16-115 and award contracts to AKM Consulting Engineers, Inc., of Irvine, CA; AndersonPenna Partners, Inc., of Newport Beach, CA; Caltrop Corporation, of Los Angeles, CA; Cumming Construction Management, Inc., of Los Angeles, CA; Harris & Associates, Inc., of Irvine, CA; Hill International, Inc., of Irvine, CA; KOA Corporation, of Monterey Park, CA; Psomas, of Santa Ana, CA; S2 Engineering, Inc., of Rancho Cucamonga, CA; Simplus Management Corporation, of Huntington Beach, CA; Stantec Consulting Services, Inc., of Irvine, CA; Vanir Construction Management, Inc., of Costa Mesa, CA; and Willdan Engineering, of Industry, CA, for providing as-needed Public Works construction management and inspection services, in an aggregate amount not to exceed $39,000,000, for a period of three years, with the option to renew for two additional one-year periods, at the discretion of the City Manager; and authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any necessary amendments relative to extending the term, adjusting the individual contract amounts withi

LongBeachCC_07052016_16-0607

Motion carries. I am 19. Report from Public Works and Financial Management Recommendation to award 13 contracts for as needed public works, construction management and inspection services in an aggregate amount not to exceed 39 million for a period of three years citywide. There's a motion and a second public comment. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a comment. Sure. Okay. Is there a staff report on this item here? Certainly. Mr. Craig, that director of Public Works. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the city council. Tonight you have an item before you that is our on call as needed construction management services. The city put out an RFP for these services. We had over 40 responses. Of those 40, we evaluated and narrowed down to roughly 20 firms that were interviewed. We're bringing forward firms that we believe will help us be successful in implementing our CHP projects, especially under measure. That concludes the staff report and I'm available for questions. Thank you, Craig. And how many of those you said there were 40. My only thing here is that there are no Long Beach resident or Long Beach business owners here. So how out of the 40 like what is the process after that? What do they have to do to be able to make this list of 13? So a council member of the 40 firms, approximately five were Long Beach firms. We went through and interviewed. Of those five, we interviewed three, I believe, that were Long Beach. None of them met the criteria of the firms that were ultimately recommended before you this evening. We do understand and support local jobs in Long Beach. We believe that there are other ways to achieve that. And any construction project that come forward that these firms would oversee does include local hiring provisions, both under play projects and non play projects. So I think we share a common goal, which is to provide jobs in Long Beach. But what you have before you are those 13 firms that staff believe are best suited to address the needs of construction management policy program. So why did they not qualify or what were the reasons for them not meeting the criteria to make it to the list? Well, typically it's because they didn't have the level of staffing. It may be a one or two person shop, and these are relatively large and complex projects. So as people went through the evaluation and went through and made presentations, staff evaluated both their experience, the projects that they work on, and the resources that they brought to bear for projects moving forward. Okay. Are there. Because I understand as well from from I believe that they're also given, you know, out of the 13, there's some sort of interview process or they come to you and they have to be vetted, if you will, to see what if they fit the criteria. Um, how many of those people were interviewed? Again, I believe that the five three went through the interview process. Okay. So three Long Beach businesses went through the interview process, correct? Okay. Um, it would I would suggest I mean, if it's possible, I think that, um, to be able to include all of those. Businesses that were interviewed because to some degree, they were they they fit some sort of criteria. And I think that out of 4013 that are not Long Beach, this is a it's a stark number. So if it's I mean, if possible for us to be able to include those Long Beach businesses, or at least the ones that came close to. Or had an interview. It would be my suggestion that this council would look at that. Councilman Mongo. Maybe I have a question that might be helpful. So if if we look at the staffing of the different organizations and let's say the 13 that did qualify, what if their staffing changes and their manager of whatever is no longer with the organization? How does that change and do people get reevaluated? How long is the term of the contract? And are there options in the future as these long each firms develop to reenter into the process? Is that a council decision to reopen in the future? Does it have a clause? Is it already settled? I guess I need to know more about that generally. Well, I think part of your question is a legal question. What I can say is that the term is typically two years. We engaged these firms for two years. We reevaluate after that. These again are as needed services and nothing is guaranteed as far as the amount of work that one particular firm would get depends on the level of IP projects that come forward and the availability and how those those firms resources match the type of work that's coming forward. So if the if the firm changes over any criteria by which they were judged, do they need to provide that information to us as a city? So I think your question is, if they if a firm goes through staffing changes, if they lose lose, for example, some key personnel. Correct. That allowed them to rate higher because of those key personnel. Would we reevaluate that contract? I think there's a twofold answer. Again, under that two year term, this is an as needed contract. If we had firm a that had an expertize in in a in a person on staff and that person moved on. We and we believed that that person's expertize was key for a project. We simply wouldn't ask that firm or bring that firm on. I completely understand that. But is there a requirement of the firm to notify us that that person has retired, left or whatever? That was a part of the initial bid? Yes. So there is a requirement under the contract terms that if key personnel are lost, that the firm must engage the city. And in telling us that that is occurred. And of all the teams being approved, are there at least multiple in every single area that we would have a contract? Or did not. So, for instance, I see there's construction. There's I'm not sure what some of these companies do, obviously, because their names are more ambiguous than others. But let's say construction, because there's a bunch that say construction management or engineering or things like that. So. In any category that we would use this as needed. Do we have multiple firms that have qualified? So if someone. Else maybe I could clarify a little bit. The item you have before you this evening is just for construction management services. Right. But those construction management services will vary greatly. So, for example, if we were building a new sports field and adding irrigation, the firm that we would use for that would be much different than the firm we would need. And the expertize of that firm to evaluate the construction of a new bridge. It's different. It's different expertize, it's different engineering knowledge depending on the complexity and type of the CHP project will typically drive the decision on what firm to bring forward. And so if we had a project, say, irrigation and there was only what would there be multiple firms on the lists that we would be able to use or if if a firm that we liked. And again, I don't know any of these firms really, but if a firm that you chose to do that project alerted you that their senior manager that let them qualify had retired. And then we were not comfortable with their new manager. Would we go out to bid again or would we just put the project on hold for two years until the next batch of these go through? Or would we just choose another firm that's less experienced? How do we work through that process? I guess we just have a lot more questions because we've got a new eye on contracting. Yeah. So I think what you have before you this evening is a number of qualified firms. Some of them have different expertize. To specifically address your question, using my example of a bridge. If there was one firm on this list that we believe was the firm that had the type of expertize necessary to evaluate that particular project , and that firm no longer had the individuals working for them that met that expertize, then the answer would be no. We would not bring on an alternate firm to provide construction management, and we would either a identify a firm, come forward to council and ask for a contract with that firm. Or B we would come back and add names to this particular list for as needed consulting services. That makes me feel great. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that. We've had a couple of questions come in through email this week, and I think that it's really important for people to know that while they are judged on the expertize of the staff and we are at a time in our life cycle of baby boomer employees that people are leaving the workforce, that we have those protections in place. So I appreciate your diligence on this and we appreciate your work. Mr. Parkin, you wanted to chime in. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council to the council member. Gonzalez, to your question and a correction, I think to the what the director said tonight, you would approve a contract for three years and with an additional two one year options to maintain this list for up to a maximum of five years. But as the director indicated, that if there were changes or companies fell off of this list, obviously the director and the city manager could come back and add names or of additional companies that could come to that. I do have a concern about just adding additional firms based upon the location of that firm. I don't have any of the information in front of me, but there would be a criteria that the selection committee went through to determine which firms qualified and met the requirements of the request for proposals. And if the firm that would be added does not meet that request for proposals, then we're not following a process that we would be required of every other RFP. They have to meet the certain criteria. And so without knowing more specifics about which firms those were, I would be hesitant just to blanket ad firms based upon their address. Cancer prostate. Oh, man. Thanks, Charlie. I think you might have answered a couple of questions that I might may have had, but I wanted to be clear on how we how we came to 13 were those that 13 that that met the qualifications or might there have been 20 that met the qualifications? But you felt like the 13 were the best. How do we arrive at that number? Yeah, so that's a good question. Again, this was a very competitive process. We had 40 firms that responded to the RFP and I won't say that's unprecedented, but that is a lot more than we would typically see. Of those 40, we felt that the most qualified of the 40 should come forward and go through a panel interview process. So there was a group of professionals that represented different interests within the city organization that evaluated these presentations. There were 20 firms that came forward and made presentations, and of those 20 firms, this recommendation, the 13 that recommended for you this evening, came out of that process. So the panel is recommending these 13 firms. Okay. So to to the city attorney's point what it is. Does the council have the ability, based on the information here, to say, for example. We want 15 farms and. And. To include two more firms and strongly consider local local firms. Um, for. For for consideration. Would that be out of line? Certainly from a legal standpoint, you could request staff to go back and to reevaluate, to see if any of the other firms that they interviewed meet the qualifications necessary to be included on the firm. If you didn't believe 13 was a sufficient number, I would leave that up to the city manager and the director to say how many firms they believe are necessary to get this work done. But as they indicated in the past, if they didn't have the expertize in one of these firms, the answer would be to come back to council and add a firm or to add a specific contract for that particular project. So to other questions of the firms that are here. Would they be prime? And would these guys would these firms. Be up to to some kind of subcontract to other other firms. Typically for construction management services. The vendors on this list or the firms listed here have in-house expertize and resources that they would do the work directly. It's not typically a situation where they would subcontracted, subcontract out this type of work. There may be there may be conditions where they would need additional support for a project and they would consider that. But typically, the firms that you have before you this evening are those that have the expertize, resources and experience to meet the demands of our IP projects. And I would add something, I think, to this conversation. Again, I think Council appreciates my perspective on local hiring and and the need to provide opportunities here for residents in Long Beach. And I just want to make sure that when we're talking about Long Beach firms, that it's really it's employees, right? We want to make sure that it's it's the residents of the city and not just a firm's address. So, for example, one of the firms that is not on your list tonight is a large construction management firm. They have a Long Beach office, but their main headquarters is in Phenix. So I don't know if you would consider that a Long Beach firm or not. But I would point to local firms should should be looked at as those that are employing Long Beach residents. That would at least be my perspective. Well, is that a question in the interview process of any of the. I don't have that data before me, but we can certainly put that together. Yeah. I would love to know that. And and of the 13 firms that I knew. Then they're not all guaranteed to actually get a job or get work. Right. Now, again, I want to stress this is as needed services. There's no guaranteed work. Thank you. And just as a as a reminder, as I know we have a couple of more comments, I think, which are obviously which is always the case. We always want the idea of bringing our local folks in is always important to everyone. But just as a reminder in Mr. Parking, correct if I'm wrong, but these these RFP proposal, the process that these go through, we're also following very clear and strict guidelines that are legal as far as what can be considered and what is actually a preference or not a preference before this process even starts. And so in this case, I know that address of of business is not something that is looked at. Is that correct? That is correct. The Long Beach does, and the council has adopted a local preference for nonprofessional services, materials, equipment and supplies. But this is a professional service contract. So there is not a local preference ordinance that would apply to this type of a contract. Okay. Thank you, Councilman. Super now. Discount on your ring. I've been skipping them, like, every time. Thank you very did take in the motion. One of the concerns that I have always raised consistently is the inclusion of diversity, of having very tired that have a commitment towards equity diversity. Small business enterprises, women, women owned businesses, as well as minority owned businesses. I see a lot of the while. None of the 13 is a minority owned business, there's a few women owned businesses. But being being that said, I recognize a few of these companies during my time at the Lonely City College and the huge construction contracts that we had over there, I recognized all these companies and I do know that they have do have some minorities working with them in terms of administrative as well as workers. So I mean, I'm okay with that. The the one thing that I do look at and and I feel encouraged. Is that one sentence right below the list that says that these firms are committed to using small, local and disadvantaged areas as subcontractors. I think that's an excellent sense to put there. The only thing that I would want to know is, is there a a mechanism by which this is going to be monitored, such as a a consultant that would be monitoring the the contracts themselves in terms of their compliance with diversity hiring and the the construction and in the construction project as they move forward. So I can in other words, using not like a compliance officer or compliance agency to monitor those contracts. Councilmember Turanga to provide some some insight as to the construction process. So the city has has engaged a compliance officer for all of the construction activity that we engage in, and that includes both the play work to make sure we're in compliance with the play. And if you recall, part of the play language includes a DB component and there is a goal of 10% participation in all of our construction projects. For the for the most part, construction management services that you have before you tonight are for larger projects. And and those projects are typically going to go over the $500,000 threshold, which is where we have our plate placed. So there is a compliance element associated with all of our construction activity. To my knowledge, I don't know. And I would have to reach out and have a conversation with our purchasing manager. I don't know how individual professional services contracts are are reviewed for participation with with subcontractor components. Well, again, I want to re-emphasize the need for diversity in our contracts that we pay close attention. I'm not I'm not so much concerned about the address as I am about the diversity of the contracts that we offer. I think that's very important because I know that with that sentence there that we're going to be looking at local hires and local businesses to do contract with. But, you know, let's just give the jobs to where they deserve to be. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. Council member Supernormal. Thank you. I think I'll get in the weeds now because I don't think we're there quite yet. But just just I just want to clarification on the subbing issue from from what I'm hearing is that there's no law or there's no rule against one of the contractors subbing part of the job. But de facto, practically, it rarely happens. Is that what you're stating? Again, it really depends on the type of construction activity that's occurring and what that firm would need in the way of support. Okay. My my suggestion was folks who didn't make the cut could apply to be on a subs list. Ultimately. And they mentioned that this doesn't guarantee you a contract if you make the list. Not only that, if you get a contract that doesn't necessarily guarantee you work if it's a large project also. So that's is just it's a great milestone to make this list, but it does not guarantee a job. Also, I think I've heard that it's been about four weeks since these decisions were made. And I don't know if that's been enough time for contractors to regroup or whatever to figure out how they want to approach this again . I don't know if there's been enough time for them to think about this, but would it be appropriate to revisit this in six months or something like that to see if if we need to upgrade the list? Does that comport with with what we're doing here legally? From a legal standpoint, yes, you could either lower the term of this agreement or you could ask them to management to give you a off council agenda memo item on how it's doing or what they see on it. You have you have options here this evening that would be legal to change the scope of this contract. I'm wonder if that would satisfy satisfy the need of Councilmember Gonzalez. What you're saying it to give folks another shot of it at six months or some type of interim period like that. If that would be acceptable to the council here on this item. Yes. I think that would be fair if we're able to do that. I don't know if that's enough time. Would that be enough time to assess? It may not be enough time to assess. I leave that to the discretion, Director. You could you could change this agreement to one year agreements at the option of the city manager and he could, you know, renew it each year individually. Okay. And council member. Super or not, are you done? I just wanted to make. Sure you go ahead. I would just thought of that option that you might want to explore, so. Yeah, I'm done. Thanks. So just to kind of address the particular question I think is staff, if we were asked to come back and expand the list to include some Long Beach businesses, then I think that that's what we should be asked to do. I think doing. Coming back and renewing our contracts in six months or a year is we can do, but it just creates more challenges. You have to remember the complexity of many of these projects are multiyear projects and I wouldn't like it would be challenging to assign a construction firm to a project that then crossed their contract term. So we are asking for a period of time to ensure that we have the resources necessary to address multiyear projects. So if really the council's goal here tonight is to try to find a way to add more Long Beach firms to the list, then then I would ask to provide that direction. And we will come back and we will amend this list and we will include some on beach firms or a or a mechanism that would allow Long Beach firms to either subcontract with the firms listed. So I would prefer that just I mean, I it's not just because they're Long Beach, but it's because they're qualified and they're from Long Beach. And I think we need to make an extra effort in light of so many reports that have come out. There's been added scrutiny, and we're the ones ultimately that have to make the decision. And of course, with your recommendation and your suggestions, we certainly respect them and we want to make sure we're doing the right thing here. So I just I see this list. It's it's striking. There's 1340 people applied, you know, zero Long Beach I keep saying residents, Long Beach business businesses. And so if there is a way we can reassess that. Mr. City Attorney, what was your recommendation on doing that? I think that would be. Well, I think I concur with the director here. If the substitute motion is to direct staff to review the list and see if there's any additional firms that qualify under the RFP, they could bring back a revised proposal to you maybe relatively quickly. Okay, that would be great. I would, I would, uh, would love to do that. So if there is a opportunity for me to make a substitute motion for that, I would like to get myself the support of the Council. Can I ask Mr. City Attorney, because I want to just clarification as the substitute comes in as well, because I think I'm hearing two different things and I just want to make sure we're clear, because I think also I know I know that a reason why this is a lot of this is forward is because the timeliness of the measure, a work which if this isn't if we don't move this forward or putting back also the work that needs to happen to begin the immense amount of construction that needs to begin after October one. So what I'm hearing, though, and I agree, is there's incredible interest to ensure that that local businesses are included in this. And so I think what I've heard from Mr. Beck and the your interpretation, we're a little bit different. I heard one is to approve the folks that are here tonight so that the critical work that needs to begin can begin, but also then open up and review and see if there's other folks that are local folks going to be added to this list or just reject the list completely and start over. But open it up to local folks. Is that what I'm hearing, Councilwoman, or because I. May remember I was talking with the city manager and the director and the way you described it would certainly work to you could adopt tonight and direct staff to bring back additional firms that qualify for this list to add those to those listed at an in a later date or do the the previous way I described it . So that is an option that you have before you also. We can do that. And how long would you would you need a director to be able to bring back? Additional companies, if need be. We have all the data. We've gone through the review process. We know the firms. I wouldn't want to open it up to a new RFP. I think we have some large firms on there and we would simply bring back those firms and ask you to amend the list that you adopt tonight and include those particular firms. I could say next week, but I'm not sure we could get on next week's agenda. So maybe two weeks. Two weeks. Okay, that would be great. I would be amenable to that. So we go ahead and I'll approve the motion to go ahead and approve these firms. And then, yes, if we can come back and you'd be coming back to the council. Correct? Because I would just recommend that you do that. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it has to come back here because you have to the council has to approve it. So. Right. And so just so I'm clear, the motion on the floor, which is a substitute for Councilwoman Gonzalez, is to approve the presented lists, the list tonight. And then in a couple of weeks, you're coming back to the council with additional firms to add to this list, taking into consideration the interest of the council to include local Long Beach firms. Councilwoman, is that correct? Okay. And then who was the second council member? Sabrina. Okay. Okay. So you just amended that that that motion. Okay. Councilwoman Mango. I'm just glad that we're I'm strongly encouraging my council colleagues to move forward on approving the list that's here tonight. There's a lot of work scheduled, and I know that we've been making commitments to our community on street repairs and tree removals and sidewalks and bridges and all sorts of things. And I think that it's important to take this dual track, and I think that that was a very wise amendment by Councilmember Gonzalez. And I'll be supporting that two weeks. Thank you. So there's a motion who's a second on it to chime in on there. I know, but it's not in the. There we go. Or I guess, Austin. So there's a motion or second public comment on this item. Please come forward. Very good. You click. Okay, so the address number of comments, the first thing caught my attention is the dollar amount here we're talking about is 10,000, $10 million short of half the cost of building the. This new civic center. Number two, I think it would be wise again to suggest that get an analysis from give it the dollar amount and the import of the projects and analysis from our city auditor. As to the comments of the need to own the imperatives of hiring local. Let me share this experience with you. As I watched the project a number of years not too long ago unfold and watched every single day. And I noticed. People standing around doing essentially nothing. Looks like a group of Larry, Curly and Moe. And the this was these were people that the contractor was forced to hire. And that did not had the skill level to do what is. The jobs, the reformed. I think that argues well to have a report from the city auditor. That's particularly in view of the last report she gave relative to the findings of some earlier contracts. Again the what we want. If you again, you take your kid to a hospital. Do you want the best person or do you want to look necessarily a local person? When you take your car in, you want it done by the best person. Or a local person. And the two are not always the same. Hence. Turn to the city auditor. Ask for her analysis of it. Thank you. Thank you. Any of the public comment? See none. There's a motion in the second. Please cast your vote.

AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 805 West 38th Avenue in Globeville. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property from I-B UO-2 to C-MX-20 (industrial in the former zoning code to urban center, mixed-use), located at 805 West 38th Avenue in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 1-29-19. Amended 2-11-19 to clarify the boundary of the proposed rezoning on Galapago Street.

DenverCityCouncil_03112019_19-0042

Council is reconvening. We have two public hearings this evening. Speaker should begin the remarks by telling the council their names and cities of residents and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. If you're here to answer questions only when your name is called, come to the podium. State your name and note that you are available for questions of council. Speakers will have 3 minutes and there is no yielding of time on the presentation monitor. On the wall you will see your time counting down. Speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech structure comments the Council as a whole, and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Council Gilmore Will you please put Council Bill 19 0042 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 19 dash 004 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for council will 19 0042 is open. May we have the staff report? Thank you, Mr. President. And Council Scott Robinson with Community Planning and Development. This is a request to rezone 805 West 38th Avenue from I.B. oh two to see Annex 22 property is located in Council District nine in the Globeville neighborhood in the 41st and Fox station area. It's just north of 38th Avenue, although it does not have direct access to 38th Avenue. It's about two and a half acres, and it's currently used as rental and storage of heavy equipment. As I said, the request is to go from I.B. to which is heavy industrial with the Billboard Use overlay to see an x 2002, which is urban center neighborhood context mixed use with a 20 storey maximum height and it would retain that billboard use overlay that you go to. The applicant is requesting the rezoning to position the property for redevelopment. The property is surrounded on two sides by the same Ibey you go to the south and the west to the north is see an x 20 of the same as being requested and to the east is seems 12. The current use on the property is industrial and the surrounding area has a mix of industrial, commercial, mixed use and residential. You can see the. Don't have it up on the screen. The this. Thanks. Thank you. So you can see the subject property in the bottom right photo there and then some of the other surrounding properties in the surrounding photos. This went to planning board on January 9th, 2019, received a recommendation of approval by an 8 to 1 vote. There was no public comment and meeting went to the Land Use Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on January 29th of this year, and there's been no other public comment on this application. In order to approve a rezoning, the city must find that these five criteria have been met. The first criterion is consistency with adopted plans. There are four adopted plans that apply to this property. First is Comprehensive Plan 2000. As described in the staff report, staff finds the proposed rezoning consistent with these six strategies from comprehensive thousand, mostly relating to infill development and mixed use development, especially near transit stations. The second plan is Blueprint Denver from 2000 to the concept land use for this property. In Blueprint, Denver's transit oriented development, which calls for a balanced mix of uses at mid to high densities. And it's in an area of change, which is an area where the city wants to direct additional growth. 38th Avenue is a mixed use arterial, which calls for higher intensity and mix of uses. Although, as I mentioned, the property does not have direct access to 30th Avenue. So even though there's no access there, access is provided by 39th Avenue, which is a non-designated local meant to connect the property to the larger streets, including Fox Street , which is also a mixed use arterial which connects down to 38th Avenue, Park Avenue and IE 25, which is all consistent with the proposed Sea Annex 20 zoning. The third plan is the 41st and Fox stationary plan from 29. The land use designation in that plan for this property is mixed use office residential 3 to 20 storeys, which calls for housing and employment base a significant amount of development and pedestrian friendly development, all of which is consistent with the proposed C Annex 20 zoning. The fourth plan is the Globeville Neighborhood Plan from 2014. It mostly just reiterates the recommendations of the 41st and Fox stationary plan in this area, again calling for 20 storeys, a diverse, transit supportive neighborhood with a mix of jobs and residential. Consistent with the proposed SIMEX 20 zoning system finds, the first criterion is met. The second criterion is uniformity of district regulations. Steph finds the proposed rezoning would result in the uniform application of the C annexed 20 zone district. The third criterion is to further the public health, safety and general welfare of the city. Staff finds the proposed rezoning would do so by implementing the city's adopted plans and facilitating the redevelopment of the property in a pedestrian friendly and transit oriented manner appropriate for the area. The fourth criterion is justifying circumstances. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning is justified by change in changing conditions, including the Globeville Neighborhood Plan adopted in 2014 and the recent investments in the area. The construction of the 41st and Fox Station. Even though the G line is not operating yet, and there has been some new redevelopment, including just a block to the east along Foch Street, there's some new commercial development changing the area and making the proposed rezoning justified. The fifth criterion is consistency with neighborhood context, zoned district purpose and intent. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning would result in development consistent with the description of the urban center neighborhood context and the purpose and intent of the C Annex 20 zone district, which is intended to apply to areas or intersections served primarily by major arterial streets where buildings scale 3 to 20 storeys is desired. As pointed out in the plans, this area is intended for 3 to 20 storeys, and while it does not have direct access to a major arterial, it is one block away from Fox Street, which is a arterial and then a block south to 38th Avenue, Park Avenue and I-25 , which are major arterials. So staff finds the area served by those major arterials. And the fifth criterion that of that staff finds all five criteria are met and recommends approval. I'll be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. We have three individuals signed up to speak on this item this evening. First up is Jean Schaefer. Go ahead. Good evening. My name is Jeannie Schaefer. I'm with Groundwork Entitlement Services. I am the owner's representative for this application, and I don't have a presentation prepared tonight, but I am here to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. Next up, Chairman Sekou. Oh. My name is Chairman Suku. Founder, organizer of Black Star Action Movement for Self-defense. Also the next mayor city of Denver, 2019. On the surface. This zoning for this particular area, we've had several zoning this year appears to be a good thing. It's going to provide economic activity, is going to provide housing and is on an arterial where we're talking about density and 20 storeys going up. And yet as you peel the layers of the onion is crying time. Because now we've got to get to the nitty gritty of the details, like how many units are going to go to folks who can afford it. Not affordable. That who can actually pay. 30% or less. But their medium income for the state. Now, anybody who's paying more than 30% for housing. Is it an abomination? You can't get no mortgage loan on that. Unless you're making megabucks. So where is the 30% or less units in this thing for people who can afford it, whether they are low income or middle income? Where is that? And how many units. Is in that? Or is this another. Scheme to provide housing made and pushed by developers who are paying the political bills? Politicians. So I can't go for this. After coming down here for a decade or more and seeing more and more and more of this is the law. But so was slavery, the law. But we do obey that law today because it's the law, or you stand up. For what's right. It was human. And as you paint yourself in this corner. Martin Luther King once said, and I'll close with this. You showed me a man and woman who's not committed. To the advancement of human life other than themselves, they're not fit to live. 1957 City Park. On that statue, Montgomery Bus Boycott. That's the history. And that's the man who we celebrate every year. And we desecrate his legacy by not doing the right thing. As soon as the day is over. That's like going to church on Sunday and the busses starts. I'm sorry, but your time is up. Next up, Jesse Pierce. Jesse Pierce, who represented for Denver, home of Salo Black, starts a moment for self defense and positive commitment for social change. And I'm also an at large candidate for the 2019 May election. We are against this. As this is just business as usual. This neighborhood is already being ran to rapidly gentrified like all parts of the city, and there seems to be no stop, no end in sight. You guys keep. Passing these rezonings in a community is telling you they do not want these things. They're being forced to accept these things. I have several questions. I want to know exactly what is the RMR. Level. For this rezoning. I want to know exactly who is going to be occupying these spaces. And I want to know. How long it's going to take for this construction to happen. And also. Why? You just keep pushing through these rezonings with no care in sight. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Are there questions from members of Council on this item? All right. Seeing. No question. Oh, Councilman Lopez. Yeah, I have one question. Can I can have you come to the microphone really quick? I wanted to ask about the rail and how close this is to the Union Pacific rail yards. The rail track is directly to the east. So the property abuts the the rail. It's the RTD tracks first and then RTD tracks first. Thank you. Then I'm not Union Pacific. Sorry. BNSF. Are there any buffers? I mean, I know that this question always comes up, and especially when it comes to to emergency management. Whenever we have rail, anything like that, what are the are there any were there any kind of conversations in terms of protocol, noise, spill, things like that? What are some of the conditions that that have been satisfied this to continue? Yeah, not as part of the rezoning. Those items were all addressed as part of the site development plan. So when this property does come in for redevelopment, they will look at it and address all those concerns about its proximity to the rail. I appreciate that. And I know that my colleague, Councilman Ortega, would probably ask that question as well to I've been to the same kind of program to the emergency management. I think it's it's always important. I mean, whenever we have heavy rail with a lot I mean, literally all you got to do is sit there and just watch it go by. You put a time lapse camera, you see airplane fuselages, you see coal, you see liquid, you see so much coming through there with a lot of population as we're building up, I just hope that in the development plan we address that in as any kind of mitigation should something God forbid it doesn't happen so. Thank you. Thank you. Guzman-Lopez Councilman Flynn. Thanks, Mr. President. SCOTT This is the Wagner rents building. And I recall some discussion a few years ago not related to this rezoning, but in another context, something I was working on, in fact actually the Gold Line commuter rail that there might be that that building might be eligible for historic landmark designation. Was there? Maybe. I'm sorry, I forgot your name. The owner representative could speak to whether we you have applied for demolition or what the future of that building is. Ginny Schaefer We did apply for a certificate of non historic status and were granted that for all of the buildings on site. But currently we have no plans for demolition or re-use of those buildings. Okay. But you do have the certificate? Yes. Good. For five years. Correct. Okay. There was the property posted. Yes, it was. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. That's all I'm asking. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. See no other questions. The public hearing for Council Bill 19, just zero zero for two is closed. Are there any comments by members of council? All right. Seeing none. I just think staff for the comprehensive staff report, I think that this one clearly meets the criteria and we'll be supporting tonight. Madam Secretary, Roll Call. Black Eye. Brooks Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. Hi. Gilmore. I Herndon. I. Cashmere. Hi. Lopez. All right, new. Assessment. Hi, Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary, please call the voting and announce the results. 11 nice Lebanese country on 19 20042 has passed. Councilman Lopez, will you please put Council Bill 19.0058 on the floor?

A bill for an ordinance adopting a new Article IX of Chapter 28 of the Revised Municipal Code concerning “Prohibition of Conversion Therapy.” Amends Chapter 28 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code (DRMC) by adding Article IX concerning the prohibition of conversion therapy for minors. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-19-18.

DenverCityCouncil_01072019_18-1508

Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. And Madam Secretary, would you please put the next item on our streams and classroom? Can each go ahead with your comment? Thank you. Thank you to my colleague for his kind words. Bill 1508 I'm proud to be a member of the out LGBTQ community, the first one to serve on this council. But I'm pretty humbled because I don't lead or speak for this community. I serve it. And the members of this community are most active in Denver from the LGBTQ commission, and many of them are here tonight. And this bill is the result of their proposal that this was important for us to tackle at the city, their ideas about the best way to do that, and then their work to work with the Human Rights and Community Partnership Department and other experts like one Colorado, to get what we needed. I just wanted to give a short summary of the longer comments that I offered last week, which is that societal expectations to be rigidly male or rigidly female or to love someone in a heterosexual relationship are powerful and sometimes reinforced with violence and threats in our society. If you know someone who's lesbian or gay or or who has transitioned from their gender that they were born or raised as then you know that the feelings that someone has about their gender and the person that they love comes from deep inside of them. It's as innate as as I was trying to explain this to my son and it's like being left handed or right handed society may expect everyone to be right handed, but the shame and the the embarrassment and the cajoling can't change you into someone else. It can't change you into a left handed person. Any more than conversion therapy can change you into someone who's straight. Or change your gender from what you feel on the inside. And so this bill tonight is about banning a practice that exemplifies and leverages shame to try to convince people that they can change who they are. It's a practice that's been well documented to be dangerous by dozens of medical organizations that are outlined for almost a half page in the bill. And today, we're going to protect our most vulnerable community members, minors, from this dangerous practice. And we're going to affirm the fact that they may need support because there is shame and rejection when society rejects individuals for who they are. But then we want to give them the support they need to work through that we don't want to use dangerous practices. So I'm proud to have been part of this bill as well with a straight ally. This council has passed many pro equity ordinances even without a majority, this LGBTQ. And so every day it's an honor to work with Councilman Clark and the other members of this council who never shy away from being strong advocates, even if it's not a life experience that they've all lived. So with that, I am proud to have this be part of our consent agenda without debate, but not without comment, because it's an important piece of legislation. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Kenny. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. First, I want to say thanks to the LGBTQ commission for elevating this conversation, for this body to bring this forward, and then Councilwoman can each for bringing this forward. I also want to express my appreciation to Representative Brianna Two-Tone for having brought a proclamation to us that we adopted. I want to say, like three months ago, raising this very issue, and it was passed unanimously among this body. And it's my understanding that you will be doing this at the state level, hopefully. So for for your efforts and for for, you know, bringing that out to us and being willing to come and testify when we brought it forward. I just want to say thank you also for for your work on this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega, Councilman Lopez. And thank you to my colleague, Councilman Canete for bringing this forward in front of the city council and the mayor's office for their position on and just for our commission. Our commission is amazing in Denver. It's not just the commission for namesake, but it's a it's an activist commission. It's active and recommends policies and is a part of our public body and how you create policy. So thank you so much for your participation. Thank you for your leadership. You know, when this came to committee, I couldn't I. Couldn't believe that we had to explicitly banning what we do we do because we cannot. Allow people to be tortured into hating themselves, because that's what this this therapy is. It's not therapy. It's torture, plain and simple. It's cruel and inhumane. And we have to stand. Up to that. And so I'm glad that Denver can be included in those lists of cities that does not condone torture. In any way, shape or form. And so, you know, I'll say I said this in committee. And I'll say it again, you know, as a parent, it's my job. To make sure that my child is not brought up in. Chaos, to protect them from chaos. For them to be who they are and to love them for who they are. Right. And that goes with. Everybody in this world that's born. There to be loved for who they are, not to be tortured and to hating themselves. So thank you for for bringing this this forward. And I'm proud to be on this council to vote on this in this city. Thank you. Councilwoman, can you. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. See no other comments. I'll just add one more round of thank you to Councilwoman Ortega for bringing forward the proclamation to Councilwoman Kane, each for being an awesome partner and leader on this. To the administration for keeping with this. After we thought where we were, we didn't know if we could find a route to tonight at the city level and to the city attorney's office for really putting in a lot of work to find us that route to the commission for all of your awesome work pushing the city and bringing these things forward. And, you know, I really liked Councilwoman Can to what you said. And so I'm going to say to you, I certainly don't speak for our LGBTQ community, but I'm very proud to represent that community tonight and to represent all the awesome allies to that community that we have in my district and across the city. I think that the two think two words that came up where this is going through tonight on consent. And we passed this as a proclamation unanimously. And I think that says a lot about Denver and how we are trying to do our best to support this community and make sure that we are the best representatives that we can be for our awesome people. So we we love you and I'm very excited to be here. The other thing I was really excited for tonight, so I'm excited to vote yes so that Madam Secretary or we're not going to vote because it's consent.

AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance providing for a moratorium prohibiting the approval of site development plans and the amendment of approved site development plans for construction of buildings using the Garden Court building form in the Denver Zoning Code for a period of approximately twelve months. Approves a moratorium prohibiting the approval of site development plans and the amendment of approved site development plans for construction of buildings using the Garden Court building form in the Denver Zoning Code for a period of approximately twelve months. This bill was approved for filing by Councilmember New. Amended 7-25-16 to allow current projects already in the pipeline to move forward as long as the projects comply with the added conditions.

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It has been moved in second at the public hearing for 541 is open. May we have the overview accounts? A new share. Thank you, Mr. President. If you could please be silent while you are exiting. Thank you. Okay. This also is a second moratorium about an unintended consequences, about a garden caught building for form. And it's misuse right now. So let's look at why do we need this moratorium, just like we talked about the small court. And I believe I've always say this, you know, because the use of this form. But here's a garden court building form. A garden court building for them with no garden and no court. Just like a joke. And so I keep thinking that there's something wrong here. And I think we all recognize that. That we need to do something about this in the zoning code. There's a lot of language in there is very confusion, confusing. We see specific intent, but doesn't allow garden code form, but then we do allow it. So we've got to straighten out the language. It really conflicts with neighborhood character. You know, we're talking about increasing density and I think we all know density is coming. But but when you look at the zoning code, again, it says there's no maximum of the number of units on a parcel. I think we may be going a little too far. I think we need to have a little discussion about what what density means and and be able to make sure it doesn't affect existing neighborhood character and or quality of life. And I was glad to see that the community planning development, they recognized the unintended consequences of this and we need to review this. I don't think they intended to do this. The Zone didn't. It's one of those things. Too small. Too small. I know. We need to really take a time out and reevaluate. Okay. Go back to the next picture. This shows. You know, like the next back to the Garden Court. The other way. There. Go. One more. Here we go. This is the picture of this in the zoning code. You know, you think, well, this is you know, it's an old town, but looks like five units. But the main thing it shows it shows a central area that's a garden court. And these can be very beautiful kind of arrangements. You've got instances of of units on to the guard court and some on the street, but you don't have a garage. But the main thing is you have a very defined garden court area that can have wonderful, beautiful landscaping and be a very beautiful, designed building for challenges we see with it in the existing zoning code. He says, you know, a minimum width of the garden court is 15 feet. It's like a large sidewalk. And so we'll show you some pictures in a minute of how it's been implemented. It was really just a lack of sufficient space for any kind of landscaping. It has very insufficient solar access and and permeable surfaces. And also, he talks about having three sides of a building facade and just sort of like that diagram, we had three different buildings around a garden court. We don't see that being implemented as well. Also in some districts where the row house is is the zoning district is being used just as part of the garden court. We see there's a vertical overlap which is prohibited in the in the zoning code. You can't put a row house above a row house, there's no stacking allowed. And so it's not like some other building type, but and so you can't increase density but by doing stacking. And again, it's all about density affecting design. Okay. Here's here's an example. In D.C. District nine, Councilman Brooks District shows a picture of a nice beach house intended as an older area. We see. But you see on the picture on the right, you see the garden caught in the middle and the units all around on three sides. Now, here's one. Here's an example. It was being implemented. You can see where is the garden court? Where is the where is that area? Where are the three sides? All you see is is is apartments coming off of of a concrete sidewalk. Nothing really attractive. No garden, no court. Here's another example of this was an incongruous park in my district as another example of the yield of a garden court project you see around a beautiful garden. Court is a nice oval, beautiful design and you know, not very high density, but you can easily see where it could be more dense. But the main thing, the design of the garden court is really beautiful and attractive and a real asset to that community. In the next one. Next one. Here's one in my district. When I first saw it, I thought it was a prison. I looked at it and I said, Well, you know, the Department of Corrections is moving in. And so but this is a garden court for them. This is a 15 foot sidewalk down. It's not even 54 sidewalks, 15 feet from building the building and the sidewalk there. No, no landscaping. You see a paper and you can see the interest. On the third side is really an entrance to the parking garage below. So we're just not implementing as it was intended. So the real confusion in the zoning code, we just need to be real clear about what the what the language should be. We need to make sure that the language matches what we want to implement and encourage better development, better design. We know we'll have some greater density, but we've got to make sure that our language matches what what we want to be implemented. Neighborhood character. You know, the mayor's talked in the city. This dress talked about beautiful neighborhoods. We have we do. We have gorgeous neighbors. I know I have one of those in District ten and we want to make sure they stay beautiful. And so we need to match character with density. Density is coming, but there has to be a balance. And balance is a key word. We've got to have smart development, recognizing the unique areas and the building forms we've got. And, and we really want a very attractive quality of life area in a courtyard. If we're going to have a car garden court building for let's do it right. Let's make it beautiful and attractive like it can be. Let's do surfaces that attract good landscaping unless we have real clarity in the zoning code. Shouldn't be any confusion when you read the zoning code is should tell you what to do. You should be real clear about what it's doing. And so residents will have great predictability of what's going to happen in their neighborhoods. And also most important and really it needs to have a still a real greater community's sense of community with residents and developers. This garden court should be a real asset to the community. Right now. We've got we get we restarted the moratorium a couple of weeks ago. We had six applications in process in the first reading. Right now, three of them didn't proceed. You know, one of them was on Colorado Boulevard and our city council did not approve the zoning for it. It was going to be a garden court and it was going to be like a, you know, the density. There was going to be twice as twice as much as what was allowed. And so our city council wisely rejected that. And two other applications on, say, Paul and Lawrence to decide they decided not to move forward. So right now, we just have we have three applications using the garden court to a marine concept review, which means the design review, and then one is in final review. Just to show you some pictures. These are the ones that were withdrawn, just three different areas. Let's go to the ones that are in the. And then was Dover proposing an exemption? These are going through concert reviews or I remember tonight we were talking about allowing anything is accepted into its concept review to be to be moved forward. And so that's what these three are. Boulevard One is a special good example where it has a 50 to 60 foot garden chord. It's very beautiful, all rowhouses houses. So that's a very good example. So I'm looking forward to this moratorium. We have this discussion. So the big areas of our mortuary we're talking about with, you know, Castle Espinosa that are sponsoring this, and Councilman Espinosa, being an architect is really being so critical to helping develop some of this. And and the with his suggestion is the height of the building the tallest proposed building is the width of the garden quarry could be, you know, 30 to 35 feet stacking in the building in the zoning code. No. If it's a real house form, no stack is allowed the bounding buildings. We need to really make sure if we gonna have three sided garden core designs. Let's make sure there are three sides in there, have buildings in dwelling units, and unless truly create something that should be a garden court buildings around dwelling units around a garden port. So again, we have three applications to be exempt and denied just because they are accepted into the concept review. And this is a 12 month moratorium, we want to make sure that this is get done. We want to bring a lot of participation. All residents, architects and our city council. Just like with this small lot, we want a lot of good cross-section of people to talk about this. And and we're we're lucky that Kyle Dalton and his team are going to lead this, and they're excited about tackling this evaluation. So we're looking forward to hopefully gaining support for this moratorium tonight. Thank you, Councilman. Newt, I understand you are making an amendment tonight. And so I want you to read that amendment into the record so that the folks who are commenting tonight can comment on the the amended bill, the amendment that you're about to make. Okay. And proceed. Okay. Most of the amendments tonight are just technical corrections. My speed is. And so the most important section is the section that allows those applications that are scheduled for concept review to be exempt from moratorium. So let me read the the changes to the the bill. I'd like to move to amend Council Bill 541 as amended on July 25th as follows. Number one on page two, lines 17. Strike the word courtyard and replace it with garden court. On page two, line 18, strike the word courtyard and replace it with garden court. Oh, number three, page two, line 18, insert the word tallest before the word proposed. On page two, lines 18 and 19, strike the words buildings abutting the garden court. Oh, he said. Yeah, just. I'm sorry. Just the overview. It's fine. Yeah. Well, gave you a preview. Anyway, they're just general changes, and that's what they mean. It's all about the main thing is this the section that allows the those three applications to be exempt. Thank you. All right. We have 19 speakers tonight. And I'm going to call the first five speakers up to this first bench. So Robbie Hoban, George Mayo, Nathan Adams, Margie Valdez and Angela Steiner. Ravi. You'll be first. If you could make your way up, that'd be great. Okay. Go ahead. Oh, well, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen of the Denver City Denver City Council, for this opportunity to speak to you about garden variety. If you can, introduce yourself to you. Sorry. My name is Robbie Hoban. And I live at 24th and Glenarm and one of the cute six that were built in 1885. And I'm kind of an unintentional resident of that area. I used to live at 14th and high in a high rise and loved it. But when I broke my collarbone, I moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband, and thought, I never want to live here, but I ended up staying and I love it. We're so close to the library, the light rail. We walked for a not so safe way. I absolutely love living there. And some friends and I had been talking about a year and a half ago as we were starting to get concerned about the container buildings that were going in that didn't fit with the spirit of Curtis Park being over 100 years old. I've loved our neighborhood mostly, and I think mostly the thing that concerns me is it doesn't feel like so much of a residential neighborhood in some areas. We're in kind of an odd corner that got sliced by the Walton corridor, which we're happy to see go in. There are a few garden court forms in our area that feel like a hug, just like you described. I didn't realize how much work you all had already done with this. So, you know, the garden court feels like this, but some of the ones that are going in now feel more like this, or maybe if I can do this this way or maybe this way or this way. So as you're walking along, Maggie and I call it we love our walkable and Taco Bell neighborhood, we feel. But with these kind of apartments, we can't even get the delivery of the Curtis Park newsletter into some of these new places, much less knock on the door and ask, Have you seen my cat, Dinah? Which is like Shannon, who lived across the street or my cat recently, who escaped. So we really do in Curtis Park in Five Points Need Eyes on the street, which make for a more safe neighborhood. If you've been to our neighborhood at 24th and Glenarm, there's all kinds of folks who live in houses and not in houses. And many times we look out and see folks who need our help. And if you can't see the street. Oh, you don't want to see the street, then you can't see people who need help. And that's what I love so much about our neighborhood, is that we can look out for each other right now, or at least we have been able to. So I know that people can choose to live in high rise apartments. I chose to live in a high rise apartment and there's lots of places where you can do that all along. Welton and all over Denver. Really, honestly. But I'm here to speak to you, to ask you for the time to reconsider what this actually looks like, what we intended in 2011 with the neighborhood plan. I figured it fits northeast or Northwest Denver plan. But this spirit that we intended with, Gordon, Kurt, and what's actually being kind of corrupted, the negative effects that have on our streets. So please consider all of us who love living in a walkable, talk, able neighborhood, feel kind of neighborhood in the spirit that our neighborhood plan called for. And we are here to speak in favor of that moratorium. Thank you so. Much. Thank you. All right. Nathan Adams. Good evening, council members and President Brooks. My name is Nathan Adams from 2899 North Sphere Boulevard. I've been an active real estate broker and developer for the past 12 years. I've built several hundred homes, renovated hundreds of homes, and I've done all of this work by borrowing money. I work with investors, work with banks, and I say this as it's relevant. Developers are not an unlimited supply of money. I congratulate you on amending the bill so that the moratorium will include the people that are already in planning. It's pretty catastrophic to be in planning to own your land, have hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, and to excuse me to simply not be able to go forward or to have the rules completely changed on you. That would be extremely difficult. I don't have a project that's at stake, so I'm speaking on behalf of those that. That's project. That's project maybe at issue. Also speaking towards the precedent that's set, I think it's a very dangerous precedent to change the rules and not allow the people that are already in planning to continue forward. I would even go so far as to encourage a 90 day period of time where those that have already purchased their land have the ability to still submit plans, still be able to come in under the existing rules. That the change that's being made via an immediate moratorium sets a very dangerous precedent anti-business, anti-growth message. I ask that you please consider my suggestion for a delayed, effective date. As a small business owner that knows firsthand how devastating it can be to making changes to development projects with little or no notice. It is imperative that the City Council be considerate of small business owners and developers when considering changes to government regulation like the one proposed tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Margie Valdez. Good evening, counsel, again. My name is Margie Valdez. I live at 2000 East 12th Avenue, Denver, and the inner neighborhood cooperation passed a motion directly from the floor supporting the moratorium. Unfortunately, the amendment language was not presented at that time, but in concept we do support the moratorium. I do think it's important for people's mental health to be able to have enough space to. Rehabilitate themselves at the end of the day, know their neighbors, know what's going on around them. It it I and C's mission is not to destroy developers by any means. We want to work with developers. We want to work with neighborhoods. That's what we're all about, is to make Denver the best city in the United States of America. And we appreciate everything that you're doing tonight. I think pause buttons are good. Sometimes you go too fast and you need to back up a little bit and think that we really intend to do that. So I support your efforts. Appreciate all you're doing. Thank you very much. Thank you. Angela Steiner. Good evening. My name is Angela Steiner. I live in Castle Rock while I work in Denver five and six days a week. I've also been a real estate broker for 16 years. Over the last several years, I've represented many developers and I can confirm that each and every one of these developers have been small business owners rather than faceless large corporations. Those developers livelihoods often depend on the success of every project, as they are not huge companies that can take losses or simply lower profits beyond a certain point. They have families and employees that depend on them. I do applaud the city council tonight to allow the projects that are already in the system exempt from the moratorium. I do feel that that is right, rather than to adopt a blanket moratorium that would be effective immediately and devastate some of these families and developers. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. Okay. Robert Vogel. I'm going to call up I'm going to call up five others. I just we had a little malfunction here. Robert Vogel, Byron Beckman, John Albers and Cindy Piggott. Rob Pegg You might as well come to Rob Pegg. Come on. Come on to. All right, Robert Vogel, you're up first. Thank you, Mr. President. City Council Members. My name is Robert Vogel. I live at four, four. Six Cook Street in Cherry Creek North. I am president of the Cherry Creek North Neighborhood Association. And for starters, I want to. Thank our Councilperson Councilman New. And Councilman Espinosa for introducing this bill. Let me give you a little history. About two months ago, we learned that the nursery on Garfield Street was destined to become a 30 unit apartment house. And. Our thoughts. At that time, we called up our city council person and spoke with a very experienced aide. Who said. They can't do that. Because the city code is so ambiguous that it is not included in the intent of Rowe House buildings. We then called up city planning and they said, Oh yes, we know about that. And we've given temporary approval. And I said, Can you send us the form? And the form was as councilman who said, not a garden cart form. It had a 15 foot. Wide concrete pathway. Therefore no garden, no court. Within a couple of weeks, a speaker who will speak in a few minutes, Andy Piggott, collected 500. Names on a petition against the development in this form. And because of this, we started a dialog with the. Arnold family, and I want to thank them for their willingness to consider. Changes. In the form. Of their. Development, to make it compatible. With the neighborhood. And to enhance the neighborhood. We believe that the moratorium should go in place so that people don't have to call up their councilman to find out whether something is approved or not approved. The law should be clear. On this case. We believe. That 15 foot wide car doors are not. Gardens and cars. This is. Not the intended. Intention of the form. Through our dialogs. We have done away. With the stacking. That is not part of the row house form and we have decreased the density. And we have, I. Believe, a much more. Attractive form which includes gardens and courts. The intent is now made. We have an. Executed contract with the family developing developing this. We strongly support the moratorium. As you have heard, as a. Time out to. Reexamine. What is become a contrivance. Within the city of Denver. We want the moratorium is time to look. At compatibility with. Your. Surrounding circumstance. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Yeah. Bye. Let's see. Byron Beckman. As Byron Beckman. Okay. John Albers. Thank you, Mr. President. My name is John Albers. I live at 45 Steel Street. I'm on the board of directors of the Cherry Creek North Neighborhood Association, and I serve that organization as the chair of its zoning committee. As has been said, we found ourselves in a situation where we had one project under construction in Cherry Creek North and another that was moving its way through the developer to the approval process under the garden form being considered and approved under the garden court form of construction. It was a surprise to us when we dug into the code to find that there was a great deal of ambiguity and in fact some conflict in the code as to whether or not the Garden Court was in fact allowed in a g r h 13 zone, which is the primary residential zoning for Cherry Creek North. And if it was allowed, there was not clarity in terms of what exactly constituted the appropriate design and construction of the garden court form. And as counsel menu has pointed out, neither of these projects had either a court nor garden. So from our perspective, while we were very happy to work with the developer on the project at 201 Garfield and, and that is excluded from this. While we were very happy to work with them going forward, we really need clarity. The residents of Cherry Creek North need to understand whether or not a garden court form is an approved form for the RH 13 zoning. And if it is under what what exact design forms, as Councilman News showed with the picture from the zoning code, what's in the zoning code relative to a diagram is much different than what was being approved. So we heartily and heartily and support the moratorium. We appreciate Councilman Espinosa and councilman's new support for this. We urge the City Council to support the moratorium and give us clarity or give the planning department time to get some clarity around these issues so that in the future we will know what's permitted and what's expected in this zoning area. Thank you very much. Thank you, Cindy Pickett. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I appreciate it. My name is Cindy Pickett. I live at 214 Garfield directly across the street from the proposed development that was under question. Webster defines specific as clearly in exactly presented or stated, precise or exact, free from ambiguity. We purchased our home four years ago. We inquired about the possible development on Garfield, as did our neighbors, with their investments in the surrounding area. We did the due diligence. The realtors and all potential homeowners check the zoning code. It stated The regulations provide certainty to property owners, developers and neighborhoods about the limits for what is allowed in a residentially zoned area. The specific intent of grh3 states, a multi-unit district allowing urban house, duplex and row rowhouse building forms not taller than three stories specific, precise and exact. In early June, we were blindsided by a Newbury employee telling us that this development would be three, three story apartment buildings and we should put the sign up now. We immediately contacted CPD. Chris Glacier's response was, As for the intent, the description is not meant as an exhaustive list of anything that can be achieved in his own district, but rather a brief summary of the. Development potential. Clearly, specific content should have been titled Possible Intent because it was most definitely not specific and the regulations did not provide certainty. Every other zone state specifically where garden courts are allowed in the intent definition not je rh three two words admitted. We still await an explanation. While we appreciate Councilman News and Espinosa's superior efforts in addressing this issue, we face more than double the amount of units that should have been allowed on this property and the potential of 50 vehicles in the span of less than one block. And quoting the CPD text amendment far greater density than intended by the adaptive plans and zoned district for the area. I'm sorry. I really have a dry mouth. This form is morphed into something unrecognizable. It is dwarfing existing homes, taking the light and leaving behind scars that affect the integrity and fabric of neighborhoods across the city, not just in Cherry Creek. It leaves no certainty to individuals that have invested and now must question what could happen next to them, in front of them, behind them, or even worse, on all sides, because that is the possibility. CPD knew this was an issue. The egregious development proposed on Garfield was possibly the straw that broke the camel's back and brought it to the forefront. Visualized two thirds of one residential block with three three story apartment buildings, three exterior doors and 215 foot cement gangways. Shame on them for allowing it to go this far. It should have been stopped. They knew it was wrong. Not clearly defined in the attempt and beyond any resemblance to a garden court. We encourage you to support the moratorium, gives CPD time to clarify the issue so it's not continue to affect neighborhoods throughout the city. Many have already paid the price into developers. That say this is what. The public wants. I challenge you to take a look at these neighborhoods, respect them the existing fabric, and create something that contributes. Your time is up. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Thank you. Try to hold your applause as we get through all these. Speaker Wrap it. Thank you. I'll try and follow up on what my wife had to say. My name is Rob Piggott. I also live at 214 Garfield, and I appreciate what Councilman Nu and Councilman Espino Espinosa have brought forward in regard to the moratorium. I do have to say, though, that I feel that as a Cherry Creek resident that we we are a victim of a hit and run by city planning. Going back to early June of this year, city planning rebuffed our zoning inquiries regarding grades three. In response to the Newberry apartment and city planning, the MISS dismissed our argument that the current zoning of Grace three was under specific and ten calls for multi-unit district, allowing for urban house duplex and row house building forms. Nowhere in grace three specific intent does it call for a garden court or apartment forms after repeated inquiries. City planning did come around in late June, and foremost off the record, of course, that there is confusion and ambiguity in the George three definition that was followed up. Much to our dismay and surprise was see city planning advocating a 14 to 16 month moratorium at a city council planning meeting in early August. It is ironic that city planning suddenly got religion in regard to specific intent definition for Grace three, but only after allowing the Newbury Apartments to get in the so-called zoning pipeline. Is worth noting that some five families have moved the 200 Garfield block in the past four and a half years with Newbury Nursery and Retail, the elephant on the block. It was natural for us in the others to inquire about zoning relative to new areas. These families and individuals to the person were referred to their realtor, referred by their realtor and the seller sellers realtor to series three specific intent, which allows for urban house duplex and row house building forms. So my question to city planning why was gardening caught in apartment form, admitted in specific intent? She or age three and I would welcome their comment and I would also ask does city planning know the meaning of specific intent? With that said, I support the moratorium. But is present support. The moratorium is presented. Although I feel city planning has treated many of us adjacent to the Newbury Apartments very unfairly. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm going to call up the next five speakers and Cox, Peter Wall, Paula Arnold, Frank Locke and Toure and John Frey's. And Cox, you are first. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm an Cox. And I do support the moratorium because of the agreement worked out between S.C. Nay and the Newbury's. But I do so with my arm twisted behind my back and resigned to the fact that we can do no better. This moratorium emerged as a short term solution to an absurd and unintended interpretation of the garden court building form. Something is seriously wrong when the specific intent of the code can be so easily circumvented by developers. Neighbors had no real notice that 30 apartments could be built there, where zoning led us to believe that there would be 10 to 12 row homes. And no meaningful recourse. Density is not the problem. The problem is that the code does not address the consequences of density. Number one among them is parking. As we've just finished hearing and in great detail, parking is grossly inadequate in the five Denver neighborhoods affected by the Garden Court problem. The Newbury Project will have 26 apartments, 36 parking spaces and just one parking space per unit. The ten extra spaces could be visitor parking. Instead, those spaces we rented to the highest bidders, the tenants and their guests will park bumper to bumper on Garfield Street. Second, developers should have setbacks that conform to the character of the neighborhood. The Newbury slipped through a loophole that requires only a 20 foot setback from the street and a ridiculous five foot setback along Second Avenue. Eight other homes on their side of Garfield have forefoot setbacks. The code calls for setback, conformity. If there are three lots that have a bigger setback. In this case, there are eight homes on two lots. So that doesn't apply. Third, the code nominally requires development in harmony with the character of the existing neighborhood. Textual amendments to the code will, I hope, close the loopholes that allowed this awful garden court slot. Home Development. Development should also reflect harmony with other city plans. Here, Garfield is designated as a bikeway. It is dangerous to bike on a street that has bumper to bumper parking and a travel lane too narrow for two cars to pass at the same time. In closing, please make future developers provide adequate resident and visitor parking. Conform to the by setbacks on the block. Build in harmony with what already exists in the neighborhood and protect city bikeways. And I also ask that developers exempted from the moratorium be held accountable for adhering to the letter and spirit of the agreements that exempted. Them this time as a thank you. You all. Good evening, council members. Peter Wall, 1660 Lincoln Street here on behalf of the Newberry family and just wanted to make myself available for questions. Thank you. Paula Arnaud. I'm Paul Arnold, and I live at 201 Monroe. And I've lived in Cherry Creek my entire life. I was born there. I was raised there. I work there and I'll die there, I'm sure. Same spot I When we started into this, we were doing what was allowed by this zoning. And I want to first of all, I want to thank all the council members for listening and meeting with us. And also I want to thank Councilman who for working with us and also the Cherry Creek Neighborhood Association to come to an approved project that better incorporates what the neighborhood would would like. And I'm here if there's any further questions. Thank you. Thank you, Frank. I can talk. Good evening. My name is Frank Victoria. I live a 2145 East 16th Avenue and I am I was I against the moratorium. But I mean I think that the what you've proposed councilman to you know makes a whole lot of sense. And and my only concern here is that I feel like and maybe this is just because of tonight's agenda, it seems like moratorium is the go to and I guess I'm a little bit concerned about a continual, you know, slowdown of things when I feel like the the items that you put on up there were completely reasonable . And so I, I feel like there is somewhat of a simple solution of that, the ratio that there's a ratio of height to the width of the courtyard. And you know, I know that it's not that simple, but I do have to wonder about, you know, if moratorium is is the right the right process, you know, for this, you know, particular issue, you know, thanks. And I'll take my answer off the air. Thank you. John Frase. Yes. Good evening and thank you, Councilman Nu, and thank you to the Council for listening to us. I've been a 15 year resident of Cherry Creek. I have 15 other family members who live in Denver. So we're all very concerned about preserving the quality of neighborhoods. And I would just reiterate what my predecessors before me have have said about being in favor of this moratorium. I mean, it doesn't take a lot of common sense to look at the pictures that the councilman knew I was looking at and seeing a before and after view of something. And, you know, to think that it could have evolved, there must be a pretty big loophole for that to have happened. So I would appreciate any anything that can be done in this moratorium. I think it's very, very, very much needed. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to call up the last four speakers. Peter Benson, Justin. Archuleta, Julian. Joanne But I don't ever. Linda Herman How could they do that? Daniel puts electrodes. Peter. You're first. Then when I assume anything. Peter Benson with Coble and Company. I reside in Castle Pines and work in the city of Denver. I manage urban homes. We focus on walkable neighborhoods in Denver doing urban infill sites. I do want to state that I think the garden court form is an important form. I agree there's loopholes to it and there's challenges there. And I agree the states should be looking at that, but it's an important form. We've been working on a project in one of the last pieces in Lowry on First Avenue, inside a court that is an awkwardly shaped property. We struggle with the site plan, and we ended up with what I think is a great site plan. The amendment calls for it to be exempt tonight. And I've heard from staff and the sponsors of the bill that what they're looking for are opening on the street for the garden quarters over 50 feet at the entrance. It gets wider beyond that. It's actual gardens and courts. So there's there's no loopholes here. But I do want to stress that we've worked on it for over a year, spent a lot of money on it. And I would encourage you to support the amendment if you do the moratorium, because even if you approve tonight, we still think we're exempt from the language I have in the draft. Staff has told us that it would still take some time for them to review the moratorium, the language for exemptions and to for us to resubmit RSVP for the next round before we would know. So I appreciate the amendment proposed and I hope that gets approved as part of the moratorium. And I have a question you can certainly answer later before we're done tonight, but I didn't quite catch all the changes for the amendment and the draft I have in section one, on page two, around lines 19 and 20 and 21 , it exempts things where the courtyard is wider than the tallest buildings. So my question is, even beyond this tonight, as someone comes in in three or six months during the moratorium, can they submit, if they meet that requirement, that language still be in there? Well, I also have a request not to get into the weeds, but that's where we spend a lot of our time. And your staff spends a lot of their time, by necessity, in section two on lines 24 and 25. It talks about the drawings have to be side by side and not stacked and says no part of any dwelling shall be vertically above the other ones. And I'd like some clarification so that we can have appurtenances like eaves and gutters from other units overhanging others, because we have some units that are one and two and three story next to each other. So I think it'd be helpful for staff to have the guidance that we can have. Appurtenances overlapping them but not livable space. You know, all in all, I do want to reiterate that I think it's an important forum going forward. I agree it should be looked at in more detail. I think the opportunity was offered before that and the task force to people like us to be a part of the task force. We'd like to be a part of that. We think there's some good ideas we would have because it's always tough. And I don't envy staff trying to write the new language because it's tough to create great design with formulas and numbers. And there has to be some quantitative things that are for quality of space performance materials. Your time is up. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Justin Archuleta. Good evening. My name is Justin Archer Letta. I'm a homeowner. Homeowner at 1599 West Berkeley Place in District one. And I care greatly about how our city is governed. I'm here today in support of the moratorium as amended that would exempt applications that have already been submitted. I'd like to kind of reiterate what Council Member Brook said about development companies having the potential to have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into planning. But I would also like to echo the sentiment that. Development companies, some that are small businesses could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars if not seven figures on land and be a week, two weeks, a month away from submission into the city. So this does leave. Many small businesses potentially hanging. And it's not necessarily just about this proposal, this moratorium. You are setting a precedent that this can be done. So I would echo councilperson ken each and that caution is required. There is a balance. I understand that intent and outcome aren't always the same. I Denver zoning code is long. It's complex. As someone who has worked with architects and developers, a lot of times it is manipulating the code to see what works. It's back and forth with community planning and development. But the fact of the matter is that there have been other Garden Corps apartment forms that have been approved, that have been built, that have set precedent for other developers. Councilperson Espinosa actually ran on a platform that he said what convinced him to run was one such development. But that was over a year ago. So developers have had a year. Looking to successful built projects. Having the implied approval from city councilor, from community planning and development. That those types of projects are okay. Now I understand that. I like like Councilperson Espinosa said, you don't leave the water running when you're trying to fix the pipe. But at the same time, you don't leave a broken pipe for a year and get mad at everybody else for taking advantage of the water. I'd also like to kind of echo councilperson ken each in that I think the rhetoric is somewhat fearful when we get into these discussions of development and density. I am someone that is moving into what is some people over term a slot home. I'm under contract to purchase. I'm extremely excited about it. My neighbors are excited. I volunteer in the neighborhood. I am a valuable member of the community. And just because my choices for the type of house that I would like to live in don't match what maybe previous generations. I mean, look at the generational gap and speakers here. There needs to be some openness, some understanding. Absolutely. I'll be doing my best to get other people from my generation and a chance to let your time's up. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Jahan Durrani. So John Barrios is. Yeah, we're working on it. Okay. So thank you all for your patience. I'm a lot less nervous this time around. So you've already heard my story. You know why this is important to me? I really want to advocate the importance of housing stock because I think contrary to some of the points that all of you express, I think one unit that gets added to the market, it doesn't matter if it's a family unit, if it's a single unit, it impacts the market as a whole. And I think we're really missing that bigger picture. So maybe you wouldn't like to live in a prison and maybe you wouldn't like to live in a 300 unit square home. But the developers don't invest things they won't sell. Those units are going to fill up and we're adding housing stock to the market by constructing those units. And so my concern is very similar to what Frank mentioned before, as now the moratorium is just becoming the way, right? So if I have a problem with something, I want a moratorium because I don't like something that looks like a prison. I want to make sure I have sufficient housing. And I think we're setting a really bad precedent because I think if we all think that in seven months, the other moratorium is going to go away and this one is just going to go away in 12 months, I don't think we're being realistic as to how this public advocacy process works. Right. It's the people who are most passionate, who have the loudest voices, who show up to the meetings. And so as a council, I think you have to be the voices for the bigger picture. And you have to think about housing stock. You have to think about the market and you have to think about all of these other things. That is really hard when you're an individual and you're kind of locked into your view. So just remember housing stock, it's really important. Don't forget, I absolutely understand that we need to make changes to the code, but you don't need a moratorium to do that, right? I mean, you can do that. You can make changes to the code, you can make adjustments. You don't have to stop development and an increase to housing stock to do that. So just something to consider. Thank you. It's a late night. Thank you guys for being here. Joann Barrios. Thank you. All right, Eva, Linda Herman. Good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for your time. It's been a long night. I do want to say something that was brought up tonight about how much money the developers are spending. We, the citizens, have also spend a lot of money and time. And I see everyone in our neighborhood which had beautiful trees. I see them all at Home Depot buying their flowers. We take great pride. So we have spent equally as much, probably much more so than all developers combined as individual people. So please keep that in mind. Before purchasing. In Cherry Creek North. I checked the zoning. Which states that we are zoned for single family dwellings, duplexes and row. Homes that the setback of any new development would have to meet the excess existing homes. But we are now facing an apartment complex claiming to be a garden court. With a deviation to the setback due to yet. Another. Loophole. We discovered all. These problems by accident and begin the process by contacting our city councilman and circulating a petition to bring awareness about this development. We acquired more than 500 signatures. What we. Didn't do. Was hire an attorney. Then, ten days before tonight's. Hearing, another Denver neighborhood advice is to. Hire a lobbyist and an attorney because the developer had both. Interesting. We had reached out to new that buried developers to no avail. But within hours. Of the developer. Hearing we had a lobbyist. They sent us a horrible plan 2026 stack units on 8/10 of an. Acre, doubling the. Housing on a block. By the way, we only had the. Lobbyist for a few hours because Councilman. You and Councilman Espinosa were helping us reach a compromise. We thank them for their work and because of their work. The stacking has been removed, but we are still stuck with setbacks that do not match the block. We are being forced to accept high density apartments. Why can't. The developer be forced to accept setbacks to. Match the block? That to me is a compromise. When both of us were a little bit unhappy, we understand that if the. Garfield. Apartments are not allowed to continue, in spite. Of all the problems recognized by the citizens. And CPD, then City Council will not pass the moratorium. In other words, the Garfield apartments are allowed. To live and we are the sacrificial lamb to save other Denver neighborhoods. But the developers are not budging. From 26 units on a 10th of an acre with insufficient parking and a non-conforming setback. So again, we are begging. You for relief. I have the dream that you city. Council will give. Us a Hollywood ending. That you will stand up tonight and at least give us the setbacks. That you will stand up and protect your citizens. That you will remember that on August 3rd you sat and. Heard CPD give a. Presentation stating that there is something wrong with the zoning code. Please stand up tonight and give us the setbacks for the integrity of the neighborhood. You have the power. Please give us that Hollywood ending. Thank you. Mr.. Ceremony. So you guys clapped and I couldn't. Ms.. Herman, can you please come back up here? You didn't state your name. I just want to make sure it's on the record. Thank you. I'm Evo. Linda Herman. I live at 215 Monroe Street. Nice Hollywood ending there. Okay. This concludes our speakers questions for members of council. Okay. I will start with my question. Oh, I can't see. Okay. Madam Secretary, I cannot see. Yeah. I can't see this because. Yeah. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. I had a couple of question, but I already. Forgot one of them. But, Kyle, this question is for you. So earlier we were looking at the small zone lot parking moratorium, which I know was a long process, as you stated. But can you tell us the difference between these two processes? I, I know this one is being rushed, and I know there were some concerns about that from CPD. So if you could just sort of explain the difference of how these two got to us tonight. Regarding the moratorium bill specifically, sir. So again, for the record, I'm Kyle Dalton with the Department of Community Planning and Development. Yeah, I mean, with the first one, the councilmembers approached us, I think about a month before the bill was filed, and we helped them draft the bill in concert with the city attorney's office. The other bill, we we weren't approached that far in advance. So we have as much time to, you know, help us include the language at least so we could better administer the bill. Now, since that time, the sponsor we we reviewed the bill after you published it on first reading and provided some technical comments which the sponsors have agreed to put forth in an amendment tonight that would address so that we at least we can administer the intent of the the ordinance. And a couple more questions. So it does say in the bill that. Garden plants can be processed as long as they comply with all applicable requirements with certain conditions. So it's not that all garden courts are going to be stop. It's just ones that have this very. Narrow courtyard and a few other. Things. Is that correct? That's correct. Anything that's got a concept review now moves forward regardless, and then future ones would have to meet the conditions in the moratorium. Okay. And then I know the answer to this, but. This does not address slot homes that have a driveway between the two. The buildings. Is that correct? That's correct. The garden court building form is just one building form in which folks build sideways facing row homes, slate homes, or whatever you call them. And it's not a very commonly used form. Okay. And and. In what zone district are those permitted in the slide homes? Oh, goodness. Dozens. I mean, they're they're allowed in more than five different building forms in dozens of zone districts across the city. Which is why CPD earlier this month initiated a text amendment that would look more holistically at the issue of slot homes and the design of sideways facing row homes. Because it is. It's bigger than this one building form where we're going to need to look at it. And all zone districts throughout the city where where these things are getting built, even the ones that that this moratorium has nothing to do with. Okay. But the garden court is just one aspect of that. That's right. And it's an important aspect, you know, but it's just one part of it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Espinosa. Thank you, Councilman Black, for those questions because it sort of it gets to the specificity of this moratorium and it's actually one of the few easily captures or situations. Mike. My question is regarding Mr. Benson's questions about the actual ordinance and probably best for either you, Kyle, or the city attorney. He specifically mentioned a concern about section two on page, page two about the the whether ease and the like would be considered part of the unit. And do you have any sort of my sense is that the intent of the the the way it would be interpreted would be that we're talking about dwelling unit overlap and not actual eaves. I mean, generally ees are accepted by, you know, they're allowed to extend over, over, over setback lines and other things. So do you do we have a reading on that? Adam Hernandez, assistant city attorney. Just to clarify, Councilman, you're asking about. So maximum height in feet? No. So it is the following. So the line reads in section two and it's the first sentence after the colon. It says, in no part of any dwelling in is constructed vertically above any other part of any part of another dwelling unit and each built building bounding the courtyard shell. Well, it's really that the way this written is written and no part of any dwelling unit is constructed. We're talking about when when the concern about stacked spaces. It's not the wall with or projections or eaves and sills and things like that. It's actually the habitable space of the unit. That's the dwelling unit. Correct. It talks about a. No part of any dwelling unit constructed vertically above the one below. Did you want to? I'll just I'll just add. So when it comes to interpretation of language, I think it's a good question that our staff are going to have to look at in the context of a specific development plan. Normally in the code, we address the term dwelling unit by specifying whether we're referring to the use or the structure. The language here doesn't provide us that clarity, but we'll we'll use our typical process of bringing interpretations to the various zoning managers who are responsible for the interpretation. And then, of course, if the applicant thinks that we've interpreted wrong, they can appeal that decision to the Board of adjustment. Right. I think generally based on the comments I've heard from council and the public, they would be more they would be more in favor of details being able to project rather than clear flat facades with no with no detail. The other question also relates to Peter Vincent's about I want to make it clear he was concerned and actually other developers and members of the audience that spoke to concerns about moratoria. Mr. Hernandez This moratorium does allow the use of the garden court during the next 12 months, provided that it meets those exceptions, correct ? Correct? Yeah. So, I mean, the garden court is alive and well. It's just the the slot home version. And this goes back to the conversation we're having citywide about the use. I mean, this the slot home form that you won't find anywhere in the building code, meaning the zoning code. But it it does it is something you can create using general building form. And so while the community is going to have a larger conversation, this will at least address the use of this form in in certain zoned districts. And I'll save the rest for my comments later. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Flynn. Thank you. Kyle, can I ask you just a quick question to clarify? I understand that a townhome or a row home is all vertical and there's no stacking of units. But why is it why is it that garden court cannot have any stacking of units? What's the purpose of that? What's the reason for that? I should be clear as as we interpret and administer the Denver zoning code as it's currently written, you can stack your address on both. Okay. Yep. Thank you. The way I was reading this was that we didn't allow that at all. Well, it wouldn't be allowed in. The moratorium passes. Okay. That's a distinction between the code we administer today and what the moratorium would do. Okay. So then to clarify the garden court form during the moratorium, if they meet these other conditions can continue to be processed and accept accepted and processed, but only if they're not stacked. Among other conditions. That's correct. They will not be able to be stopped. Okay. Can I ask maybe Councilman Nur Espinosa why? Why that is. Mr. President, can I can I ask him? Yes, please. I thought they should respond right away. Councilman. So the real reason is if we. So the purpose of the moratorium and the reason to move this forward the way we did is to stop the egregious use of the form. And so the form was intended to be mapped to our former R2 zone districts, which were single-family duplex areas in the rowhouse was conceived as an idea in the specific intent, as a way of sort of increasing density, but still orienting these developments towards the street and managing mean having a healthy set back and whatnot. So it's the the, the, the issue. But so what, what the Garfield project in particular represents is actually what's specifically permitted and prevented in those rowhouses and districts is the apartment form, which would be a multi-unit stacked configuration. But by placing essentially two apartment forms 15 feet apart and calling a court between those buildings, the garden court, and then orienting the doors towards that thing, you're now effectively building two apartment buildings in a row house alone district. And so by getting rid of the mean life defining dwelling units as being non vertically stacked, we're at least getting to what even those egregious uses are already, which are sort of simple developments. You can still rent them, but it only gets at least one unit per door facing the street. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Thank you. I just want to. Make sure that. When the moratorium is over, then. A garden court forms applications can still be accepted. Can then be accepted when they include stacked units. No, that would be specifically. I think it's yes, but. Oh, I didn't understand the question. Yes. When the moratorium expires, it's no longer in effect unless the council changes that. Unless we change the definition. Okay. Thank you. That's a great clarification. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. President. Yeah, thank you, Councilman Flint Kent. Councilman Cashman. Mr. Dalton, you almost got to sit down there. That was close. You were dreaming of the bench, weren't you? I'm just wondering if you could address the set back issue that was brought up as to why the proposed Garfield development apparently does not have setbacks. That reference, what's existing on the rest of the block? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm I'm only prepared tonight to speak to the to the bill and not to a specific project. I don't have those details in front of me. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I have a question for you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. So I'm going to go back to Councilman Black's questioning around the what forms are allowed in the slot house fro homes is what folks call it in my district, fake row homes. You know, there was a there was a news article released saying that this moratorium takes care of all slaughterhouses. And so I just want to that is not true just for the public. What percentage would you say of this moratorium in front of us deals with the kind of fake row home in the slot home issue. So. So the best we can do is do an estimate, right? Because slot home isn't a defined term. What looks like one to somebody else may not to another. Our best guess of what we have in the pipeline today is approximately 8 to 10 times more projects being built that are sideways facing row homes in other forms than in garden court form. Okay, 8 to 10. So what percentage? So that would be, you know, 80% are not are not guarded. So 90%. So what what's in front of us today is about 10 to 20%. I think the councilman was correct. We have three in the pipeline right now. So it's it's a very small portion of what we have under review. Can you can you share specifically what other forms that I mean, I think you guys are looking at this at a macro level. And, you know, we're excited to hear what solutions you come up with, but what other forms are in this kind of sideways home, you know, slot home? Sure. So the most common ones we see are in the apartment building form or the general building form. Now, those forms aren't allowed in the zone district where that one project is that a lot of folks have talked about today. And I think Councilman Espinosa did a good job of explaining in the Rowhouse District, you can't do an apartment or you can't do in a general. But in our multi-unit and our mixed use commercial zone districts where those forms are allowed, that's where we're seeing the more often. Yeah. And so this is just a question to Councilman knew and and Councilman Espinosa, I know this was a I was out, so I'm just now getting this but this was an knows fast process. But was there any consideration for having a larger conversation around some of these other forms? To be honest, Councilman Brooks, that would be a very, very, very heavy lift for this council. That is, there are so many zone districts we couldn't even I we could we could quantify that. But it is a very large number and it would be very hard to I mean, you would basically be laying a moratorium on both the apartment form and the. General building form, which. Would be disastrous for the city. To be honest now, it just seems like this is a big issue citywide. And if 10%, 20% is what we're after, that it seems like I just want to make sure that we're looking at this whole thing. I mean, we are the legislative body of the city, right? The macro view of this. And so I am concerned about that. Other now Carl didn't speak with specificity over what we're looking at as CPD, you know, in the future and I know there's some others, but that's just my concern. That's just come up. Councilman, do. They, sir? Sure know. Walter said she would like to get into SWAT homes in the garden court evaluation. So? So they're thinking about similar kinds of forms where they really need greater definitions of. So I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get into some of that. But the focus will be on Gordon. Gordon. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, CPD is is part in parallel with this garden court moratorium. They're spending the next 14 months specifically trying to address this at home in a task force community outreach manner. That said, and this is going to strike fear in every developer in the city. You know, the exemptions that we have written in here could actually be put forward in a general building form, basically requiring that, you know, because right now we have an unlimited number of buildings that can occur on certain zoned lots. And the building code only requires a six or ten foot minimum distance. So you could actually say, well, we're going to make it mean that any two buildings that are residentially occupied 100% really need to be separated by a certain you could address it. But yeah, so I think it's just an important, just important for our folks at home and the audience to to know that, you know, what's before us today handles a slice of some of the maybe the issues that we see in CPD, but not the full kind of breadth of it. Councilman. Councilman Cashman. Thank you. I appreciate that. Mr. DALTON. Let's let's talk more theoretically on setbacks, if we can. Is it. Accurate or even close to. We have a general policy of trying to keep uniform setbacks in zone districts. So it depends on the zone district. But many most of our residential districts include what we call a block sensitive setback. Right. So that requires that. On that, what people refer to as the front setback, be sensitive to the setbacks of other buildings along the block. Different rules apply depending on where you are in the block. And I think part of what's going on here is it's a corner lot where where there's a different analysis and the rule of measurement about which lots you look at in terms of what you have to be sensitive to. It's a it's a complicated part of the code. And that's that's part of why I can't answer on the fly. But yes, in general, we have a block sensitive set back and it would apply in the grades three zone district. Thank you. Would you mind doing that analysis when you have a minute and get that and give me that information for sure. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. So I want to ask a process question. And, Kyle, you're probably the best person to answer this. So in terms of next steps, assuming this passes here tonight, what what are the next steps for how CPD will handle this? Will they be selecting who the people are that will serve as representatives similar to what we just talked about regarding the previous moratorium that we passed. So help me understand that as well as the timing of it in terms of how quickly that will ramp up and will that be done internally? Sure. Great question. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. So with regards to the garden court moratorium specifically, we will begin enforcing it as soon as it goes into effect, which would be later this week. The mayor signs the bill and so on. So that would that would start for all consent reviews. Typically, that happens after Thursday of this week. So so that's the garden court issue. But the bigger picture about the lot home text amendment that were that we announced earlier this month that we would initiate. We've spent the past couple of weeks assembling our staff team, assigning project managers, getting folks involved. You know, we've had to put other work on hold in order to prioritize this in our work program. So we've we've built a good internal team. And what we're doing over the next month and a half or so is as that initial work of ramping up a project problem identification and the rest, we announced that we would do a public kick off, we expect in October where we identify the stakeholder groups and we do think it's important to have a cross-section of the community and a cross-section of diverse perspectives on that stakeholder group, the task force, whatever it has called. So design professionals, architects, neighborhoods that are affected by this, you know, folks involved in finance. We think there's a broad perspective that needs to be brought to the table. The idea of a first task force meeting sometime later this year, maybe November, from kick off the best schedule we've been able to come up with so far would be 14 to 16 months. So we think we would have a package before this council at the end of next year. But but that process will will involve a lot of problem identification, upfront testing of solutions, using real life examples so we can find loopholes before we create them, write a new draft and do the drafting process. And then, of course, there's a series of public hearings and a public adoption process that would happen over the end of 2017. As with any of these large text amendments, like like a proposed square, like Cherry Creek, where we're tackling multiple diverse issues that that need that stakeholder perspective. We do expect to bring on board third party folks, particularly with the facilitation of those stakeholder meetings. But we may also draw on other third party resources we know will draw on outside design professionals to supplement our internal design staff. And there may be more resources to be brought to the table on this. So can you tell me how the work that's going on with Blueprint Denver, with the multiple consultants that we've brought on board to help us, you know, look at revising Blueprint Denver, how any of that correlates to the two conversations we're having here tonight or how these fit into that? Vice versa. I mean, the really. Different questions, right? So Denver, right. And Blueprint, Denver Update and the other plans that are part of the Denver right effort are citywide planning their vision, their future policy. So are these. What we're talking about here is a change to the regulation. So it's taking the code in and changing it. There's there's certain amounts that we think you can do with what you already have adopted in your plans that are calling for regulations that respect neighborhood character, that advance areas of change in areas of stability. There probably are issues that folks would like to address through this text amendment that instead need blueprint Denver guidance first. And so those would have to be in a future phase of regulatory implementation. I think of things like design review, like whole different bodies of staff, like things that aren't already embedded in the city's broad policy visions , that that's the kind of thing where Blueprint Denver in the Denver process will help inform future regulatory implementation. Well, and again, just getting back to the staffing issue. So did we factor in any. Leeway in those contracts to be able to utilize some of those folks that we're already, you know, that are already under contract with the city. These would be blueprint and some of the other planning efforts that we're doing. Well, not the Denver right contracts. What we'll use are the regulatory contracts that we have. Again, they're separate skill sets and they're different folks that we would need. So instead of the the the kinds of professionals we would use, like we use on Arapaho Square that we like, we use on Cherry Creek or that we would have used on Golden Triangle if we hadn't delayed that project to make room for this one. You know, we'll use those kinds of folks rather than the Denver right contracts. We're going to do that because we don't have that staff expertize or we just don't have enough staff. No. I think a third party perspective really adds an additional lens to, you know, can bring the kind of this is what other cities are doing. This is, you know, best practices around the world. Also, having a third party facilitator helps build trust among the stakeholder committee where the city is one of the parties at the table, but isn't the party steering. And so we found that to be an effective way that's really brought forth those previous amendments I've mentioned that have, you know, really come forward with folks in alignment on the outcome and the consensus building. That's where we find that third party voice is really helpful. Thank you. That was helpful. So I'll just touch on that because we just went through the Arapahoe Square text amendment and we had a third party come and walk us through that. And as neighbors and, you know, city council folks and developers, it was an amazing process that brought us to a I think a pretty good conclusion. So thank you for that. All right. Are seeing no other comments. Our our public hearing is closed for council. Bill 541 councilman new. Would you like to offer your new amendment to the council? Bill 541 Please read the particulars. All right, we will start again. Here again. I move that amendment council bill 541, as amended on July 21st, 2016, as follows. Number one on page two, line 70, strike the word courtyard and replace it with going forward. Number two, on page two, line eight, strike the word courtyard and replace with garden court. Number three on line two, lines 18. Insert the word tallest before the word proposed and before. On page two, lines 18 and 19 strike the words buildings abutting the garden courtyard, buildings abutting the courtyard, and replace with buildings whose facade bounds the garden court. Number five on page two, line 20, insert the words building form after the words garden court. Number six on our page two, line 21, insert the word R before the word units. Number seven on page two, line 23, strike the word court already replace with Gordon Court. Now read our page to line 24. Strike the word courtyard replaced with Gordon Corn on number nine on page two. Line 31. Add a new section which reads as follows Section five This moratorium shall not apply to complete applications for a mandatory review concept review pursuant to section 12 .3.2.2 of the Denver Zoning Code, which are which are submitted in advance of a required site development plan per section 12 .4.3.3 of the Denver Zoning Code and accepted by the Planning, Community Planning and Development Owner before the effective date of this ordinance. It has been moved in second to comments by members of council and the council. I'm going to go right to you, but I want to remind members of council this is on the specific amendment. Will then give you comments for the whole bill later. So, Councilman. No. Yeah. I think this is the most important part about this amendment is is allowing the pending applications, those three pending applications to go through. We appreciate the number Arnolds, as they've really negotiated and worked with the neighborhood to develop the project and refine the project. So and so I think this this section will address those issues, those three applications that we've mentioned to go through. So I encourage my colleagues to support this. Great Councilman Flint. Thank you, Mr. President. Putting on my old editor's cap again, can I bring out a correction that needs to be made to the amendment? The one line that's number six. Insert the word R before the word units. It should actually be after the word units. Let's let's look at Adam Hernandez. Is that would you concur? That is correct. Okay. So I believe at this point, Councilman Flynn would have to offer an additional amendment. Okay. And have that seconded and. Then down the ladder. Sorry, Councilman Cashman. Mr. President. May I offer then a motion? Just if the two are in secondary, agree to the change they can. Okay. So that would be okay. Does the mover in second agree to the change? Yes. Okay. So can Secretary. Do we need to go to that whole. Oh, okay. Okay. You can just do the change on the fly here. Or do we need to read it back into the. No. It'll be corrected. It's corrected. The only other comment I would make on is that we continue to have the issue with the pagination from word into PDF so that the amendments when it refers to line page in line has no relationship to what we're actually looking at. So it took me a little bit of time to find that mistake. Will that be corrected? Do we know in our new system? We'll get an answer to you. Later on. But thank you for catching that. That was good. Councilman Espinosa. I just want to thank my colleague, Councilman Nu, and his staff, Melissa Horne, for the work in getting getting to this amendment and getting to today. Thanks. Great. I'll offer a comment. This is this was probably one of the most important pieces for me supporting this piece. And I appreciate you included in as I had residents. Small business owners, developers who were concerned about this piece. So thank you so much. Okay. We have a first in a second. Madam Secretary, roll call on the new amendment. New Ortega. By. Black Eye. Clark. Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. Hi, Gilmore. I heard in. Cashman. I can eat. LOPEZ All right. Mr. President. I, Madam Secretary, announce the close of voting in US results. 11 eyes. 11 I's Council Council Bill 541 has been amended. Counsel No. We need a motion to place upon final consideration and do pass as amended. Okay. A move to Council Bill 541 to be placed upon final consideration, do pass as amended August 22nd, 2016. It has been moved seconded comments by members of Council. This is on the entire bill now. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I'm talking so much tonight. I have a few comments. One, I want to say that the developers who have built this garden court farm with the 15 foot wide court on whether we consider it a garden or not. We're actually following the rules and I think it's unfair to accuse them of doing something wrong or unethical, but they were following the rules that the city had. And so in this example of on Garfield Street with the Newbury family, they were also following the rules. I don't think they were trying to put one over on anyone. They were following the rules and doing what was permitted under our code. But I do commend their willingness. To meet with the neighbors. And thank you to Councilman Nu for bringing everyone together and and coming up with a great compromise. I am going to be supporting this, but I would not have supported it without that amendment. Protecting those that were. In the pipeline. My third point is. That I have faith in our community planning and development. Office. They are professionals and none of us sitting up here are urban planners. So you have a lot of work before you. So thank you for your expertize at that. I think it's dangerous, as several people have said, that we might set a precedent of all of us sitting up. Here rewriting the zoning code. And I don't think that's what we. Want to do when we've got. Experts who know what they're doing. And lastly, just I was. Remembering a council meeting. Before I was a council person. And Councilman Clark's predecessor, Chris Nevitt, used the word cognitive dissonance to describe the fact that here in Denver we have a severe housing shortage, which several people referenced. And with our low supply and our high demand, our rents are high. It's a common law of economics. But we still. Have resistance to more housing projects. I'm not judging anyone or anything. I just think there's a lot to be said for that. We all. Acknowledge that we have a shortage, but none of us really. Can agree upon where we should build new housing. So just a little shout out to Chris Nevitt. Thank you. Councilwoman Black. Councilman Nu. I just want to come in and I really appreciate the collaborative process we've had. We've had a lot of discussions. I couldn't think of a more passionate group of residents and we haven't agreed. North They're just phenomenal to work with and and really explained issues to me so clearly that it helped me very much. And I really appreciate all the help that you gave me on this. We have a wonderful neighborhood association led by Bob Vogel and and John Albers. And and their leadership has been really appreciated in this and especially the Arnold Palmer and Paul Arnold coming to the table to negotiate this. And we understand that the code was the code, but but you're willing to to make the project even better and and being willing to share the design with residents too. And so the it should be an attractive asset for the for the neighborhood. So I really appreciate this effort and especially appreciate Councilman Espinoza and his architectural skills to help us with this. It's great to have that kind of qualification on city council to help us with these difficult zoning matters, you know. So thank you, everyone. Tonight, I look forward to and encourage all our our councilmen to pass this moratorium. Thank you, Councilman new Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to commend Councilman Nolan, Councilman Espinosa, for the real hard work that they put through on this. I as well was very pleased to see the amendment come forth. But if I'm understanding correctly, it wasn't simply, okay, we'll just let this slide through. I'm aware that Councilman Espinosa has been spending a lot of time working with with applicants, trying to create projects that that meet what they're trying to create out of the garden court form. And I very much appreciate that and I very much appreciate the Arnolds and the others who were willing to compromise along the way. You know, as far as. People were just playing by the rules. I'm going to take a little bit of issue with that in that the people that are interpreting our zoning code are very bright people. And you look at the book, you're an architect or a designer or an experienced developer, and you see the picture. Of what we're looking for out of a garden court and to look at that picture, if you have if your interest is in creating a community in Denver for the long haul, you're going to look at that picture of garden court and see that 15 foot minimum and go, huh? Something's something's wrong here, not you. We can we can squeeze something in here. So I want to again commend the Arnolds and their willingness to compromise and take to task the people out there who are looking for those loopholes because there's going to be loopholes existing. I remember when they first started talking about the zoning code update, I don't know, 2007, eight, six, whenever it was. And it was going to be simplified because we have this big zoning book, Chapter 59 zoning code was this big, monstrous thing. And we were promised this going to be simple. You're not envisioning like a copy of Mad magazine. You flip through it and you know what you're doing. Well, our current zoning code is bigger than the last one, so there's going to be problems along the way. So I think we need to hold ourselves and our development community to a higher standard of conscience to build the city that we want. So thank you. That's all I got. Thank you. Then again, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Espinosa, first thing, I want to thank Kyle for that that explanation and answer to the question about what's next and how that overlaps with Denver. Right. I just the whole time you were talking, I just thought that was the greatest answer you could have come up with. And that's it just tells me that we got the right person in the right place at the right time to help us get and negotiate this next iteration of Blueprint. Denver. So thank you for that, for that response. And then if I want to make it very clear that if you're looking for places to develop housing, including high density development housing, don't be afraid to call me. There are places really developable parcels in northwest Denver that could capture increased increased dwelling units on those properties and good projects. So if you're a good developer and you got creative solutions, feel free to call me and I will happily steer you to where we've got ample development opportunity. So as much pressure as we are feeling from development, there are still ample places that could use your creativity and I would be happy to sort of work with you on those. But specific to this moratorium, this moratorium is vital to give, are capable, truly capable, but overburdened community planning and development staff the opportunity to come up with appropriate standards to capture the intent of this form. The moratorium with with the exceptions, is to ensure that we aren't continuing to create a problem over and over in neighborhood after neighborhood. While changes are made to the garden court form standards and application for the sake of for sake of comparison, as was already mentioned, you do not leave the water running when you're trying to fix a pipe. The moratorium is a temporary shut off to fix the problem, and once corrected, improvements to the form and its applicability will allow for improved outcomes when the garden court form is used. So I am convinced this is not an easy task, but there are there is a need for this form and appropriate uses of this form and it's going to take a public process to hammer out how that should be. But as it is today, it shouldn't. I like to thank CPD staff, CPD and the staff for all their hard work on this moratorium. And I look forward to working together with CPD and constituents and stakeholders, including developers, over the next 12 months. Finding new solutions. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilwoman Ortega. Mr. President, I just wanted to make sure that anybody who might be watching this meeting isn't assuming that these two moratoriums are going to stop all development in this city. And, you know, we know that there are other sites available across the city, many of which, as I indicated earlier, we've already re zoned where we have the ability for high density housing. In fact, I was looking at some data and. What what's happening is we're seeing lots of apartment buildings being built because of the impact that state legislation on construction defects had for for sale housing. Now in my neighborhood, we've continued to have for sale housing being built, but it's at the top of the AMIS scale and we've seen somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 units that have been built, apartment units throughout the metro area over the last year. And so it's not like the development isn't happening. The issue is that we have 100,000 people a year moving here from other cities, and that has created the demand and the pressures that we're seeing happen. And so I think being able to take this time out, we all know that part of what makes Denver such a great city is our great neighborhoods and and people. You know, as we've heard, a number of folks testify, they live where they are because they love the neighborhoods. And when we began to completely change the fabric of some of the neighborhoods, it's why we've seen residents across the city come out. I remember when the Sloan's like neighborhood was starting to see single family homes and being replaced with duplexes. We all know it started in Cherry Creek, but that, you know, has sort of begun to happen in in neighborhoods across the city. But these two efforts tonight do not in themselves prevent other development from happening across the city that will continue to occur. So I just didn't want people to walk away thinking, you know, this just stops all development across the city and that is not the case. So I will be supporting this tonight. I think, again, taking this time out to be able to ensure that the the information that people look at when they come to our planning department is is clear. And it gives clear direction to both neighborhoods and to the developers who are trying to do development in this city, particularly around this garden. And I just want to thank everybody who's been involved in moving this forward, particularly councilman new Councilman Espinosa, but really came from neighborhoods saying this is something we want to see addressed. So thank you. Thank you. Madam Secretary, call. New Ortega Black Eye Clark Eye Espinosa. Eye Flynn. Eye Gilmore. Eye Cashman. High Carnage Lopez. All right. Mr. President. I. Mental Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 11 eyes. 11 eyes. Council Bill 541 has passed as amended. August 22nd. Before we go to the next public hearing, I'm going to give Councilman Ortega a little bit of privilege and make that announcement. Since you missed the. Okay. If you could. If you could stay quiet as you're exiting. I appreciate it. Thank you. So I wanted to state that the city's local emergency planning committee, which I. Councilwoman, 2 seconds. If you're leaving right now, the stairs are closed and you have to take the elevator. Yeah, just letting you know. Okay. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. And I appreciate you giving me just a moment to do this. I forgot about this when we had comments at the beginning of the meeting. So tomorrow night. I was just trying to wait for. Can we ask you all to leave quietly so we can continue conducting our meeting? Thank you. So the announcement that I want to make is that our local emergency planning committee, which is an arm of the Office of Emergency Management for the City of Denver, will be hosting meetings in every council district. The first meeting is tomorrow evening at 615 at the La Alma Rec Center in Councilman Lopez's district. And part of what they will be doing is talking to neighborhoods about the emergency preparedness plan that we have for the city, which we are required to update at a minimum of every five years. And so this is part of that process where we're soliciting public input for the emergency preparedness plan that we have for the city of Denver. So I just wanted to encourage people to come out. The address of the LA Alma Rec Center is 1325 West 11th Avenue, right next to the Lincoln Park in the Lincoln Park neighborhood . Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right, moving on, Kels. Menu. Will you please put Council Bill 566 on the floor? Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that the council bill 566 be placed on final version and do pass. It has been moved. Can we get a second? Yes, it has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for council bill 566 is open. Kels Menu. Are you giving us an overview or do we have a staff report? Carers. Okay. Can we have the staff report? Good evening. My name is Kara Hahn. I'm a senior city planner with Landmark Preservation at Community Planning and Development. This is a landmark designation for 1400 Lafayette Street, the First Unitarian Society of Denver, and this is an owner supported designation.

A resolution approving and providing for the execution of a proposed Grant Agreement between the City and County of Denver and the State of Colorado concerning the “Public Assistance COVID-19 Grant” program and the funding therefor. Approves a grant agreement with the Colorado Department of Public Safety for funding in the amount of $38,609,673.86 for the Public Assistance COVID-19 Grant Program (202054524). Councilmember Black approved filing this item on 4-27-20.

DenverCityCouncil_05042020_20-0393

Thank you, Councilmember. I'll raise other comments on this one. We're going move on to the next one. Secretary, please put the next item on our screens. This is 393. And Councilmember CdeBaca, you close enough for comment? Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. I caught this one out because I've been getting multiple calls from Denver health workers, employees who have felt like their safety and health has been jeopardized and they haven't had an outlet to speak up. They're afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation from Denver health. And so several of those individuals pulled together a letter that I'd like to read on record for council members. Distinguished Council members. We are a group of dedicated bedside nurses and employees at Denver Health caring for patients battling coronavirus, all while we continue providing the essential care that our community relies on our hospital for. We want to thank you in advance for approving desperately needed emergency funds and at the same time rightfully actioning the allocation of money inside our organization. Your commitment to ensuring the fair and ethical distribution of resources is reassuring to us at a time when we are being forced to reanalyze and reevaluate the assumptions we have taken for granted. We share your concerns, concerns we didn't think we would ever have. After some of us left for profit health care jobs in favor of nonprofit ones, we have been diligently working with the understanding that from top to bottom, this hospital was a team working in service of a shared mission. When our administration asked the front lines to make cuts and sacrifices, we assumed those cuts would be shared across the organization. We weren't. We were reluctant to ask questions, assuming these requests were being made in good faith. When the same hospital executives who asked us to sacrifice took over $1,000,000 in bonuses, we felt betrayed and demoralized by our leadership as our concerns for more, more as our concerns for patient safety and our rights as workers were repeatedly dismissed. We have begun to feel ever more expendable as COVID 19 lingers, claiming more lives. We are concerned not only for the outcomes of our patients, but for the first time we are concerned for our own safety. As you know, many of us are distancing ourselves from loved ones and have not seen our families for over a month . Knowing that when we come home from saving the lives of our patients, we may risk the lives of our families with the substantial viral load covering our close face and hair. We know we are in danger. The fear of contracting this illness or giving it to loved ones keeps us up at night and puts our dedication and altruism to the test. In nursing school, we were taught to always assess the scene, to ensure our own safety before caring for others. We were taught that the safety of others would never be expected to take precedence over our own. Until now, as we face emergency PPE shortages, we are extending the use of one N95 mask from a minimum of 12 to over 36 hours three weeks in some cases. This is a mask that was designed for single use and to realistically only be worn for at most an hour or two. We don't have access to full body suits necessary to protect our face, neck and clothing. Instead, we utilize single use gowns which only protect our arms and front portion of our torso. We are providing our own safety glasses because shields used to protect our entire faces are often hard to come by and are in questionable condition being reused between multiple staff and even patients. Cleaning supplies and disinfectant wipes are also in short supply. Advice to think carefully about what we clean and to judiciously use disinfectants. Nurses are are accepted to be expected to be the professional experts on a holistic view of patient's lived experience while in the hospital. We know firsthand how the quality of patient care has been reduced in efforts to preserve PPE and cleaning supplies. Many of our patients at Denver health are gravely ill and often have medical histories with multiple preexisting conditions due to income and systemic health disparities. Simply put, our patients are sicker than those that other hospitals. They have fewer resources, lower health literacy rates and diminished coping skills. Their care is complex and more involved than patients at other facilities. We can confidently inform this council that supplies and money for training are desperately needed to maintain the health of the most vulnerable members of our community. As the frontline nurses, we're committed to this mission, but we need Denver Health to have the support and leadership it needs. We can't do it alone. Thank you. So much for your time, consideration and commitment to the public of the of Denver County. And this was a letter that they brought to me due to their concerns over the insufficient paid help paid leave for people or professionals who come down with coronavirus for a paycheck loan program through Denver, Denver Health that has an 18% interest rate for the most vulnerable workers. And this is all due to that, what we're being billed for or what we're trying to have reimbursed by FEMA through the grant agreement that we're passing tonight. It's important for us to look at the many spreadsheets associated with this request and to demand continued reporting on modifications to this grant agreement amendments, deliverables, financial reports and even approved expenses. I think that we need to make sure that we're getting these reports on a regular basis, and I request that our leadership has this for us so that we can be in lockstep with what's happening on the ground and make sure that we're getting these resources to people on the ground. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Next up, Councilmember to our editors. Thank you, Mr. President. I really appreciate that letter. I think those. Six. Employees really quickly put into words. What it's like to hear from our district offices. And this. Is a reminder of even those that. We have to for how. We don't we may not have the authority of our personnel decisions, but we expect the demand. Leadership to work towards. These kinds of communities, and we expect that to work as well, which is really important. Failure of the leadership team is what I've seen, and I hope they. Will correct it. Thank you, Councilmember. Except Councilmember King. Thank you so much, Mr. President. I was not in favor of delaying that approval. And this is body politic that we've defined is critical. That said, important information that has come out of this many of us. Over the last few weeks. I want to thank them for answering some of those questions, but one that I would like to ask the members of the administration once again, if you could do it very obviously, or sometimes the connection between them or help in the in terms of things like security and purchasing of equipment. So I would like to understand better. You can follow up with that email. Understand when you've been asked to help to procure PPE, when you've done that, when you've obviously exhausted or declined to participate, whether it's the client and 95 because the price is too high when they were available. So if you could just help us understand how much we are involved in your health and think that was great, I don't want to put you on the spot and help it provide that and it would help me a little better. I know that we're separate entities that the president that our public health arm that they operate. It's my sense that there is some information happening at the government level. So it's needed for me for that. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. Singular comments on this one. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screen. Councilmember Torres, would you please put Council Resolution 416 on.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and take the actions necessary to adopt the Fiscal Year 2021 budget as listed in Attachment A. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_09012020_20-0831

Mr. Monica, you say you were ready. I said we were working on getting the presentation loaded. Okay, we'll wait it. Okay. Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, we are ready. We have the presentation up on the screen. So I will turn this over to Grace Yoon and the budget team to go through a presentation on our Budget Priorities survey. This is something we've done every year for the last several years and provide some good input in a way for our community to engage. We saw a huge increase in budget engagement this year, which we always like to see. So we'll go through the presentation for you now, Grace. Great. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the city council. We have Joe Greer here, a budget analyst on our team who will be providing the presentation and staff report. It evening, mayor and members of City Council. This presentation will be providing a high level summary of the responses from the Budget Priorities Survey or the BOCES request to provide this presentation. The full City Council ETF, summarizing the responses of the Budget Priority Survey, was issued on August 25th and provides additional detailed information. The budget survey is just one of our many efforts to receive community input and provide resources to the public on the budget and the budget process. These other outreach efforts and resources include the following budget hearings that took place throughout the month of August, where departments were able to present their budget proposal, proposed budgets, and the City Council, as well as the community, had the opportunity to provide comments and discuss the departments that presented this year where police, fire, public works, including city health and library services. The proposed budget and budget presentations are available on the city's website. This week, there were also weekly budget oversight committee meetings that started in late July this year and didn't do that due to the pandemic. We held four city wide community budget meetings through Zoom. Spanish was available for two of the meetings in committee and Tagalog. Translations were available for one meeting each. The community was was able to attend and hear an overview of the budget and had the opportunity to ask questions with representatives from nearly every department at each meeting. This year we also had a budget simulator available online for residents to try to balance the budget and solve a $30 million shortfall with a menu of options where they could either add or cut various services and also get a glimpse of the challenging decisions and limited options available when trying to solve a significant shortfall. It is important it is important to note for this year this was not designed not designed as a survey or to solicit solicit specific items that would require much more work in terms of developing the options, the types of options included and descriptions and service impacts. Given the limited capacity we face, the staff. The tool was designed to purely to provide an educational resource for residents. We hope this is something we can continue to develop and expand and improve upon in the future. Based on feedback from this year, 970 committee members completed the budget simulator as of today. We also have our budget one, two, one video that was created last year and updated slightly for this year. That gives an overview of the budget basics such as our city's funds and funding sources. We also created this year new short video clips that provide a specific overview of the proposed FY 21 budget made available in English, Spanish, Tagalog and combined. Lastly, there was a robust social media outreach effort to inform the community of all of all of the ways to engage in the budget process. I want to highlight that between the streamed press conference, community budget meetings and the FY 21 highlight videos, we had over 25,000 views on content specific to the FY 21 budget. Also, 3200 of those views were from individuals viewing in combined Tagalog or Spanish. Turning now to the budget survey. This survey has been conducted each year beginning in 2015 and the results have been shared with council each year. The survey was made available in online, in English, Spanish combined to call it. Also this year the survey went live earlier than previous years, going live on June 16th. The survey was promoted on our city website, during our online community meetings and on various social media websites. We had 404,710 responses this year, more than 12 times the responses last year. The data provided in this presentation is summarizing the data from surveys submitted as of August 28. Survey participants were asked to rate 36 services as being very important. Somewhat important, not very important or not at all important. Before I go over the survey results, it is important to know that the budget survey is not a formal or professional survey. This is not a scientific survey and the results should not be considered representative of the public at large. Also, there are no controls that prevent multiple responses from a single individual. However, the survey does provide considerable feedback from participants and comments that share their concerns and interest. This lab gives a snapshot of the demographics of the survey respondents. There was participation from all Council District Watts Council districts three and five, having the largest number of responses. 17% or 726 respondents noted that they did not know what district they lived in. 1% or 68 respondents indicated that they were nonresidents, and 475 respondents skipped this question altogether. In terms of age, the age bracket with the most respondents was 30 to 39 years old, with 22% of the responses. But in general, there are a good number of responses for each age bracket. There was also an overall shift in age of respondents this year. In prior years, 60% of the respondents were 50 years or older. This year, 60% of the respondents were under 50 years of age. There was also a shift in household size this year. In prior years, 60% of the respondents were in households with one or two persons. This year, that dropped to 50%. The largest group of respondents were households of four people, with 882 responses, or 20% of the respondents. To allow us to have an easier way to compare the results. Each response to each service was assigned a weights very important was given three points. Someone important was given two points. Not very important was given one point and not at all important was given zero points. At total points, each service was divided by the number of responses received for each service. This allowed us to obtain a weighted average. This slide and the next slide lists the services that we asked respondents to rate, and they are listed in ranked weighted order. With the first item on this list being the highest scoring service. This slide shows the highest rated services. With the items above the line signifying the top ten. I'll talk about them more in a moment. This slide is a continuation of the list of services from the previous slide. All of the services under the line on this slide received a weighted average below two, which means respondents generally ranked the service as being not very important or not important at all. What is notable is that this year, 15 of the 36 services had an average rated score under two. Last year, only six services were or scored under two. It appears that the survey respondents prioritized and made distinctions among the services more than in years past. Essentially what this means is that a lot more is that this year more people labeled more services as being not important compared to last year. In this slide, you can see the top ten ranked services from this year and last year. New to the top ten this year are reducing ocean pollution by improving storm drains at five and providing free or low cost recreational programs for youth up ten. Dropping out of the top ten are providing nuisance abatement programs downtown and enforcing traffic laws down. Five Other observations to now regarding the top ten is that, I mean, maintaining a low crime rate dropped from number one to number four and preparing the community for emergencies and disasters has jumped up from number eight to number three. Also this year, top four are all public safety related. The surveys. This survey also provides an opportunity for respondents to leave written comments. We have received approximately 2300 written comments and they are listed by district in a Tier 12 that was issued on August 25th. The comments cover a wide variety of issues. Some of the major themes include defund, reducing police budget support for the police and public safety. Homelessness, mental health. COVID 19. Recovery. And a variety of community services. That concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions. Thank you, Mr. Murdoch. I think that's the only part of the presentation that we're doing today. Correct. That is so this is the first night that the council can consider the adoption of the budget. So we have this set for today, for next Tuesday and then the 15th. Those are the three dates. Typically when the Budget Oversight Committee is done with its recommendations, they forward it all on and that becomes the complete package. So that work is underway and we're available to answer questions or we can push this forward until the eighth and continue our discussion then. Great. Thank you. So I'm going to start with our BRC chair, come from Austin. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd just like to make a motion to continue this item into September 8th. Number one. And then I have a question in terms of process for the city attorney or city manager, in terms of our charter and its as it relates to the budget. Can you explain to us if we as a city council are not able to come to agreement on a budget by a certain date? What happens and I know September 15th is the date. You're correct. Councilmember The date is September 15th if the Council does not adopt a budget by that date. The city manager budget goes into effect pursuant to the charter. Okay. And does that include the mayor's recommendations as well? It does not. Okay. Thank you. And so I guess as BMC Chair, look forward to working with my colleagues to hopefully get the budget adopted. I know we are working very diligently on the Budget Oversight Committee with staff and I know each and every council member is weighing in with their respective constituencies and communities. And I think the process and if I can just speak to the process thus far, I think it has been a robust process. This budget survey has given us a lot of good information. We have to also recognize some of the organized advocacy out there, namely the People's Budget and our Budget Oversight Committee. We we actually addressed that last week. And I think at the end of the day, we are looking to pass a budget that meets the needs of our city today in 2020, but also reflects the values of our very diverse constituents. So those are my comments from now. My motion says thank you. Thank you. Customer price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank staff for that presentation. I am blown away by the huge level of participation that we got this year. I think that's fantastic. I'm sure there's a number of factors that contributed to us having almost 5000 participants in this budget budget survey, and I'm really thankful to my residents. The third district represented 25% of the total respondents, so I want to thank them for continuing to be engaged. I know that our team really advertises and promotes the budget a lot in our in our emails to the community and in our newsletter. We've been promoting it pretty consistently, so I'm grateful that that folks took the time to fill it out. I am not surprised based on the hundreds of emails my team and I get every day, that the four top priorities were public safety related. That certainly seems to be consistent even from those who are interested in seeing some reforms from the police department. We've received heavy support for maintaining patrols and ensuring acceptable response times when people do call for emergency services, which is understandable. And so the budget survey results really does mirror very much that email correspondence that I'm engaged in every day. And and it was interesting to see the responses and the response levels throughout the city as well. So thank you very much for bringing this forward. And I'm really glad that we do a budget survey, especially when the results include as many participants as we have this year. So thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Thank you and staff for this work and thank you. Council Member Austin Chair Austin for postponing this vote today. As far as the survey goes, I agree. I'm really impressed with the numbers. I think it's typical for the third district to stay super engaged on the budget. I'm glad to see a lot more people in different areas. I think Second District has around 400 something and and I know that it's difficult, but I do love the fact that people were able to do this online, that we were able to have the budget meetings online. I definitely missed having the opportunity to meet with my neighborhood associations and some of my community members. Specific to the second district, outside of the people's budget and everybody else. So this week will be having another community meeting around that. But I did think that it was really enlightening to be able to see that the top four was medical fire, preparing for emergencies and maintaining low crime rate. And I say that because I, I was curious what this survey would come out with. And I think having that as a city, as a whole thing, that those are our four goals. We have to really look at what it means to provide public safety, and I think that that's in alignment with the conversations that people are having. We know that communities are safer whenever they have roofs over their heads, when they've got good jobs, when they've got access to education and the resources that people need. But I also just really feel like this is giving us that moment to reflect a little bit longer on what that means for us in the city of Long Beach, outside of maybe some of the reforms that are already present there. So I look forward to having deeper conversations in the next week. I hope to meet with some more of the BMC members and be able to kind of flesh this out on what it means to really provide public safety while maintaining the core services of each department in the city. And so I think that that's where we can have some really robust conversations and understanding how our departments really work together and not in silos to deliver on these public safety services. So thank you. Thank you. Council members. And they are. You, Mayor, and thank you very much, staff, for this presentation. I'm very lucky looking at the the survey results. You know, I'm very pleased that the community has responded in this way. I think it's very, very important to have community input. This also brings to my attention that we need there's still a lot more work to to be done in the in the area of putting our budget out there and getting people to actually respond, especially in my district. I see I see it as one of the districts that has responded in the lower category. And so I I'm I know that it's been a very difficult time right now with COVID. And so I know that is it's you know, it has something to do with that. But, you know, I look forward to to making sure that we raise that number in the in the future to have better numbers and make sure that all our residents, especially in my district, can have the opportunity to voice their opinions in this survey. But very good survey, very interested, I mean, and very interesting also. I really like that. I see I see quite a percentage of young adults that that have been involved, 20% being from 19 to 29 and gives me a lot of hope. I think that it's very important that our youth really take, you know, take initiative and be active in in surveys as these that are so, so very important. And, you know, we really need their voice to be heard. So I'm very impressed with with that, you know, and the next level up is, you know, our age is 30 to 39 and, you know, that's a 22%. So I hope that we keep that up and that hopefully we can get more and more people involved in surveys like this, especially with something so important as the budget . So thank you very much. Thank you. Next up is Country Supernova. Thank you. Thanks to the staff for that presentation and thanks to all the residents who participated in the survey. I think if I could ask staff, I mean, we talk about the top ten items, whatnot. Would staff be able to read aloud numbers one and two? That is the top four priority and the priority and the number two position. Thank you for that, Councilmember. Number one was providing emergency medical services. And number two, it's providing fire protection services. Okay. Thank you for that. I know the greatest number of respondents came from districts two, three, four and five and in the highest numbers from from three and five. I would just like to mention that while I made the case that Internet 17 helps our entire system, my fire response system, city wide and and indirectly has a lot of influence on District six. Districts three and five are served directly by Engine 17, and that's a paramedic assessment engine company. In three, it calls on the Park Estates area and in District five, the Stratford Square neighborhood. And I think it's just abundantly clear what the residents want or what they prioritize in their services. So I just wanted to make that point. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Just a few thoughts. So it's great that the DLC has been been so productive and getting us to this point, I think. I support the motion of continuing the next week particularly so we can have a bit more time, do an outreach. I see that from the survey. First of all, congratulations on getting so many responses. I want to I want to I want to highlight where we need to do a bit better. If you look at the survey, you see that districts one six. Let's see. One six, seven, nine. The respondents on within those districts, the sum total of those four districts is less than the responses in the third district. And it's great that the third district in the fifth District has a lot of response, but we need to make sure, particularly given all the changes and all the dynamics that people are dealing with, that we really put it in the right context and we we take additional steps to do more outreach. Traditionally, you know, I'm an in-person person and I, you know, I have a difficult time just keeping up with things online and, you know, just, you know, just having kids and all that stuff. And those are just no working families. That's just what it is. We typically look forward to an in-person budget meeting and we typically pack out the room and city staff know that we have a good time. It's it's the time of the year to really check in with a lot of departments, but we can't do that. And then we, we, we did sort of joint meetings and, you know, the participation wasn't very present there as well. So so I say all that to say I think we need to I think we need to like we've we knew this was an accelerated sort of process within this budget and there were multiple processes taking place at the same time, the reconciliation process, a lot of unrest in the community. And so I want to make sure that we we sort of think about that moving forward. We don't know how long it will be in the situation, but we're going to have to do a better job doing outreach. And and I'm I'm willing to be a part of that. I think given where the dynamics are, where the surveys didn't come from, we're going to have to have staff work, you know, just work a little bit harder in central Long Beach and in North Long Beach and on the west side to make sure people participate in this process. We also know that digital divide could play a role in this. We really need to think about what these barriers are so people can participate moving forward. I think there's, you know, a little I think the budget for the most part is I like the things that I see in the budget and the things that I'm seeing in the in the city managers budget. I mean, in the in the mayor's budget, there's some fine tuning to do. I have a I have a question about one particular issue, and I'm going to hold this to the make the chair, the B or C in the in the recommendations within the reconciliation framework, we talked about a Measure B funding arts. And as a matter of fact, I think I'm going to process the staff. And then I'd like to hear from you from Councilman Austin. But as it relates to Measure B, are those are those final filters down? So are those are we making the allocations on Measure B this year? And are we doing that? And if not, when do we anticipate bringing that up? So yes, we have a general dollar amount allocated in the city manager's budget and then the Mayor further puts detail on that as part of his recommendations. Measure B was something that the mayor's office really worked with the arts groups on. In fact, today his office put out a allocation, a proposed framework to the council that you can consider as part of the budget. Okay. So I'll I'll talk with the mayor and I'll talk with A, B or C chair. Thanks a lot. But I look forward to I know there's some more community meetings and presentations and I'll look forward to adopting the budget unanimously next next week. And if I could just just also weigh in here on that question. We did go through the mayor's recommendation for allocation Measure B during the Budget Oversight Committee. We heard a report and Budget Oversight Committee will be making our recommendations as well. And I would leave it open to the mayor to comment as well. Thank you. Let me let me just weigh in also just real briefly and then we have a couple more council comments since I think I think it's good. Yeah, we sent out. So just you should have or your staff should have some follow up documentation on the Measure B proposal. Just as a as a note, because I've had a couple of questions, so I'll just answer them publicly. One is, the proposal you have in front of you was the agreed upon proposal as we presented it when Measure B first came forward. And what then what the arts groups and the convention center came together on. It's also the one, of course, that I discussed with with with all of you during the process of us getting it on the ballot. And so that's the proposal you have in front of you. There was a question about the Arts Council. I want to make sure I clarify that as well. So one of the benefits of Measure B is it's going to be a huge benefit to the Arts Council directly because the arts groups, particularly the large ones that received significant grants from the Arts Council, the way we're going to ensure that they are able to give more grants to other organizations are their artists, is the the operating grants that they give, they're going to dial back on those for those organizations. So let's say you are in a musical theater west and you receive $10,000 a year from the Arts Council instead of that going to musical theater west because Measure B is significantly enhancing, then the Arts Council will keep those resources and be able to use them for their operating needs and or to grant out to other smaller artists. And so at the end of this process, not only are the arts organizations winning, but the Arts Council will significantly gain additional resources by not having to give out those operating grants to these organizations that are benefiting from Measure B. So I just wanted to also just answer that because I did answer that one other councilmember again, this was all part of the kind of agreed upon framework that the arts organizations have kind of put forward as as they develop Measure B. And in addition to that, I want to I want to mention something and this is Councilmember Austin has been championing. So we are in discussions and and Councilman Austin and I hope to have more of a concrete proposal by next week. But we are in discussion. We know that the African American Cultural Center and Museum is at a is at a point now where they have been receiving funding from the council for a few years. There's an active board. They have a collection that's growing, they're looking for space. And so we do believe that they are an organization that deserves some stable funding. And so we hope that by next week we will have, in talking to our other arts partners and within Measure B, some opportunity to support them on an ongoing basis. We just want to make sure that we meet our commitment so we are we're certain we're going to be able to make that happen. I know it's very important to Councilman Austin, but also other members of the city council as well. And so that's something that will have for you in the next few days. That clarifies my question, Mr. Mayor. Thanks a lot. In the reconciliation process, we specifically called out the fact that African-American arts organizations weren't included in that funding. So I'm glad to hear that you and Councilman Austin are working together to resolve the issue. Thank you. Next with customary Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I, too, want to congratulate Stefan on great analysis of the surely great turnout by the community was really encouraging to know that people are paying attention and care about Long Beach and carrying out the survey and to put in their comments. I really want to send out a big shout out to the community for their participation. I want to also just again by my kudos to Chairman Austin. We ran some real good like Universal Committee meetings. We had the discussions and the motion to make to adopt next week to get a more robust discussion and possibly adopted next week. It is wonderful and I think that it provides an opportunity for us to see much more closely with with a finer tooth comb, to make some final recommendations and or other suggestions as well. And that were the things that did come up. Was the Arts Council on that? I also brought up earlier today some other issues that will be coming forward later as we move forward. So thank you, Councilmember Austin, for your leadership on the ability. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I've had the great pleasure of listening in on all the Budget Oversight Committee meetings, and I think Councilmember Austin's doing an excellent job. I really appreciate the survey. I know in my office we were promoting the survey constantly. I know our calls for service are very high in our office and we would share with all of our constituents when they called an opportunity to share their opinion. And I think that the council offices can really be a big part of promoting the survey, and I really appreciate that opportunity. I'd also like to remind staff that we have a communication strategy that has an equity lens built in and that as long as we're following what we believe will get responses, then I think we're we're moving in the right direction. If we need to make adjustments to that strategy, then we as a council probably need to see what that looks like and make sure that we as a council agree to what we're talking about. So I'm always open to revisiting that. I think it's really important. Furthermore, I think that the survey demonstrates the need to address and what we all know to be true, which is a large percentage of our reliance on the nine one. One system is for two things a medical calls and a paramedic assessment. And that's really important and valuable. And then also crime prevention over the last year and a half. Long Beach has experienced several instances where sexual predators are in their cars watching and being inappropriate in their cars near schools. And my concerns are really with schools being virtual and kids being at home and less eyes being out on the street, seeing these individual children and giving them a little bit more freedom that we need to double down on our sex offender compliance. I see that there is a great opportunity to perhaps pull together some efficiencies that make sure that we aren't leaving our children at risk. So I'd encourage the merging of the. Violent Sex Offender Compliance Unit and our previously sought out warrant detail to make sure to protect our children from non-compliant sex registrants. And September is a really important time to think about this. Sex offenders are not allowed to decorate their houses for Halloween and give away candy for obvious reasons. But those compliance checks are really in the hands of our our officers. And those compliance checks cannot be done by admin analysts. And so when we're talking about really investing in our community and investing in youth, it's also about setting up good boundaries on what we're willing to eliminate in the budget. Those compliance checks with violent offenders and sexual predators are going to be more important than ever with children spending more time at home and in small groups out in the neighborhood. So I just really encourage us to look at I know I've already brought to light that the K-9 unit and the the costs that have gone into that. And I know that that's been a priority. I've gotten a lot of calls from the animal community about it, but then also really merging those units together, coming up with a new unit that really can put those things together in some meaningful way, potentially some kind of. Predator compliance unit that pulls it all together to make sure that this is a very different time. And as kids are going to be moving into our afterschool programs and at the parks, which I want to give a round of applause to our city manager and our Parks and Rec department on the reimagining of our our school programs. These kids are going to be walking from their homes, these parks. Back when we had school in session. They would be able to walk in groups to those parks together. They won't have that as much anymore. So we really need to make sure that we are setting up some good boundaries. I know that fifth District residents have some serious concerns because these particular individuals that have circulated our schools just keep rotating and and their addiction to our young girls is just sickening. And we need to be sure to protect them. So I'm I'll just reiterate that. And then I also see in the top five is infrastructure. And then we talk a lot about walkable communities and its direct correlation with health. And I think that if there is a place that we could pull funding from to make an investment in infrastructure, even in this very strenuous financial time , it's really an investment in more than just the streets and the sidewalks. It's also an investment in construction jobs around our city. I pushed really hard with our economic development department to have the play on tonight's agenda, and those jobs associated with that work are really, really important for our community as well. So I would encourage the finance division to work with the BMC to explore opportunities to dip into our Fleet Fund. The Fleet Fund has a direct correlation with street repair. If the streets that our city study vehicles are driving on are not in good repair, it does have a direct correlation with maintenance costs of those vehicles and quite frankly, the maintenance of the vehicles that we. Recommend for at five minute council events. We can just wrap up, please. That was the end. That was my last comment. So I'd love to see us pull 5 to $10 million from the Fleet Fund and invest it in streets in this next year and those construction jobs. Thank you. Thank you both, Mayor. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank you for making the motion to delay this for next week, because I know what Black Lives Matter reached out to me on behalf of people's budget about delaying this vote and had some concerns about the proposed tax increase. You know, and I hope we can continue discussion next week with the b c members. And thank you very much. Thank you. That concludes council comment. So we'll conclude the call for comment, but we do have public comments. So I'll turn it over to the clerk and we'll begin this press conference. Our first speaker is Alyssa Gutierrez. Alyssa Gutierrez. Good afternoon. Yes. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Three. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Melissa Gutierrez and I'm a second district resident and I'm speaking to you tonight as the chair of the Human Relations Commission. The purpose and function of the Human Relations Commission is to inspire and support social justice and equity in the city of Miami and foster mutual understanding and respect for all. We work toward a vision of Long Beach as a just and equitable community, free of discrimination and violence for all people are valued and have the resources to reach their full potential. As you finalize your budget in the context of a public health crisis, recession and uprising, we call on you to meet this moment by investing in the programs and policies that foster faith and healthy communities and divest from the practices and policies that perpetuate inequality and racial disparities. Investing in racial equity is more than a moral desire. It's an economic imperative and will be the key to a successful post-COVID economic recovery. This understanding we would like to eliminate the following items institutionalize racial equity by developing the Office of Equity Staff and Fiscal Capacity to implement racial equity efforts. Fully fund and implement citywide anti-racism trainings and LGBTQ inclusivity trainings with a special focus on the transgender community. Elevate the role and function of the Human Relations Commission as an important advisory oversight body of the Framework for reconciliation by allocating one full time staff to support the work of the Commission. Our Vice Chair will follow with the breadth of the recommendations. Thank you. Think your next speaker is Amy Erickson. Good evening. This is Amy Ericson. I'm the vice chair of the Human Relations Commission. And thank you to the council for taking the time to talk about this tonight. I will follow up the rest of the recommendation letter from the HRC. We want you to also fully fund the implementation of the language access policy. Less than 1% from the budget would fully implement the language access policies. We want you to also establish a citywide rental housing division and tenants right to council programing. Establishing a rental housing division within the Development Services Department to communicate with both tenants and landlords, issue legal bulletins and update enforce renter protection laws, centralizing for information form and administer a citywide right to counsel program for renters that will provide legal resources and representation to renters. We would also like to see funds to fund citizens, Police Complaints Commission reforms, to engage in a formal outside expert study through a non-police community selection process, and to conduct further community outreach to ensure reforms and or new oversight bodies meet community needs. The last recommendation is to develop an annual budget using an equity lens to use a zero based budgeting approach, beginning with the fiscal year 2122 budget to fund staffing this year for community outreach and feedback regarding the budget to fund the implementation of a public budgeting process with an equity led to determine how to allocate any additional federal funding sources. Thank you. Our next speaker is Don Martins. Hello. Yes. We can hear you. Can you answer? Hi. My name is when I got to know them. Actually, it is about your sister. My brother was murdered August 20, 29, so 2017 by Martin Ron from Long Beach PD. So I'm here because, you know, I think I believe that the defunding should you guys should defund the police and you guys should the rest of the funds should be used for the community and for the children and family members that are traumatized due to this killer cops that they have done what they have done, you know, to the families then for, you know, the community library, schools, etc.. You guys council, the city council, you guys are you guys should do your job correctly, hold them accountable for what they did. Murder one is still running these streets. He still he has he has blood on his hands, just like the Chief Luna that has commented on my brother's case. And he has said that it was my brother's fault for not being able to pay a dollar 75. And that's what he should have had happen to him, which I totally disagree, because they should have just given him a ticket. That was all they could. They should have done that. Very funny. The I'll be PD is responding to non-emergency cases and are escalating instead of the escalating and just doing, for example, a simple table you got, you know, taxpayers are paying for these killers mistakes. I think it's time for you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jennifer Hing. Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, you hear me? Hi, Jen. With a invest in youth and people's budget. We demand that you defund the police by 20%, not a mere 5%. On January 15, 2017, a 37 year old Cambodian mother who suffered with a mental health condition was shot and killed within 46 seconds of getting out of their car. Her daughter, Jonathan Lee, was a former youth leader of Girls in Action who advocated for support services for her community. I'll be PETERS Negligence, malice and oppression cost taxpayers a $9 million settlement, one of the largest settlement payouts in history. The proposed 5% cut is nothing compared to this one settlement and may long be. City attorney Charles Parkin reported that the city has spent more than $31 million since 2014 to settle 61 excessive force and wrongful death lawsuit for youth. Public dollars show that only $204 is spent on positive development programs per youth. But overwhelming $10,500 is spent on suppression for issues, arrests, police suppression and violence as a public health issue. Black youth and young people of color in these communities not only face police brutality, but witnessing police violence stops done by police and living in a heavily police community all harm health. Police violence compounds are growing rate of anxiety, depression and PTSD and disrupt young people's learning and growth. So to speak to your August 27th Facebook post, mayor. Our young people need to know and see that these deep and serious challenges can be addressed this year, in this presidential election, in this school year, and definitely in this budget cycle. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jordan during. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hello. City Council Mayor. My name is Jordan. I'm going to start here with a quote from the mayor as. We move forward. Whether we're talking about issues around the budget or legislation that will happen later this year, in the summer, that's what we do. Now, I think what I just said is that it's way more important that we're uplifting the black voices. Our communities are directly from the community and that they're involved in all the decision making processes and that there is actually a voice, instead of just presenting the budget and the council meeting among themselves and having a conversation that is inclusive of the community where the youth development or workforce programs and that money is. Invested in ways. That are dealing with the changes. Mayor Garcia, you made the statement in June that you would take into account the black community and the community in general wishes when it came to the budget. That has not been the case. This budget does not reflect the wishes of the community at all. Does not defund Vpd, which is a major priority of BLM and what the major priority of all respondents in the reconciliation process. So I must ask Mayor Garcia, will you keep your word to the community or you betray them? You said yesterday privately that you would support further cuts to LBP. Will you say today publicly or hide? Thank you. Our next speaker is Jordan Wynn. Jordan when? Our next speaker is Max Nurse. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good evening. Rex and Jeanine and you folks are bought and paid for by the Long Beach Police Officers Association. 2020 is not a normal year and on this I think we can agree, but all discuss this as if it is any other budget. But there's a clear outlier here in front of us in giant, bold letters that haven't been anywhere near the top ten ever before, and that is to defund the Long Beach Police Department and their killer cops. I think we can agree that killer cops are bad, so start there and fire them all. If you need a list, Google me. Drop me a line. Over this weekend, we had the third angel burglary of Cesar Rodriguez PD murdered and the cop who murdered him, Martin Ron got promoted. No more platitudes. Deep cuts, 20%, 25%. Maybe we could get some more empathy for Daryl and the district. Maybe we can do all the other things that had to get scrapped this year if we just make them deep cut. And we need to start with a violent, asinine white supremacist culture that is displayed by Robert Luna and the Long Beach Police Department, and especially the Long Beach Police Officers Association. Google the challenge coins. Understand this stuff. These guys are not good. Thank you. Our next speaker is Melissa morgan. Mayor Garcia used your platform to get things done. You're getting national spotlight, spotlight our city. If you really care about black people, if you really wanted to champion a healthier, more inclusive Long Beach, if you really wanted to defund the police, you could help council see the light and make it happen. Your wee little defund the police gesture is not yet significant. Defund the police by 20%. Make a bold stand against police violence. You hear our stories tonight. I'm Tyler Woods. I'm 19 years old. On November 19th, 2013, I was at the store with my aunt, my mother, sister, as we walked out of the store. Long Beach Police Department officers were standing there staring at us. We wondered why we live in a continual state of fear of police and felt incredibly uncomfortable. The more they stared, the more uneasy I grew, beginning to fear for my life. They came towards us and out of fear and a lifetime of traumatization by police. I ran. They chased me down fourth Street. I ran into a building to try to get away from them. There were people around. As the officer got closer to me, I heard him call me a nigger several times. An older Latina woman who was looking on heard the words as well. The officer began shooting me in my back. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 times. Someone please help me and my black body in court. The lady witness told the judge. The court said that nigger shouldn't have run mayor and council. Defund the police. Be bold. Divest. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jordan Wynn. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Glad you can this time. Lobby City Council. I'm Jordan Wynn. And we're tired. We're tired of talking about black lives, politics instead of ones that matter and who are suffering because of police violence. I hope you were listening to the last public comment carefully. We are tired of police firing violence across our country and here in Long Beach. One unjust death is too many. Yet they continue to happen every day. Donte Jordan say his name Feroz Mourad. Say his name. Lionel Gibson. Say his name is Rodriguez. Say his name. Taylor would say his name. Catherine Gomes. Say her name. Frederick Papp. Say his name. We are tired of city politicians skirting around this issue. The platitudes and the public input sessions aren't helping. When you don't listen to the people, what did the people want to focus on in every reconciliation public session? Alternatives to incarceration. There are decades of research on how to do this, and the people are asking for it. It's time to defund the police. There is no reason city council members should speed up the process and approve the budget today or next week without listening to your constituents who have prepared the people's budget. The proposed 5% cut to the LAPD are grossly inadequate. Imagine if we cut police budget by 20%. That's $50 million. We could fill the city's entire shortfall and fund the entire people's budget and boost essential services like libraries and parks. This moment will go down in history. Will the City Council align with the violent and corrupt police department or with the families and neighbors fighting for justice and healing? Thank you very much. It's up to you to decide. Thank you. Our next speaker is Rick Chambers. Good evening, Mayor. City Council members. I'm Rich Chambers. I'm president of the Long Beach Police Officers Association. We understand the city is facing serious financial challenges. Early on, we were told the department would be cut up to 8.7 million, representing a three and a half percent cut. That represented the balanced outcome approach where police services were prioritized. Then we see the proposed budget and we see those cuts increase to 10.3 million 5%. My concerns center around that additional $1.6 million. There has been no proper analysis, no formal discussions about the impacts of or the reasons for those additional cuts. As you look at these cuts, we ask that you consider what impact would this have on our communities? What effect will this have on our response times? How will these cuts affect our ability to keep the public safe? We want to be part of the solution, and we've asked to be part of the discussions. The proposed budget eliminates 54 sworn positions, and we're asking for only reasonable restorations. There are critical, specialized positions that need to be restored. We can talk about each of these positions and why they're important. As tonight's discussion has emphasized, the people have spoken. Your budget survey showed that maintaining a low crime rate is still a top five priority for the community. And a recent scientific citywide poll showed that 66% of Long Beach residents believe department funding should be increased or kept the same. We ask respectfully that you look at the data, the impacts that you listened to, the community's concerns, and consider our request for these critical, specialized units. Thank you. Our next speaker is Tanya Jimenez. Huh? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Good evening, everyone. Just like Jordan winner Melissa morgan, I'm tired and angry. This budget process has been extremely frustrating, largely in part by our collective refusal to listen to the public's demands. On one side, there are people that have been pleading for your assistance in ending police violence and ensuring that people's basic needs like access to housing , food, well-paying jobs, and even the ability to understand what their leaders are doing in their in their own language. On the other side, there are lovely people that are concerned about police response time who are seemingly unbothered by the current state of affairs, where the LAPD brutalizes and murders black and brown communities, and you all let them get away with it, even praising their actions and calling them heroes that go through there while condemning police violence elsewhere. I understand the multiple and conflicting obligations that you all face, but your primary obligation and duty should always be to the public. I also understand that the public interest is a vague concept, but in all that public servants do, they must act in accordance with the demands of their most disadvantaged constituents. That means prioritizing the people that are demanding that you build your influence to end violence at the hands of the LAPD, that you de-fund LAPD. Not a 1.6% cut from last year's adopted number from the general fund, and that you divest from LAPD with the goal to reinvest in black and brown communities. We are not calling for the reforms that you are proposing. First and foremost, we are calling that you are deep LAPD by reducing your budget size and power meaningfully. Now, are you misusing if you're still confused about what, defunding? May I be one that has been murdered by the LAPD since the department was established? Rest in power. Thank you. And now give us a moment. Well, we transition to the Spanish portion of our. Public comment. Our first speaker is Elizabeth Gonzalez. The preeminent person maker of letters, Elizabeth Cohen tells. Say hello. To. See. Sydney suburb Gonzalez Como. These are the last few that they loan this deportivo la quality that the of their immigrants. That means there will be no question in the last year that. Yes. Only that necessity central disagreement. The necessity program of the rehabilitation. But alas, Persona's problem is that all of us get to this point the metaphor that gets stolen as media. Chewing gum access. I usually set up. My name is. Programmer. Better than the better than me not to continue my. Four. No, it's a scratch on the ticket. It's better. They hit that Acela. My name is. Elizabeth Gonzalez. And as a mayor and also as a counselor of the coalition of Immigrants, I wanted to talk to you because wanted to speak out about that. The but the city budget. I wanted to make sure that there is money so that we can have health centers and also we can have rehabilitation centers. So for people who are dealing with drugs, also for not only for them, but also for their families and all residents of Long Beach, especially if the family needs therapy. This is going to continue in Spanish now. Good enough for me to get close enough. I mean, getting access or DARPA. Program as a whole in this comparatively. Second, on a personal necessity, I do not think I declaration my moral service or the idea of I'm in that either. Like this is super. And all the services should be available for all family members. The programs should be available for young ones and including their parents. Instead of calling 911 or calling the L.B. Long Beach Police Department, they should have a number where they can call the mental health services or mental health centers so that they can help them out and with the situation that needs to be de-escalated. Did we. Know? You know, you precious. Yeah. Yeah, well, not alternativa. Is happiness a competitor? And first of all. De La Ciudad where they do that? Yes. David, there's a simple foreign policy opponent. Bankruptcy until. Ten my common. I will like for the city budget to show. Money to be granted over to these mental health centers so that they can help these people, especially with therapy. And also, instead of calling the police, like I had mentioned earlier, they should be able to call them and get help. They should defund the police department 20%. This is the end of my comment. Gracias. Thank you. Your next speaker is clemency, Crespo. Allow them instead of. Of course, you. See them as this creature to get it is the goal. And that's what this Belarus Yellow Laboratory and Nicholas. Follow me on Twitter. Hi. My name is Clements Crespo, and I'm from District nine. That's why I keep for capital access alive for my family to bring this up money that. And I'm here because I. I support the information, the vital information for all our communities. Obama said both Army units are Keeping Them Honest, but that a piecemeal farcical. And I implore the city to put $2 million so that we can have this service of of equal support, equal access to all languages. At the homes of my son. You must have a better fear of Obama as a younger man. These meetings have shown us that we do need this translation and we do need this service. Not to bother Devon, the fed up each other, not their leader on that of in Kuala Interpret. I think our voices need to be heard and we also need adequate translation. But I thought it was a simple 5% policy to name a former programmer for less than $0.50. That is why I'm asking for defunding of the police department so that we can allocate this money to actual programs that the city needs. For your monthly phone bill. They can see you. For example, accessing languages and also for the justice system. Mental illness. I think almost all of us. Because we all need this, especially we need the councilmen and also the mayor to hear us. I'm a portrait of a Savoy Mori on the menu for the North. Taking up a setting for my parola policier. I got stopped by the police, and now I have to go to court. And I'm very scared. I do not know what's going to happen once they get to the courthouse. Criminal criminality can make it that only Carol. But Carol, it's always fun to play for families and families and then for you to. This is the first time I get I get stopped by the Long Beach Police Department. They took my car. I just need somebody to hear me out. I need this to be stopped. Watch out for my commentary. I'm one of you. Thank you very much. This ends my commentary. Have a good day. Thank you. Our next speaker is Magnolia Rodriguez. When a notion watching it, which is an economical hit of land sovereignty in the end here that I would say to you that the entire. Hi. My name is Magnolia Rodriguez, and I want to address the mayor and also the councilman about the experience I had in the last meeting. Lost brother, Boris Peck, on the other hand is 70. So it can be a minor thing that most experiences when the. If they really keep getting most of the people per mundane thing, it doesn't seem. In the last meetings we had, we had different interpreters. We have not had the same interpreter, so it has not been a pleasant experience. We want to have a team that's going to be able to interpret all our meetings. But I've been there roaming for my own for exactly three. So that the information that they're interpreting is accurate and correct. Zambian kettle black EPA, the utility's. Okay, your circular policy is important. That Zambian company does better than the employees over that filtration area. Necesitan. I use the como departamento de salud. Let me look at the fundamentals. But for their affinity, yes, they must ponder the of Beyoncé's the removal of policy on the policy. I know that the police department is important, but I also see the need for the health department and also mental health and other departments that are more crucial to the city. So that is why I am asking for a 20% defund of the police department. Muchas gracias. Thanks. Thank you very much for your attention and my column. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Okay. Mr.. Mr.. Quirk, that concludes public comment and the council meeting is adjourned. That was the last item and we will have next one moving on to the next week. And then, of course, I hope everyone enjoys their Labor Day, especially all the hard working folks that we celebrate that day for and for them. Thank them for their labors. Have a great, great weekend and we'll see everyone next week. Thank you. Mayor. In order to layer over the item, we need a vote. All right. I'll move. Three, five. Nine. Well, roll call vote. District one. District two. District three. District, for. Instance. District five. By. District six. By. District seven. Yeah. District eight. Just try. District nine. All right. One more. Try to win one more person, one more council member. And our taking these other. Thank you. Oh, no. Yeah. Sorry, Mr.. May I? Excellent. District three. Motion carries. Perfect. Thank you. Cosmo Ranga has been a meeting. Then I. Council member. The motion passed. Five five. We got five eye votes. And at number four, your father. And I and the House are. Yes, I. I wanted to also. And I. Thank you very much. Always emotionally. The motion was to lay the item over to the next meeting. At what budget? 15. The budget hearing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I. You're an I as well. Thank you. Motion carriers will adjourn the meeting. Thank you. Yeah.

Recommendation to declare ordinance finding and determining that a credit is due against the Transportation Improvement Fee applicable to the Shoreline Gateway project located at 777 East Ocean Boulevard; and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement regarding credit for transportation improvements made in connection with the Shoreline Gateway project, read and adopted as read. (District 2)

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Okay. Thank you. We'll going now to item 19. Please report from Public Works recommendation to declare ordnance finding and determining that a credit is due against the transportation improvement fee applicable to the Shoreline Gateway Project located at 777 East Ocean Boulevard, and to execute an agreement in connection with the project read and adopted as Read District two. Can I get a move on in a second, please? Most of my cameraman, Alan, going to get a second. Second by Councilmember Austin. I don't think there are any public comment on this. No. Okay. Let's go ahead and do a vote, please. District one. This time. Thank you. District two. District two. District three. I District four. I. District five. I. District six, district i, district seven. I. District eight. All right. District nine. I. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to new business. We start with customer supernova. Got it. Yeah. Thank you. I just took that long to unmute. I'd like to close tonight's meeting in recognition of the 70th anniversary of the opening of Fire Station 17 on April 21st, 1951, to the Long Beach Fire Department and all the crews who worked

Recommendation to declare ordinance approving and adopting the official budget of the City of Long Beach for the Fiscal Year 2019-2020, creating and establishing the funds of the Municipal Government of the City of Long Beach and appropriating money to and authorizing expenditures from said funds for said fiscal year; declaring the urgency thereof, and providing that this ordinance shall take effect at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, 2019, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-19-0020). (A-16)

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Count motion carries. It. Thank you and reader 16 Please. Report from Financial Management Recommendation to declare the Appropriations Ordinance for FY 20 as an emergency ordinance read. It adopted is read and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading. Thank you. Last week I said you wanted to again think the city council before we vote on really great budget season has been a lot of work a lot of community input but there's a great document in front of in front of everyone. I just want to thank all the work. I also want to just make a quick note that I do want to again thank the council that partnered Engine 17, I believe, is probably the last major commitment that we had outstanding from measuring that office where there's others other commitments ahead that we will be obviously making. But that was a move that was important, I think, for the community. I want to thank Councilman Supernova and the work and under the community is very excited about that. And that is also here in this budget and that's beginning on October one. We look forward to a roll out date for for that engine. And again, thanks to all the work from the BFC and everyone else. Councilman Mongo. I want to thank my colleagues for all their input on this process. And then just a big thank you to the budget staff. All of you have been excellent to work with, with particular recognition for grace. There wasn't a time where she didn't answer the phone, even though she probably shouldn't have. She was on vacation and she would answer calls with questions I had about appropriations and revenues and all of that. And just the outstanding dedication from all of you is just been exceptional. Thank you very much for your partnership. Thank you. And with our members, please cast your votes. Motion carries. Okay. Next year's budget passed.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to purchase, through Alliant Insurance Services, a Self-Insured Retention buy-down at a premium not to exceed $831,000, for the period of July 15, 2020 to July 1, 2021. (Citywide)

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Okay. So the next item, I believe, is the number 22. Report from Human Resources recommendation to authorize to purchase a self-insured retention buy down at a premium not to exceed 831,000 citywide. Is there a motive? Council member communities moved their second moves that they heard. Richard. Thank you. We will go to. And we get a brief staff report on this and then we'll go to Councilmember Pearce. Yes. A very brief staff report. Good evening, Mayor and city council members. The Human Resources Department is requesting City Council approval to purchase access liability insurance coverage with a self-insured retention of 7.5 million for a premium not to exceed 831,000. The city annually purchases excess municipal liability to cover exposures arising from city operations. Coverage is to be obtained through the city's casualty broker record of life insurance services. On June 23rd, 2020, the City Council approved the purchase of this year's policy for accessing municipal liability insurance with coverage limits of 40 million excess of a $10 million self-insured retention for all city departments, including the police department. Last year, due to historical claims, frequency and severity, the city's self-insured retention was increased to 10 million, the highest it had ever been this year. Early in the insurance renewal discussions, the city did not appear to be eligible for lowering the self-insured retention back down to 7.5 million. City risk management staff worked with the city's broker or insurance services to secure an option to buy down the current 10 million self-insured retention to 7.5 million. Self-insured retention through decisions against local government are trending towards larger amounts and are more, more and more likely to exceed 7.5 million. The City Attorney's Office, the Financial Management Department and the Human Resources Department all support this insurance change as a as an approach to better manage the Liability Insurance Fund and its financial status. Staff is available to answer any questions related to this request. Thank you for that report. Council Member Richard, I'm sorry. Pearce No questions. Just great job stuff. I know you guys worked hard to get to this point. Council member interested? Nope. Okay. Let's call for the vote. District one. Hi. District two. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Was there public comment? There's no public comment on this item. Okay. District three. I. District four. All right. District five. I. District seven. I. District eight. II. District nine. I know she cares. Our next item is item number 23.

A bill for an ordinance approving the Department of Public Works 2018 annual programs and waiving further City Council approval of specific contracts implementing the annual programs. Approves the annual Public Works infrastructure program by waiving the requirement that contracts above $500,000 be individually approved by City Council. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 3-19-18. The Committee approved filing this bill by consent on 2-13-18.

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11 eyes, Constable. 151 has passed. If you could please put the next item up on our screens. And, Councilman Cashman, will you put Council Bill 137 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move the council bill 18 0137 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded questions by members of Council. Councilman Espinosa. All right. Question for public works. This one. I just wanted some clarification. We've got six bills today, four for $3 million, $6.3 million contracts for sidewalk gap. So obviously, we could theoretically. Charge up a storm on that and I'm sure everyone would love to do. What is that, $18 million worth of sidewalk gap? But but this bill here only has basically earmarking $1.5 million to that program. How is that in addition to some of additional other funds? How much money is going to is already allocated for this year to the Sidewalk Gap program to sort of justify having six $3 million contracts . Uh, I think this is a separate ordinance from the question that you're asking. So the annual ordinance is our annual maintenance program. The on call the Sidewalk Gap program is something different. So there's a there's a specific number, and I could call it let me call it up that identifies it as sidewalk gap program. So which is why. I was yeah, there are some there are six on call contracts on the docket tonight that are for the Sidewalk Gap program. I'm sorry. I'm bringing it. Up. Well, he's looking that up. Would you mind introducing yourself for everybody? Charity named Angela Casperson with Denver Public Works. Thank you. So it's a it's fun 3030 1050-5011100 PR 002. Sidewall Gaps and safety repair. Is that. In addition. I mean, could these guys do both? I mean, is it a separate program? It's they are going to be utilized for a couple of different programs. So we will see some money for this sidewalk gap program. And it's my understanding that they could potentially be used for other sidewalk needs throughout the city. So that includes if there's go bond fundings, that sort of thing. So we had talked previously about a $4 million allocation to the SIDEWALK program. Is this so? Is this in addition. So this is. This is. So are you asking me about the on call contracts or, you. Know, this funding? So we're giving you the ability to contract out on all these different fund requests. I mean, these fund based on these fund amounts, these budget allocations with this. What do we call this thing, this ordinance for annual programs? So we're so one of those line items in that is 1.5 million to sidewalk safety repair. We've also then made a pledge to start this regional sidewalk repair program. Right. For to the tune of $4 million. How did these separate funds or do these support? Separate. Those are separate funds. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Tell us we new did you want to jump in? And this is the normal annual request for all the capital improvement programs. Right. For public works. Right. And these were all reviewed in the budget process. And we approve the right. Yes. Right. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Councilman knew seeing no other questions comments by members of council for we will. All right. Seeing done, Madam Secretary. Raquel Espinosa. Flynn Gilmore. Herndon Cashman. Janet Lopez. All right. New assessment. Black eye. Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, please close voting. Announced the results. 11 eyes. 11 eyes comfortably on 137 has passed. That concludes the items to be called out tonight. All other bills for introduction are ordered published which are now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilman Cashman, will you put the resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass on the block for the following items. All series of 2018 175 one 9166 184 185 187 194 196 138 159 one 6161 162 163 164 170 60030 165 177 178 one 8181 182 197 198 143 144 156. Thank you. Tells men that look good to me. Madam Secretary, did we catch them all? Yes, Mr. President. Great. It has been moved and seconded. And, Madam Secretary, roll call black. Espinosa, i. Flynn I. Gillmor, I. Herndon, I can. I. Can. I. Lopez All right, new. SUSSMAN. Hi, Mr. President. I. Uh, Madam Secretary, please close voting and note the results. 1111 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted in the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a required public hearing on Council Bill 8.0043 changing the zoning classification for 1630 South Acoma Street and Overland.

Recommendation to approve renaming the Long Beach Fire Department Regional Training Center located at 2249 Argonne Avenue, the “Captain David Rosa Regional Training Center."

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Appreciate that. Item 14, please. We're moving up on the agenda. Report from Fire. Recommendation to refer to the Housing and Neighborhoods Committee to consider the renaming of the Long Beach Fire Department Regional Training Center. The Captain. David Rosa Regional Training Center. District four. Thank you. Let me just say a few words about to turn this over to the chief and then also to Councilmember Super now and and Councilman Pierce and then everyone else that like that lines up on the speaker's list. But let me first let me just first say that I know that the family is here. Good to see you all again and look forward to saying hello. And just a minute, but I want to thank you, of course, first for for being here and for all for your strength that you continue to show every single day and for the way you are all honoring this amazing person, David's amazing legacy in our city and our community. So we just honor that and thank you for for being here and for for your advocacy, which I know is not always easy. And I want to, of course, introduce here our chief. I think this is a really great way to honor Captain Rose's amazing contributions. And I just want to thank you, Chief, for for bringing bringing this forward with with the staff. And I want to turn this over to you to just say a few words and give us a report on this item. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Mr. Mayor, council members. Thank you very, very much for this opportunity to address you real quickly on this, we think is a very important item. As you mentioned, Mayor, I'd like to introduce Linley Rosa, Dave's wife, who is here, Paul and Jean, his mom and dad and Dan Flemming and Gloria Fleming are here tonight to hear you discuss this item. And I do want to thank you for bringing this forward tonight. I know it's a little bit out of policy for the city to do something like this so relatively quickly after the tragic death of somebody that's beloved in our city. But I appreciate you, Mr. Mayor, and council members for picking this up and moving it forward. Obviously, June 25th was a day that will live in infamy with Long Beach fire forever, and it will certainly be a day that's etched in my heart for the rest of my life, as well as the members of our command staff and our firefighters, rank and file and sworn in civilian across our organization. It shook us to our core. And on the heels of that, there's been a lot of stories told about the contributions Captain Rosa made to this community, made to his community, where he lived, to his family, to his children, that he was a staunch family man, a good husband, an amazing father to his two sons, Alec and Sammy. And there's been a lot of stuff discussed there. And one of the things that came out during that discussion was his contributions to the Long Beach Fire Department, not only as a captain in the busiest station in our city, but most importantly, his contributions to our training center and as a member of the cadre of our of our training staff. And there was a lot of discussion inside the organization about how can we go about recognizing this man's contributions to our city in perpetuity, something that will live on beyond all of us. And and we decided that the best and most fitting tribute we could pay to this man is to rename our training center in his name, Captain David Rosa Regional Training Center, so that this day, from this day forward, every single young man and woman that joins the Long Beach Fire Department as they cross that threshold and begin their life of service, will hear the story of Captain Rosa and they'll understand. I'm going to read right now, you guys. I'm sorry. They'll understand that sometimes in service to our community, you have to pay the ultimate sacrifice. And Captain Rosa did not. He did that with his head up and with his eyes on service to this community. And I'm proud of his contribution. And I'm proud. That right now at this time, this council that I've had much respect for over my career are going to do something to remember this man's contribution. And I thank you. So with that, I wanted to make sure the Rosa family was here tonight. I think this is a fitting tribute. To a dedicated public servant. And I thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, for the time. Mr. Draghi. Thank you, Chief, for for that. And we appreciate everything you've done also in this time and your leadership shown in the department. And I think that. I think the way that the department has really stepped up to honor Katherine Rose's memory in a variety of ways is has been really great to see. I know. It's been great to see for for that for the family. And so thank you for for bringing this forward. And it's certainly something that will be very special for us here here in Long Beach. What I'm going to go ahead and do is I was going to a public comment first. Councilmember So is there any public comment on this item? Now that we know we have one here. Rex Pritchard, the president of Long Beach Firefighters on behalf of the men and women of Long Beach firefighters, Local 372. We want to thank the fire chief, city manager and staff and all of council. I'm bringing this forward. I echo everything the chief said. And the one thing I will add on to it not only will every single future Long Beach firefighter know Dave Rosa uh, Dave worked at Station ten and like the chief said, busiest house in the city, busy his house with rookies and training. I mean, they've. Was it training? Captain in training is something that sometimes isn't fun to do but is a must do. And so. For our current membership, our current firefighters. Every time we go to the training facility, whether it's EMS training, high rise training, operational training, it's a reminder might be in the station going up. We got to do this again. But when we're going to the David Rozsa Training Center, it's going to be a stark reminder. This stuff's important. So we stand in complete support of this. You guys have been amazing, Mr. West. And your entire team, uh, the service and the support you guys gave at the service, uh, just absolutely can't thank you enough. Um, the outpouring of support from this community in this council has been amazing. And so thank you very much. Thank you very much. See no other public comment on this on this item. Councilmember Superman. Thank you. I'd like to first thank Chief Terry and Rex Prichard for speaking today. This is a tremendous idea that I fully support. I have the great honor and privilege of having the training center in the fourth District. And for those of you who don't know, Station 17 is also located on that same campus as the training center, the regional training center. And for me, just on a personal note. My dad, Don Supra. Was stationed at 17 for 20 years. So to say this is incredibly meaningful to me. It's an understatement. But I'm just glad that I have the opportunity to support this. And thank you. Again for bringing it forward. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. I yes, I want to also think staff and our department for bringing this forward. Captain Rosa was somebody that the very first time I met him just. His presence was very much about his his dedication to the community and his love. And when we talk about training and we talk about those moments when we get to develop the next tier of firefighters, they're going to be serving in Long Beach to be able to be rooted in somebody who had values like Captain Rosa did, I think is really, really important. And I want to echoed the sentiments that you guys shared about what he meant to everybody. I've had the privilege of going along three different times with our firefighters to watch them train in practice. And I know how important that is. And I know that his legacy is going to continue to live on and we're going to be able to celebrate what makes Long Beach different. And it's going to be people like Captain Rosa. And so I want to, you know, applaud this this item and everybody that did the work on this item, this incident on the 25th was right across my district line. And so it very much touched my community. And it's a stark reminder of how much we need to be on our toes and how much we have each other's backs. And so to all the firefighters. Our hearts are with you. And we will continue to celebrate your efforts in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Over the last few weeks, I've learned so much about Captain Rosa, and I think this is a very appropriate, very fitting way to celebrate him and his life and his example. So I would just simply want to say that I'm completely honored to cast his vote in support of this tonight and and be a. Part of this legacy. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Landrieu. Yes, thank you. Also, I echo all the sentiments it's just been said about Captain Rosa. But the biggest part about it, and I learned so much is because the fact that Mr. and I we realize that the center is in his district, but the station is in my district and I enjoy it so much because the fact that every time I say Station ten, the fire chief is going down the street, sometimes I know I could get a ticket, but I try to stay close to them because I know that this individual's on that fire station. So the family and all I all my condolences still go with you. And I know that this individual, he is just such a loss to our city and to the community. But God knows best. And that is just it's amazing. But thank you guys for doing this year. And my vote also will be overwhelming for this. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember Ringgit. Thank you, Mayor and Mayor, continue. Condolences to the family. I know you're very proud of of your son and your husband, father, friend. I was a city employee for 28 years. And when we lose anybody who works for the city, it's like losing a family member. So we lost a family member as well. And and our sadness is with is yours as well. So we are with you in regards to your pain, feeling your pain. The chief jury demonstrated and exhibited that and how painful it is for us to have to go through this. But his memory will live on his efforts in Long Beach as a firefighter and captain will live on through the center. And I'm honored to be a member of this city council to cast his vote to recognize the training center as they were also training to. Thank you. Councilmember Austin. Thank you very much. And I, too, will be supporting this and overwhelmingly this this vote, this honor, I think goes transcends this this the city council, the the action, which was was horrific. Touched not only the city family, but touched people throughout the state and anybody that heard the story and and to learn about who David Rosa was and how he contributed and how he served this city with such was valor. And. Honor and pride. Makes me very proud to. To have some sort of small connection to. To him and his family. You know, he mentioned that the fire station was in his district. Darrell has a connection. His family, his parents actually live in a district. And I had an opportunity to meet them a few years ago. And his mother, Gene, beamed with pride, talking about her son and his accomplishments and how proud they were of of their son and his work as a firefighter and had an opportunity to meet him that day as well. And so this this this this this unfortunate incident was hit home, too, for for us all. And I'm glad that that we are honoring a true hero today, particularly on on on 911. It means a whole lot. And so to to his his his widow to his parents, you have our sincere condolences. But as I mentioned to you earlier. Your family has expanded beyond what you even. Know because you have the full support. I know of this not only the city council, but the entire city is with you as well. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I echo a lot of the same sentiments. You know, I learned so much about the family at the service. You are of a remarkable family in so many ways, so close. And who he was and what kind of a leader he was is a testament to the parenting that he received and the love that he had and his wife and his boys. And I learned a lot. And I was so inspired. I was I went home and just couldn't wait to talk to my own family about everything that I had learned. Especially I was particularly moved by the words of your pastor. It was very meaningful for me in my own life in taking away some of the things that he said in terms of what kind of life I want to live. And that was a lesson to all of us, I think, to the chief and the command staff to have this happen and to shepherd your employees through this process that was devastating and emotional and traumatic for them in so many ways. Must have. For you because you yourself were going through a loss, but you did it beautifully, at least to the outside world. And I'm sure that there were probably some internal tears. But to the outside world you maintained a strong force with very little disruption and the quality of service that we expect as residents and as policymakers. And to that you should for that, you should be very proud. I think this you know, any time we dedicate, whether it's it's a building or a facility or a space in the name of someone that we've lost, you know, I always come back to. It's it's not about that location. It's not about the the place that we're naming after the person or in dedicating the place to. It's about the spirit of what that dedication means to me. Our first responders are subject to so much criticism and it's such a thankless job on so many levels. But our first responders are the ones that are called at a time of need. They're called when people feel scared and don't have the strength. They're called when people don't know what to do. They're called when people are in their most vulnerable and desperate place. And our first responders take risks every single day. And for that, they should be rewarded not just in words, but in everything that we do as a city to place value on what they do. This is an example of a first responder whose job was to protect. And to serve. And I agree with Councilman Austin. It's it's very fitting that we're doing this item today on a day when we're celebrating the freedoms and the values and the fight for justice for our nation. Because I think Captain Rosa embodied all of that in everything that he did. And I learned so much about him through the service. And again, the service was just a reminder to me and to our community of how much better we can all be individually and collectively. So I thank you. You know, I say I was a homicide prosecutor for many years, and I would always tell the victims families, I meet the most amazing people under the worst circumstances. And I really felt that way. On the day of his service, because it wasn't so much meeting the most amazing people, although I did do that, but I learned some of the most powerful messages, life messages on that day under the worst circumstances. So I thank you and your family for allowing us to be part of the journey with you. And it's a complete honor to do this and more in his honor. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Mongo. I just want to thank the family for being here and sharing their their husband, father, son. With us in our city for so. Many years. And I'm very supportive of this item. And I would also be supportive of a truncated timeline for it to come back to council. I know that's at the discretion. Of the committee. But I think in this case it would be appropriate to not wait the full year, but to have this in place sooner rather than later. So thank you. Thank you. With that, we do have a motion on the floor as presented by by staff in the fire department. So, members, please go ahead and cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor, I know we have a consent and we have two hearings. Yes. Thank you. We have a motion on the consent. Is there any public comment on this? Yes. During public comment on the consent calendar. If no members, please cast your vote.

A bill for an ordinance amending Article II of Chapter 15 of the Revised Municipal Code for purposes of approving a new redistricting plan for the eleven council districts of the City and County of Denver for the municipal election on April 4, 2023, and for any general or special council election held thereafter. Describes the district boundaries depicted in Map G. Councilmember CdeBaca approved direct filing this item on 3-17-22.

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Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. And see no other speakers in the queue. We'll go ahead and move. Move forward on the agenda. Madam Secretary, would you please put the next item up on our screens? Councilmember Clark, will you please put Bill 328 on the floor for publication? Yes, council president. I move the council bill 328. We ordered published. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. Comments and questions by members of Council on Bill 328 Map G. Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you. I'd like to ask my colleagues to vote no on this one. I introduced this back in back last week when we were not sure what kind of conversations we were going to be able to have around amendments and how the legal review would work. And so I introduced it as a separate map. It was an attempt at amending the approved map. EA The council sponsors of Map e were not amenable to these changes. And so I am pulling this one and asking you all to vote no on this one for now. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Secretary. Roll call on Council Bill 22, dash 328. And for the public who are watching this map, G. CDEBACA No. Clark No. Flynn No. Herndon. No hay. No cashmere? No. Kenny. No. Ortega No. Sandoval. No. Sawyer. No. Torres. No. Madam President. No, Madam Secretary, please close of owning and announce the results. 12 nays. 12 nays. Zero Ies Council Bill 20 2-328 has failed. Madam Secretary, please put the next item up on our screens. Councilmember Clerk, will you please put Bill three, three, two on the floor for publication?

Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute an amendment to the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility (SERRF) Operations and Maintenance Agreement No. 23336 with Covanta Long Beach Renewable Energy Corporation. This amendment will extend the term of the agreement from December 8, 2018 to June 30, 2024, provide a discount to the operating fee, and recognize a change in the name of the operator. (District 2)

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Motion carries seven zero. Item number 25. Yes. I'm sorry, 23. Excuse me. Item number 23, report from Long Beach Gas and Oil Recommendation to execute an amendment to the Surf Operations and Maintenance Agreement with Covanta on of Long Beach Renewable Energy Corporation to provide a discount to the operating fee and recognize a change in the name of the operator. District two. There's been a motion by Councilmembers Councilwoman Mongeau and Councilman Austin. Councilman Mongeau. Did you have any comments? I'm just thankful that the city staff have had the foresight to move forward on this. Thank you. Like a staff report? Sure. Mr. Chris Garner. Thank you. Tonight, what we brought to you is we've had a contract since 1994 with the Montana Pacific Power to operate surf. And then they were bought out later on by Covanta, which is operated in excellent manner. Surf since then. The the term of the existing contract expires December 2018, and its proposed amendment tonight will reduce our operating costs by $1 million annually for the next eight years and will allow the continuous operation of serve for a period of five years beyond the current term. While the city explores the long term financial feasibility of the plant beyond 2018. Thank you. Are there any questions for staff? Okay. There's been a motion and a second. Is there any member of the public that wish to address the council on this item? Seeing none. Members cast your vote. I mean. Yes. Motion carries seven zero. Item number 24 Report from Public Works Recommendation to receive and follow the application of Flippin Pizza four. I wanted to say that.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4400 North Fox Street in Globeville. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 4400 North Fox Street from I-B, UO-2 (industrial) to C-MX-12, UO-2, C-RX-12, UO-2, C-RX-8, UO-2 (urban center, residential mixed-use) in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 5-1-18.

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11 eyes, one abstention. Three. No one has been adopted. Okay, um, let's see. Councilwoman Sussman, do you want to go head on and make your. I think Councilman Kasserine is going to put it on the floor. Yes. Order! Yeah. Councilman Cashman, we do have to take this out of order. Can you please put 412 on the floor? I'm glad to. I move the council bill 18, dash 041 to be taken out of order. It has been moved and seconded. Councilwoman. I think we have to do it on this one before I make my. Okay. Go ahead. Madam Secretary. Raquel Sussman. High Black. Clark Espinosa Flynn Hi. Gilmore Cashman. I can eat Lopez. I knew Ortega. I. Mr. President, I. 12 eyes. 12 eyes. It has been taken out of order. Okay. And Councilwoman. Yes, I move. That final consideration of Council Bill eight does show 412 with its public hearing be postponed to Monday, June 18th, 2018. And we'll be ordered published. Okay. In. Madam Secretary, we just need to put this back up for a vote. Yes, it needs to be moved and seconded. It has been moved and seconded. Roll call. SUSSMAN. Hi, Black. Clark, I. Espinosa, i. Flynn. I. Gilmore. Cashman. I can eat. Lopez. Hi, new. Ortega. Mr. President. I. This was very nice. Results. 12 eyes. All right. 12 Eyes. Counsel for 12 new public hearing date is now June 18th and will be ordered published. All right. This concludes all. The need to order it published. We do need to order and publish. Okay. Can I get an order? Yes. What would you like to order, Mr. President? You know. You know, right now I'm really hungry. So that in and out burger would be great. Okay. Please order this. Publish it. I move the notice of Council Bill 18 041 to a new public hearing date. Be ordered published. All right. It has been moved in. Second it secretary. SUSSMAN I'm. Black. CLARK All right, Espinosa. Flynn I kill more cash than I can eat. Lopez I knew. Ortega, I. Mr. President, I. Please. Please close it. ANNOUNCER Results. 12 Ice. 12 Ice. All right. New poll say just 18 minutes. It's now officially order published. Anything else, Madam Secretary? Nothing, Mr. President. Okay, great. All right, we're moving on. All of the bills are order published. We're now ready for the block. Votes on resolutions and bills and funding consideration. Council members. Remember, this is a consent or block vote. You'll need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call an item for a separate vote. Councilman Cashman, will you please, for the resolution for adoption in the bills and final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that the following resolutions be adopted and bills be placed upon final consideration and do pass. 18 Dash 048 118 Dash 037 418 Dash 042 918 0437. Pardon me, Mr. President. 18 2043 818. DASH 043 918 days zero four 4018 days 044 118 days 040 218 days zero four or five 418 days 045 518 Dash 047 218 days 04738048 418 days 035 118 Dash 03908047 518 047 718 042 518. Dash 0436. All right. Madam Secretary, do you concur? Yes, Mr. President. All right. It's been moved a second and roll call. Black tie, Clark. All right, Espinosa, I. Flynn, I. Gilmore. Cashman. I can eat. Lopez. I knew Ortega. I. Susman. Hi, Mr. President. I please close the voting, announce the results. 1212. As resolutions have been adopted and bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass tonight, there will be a required public hearing on as amended Council Bill 323, which amends is only coupled with multiple, sustained, substantive clarification and usability amendments in response to customer and community feedback, which is so nice, and also industry changes and other

A bill for an ordinance approving and providing for the execution of a proposed Intergovernmental Agreement between the City and County of Denver and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) concerning the "I-25 and Broadway Interchange Reconstruction" project and the funding therefor. (IINFRASTRUCTURE & CULTURE) Appropriates $17,373,000 of federal grant funds pertaining to the intergovernmental agreement with the Colorado Department of Transportation for the I-25 and Broadway interchange reconstruction project through Fiscal Y ear 2018 (201626760). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 4-25-16. The Committee approved filing this bill by at its meeting on 3-23-16.

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This is a project that is funded through federal funding, that goes through seed, through Dr. Kong, the Regional Council of Government, and then to Denver. And we are actually building it. We are building it, yes. Even though it's it's affecting the state highway. Thank you. We are okay. That's all I need. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you, ladies. All right, that was it. Soon we are moving on to the block votes. All of the bills for introduction are ordered published. Councilwoman Sussman, would you please put the resolutions on the floor for adoption in a block? I certainly will. Mr. President, I move that the following resolutions be passed, be adopted, they all or series of 2016. They are resolution 186 187 180 8167190233193. Thank you. Moved and seconded. Seeing no comments. Madam Secretary, roll call. Flynn I Gilmore. I Cashman. I can each. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Sussman Black Eye. Brooks. Clark. Espinosa.

A resolution approving and providing for the execution of a proposed grant agreement between the City and County of Denver and the United States of America concerning the "Continuum of Care Projects" and the funding therefor. Appropriates $2,657,458 for the Combined Housing First Continuum of Care project from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide rental assistance and support services for homeless persons with special needs. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 4-30-18. The Committee approved filing this resolution by consent on 3-13-18.

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Yes, Madam President. Okay. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Madam Secretary, would you put the first item on our screens? Councilman new, will you put council resolution 260 on the floor for adoption? Move the council resolution to 60. Be adopted. You're waiting for a second. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennish. It has been moved and seconded. Questions by Council. Comments. Council. Councilman. New. Comment. No, no comment. Okay. Comments. Councilman Ortega. Madam President, I call this out because I am on the board of a nonprofit that often receives continuum of care funding for services provided at a couple of housing developments owned by this nonprofit. So I will be abstaining from this vote tonight. Okay. Thank you very much. Seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Ortega Abstain. Flynn. Gilmore. Cashman. I can eat. Lopez. I knew. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, roll call. Seven I's, one abstention. Seven I's, one abstention. The Council. The resolution to 60 has been adopted. Okay, Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? Councilman Flynn, what would you like us to do with Council Resolution 286?

A MOTION confirming the executive's appointment of Sam Choi, to the King County gender identity and sexual orientation inclusion task force, representing Gay City.

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Okay. So we'd like to now have Sam Choi, who goes by he him and Christina Fogg, who goes by she her to join us. And I welcome you and I congratulate you on the appointments. And it is the council's responsibility to have you come before us and answer some questions. And then we will take action today on moving your names, your appointments to the full council for confirmation of your appointment. And let's take that as Mr. Choi first, who serves as the Training and Technical Assistance Coaching Coordinator for Game City. And Jeff, where you going to go over each person's background a little bit. I think it's probably best for their appointees to do that, but I can do that for the ones. Okay. We'll go ahead and let the appointment. I'm just going there. Usually that's how we do it with the staff report. But Mr. Choi, Sam, would you please provide us a little bit about your background and your reasons for wanting to serve on this task force? And welcome. Hi. Good morning. My name is Sam. I use him pronouns and like you said, I am the training and technical assistance coordinator at Case City. We are going through a rebranding right now, so we will be changing our name to Seattle's Automated Compliance Center. Like I said, I graduated with a psychology degree u dub and I am a first generation queer and trans immigrant and a queer person living in Seattle. And through my work I work with acutely bipoc so queer and trans black indigenous people of color, youth, and we center bipoc youth in all of the work that we do . And through my work I connect with organizations, hospitals, businesses, whoever to meet their needs and becoming queer and trans competent. And I really hope to bring forth more compassion and care for queer and trans individuals and beyond comprehension. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Have you attended one of the meetings yet? Yes, I have. I have since April, when our previous executive director, Fred, left, I kind of took over his role in the task force. And so I've attended three meetings so far. Oh, good. Yeah. Any thoughts about the meetings and what you're getting yourself into? Yeah, I am. I think I'm still opening pieces together, but I understand the critical needs of having this task force of meeting to have various queer individuals in their room to understand and assess and make recommendations to ensure that Kent County as a whole can better support queer and trans rights. Well, it appears that you're an outstanding new member of the task force, and it appears like you're really enjoying your work on it thus far after attending three main meetings. So I think you'll do great. Do any of my colleagues on the committee have any questions to ask of San. The Council members are. Hello. And good morning. Good morning. Thanks so much for volunteering to be on this task force. I'm really appreciate your help. Could you just speak to some of your goals with the task force? What are your priorities? Yeah, I think I kind of spoke about it earlier. I work primarily with Bipoc youth in the work that I do currently and I feel like, you know, Bipoc youth are often left out of the conversation. Adult ism is a very critical thing and we do not give a lot of agency autonomy to youth. And so I really hope, through my experience working with them, to really center their voices and their experiences. So I am I'm healing from COVID and to really bring their voices and their experiences to the table as well. Tam, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Are there any more questions? Well, thank you very much, Sam. Again, we'll be taking up a vote on your appointment shortly. And really pleased to have you with us today. And again, congratulations on your appointment. All right. And we also have with us Christina Fogg, who has been appointed as well and is the new member of the council staff or council member. DEMBOSKY has just joined us. Good morning.

A bill for an ordinance designating certain properties as being required for public use and authorizing use and acquisition thereof by negotiation or through condemnation proceedings of fee simple, easement and other interests, including any rights and interests related or appurtenant to properties as needed for the National Western Center Project. Grants the authority to acquire through negotiated purchase or condemnation any property interest as needed for the Brighton Boulevard 47th Avenue to Race Court Reconstruction project including easement interests, access rights, improvements, buildings, fixtures, licenses, permits and other appurtenances located at Brighton Boulevard from 47th Avenue to Race Court in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this bill by consent on 2-6-18.

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And Councilman Espinosa has also called out for a Vote Council Bill 137 approving the annual Public Works Infrastructure Program by waiving the requirement that contracts above 500,000 be individually approved by City Council under pending, no items have been called out. Did I miss anything? All right, Madam Secretary, could you please put the first item up on our screens? And Councilor Cashman, will you please put comfortable 115 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move the council bill 18 0115 be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded questions by members of council. 115. Those called out by Councilman Espinosa. All right. Um, sorry. Yeah. So I had some concerns reading the legal description. You know, we were considerably, you know, the way it's written, there's considerable amount of air land area that has been added to this area for condemnation. But I understand it's it's customary, but I would like somebody from public works to to speak to how this acquisition would be, how this kind of these new this new area, as defined, would be used to sort of assure me and this council that the recommendations of the Illyria neighborhood plan, which asks that the which states in their its recommendations that improvements to Brighton Boulevard do not go east beyond what is there today, so that there there is no, you know, destruction of the existing fabric. Good evening. Lisa Lemley, Division of Real Estate. So, Councilman, I can address in a general way first, the land acquisition ordinance is what is traditional for us almost 100% of the time. We use the vesting deeds to for each of the properties that we may impact. The reason for that is we come at a time before the design is 100% completed, but we need to be moving the land acquisition forward or the ordinance forward so that we can meet the timing of the project itself, recognizing that the intent is not to take all of the properties on this particular project. I can confirm with you, but in general I believe the ratio is ten of them are temporary easements, two are permanent easements and three are partial acquisitions. And the partial acquisitions are where Brighton curves a little bit. And the intent of the project primarily is a little bit of widening and sidewalks where there are no sidewalks right now. Now I would need to probably follow up with you on the Illyria plan that you're referencing as it relates to the design in terms of going east. The project is just between 44th and 47th grade. Yeah, yeah. I'm happy it's C 115 or I, I had it printed out but I forgot to bring it. So the, the reason why this is concerning when I saw the legal descriptions is we, we certainly put a exception on the final five feet of the property for the alley right of way. Me personally, I would have much rather seen an exception come further closer to the to the front property line where you actually need the right of way. The reason why it's concerning, though, is because we're in the process of acquiring everything west of those properties. And so we can certainly widen and put all the the the right of way improvements on our property that we already own. So I'm just it's important that. Yeah, well the question I should add, I'll ask it this way. So the intent of the neighborhood plan, which recommends not going east into the existing fabric, would be met by the proposed plan. I mean, the proposed project isn't as envisioned right now, correct? My understanding is yes. And like I said, I'm happy to follow up with you tomorrow then to confirm that. But my understanding is, yes, we are taking just there would be three small parcels and it is just to get around a curve, and that is with land that we do not own as part of the National Western Project. Okay, great. I sort of just want that on record because I don't want us to be in the it's a great opportunity. And there's also language in the plan about the redevelopment along Brighton Boulevard, but I wouldn't want us to be in this business of acquiring land through condemnation procedures and only to put it back on the market. No, there are very specific requirements around that with the Uniform Relocation Act, the whole process. No, it's it's very controlled. And how the city moves forward and public works and real estate move forward with these projects. And then one last bit of clarification. You know, I was told it was a public works project, The Broad, the Brighton Boulevard. But it is clearly stated in the bill this is part of the National Western Center is. The distinction is it is not within the National Western Center boundaries for the original land acquisition ordinance. It is in the National Western Center area. So Brighton Boulevard obviously is a major roadway that will support National Western. So that is why it was referenced because of that 44th to 47th block and it is being paid for from national Western funds. Oh, great. Thank you. I don't see anybody else with questions. Councilman Espinosa, did you want to make comments before we vote? No. No comment. All right. Madam Secretary, roll call. Espinoza. I. Flynn. I. Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman. I can eat. Lopez. I knew. Sussman. Black. Hi, Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary, please close voting. And now the results. Lebanese Lebanese Council Bill 115 has been ordered published. Final consideration will be Monday, March 12th. Madam Secretary, if you could put the next item on our screens and Councilman Cashman, will you please put Council Bill 151 on the floor?

On the message and order, referred on November 17, 2021 Docket #1182, relative to the adoption of classification in the City of Boston in Fiscal Year 2022, the committee submitted a report recommending the order ought to pass.

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Docket number 1182? Councilor Bullock offered the following order relative to the adoption of classification in the city of Boston in fiscal year 2022. Thank you. The Chair recognizes the District Council from Beacon Hill Councilor Kenzie Box. The floor is yours. Thank you so much, Councilor O'Malley. I think as all councilors know, the city of Boston's revenue is mainly based on property taxes, about three quarters of our basis. And and that's obviously very important to funding everything that we do and talk about here. And also, it's something that this body continually discusses, especially with members of our community who might be property rich in the sense of having a house that's appreciated in value, but the seniors on a fixed income and otherwise, you know, have difficulty keeping up with the property taxes. And so that has been an ongoing challenge. And and over time, the city of Boston has taken a number of steps to try to relieve residential tax payers of of an undue burden. And it's really a pretty proud tradition. So actually, you know, originally by the state constitution, we were only able to have one tax rate across all types of property in the city. And it was actually the voters of Boston who led an effort to amend the state constitution to allow for what's called classification, which is the idea that you can have a different property tax rate on commercial as opposed to residential property, and it allows a certain shift of the if you sort of imagines that everything was taxed the same, then you can shift a certain amount such that the commercial rate is higher than the residential rate. And so that was a that was a success of the residents of Boston. Then again, in 2007, under the Menino administration, Boston went back to the state and successfully achieved the residential exemption, which people are probably familiar with, which exempts a certain initial amount of residential property from the taxation. So I just tell that history to say it's something that this body and the residents in leadership Boston's been intimately involved in because property tax law despite the fact it's our taxes is set at the state level. And so that classification capacity that we got ourselves a while back, we have to actually act on every year. And so the order that I have filed is in order to do that maximum shift of the burden away from our residential tax payers and onto the commercial taxpayers, which is something this Council has approved continuously year after year. And so which I am, I'm coming with again, it does need to be approved by early December. So I intend, as the chair of Ways and Means to hold a hearing on this. But I just want people to know that I will also be aiming to move on it at the next session. And so I would urge councilors who have an interest in the topic or questions and such to definitely make sure to attend that hearing. In the meantime, um, I will just say that I know that even with our existing, even with these existing tools, we have residential taxpayers who feel significantly burdened. And it's something I know, Councilor Flynn, that we were holding working sessions about in February, March. And I think it may be that the city of Boston needs to once again pursue tools at the state level to make that better, because the existing programs we have don't serve enough folks. And and I would just say what's going on in terms of why folks feel that the burden is rising, even we make these shifts is that assessed property values are going sat are rising faster on the residential side, in the commercial side, and in many respects the pandemic sort of deep into that because of the uncertainty about sectors of the commercial real estate market. So I say all that to say like there's still a conversation about other tools to have this tool classification is the biggest tool we have to bring relief to our residential taxpayers. And it is critical, in my view, that the city council continue our tradition of of maximizing that shift. So that's what this order would do and we'll discuss it in a hearing. But I do. Mr. President, I hope to be back with a committee report on it by our next meeting. So thank you. Thank you very much, Councilor Bach. With anyone else wish to speak on Docket 1182. Would any councilors wish to add their name as a co-sponsor to talk of one on eight to Mr. Clarke, please add. Councilor Arroyo. Councilor Baker. Councilor Braden. Councilor Campbell. Councilor Edwards. Councilor B George. Councilor Flaherty. Councilor Flan Councilor me here please add the chair and docket 118 to will be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means. Mr. Clarke, would you please read docket.

Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the City Attorney to prepare and present to the City Council an Ordinance amending Section 10.30.080 of the Long Beach Municipal Code to permit the closing of the Boathouse Lane parking lot from one hour after sunset until 8:00 A.M. daily, instead of the current hours of closing from 10:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M. daily.

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Item 62, please. Communication from Councilwoman Prices and House Pierce and Vice Mayor Andrew's recommendation to request an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code to write the closing of the boathouse lane parking lot from one hour after sunset until 8 a.m. daily. Councilman Price. Mayor. So I want to make a few modifications to this ordinance before we open it up for public comment. The first is I'd like the modification to be that access to the lots is limited between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. because we do have a rowing facility located right there and we want to make sure that we accommodate the hours and the programing that takes place by the tenants that occupy that facility in terms of access to the water and access to recreation. So I'd like to direct that. And then I also want to point out that earlier today, this afternoon, we received a letter from the Coastal Commission with some recommendations in terms of things for us to keep in mind as we're drafting the ordinance. So I would like to make sure that the city attorney through this motion drafts an ordinance that's consistent with the timelines indicated in my motion and is consistent with the Coastal Commission recommendations, and that they have the conversations with Coastal Commission staff to ensure that access to this area is not restricted and that the ordinance come back to council so that we can start the process. I do want to highlight for my council colleagues where this request is coming from, as some of my colleagues may or may not be aware. We do have different operating hours in various coastal areas in the city of Long Beach and we want to make sure that we modify the hours of operations for the parking lots adjacent to Boathouse Lane to be consistent with some of the others along Marine Stadium. Boathouse Lane is located immediately adjacent to a residential community called Spinnaker Bay. And based on the calls for service that we've seen with the police department and the increase in the calls for service that we have seen there, the nuisance activity and the instances of criminal activity have really seen an increase in recent times. And that has a lot to do with people congregating late night in those parking lots. And so we want to make sure that people continue to have both bike and pedestrian access 24 hours a day to that coastal area. But that just like we do in many of our other beach lots, that the hours of operation for the parking lots are limited to reflect what we have available now at Marine Stadium and similar areas. So that's the background. I know there's a number of residents who want to residents and and members of the community who use the recreational facility who want to speak. And I just I want to make sure that the residents and the members of the rowing community understand that we're trying to balance the concerns regarding recent uptick in criminal activity, but also understand the importance of allowing access to the recreational facilities and to the water, as that's a very, very important function and part of our city. And we want to make sure that we don't restrict access and we'll do everything we can to allow our tenants to continue to have access at that location. So with that, Mr. Mayor, I think if it's okay with you, I'd like to comment unless the city attorney needs any clarification from me. This is Mike Mays from the city attorney's office. That's perfectly clear. Thank you. Councilman Price. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and go to public comment, please. Our first speaker is Bill Beder. Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Bill Boner and I'm a current member of the Board of Directors as well as an active member of the club since 1980. Marine Stadium in the following areas and ride facility are landmarks not only to the city of Long Beach, but worldwide. The facilities used by juniors, collegians, Olympic hopeful master rowers, recreational rowers and people with different abilities, including veterans from Long Beach Bay. Why the watering is not new to this area. I think that the current environmental conditions with COVID has exasperated the issue, and I'm not so sure that the proposed ordinances will stop these actions. In fact, I'm a little concerned because I think the only people who would be impacted by this the most are the actual members of the club. I'm also kind of disappointed that Albury board was not included in the discussions regarding this ordinance and therefore I would propose that the ordinance be tabled until all parties can discuss the resolution and present and revise equitable remedy to City Council. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Our next speaker is Brian McGuinness. Ryan McGuinness. Our next speaker is Charles Griffin. Oh. City Council. Mayor, my name is Charles Griffin. I'm also a member of the Board of Trade Association. And I just wanted to echo most of what Mr. Boehner said, that we really appreciate the wonderful facility that we have at the Archer Rowing Center, and that the recent change in or the recent nuisance that has developed along Boathouse Lane seems to have developed because of COVID 19 restrictions and people deciding to loiter there. And we wish that we had been more included in discussion. But certainly Councilman Price's trying to accommodate all elements as she and trying certainly as she changes. Was trying to ensure that everyone has appropriate access to all the facilities. And we want to applaud those motions and hope that she continues to make certain that everyone has appropriate access to the facilities and that the facilities don't come under excessive restrictions. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ellen Kirk. Hi. Thank you, everyone, for allowing. Us this evening. Bill Baiter and our. Club president, Mr. Griffin spoke. On the issue. It's important to. Emphasize that during. The war. We bring honor and. Respect to this city for homeowners and business owners in the city. And that is. To say, it is important that our concerns. Be considered, although we're not doing the complaining quite often. We've had issues. With the Santa Fe population, with the homeowners there. But I've. Been there long before homes were going. To do. It again. We've had spikes in the road. Those things have all gone. Away over time because they haven't been deemed necessary. So now, in addition to reconsidering this, I think it's very important to think about. How why this. Money is being asked to be spent. Right now, the city budgets are tight and it's kind of hard to. Justify spending money on something that was. There was taken down. So in addition to expanding the hours to include when I was actually show up when it's not likely to be evangelistic. Opportunity to the home. I just feel really emotional about this because we weren't asked to be involved. The solutions being proposed are expensive. At a time when expenses are really questionable and they've been done before and they were taken away because they weren't deemed necessary. Maybe there's a less expensive, temporary way we can get. Through this problem. Thank you. Your next speaker is Henny Kubik. Hi. My name is Hannah. Terrific. I'm on the Long Beach Rowing Association board and a long time member. It it's been brought to our attention. There has been some loitering in the parking lots on both land, possibly related to public gathering limitations brought on by COVID 19 restrictions. Part of the immediate response has been to expand the number of webcams covering all of the area around the boathouse, including the parking lot. The proposal to lock a gate at the boat base of about half an hour after dusk was made without notifying or consulting the community in any formal way. Currently, this gate is locked at 10 p.m. and open at 5 a.m. We really have to avoid the gate, but if that is not negotiable, it is imperative that we are given a written agreement for what has been confirmed to us in the last couple of days that the gate will be open at 5 a.m. and our preference is to remain open until our classes are completed or an hour after sunset, whichever is later. All LBO remember tenants will get access at all times. The city is offering to pay for this and to find a city that works for all parties. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jack Nunn. Uh. Hello. Uh, Honorable Mayor Garcia and City Councilman. Um, yeah, my name is Jack, and I'm currently run the Rail Works Facility, the Rail Works Program. We are indoor now outdoor fitness program where we do group rowing classes. I'm a former junior rower as well, a high school rower that went on to row at Berkeley a scholarship, three national titles, and then went on to the U.S. national team and then came around and coached for the Long Beach Juniors and also coached for Loyola marymount. Um, kind of full circle. This really this audience that just is kind of brought up on a strike so quickly, um, really affect not only the junior program but also rowers and in a really negative way. And I just ask that you guys think about the full spectrum of what you're asking the juniors right now. The kids need time for the parents to pick them up after practice. Uber parents, you know, all these negotiations that are taking place to get them picked up and to have them take care of them is really important. And also for my classes, Long Beach at night, they end at 730. And so that would impact my business as well, which we're already really suffering because of COVID. Thank you. Our next speaker is John Nunn. Hi. My name's John. And, uh, I'm a long time rower at Long Beach. I started, uh, in 1966, and I've been rowing there ever since. So I'm Olympic medal winner, Olympic coach, and I've been closely involved with the Long, Long Beach. Actually, I was I was the expansion director for expanding the boathouse back and we finished that in the eighties and excuse me in the nineties. But anyway, what's really critical is that we, uh, we have some kind of a ability to access the water because early in the morning, because we have people on the coast, Long Beach , people have to get the 8:00 classes, people at work have to get to work. And then on the other end, the juniors have to be able to get to get to practice after school and then be able to have parents pick them up in, you know, whatever, whatever degree of darkness it is because the school day doesn't change, because the the sun sets earlier and when the time changes, it's a real problem. So I think it would be better. Most of these problems have been happening are COVID related because there's people that don't don't having to do so. This is sort of a place they can go and they don't you know, they don't have to they they can get there without being hassled. So it's just, uh. Thank you. Your next speaker is John Van Blom. Hello. My name is John Van Blom. I'm a four time Olympic rower. I started I learned a role in Long Beach and have been running here for almost six years. I can appreciate the concerns of the neighbors at Spinnaker Bay. However, I want to express my concerns over the school closing time. That is closing one hour after dusk and not opening until 8 a.m.. Early morning is the best time for rowing due to the calm water and less traffic from other boaters. The Bay and at the time when people can row before work. Also we can run the Marine Stadium early in the morning, but we have to be out of the stadium by 8 a.m. to accommodate water skiers. And in the winter, one hour after dusk is about 6:00 when people coming to row after work are just arriving and young rumors of the junior program haven't yet left. I'm asking to maintain the current hours of access to the boathouse while addressing the needs of residents. I know Councilwoman Price is looking out for our interests at the Rowing Center and has said you work to get access. We need and I trust you will do that. I just want to emphasize to the council how important that continuing access is to the rowing community. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker is Christina Dugan. Mr. Mayor and council members. Hello, my name is Christina Dugan. I'm a third district homeowner and business owner and have lived in Long Beach since 1999. I'm so thankful for the Peter Archer Rowing Center because 13 years ago I attended a learn to roll class offered annually by the Rowing Center and fell in love with rowing both on and off the water. I'm a 13 year member and the club's regatta director and we welcome rowing clubs from all over the U.S. to participate in regattas and hopefully we will welcome rowers in the 2020 Olympics. I'm speaking this evening to convey my desire for the city to continue to accommodate the tenants of the Peter O'Toole Rowing Center at the hours we have previously had, which has been discussed and it sounds like 5 p.m. is going to be the time the Rowing Center and Spinnaker Bay residents are neighbors. I can appreciate the balance the councilwoman is working on to find a solution to mitigate nuisances experienced by residents, as well as accommodate rowers access to the water. Attleboro there don't master's program does a majority of the rowing from 5 to 8 a.m. for work. Long Beach Junior Crew. The high school program uses the water before seven on the weekends. See all being beach crew is on the water at five m to finish before classes. Each of the tenants uses the boat house early on a regular basis and all of us wish to continue our access as well as work with a solution with the city because they know nefarious activity on boathouse lane has made it a problem for the residents. We're grateful for the most beautiful. Thank you. Our next speaker is Laura Payson. Hi. This is Laura Barzan. I'm a deputy district attorney and a resident of Spinnaker Bay. My backyard sits adjacent to Boathouse Lane. So my family and I are privy to what is quickly becoming a hotbed of illicit activity after dark. Every day, for the last several months around, sunset cards of young adults arrive to what they apparently see as a haven for their bad behavior. This behavior includes underage drinking, public use of marijuana and other narcotic sexual activity incredibly fast, loud and dangerous street racing and illegal fireworks. These individuals seem to know that it is virtually impossible for them to get caught as they have quickly, as they have a quick and easy escape route. And nuisance calls to this area are an extremely low priority. Accordingly, there simply are no repercussions for their criminal behavior. And they know this. Despite that, in an effort to fight the deterioration of this area of Long Beach, I personally have called the police several times when I've witnessed any semblance of illicit activity, whether that be racing trucks, nearly mowing down children and killing them, or marijuana wafting into the backyard when my kids are playing. That these people on whom we call the police may somehow try to retaliate is another fear shared by many neighbors, and it presents yet another problem with their presence. After dark, it's come to our attention that there is a concern by some that the new hours for gate closure would deprive growers of access to growing activities. We are not in any way trying to limit access to the growing community and we believe their concerns can be addressed simply by allowing specific access to Rolling Thunder representatives at all times. Marine Stadium is a beautiful place for all to enjoy. The community of Spinnaker Bay is asking only for a simple measure to help keep it that way. This measure will without a doubt send a clear message to those looking for a safe place to break the law. That is, your criminal activity will not be tolerated. And you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mary Perot. Good evening. I'm Mary Perot. My husband and I have been Long Beach Rowing Association members since 1984. In the past 36 years, I've actively participated in our efforts to keep boathouse lane area. Free of disruptive behavior, drugs and solicitation, largely through the observation and reporting. By elbow members in early morning hours and post 6 p.m.. The presence of LV remembers entering and leaving Boathouse Lane has acted as a deterrent in these hours. I urge you to reject the proposed ordinance to restrict ours. You would have many other. An unintended consequences, such as increased parking and traffic congestion. In the Spinnaker Bay development. As a long time Albury member. I also know that verbal promises are not worth much. Therefore, I urge you, do not change access hours as it is the letter of the law that will govern govern future access. Thank you. Thank you. Your next speaker is Michelle Mallory. Good evening. I've lived here in the third and seventh Council District for 40 years. I began rowing in 1979 as a member of the Cal State Long Beach crew in the late 1970s. We met at 5:30 a.m. for our morning workouts, and each day the lifeguards reported for duty at 8 a.m.. For the last 25 years as a transportation professional, I rode most mornings at 5 a.m. before riding my bike to work or catching transit to my workplace. Naples Island, the Marine Stable Stadium, were initially developed by rowers in order to create a rowing venue. And indeed, the Marine Stadium has been host to the 1932 Olympics, as well as the 1968 Olympic trials. Long Beach Rowing Association, Beach Crew and the junior crew of all produce a number of Olympic national team and multiple university men and women throughout the nation. While I understand there is an ongoing problem in the parking lots associated with the Marine Stadium, and I support the city's efforts to rectify these problems. I want to be sure all the council members understand the need for the Long Beach Rowing Association, Beach crew and the junior crew members to have ongoing access to the boathouse at the end of Boathouse Lane. This access is needed every day at 5 p.m. and in the early evening, no matter when the sun sets, as has been the case for well over 40 years, the need to continue to allow this access for the foreseeable future is critical for the health and survival, the current programs and the future of the production of West Coast Rowing Champions, as well as for the fitness and pleasure of everyday rowers such as myself. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Our next speaker is Rob Glidden. Good evening. I'm Rob. Good. I'm the past president of Libera, and I am troubled by two aspects of the proposed action to restrict hours of access. The first is the potentially devastating effect this proposal can have on each of the five separate growing programs that operate out of the PDX Rowing Center. These programs comprise hundreds of athletes that range in age from 14 to 86. We come from every corner of the city, making this a matter not limited to District three. Throughout the 88 years that rowing has been a part of the fabric of Long Beach, we have depended on early morning and after work afterschool access to the waterways and our athletic facilities. Given the marginal effectiveness of existing enforcement measures, the sacrifices being asked of us are likely to be in vain. Plus, I have reason to believe that the recent miscreant activity is a combination of factors that have made 2020 special, namely organized political disobedience and restlessness from COVID induced boredom. These will in time pass, but our activities may be collateral damage in the process. A good faith effort is being made to mitigate these consequences, such as by issuing gate keys to users of the boathouse. This is my second concern at the devil is in the details. Many of us have put our heads to the problem, and we continue to identify shortcomings in terms of cost, complexity, security and effectiveness. If a special accommodation for the boat. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ron Harvey. Hi. My name is Ron Harvey. I started working at the Long Beach Rowing Association in 1996, and the boat club was the reason I moved to and bought a home in Long Beach in 2001 after a sustained spinal cord injury and became a paraplegic and thankful that they were continuing with the California Adaptive Drilling Program, or Carbon , which is based in Gary Hope, is open to people with any type ability and we welcome anyone who shows up at one of our parks is a positive and supportive environment for people with disabilities to come together and encourage one another to work to the best of our individual ability sport that we enjoy. We take pride in basically getting everyone who wants to go out on the water. We hold several regular practice sessions on weekday evenings from 630 to about 830 or 9:00. The reason for this time slot is that both our members and volunteers add their jobs during the day and then afterwards we can meet in the evening to get some exercise. It also allows us to have the protected water, the Marine Stadium after sunset out of the ground. The traffic. Please consider keeping the access to health clean from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.. We can continue to take advantage of the. Wonderful water and weather that allows us to be around the town beach. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Terry Glidden. Hello. My name is Terry Glidden. I'm the secretary of the Long Beach Rowing Association. In her email announcement, Councilmember Price has described Boathouse Lane as an access road to a parking lot that leads to a dead end. In contrast, the city's Parks and Recreation Web page proudly shows the same boathouse lane as a named road running parallel to the historic 1932 Olympic Marine Stadium venue ending at the Pete Archer Rowing Center, which Parks and Rec describes as a city asset home of national champions and one of the most competitive junior rowing teams in the country. Council members from other districts should know that the Rowing Center at the end of Boathouse Lane serves hundreds of athletes of all ages from all over Long Beach and beyond. This is not merely a District three concern. The Boathouse community has been excluded from providing formal input on the matter of new restrictions on hours of access to the Rowing Center that we leased from the city. I ask that the council delay or table action on this item because boathouse lane has been mischaracterized and there has been no opportunity for fair, coordinated input from constituents who comprise the rowing community directly affected by the proposed ordinance. Thank you. Thank. Think your next speaker is Ron Harvey. I. I've already spoken. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Our next speaker is Veronica Wagner. Good evening. I'm Veronica waggoner. At this time. The city council should move to table item number 62 until council more than Price's office in the Marine bureau. Contact and receive input from all the concerned party. The Marine Bureau and Councilwoman Price's office, who initiated this ordinance change, are well aware of our operations at the end of Boathouse Lane. They failed to inform Bilbray. They were putting forth an ordinance that would change and impact our operation. I do sympathize that there is a criminal element that is creating problems for the homeowners of Spinnaker Bay. But the solution is supporting and funding our police, not catering to a small group of homeowners. That. Want the coastal access near their property restricted. There are five organizations, four of them nonprofit at the Boathouse Lane. With hundreds of. Members that will be affected by this change. The IOC has sent people down to El Rey to look at Marine Stadium venue as a potential rowing site for the 2028 Olympics. To my knowledge, we are still a contender for that possibility. But how do we stay a viable consideration when our boathouse access to the best water time is now under threat? This ordinance change has been pushed forward without proper notification to all concerned parties and without any interest in gathering all of the data necessary to make an informed decision. I ask that you table this item until due diligence has been done. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is William Eldon. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, and members of the council. I would just like to echo what my compatriots at the Romney Center has said previously. I've been involved with various rowing programs at the boathouse since about 2001, and I'm also a US rowing referee and I've been chief referee for a number of the regattas that we've held here . We've already been told about how affecting the opening hours of Boathouse Lane will basically put the rowing operation out of business. I welcome council members price change to the opening hours of boathouse lane to 8 a.m. But as my compatriots have stated, I'm concerned about the evening closing hours. We do have things that operate until late in the evening and there has to be a different solution. I hope that this resolution or this recommendation can be tabled until all stakeholders have a chance to get together and figure out what is the best solution for what is admittedly a difficult situation with the recent uptick in criminal activity. Thank you. Thank you. Your next speaker is Stephen Hui. Stephen Hawking. Yeah. My apologies there. Thank you to Councilwoman Price for listening to us and taking our concerns seriously as the residents of the Bay were located immediately adjacent to the ruins that are parking lots. Our location gives us a prime seat to witness what's become at times nearly a nightly display of pot smoking, drinking, reckless driving and other nuisance type behaviors that are well documented on the police logs and include a horrific personal assault of one of our residents. Contrary to the concerns and sentiments being expressed tonight, the residents nor the ordinance are looking to impair front and center operations. There simply will not be a lost tidal stroke or any loss to exercise programs. As I sit here tonight, the lot was completely vacated at 730, as it is most every night, and the proposed change would simply not impact that timing. My biggest concern is the limit is not limited to the parking lot. The reckless driving down boathouse lane pass speed constantly after smoking, pot drinking and are going to kill somebody coming out of our two access points that have significant blind slot entering onto boathouse lane. This tragic result can easily be remedied by cutting off access in the late evening hours that are unaffected by the boathouse. The reality is we're losing more officers with budget cuts without limiting access as problems are only going to get worse, not better. And we need to act before it's too late. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. Kotsenburg Ringa. Thank you, Mary. I just want to say that the other speakers who came on and me about this item, I initially had some concerns about the coastal access portion of IT city on the Coastal Commission. I know that I'll probably be reviewing this again as part of their. So I'm glad to hear that the Councilwoman Price has made it a point to ensure that staff does contact the Coastal Commission and works with them in terms of creating something that's going to be workable for not only in Long Beach, but to ensure that coastal access remains intact for city residents. So I will be reserving all my comments from here on out until it goes back to conservation. But I do have one question in regards to process. Does the Council, this ordinance that we're requesting the city attorney to put together will come to the city council and then, of course, the commission, or is a proposal coast to coast commission first before that city council decides to make it on its side. I just want some clarification on that. Councilman, your anger. This is Mike Mays. In a situation. Like this. Typically council. Would we have an. Existing. Ordinance. That governs the current hours of operations. There? And typically we. Would amend that ordinance adopted by council and then. We would send it. To the Coastal. Commission for its. Review and approval. Okay. So basically it's we send it over the lesson and then we get. But that's the normal route. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, like I say, I hope that we are able to work something out with the course committed to ensure, again, that access to the beach is maintained. Thank you. Councilman's and day house, please. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Price, for this item. One of the things that I was concerned about is definitely the access. I know that I have one of my very good friends now who has been rowing for almost as long as I've known him over almost ten years. And he's been part of the adaptive rowing, a group that uses this facility on a, you know, on a regular basis, especially after sunset, when everybody, all the volunteers come out to help and they they help prepare, you know, everything for the night's activities. And they help everyone out of their wheelchairs and into the boats. And so, you know, that's very important to me. And, you know, that's something that you know, it's a program that I'm very proud that we have here in Long Beach to have an actual really good establish adaptive rowing program. So I really hope that we can look at giving access and continuing giving access to the ones that are doing these kind of activities. And just for clarification. Councilmember Price, you were right now, the the recommendations that you added right now is to allow more access. Yes. So just so my recommendation and I think a lot of the speakers maybe in anxiety or anticipation of speaking, didn't hear my comments. The proposal is that the audience would access would be from 5 a.m. until 8 p.m. that's what the ordinance would read. But of course, we would work with the tenants of the building to make sure that they have access to the additional times, which I'll I'll talk about a little bit further when you're done with your comments. Council members in the House. Okay. Because I think that that's very important that that they know that we're trying to kind of extend and be able to provide access. So I thank you for that, Councilwoman. Thank you. Thank you. Gentlemen. Mongo. And then we're going to go back to Councilman Price for a close up. Thank you. How do we currently restrict the access? Is there a fence or a gate. That I. Guess some of the comments confuse me a. Bit because I was just down there last weekend and it seems as though maybe Councilmember Price could provide some clarity. In her comments on it sounds like it's going to be 8 p.m.. It cut out again. Right. So. So, just by way of background, in 1993, the city entered into an agreement with Coastal Commission. That boathouse lane would close at the same time as Marine Stadium, which is an hour after dusk. For whatever reason, the ordinance that was passed by the City Council in 1994 excluded boathouse lane. And so even though Boathouse Lane was contemplated to be included and treated the same as Marine Stadium, it was not. We try to identify why that change was made at council, whether it was inadvertent or for some other reason, and we just couldn't find the backup material to support that. So it's been closed at 10 p.m. for a number of years, and so since 1994 and actually before then, according to Alveda Hallinan, who manages our our Marine operations. And so the requests from the residents and this is a really a resident initiated request was that we consider closing it. They definitely didn't want to interfere with rowing operations, but around 8 p.m. and so the city staff actually reached out to Eldora and I personally talked with BJC and it looks like Sarah McKenzie, the facility manager at Eldora, provided the list of activities at the center and identified the times that would be appropriate to accommodate all the members. And that's where the recommendation that I made tonight at the start of my comments came from in terms of the hours of operation. But we've made it very, very clear to all Eldora and all BJC members, I've been dealing with this now for three full days of contact with members that we will do everything we can to accommodate our tenants in that facility. Now, I did hear from some folks this evening that are saying they're there operating some sort of classes out of the facility. I'm not sure that they're legally or officially a tenant in our lease, so we'll have to look into that. But in terms of the tenants with whom we have an official legal relationship at that city asset, we will accommodate the hours to make sure that they have access to the recreational facilities. Wonderful, as long as everyone's been considered and consulted. I know that there's always work that can still be done after. And I know that you'll work towards. Making sure that happens. Thank you, Councilman Price. And then, Councilman Price, did you want to add anything else before we go to a vote? Yes. Yes, Mr. Mayor, I do. I want to thank everybody who called. Then again, I started off my comments by saying that we're going to maintain that. They point. Out hours. The evening hours. We're asking for a reduction until 8 p.m. not at us to accommodate the ten operational facilities. And so we have the tenants that we have and subleases, we'll do every canned fixture we'll have in regards to the activities that the residents are concerned about. First of all, the residents, it was very, very important for them because this is going to be about a six month long process before it goes to Coastal. So the residents wanted us to get the process started before we got the process started, before we filed our item. Parks Rec and Marine reached out to the facility manager, informed them that we were looking at changes and got a list of programing. I also specifically spoke with one of the up lessees, LBJ D and made sure that they knew we would accommodate the programs the residents have called the police on on numerous occasions. And so I know we have Long Beach PD on the call. I'm not sure if they can weigh in to share with us what some of the calls for service data looks like in this area. Good evening, Mayor and city council. This is Commander McGuire and the council tonight. With respect to calls for service on the boathouse lane in 2018, we have a total of 13, 2019, we had 23. And so far this year we've had 34. So we definitely are seeing an increase. Most of the calls reckless driving, loud noises, groups, parties, illegal drug use, that type of thing. In addition to that, this year we've had over 800 what we would consider officer initiated calls where the officers were just out there trying to be visible. It is a very remote area, relatively speaking, but they're trying to be visible. They're trying to be out in the area to kind of mitigate some of the things that we have been seeing and hearing about. But for our perspective, we have there definitely has been an uptick in the calls for service and the amount of activity that the officers are engaging in in that area. I hope that helps. Very much. I really appreciate that report. With that, I would ask my colleagues to support this item again. It's going to be a six month long process about hopefully sooner than that. We're going to ask the city attorneys to work with coastal staff to do a little bit more research. We did receive a letter from Coastal this afternoon. Staff is going to have to follow up on that and make sure that we are aligned in terms of the issues of access, which as everyone heard tonight, are very, very important. And I just want to thank everyone for calling in and to the rowing community. My boys row for LBJ. See, I'm on your team. We will provide access. We will accommodate. We want the adaptive rowing programs and diverse programs that bring the region and residents from all over the city and introduce them to the water. We want those programs to continue. We appreciate having that partnership with all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Roll call vote, please. District one. District two. District three. District three. I district for my district five. I District six. District seven. By District eight. District eight. I think you may have gotten disconnected, said Mr. King was trying to get back on. All right. Thank you. Okay, motion carries. I just got a few more items here left. Just get through these. Thank you very much, Counsel. A few items.

AN ORDINANCE proposing an amendment to the King County Charter to make the office of King County prosecuting attorney nonpartisan; amending Section 610 of the King County Charter; adding a new Section 649 to the King County Charter; amending Section 680.10 of the King County Charter; and submitting the same to the qualified voters of the county for their approval or rejection at the next general election occurring more than forty-five days after the enactment of this ordinance.

KingCountyCC_06012016_2016-0044

This. Okay, so I'm wondering about making sure, since that is if we should go on to if they record a quarterly update and we can't do that because he's missing, you know, we'll just take it in order. So could you begin on our ordinance number 2016 0044? Yes, Madam Chair. Nick Wagner, Council staff. The staff report on this item begins on page 11 of your materials. This proposed ordinance would place on the November 2016 ballot a charter amendment that would make the office of King County prosecuting attorney nonpartisan and would, among other things, provide for vacancies in that office to be filled in the same manner as vacancies in most other elective county offices. Currently, every King County elected office except prosecuting attorney is nonpartisan. On the other hand, in all 39 Washington counties, the office of prosecuting attorney is a partizan office. For non charter counties this is prescribed by state law which is quoted on page 12 of the materials for charter counties. The ICW allows county offices, but not state offices to be designated as nonpartisan in the county charter. So if prosecuting attorney is a state office, state law requires it to be partizan. If it's a county office, the RTW would permit a charter county Charter County to make the office nonpartisan by charter in four of the seven charter counties in Washington, including King County. All of the executive branch elective offices except prosecuting attorney, are nonpartisan. This disparate treatment of the office could be due to uncertainty about whether the prosecuting attorney is a state office or a county office, and therefore whether the county is permitted to make the office nonpartisan. In an opinion issued last November, the Washington attorney general expressed the view the prosecuting attorney is a county office for election purposes and that a charter county therefore may convert it from partizan to nonpartisan by charter amendment. And that opinion is attachment to in your materials that pages 25 to 30. In reaching this conclusion, the attorney general considered not only the CW but also the Washington state constitution, which provides that counties, quote, shall not affect the election of the prosecuting attorney, close quote. The attorney general interpreted that constitutional provision to mean only that the office of the prosecuting attorney must remain elective rather than being made a point of those, according to the attorney general. Charter counties do have legal authority to convert the office of prosecuting attorney from PARTIZAN to nonpartisan by charter amendment. The effects of the proposed Charter Amendment, if it were placed on the ballot and approved by the voters, are described on pages 13 to 14 of your materials, starting at the bottom of page 13. First, the election of the prosecuting attorney must be conducted as a nonpartisan election. This means that no candidate's party preference may be listed on the ballot. This does not preclude candidates from seeking party endorsements or affiliating themselves with political parties in their campaigns. Nor does it preclude political parties from endorsing or campaigning for candidates. Nor does it prohibit any form of partizan, identification or advocacy except on the ballot itself. The second effect of the amendment would be that upon taking office, the prosecuting attorney is required to, quote, designate one or more employees who serve as a deputy or assistant in such office to serve as an interim official in the event of a vacancy. Close quote. If there is a vacancy in the office of prosecuting attorney, the amendment would require that it be that it be filled like a vacancy in any other nonpartisan elective county office. Which is to say that the council appoints as acting prosecuting attorney, quote, an employee who served as a deputy or assistant in such office at the time the vacancy occurred, close quote. And that person shall serve quote until the vacancy is filled by appointment pursuant to general law for nonpartisan county elective offices, close quote. The council is not required or would not be required if this amendment were approved by the voters to appoint someone from the same political party as the former prosecuting attorney and from among three persons nominated by that party's county central committee. As would be the case if the office remained partizan. The fourth requirement or the fourth effect of the matter. That there are six. I have a question. Okay. So when the prosecuting attorney takes office, he designates one or more employees to serve as deputy or assistants. So not that this is going to happen to a prosecutor, but suppose he should die. And so then that person would the interim official would then take over as the new prosecuting attorney or as the interim until he appointed using the same procedure that we just did. The three judges with. That person would take over as the interim prosecuting attorney, and then the counsel would be, who would have the option of appointing someone who served as a deputy or assistant in the office to serve as acting prosecuting attorney until such time, if the county wish, the county could just leave it at that until the next election. Or the Council could appoint someone. Anyone who meets the requirement. The qualifications of office to be the I guess you call none acting prosecuting attorney until the next election. It's kind of a convoluted process. As to why it's going to be a Hanabusa. Okay, so the person he appoints to be the interim from the very beginning is not the person that would necessarily step up because we'd have or they'd step up for a while until we decided which of the existing deputies or assistance in the office would fill it until we got to the person. Okay, I get it now. All right. That is a little convoluted. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. The fourth effect of the proposed amendment is that the qualifications for office and the timing of the election of the prosecuting attorney shall be as prescribed in state law. Before discussing the practical effect of making the Office nonpartisan, it's important to understand what partizan elections in Washington look like. Unlike traditional Partizan elections in which the political party endorsing a candidate is listed on the ballot with the candidate's name. Washington's top two primary system permits only a candidate's party preference to be listed with the candidate's name in a partizan election. The ballot may not show whether the candidate has been nominated or endorsed by a political party. Whether a party approves of the candidate or whether the candidate is a member of or is otherwise affiliated with a party. In traditional partizan elections, the listing of the name of a political party below a candidate's name on the ballot informs the voter that the party endorses the candidate, which is information that the voter can use in deciding whom to vote for based on the voter's familiarity with the party and what it stands for. Party endorsement has been described as a low cost and usually reasonable policy guide for voting. Since it enables the voter to avoid a more time consuming process of determining the candidate's positions on issues of concern to the voter, and in my staff report, I compare it to the way a consumer might rely on a consumer magazine's ratings of products. A more important decision, but still there is some similarity there. The candidate's preference for a political party does not necessarily mean that the party supports the candidate. For example, two candidates running against each other might express a preference for the same party, and the candidate could express a political party preference for strategic reasons, despite holding views not shared by that party. The bottom line is that some of the informational benefits of traditional partizan elections are unavailable to voters in Washington under the top two primary system. Still, even a candidate's expressed preference for a political party provides some information about the candidate that a voter might find useful on pages 15 to 17 of your materials . Starting at the bottom of page 15 is a discussion of some of the most common arguments for and against Nonpartizan elections. First, there's the argument that potholes and bus schedules, for example, have no political affiliation in the sense that there's no political disagreement about whether potholes should be fixed and busses should run on time. This argument is then extended to say that local government is really all about management issues, not politics. So party labels are less important in local elections and don't belong on the ballot. On the other hand, one could argue that a willingness to raise taxes, to finance road improvements or mass transit or the allocation of resources between those two may depend on an elected officials political perspective. Similarly, one could characterize as representing a political viewpoint a prosecuting attorney's position on issues such as whether it's an effective use of public resources to press felony charges against against certain low level criminal defendants, or whether to support diversion programs for nonviolent offenders or to decriminalize certain drug offenses . This latter view would suggest that local offices and issues have political dimensions and should be treated as such on the ballot. A second argument for treating local elected officers as Nonpartizan is that political allegiances and party affiliations are sometimes based on national issues that don't carry over to the local level. The local branch of a political party, for example, may take positions on local issues that the voter, if he or she knew about them, would not support. Voting on the basis of a party label on the ballot could lead such a voter to vote mistakenly against his or her own preferences. Another argument for making nonpartisan an office like prosecuting attorney or for that matter judge, is that such officers should be conducted in a nonpartizan and unbiased manner. But an endorsement by a political party does not necessarily mean that the endorsed candidate, if elected, will be biased in favor of that party in performing the duties of the elected office. On the contrary, a party might endorse a specific candidate for prosecuting attorney, for example, precisely because the party believe the candidate will be even handed. In Washington, though, the only permissible reference to political parties on the ballot is the candidate's preference for a political party, which does seem more suggestive of bias than a party's endorsement of a candidate. This arguably strengthens the case for having nonpartizan election of the prosecuting attorney in Washington, compared with states where a party's endorsement is permitted on the ballot. Fourth. It has been argued that nonpartizan elections are inherently less rancorous than partizan elections. In Washington, though, nonpartisan elections are required to be nonpartisan only in the sense that party endorsements, affiliations and preferences may not be shown on the ballot. Candidates are not precluded from affiliating themselves with political parties in their campaigns or from seeking partizan endorsements. Nor are political parties precluded from endorsing or campaigning for candidates. Partizan Identification and advocacy are prohibited only on the ballot itself. Another rationale for removing party affiliation or preference from the ballot is to motivate voters to find other sources of information about the candidates. In practice, the evidence suggests that many voters in nonpartizan elections rely on information, shortcuts, or I should say, substitute information shortcuts like the race or ethnicity suggested by a candidate's name or the candidate's name, familiarity which favors incumbents and well-financed candidates, or that a voter might decide for lack of a reason to favor one candidate over another not to vote at all. This possible negative effect of having a nonpartizan ballot may be limited to some extent by Washington's practice of providing a voter's pamphlet containing information provided by the candidates. Finally, if partizan information is unavailable on the ballot and voters have not found substitute sources of information, they may end up voting by mistake for a candidate who does not share their views. Besides being undesirable in itself, in a jurisdiction where a clear majority of voters supports a political party, such mistakes are statistically likely to favor the minority party. That concludes my staff report, unless there are any questions and as you see, also available to answer questions. Are the prosecuting attorney, Dan Söderberg and Tom couple from the Pierre. Any questions before we bring our prosecutor and legal staff and then as a senator again? Sorry about that. Councilmember Caldwell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Nick, I went in under a system of the non the nonpartisan position, just as it's the case of our running for office where we have nonpartisan offices and I don't recall this can a candidate place the party designation on the yard signs? Yes. The only thing that is affected by the nonpartizan status of the office is the ballot. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And then I had one quick question. So judges are considered county employees, aren't they? Are they state employees? I'm not sure about that. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. And Mr. Söderberg and Mr. Couple, if you want to come on up. I can't remember. Do you have a question? Thank you, Madam Chair. How many of the elected officials here in King County are Partizan? How many of the elected officials in King County are part of one and that is. The prosecuting attorney. Why is that the case? Well, I can only speculate that it may be due to uncertainty about whether it is considered a county office or a state office under state law. The the rc w permits the county the county charter in the charter county to make county offices nonpartisan and state. An office is a state office. Then the rc w requires that it be partizan. So I think, Madam Chair, that we should have some consistency in county government. We should all either be partizan or nonpartisan. And that's why I'm looking forward to supporting this measure. But I would like to hear from Dan and our lawyer. Great. Their next. Mr. Senator, welcome. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Members of the Council in the onset of King County prosecuting attorney, also senior deputy prosecutor, Tom couple with me to answer any legal questions you have. And the question that you asked, Mr. Gosset, is is is the question why is it in King County government that the only office that's a partizan office is the prosecuting attorney? And the technical answer to that is that there was some ambiguity about whether it was a county office or a state office. Now, that ambiguity has been clarified by the attorney general's opinion that Mr. Wagner referenced, and I think I provided you each with a copy that that says that in a charter county that you have the right to ask the people how they want to form their government. And so now that that ambiguity has been resolved in favor of asking the people how to resolve how to form their government, then they're within, the tougher question is, well, then if you could change it, why wouldn't you? Why would the prosecuting attorney be the only partizan office when by anybody looking at it, it should be the one that shouldn't be partizan? I mean, Mr. Wagner's excellent report makes some of the arguments about, well, a party label can be shorthand to give limited information to people who don't otherwise want to do their own research about the candidates. I would suggest that that might be true for members of Congress, for the state legislature, even potentially a county or city legislative body where issues of budgets come up, where taxing and priorities of spending come up. But I would I would submit that it is very misleading to have that binary approach for a Justice office like the Office of Prosecuting Attorney Binary BI You either play for this team or you play for that team, and that somehow that label is going to tell everybody everything they need to know about this person's approach to justice. And there's a reason that we don't do it for judicial positions, because judges are supposed to make the best decision they can on all available evidence and try to do the right thing. Well, my office does that, too. The prosecuting attorney's mission is to do justice. And we don't go to a touchstone of a party platform to decide how to best prosecute cases, how to best use the resources that the county gives us. The party affiliation is misleading and worse than misleading to voters. It undermines the single greatest challenge that the criminal justice system has today, and that is to build confidence with the communities most impacted by crime that they can trust us, that they should participate with us, that they should testify when they see a crime, that they should call 911. And all the efforts that we've made to build a system of community justice are undermined by the fact that you can look and say, well, wait a second, you're a member of the Republican Party. How can I trust you to do that? And so I'm asking to harmonize this office with the rest of the county and and take away that that misleading label. Now, the it's not hypothetical to imagine a time that the prosecuting attorney office could become a partizan office. And it wasn't that long ago. And I would I would recommend to you who haven't read it Christopher Bailey's book called Seattle Justice, that tells the chapter of our local history that happened right here in this building. When Charles O'Carroll was the prosecuting attorney from 1948 to 1970, he was not only the prosecuting attorney, he was also the de facto head of the Republican Party. And if you wanted to have a job as a deputy prosecutor, you had to be sponsored by a Republican Party official or precinct committee officer, and you had to agree to work on Mr. Carroll's campaign, either donate money or put up yard signs. It was a political machine, and it eventually, as the story is told, it fell apart because it was a political machine, because corruption invaded this this office. And since 1970, during the eight years of Mr. Bailey's term, during the 28 years of nor mailings determined over the last nine years that I've had the privilege and honor of being the prosecuting attorney, we've done everything we can do to have internal policies to keep politics out of the office. So in my office. You're not allowed to endorse the prosecuting attorney. You're not allowed to give the prosecuting attorney any money. Know, we try to keep people at arm's length from the from the partizan political nature of the office. But I will say that adopting this ordinance, allowing the people to vote on the structure of their government and if they were to vote and I relatively confident that the people would have no problem saying, well, of course, the prosecuting attorney's office shouldn't be a partizan office. That would be the culmination of the last 45 years of reform in this office to make sure that that the the excesses and the corruption that went with a very partizan office never comes back to this office. So this, I think, is an issue for you of an issue of good government. It's an issue of harmonizing the the office of prosecutor, agreeing with every other elected official in this in this office. And I think we've got the clear sign from the attorney general that this is permissible. And now that it's permissible, I think answering that question about why this is the only prosecuted only partizan office becomes nearly impossible to to to answer without completely misunderstanding the role of the prosecuting attorney's office. So I'll stop there. Happy to take any questions that you might have been. Any questions come from. Thank you. So you're saying that every prosecutor in King County since 1970 has been a Republican? Every prosecutor since 1948. Been 28. Okay. I mean, I was listening to you, and I think that the argument is basically true, because the first time I ever went to jail was under Charles Carroll. And he said that people like us were nothing but outside agitators coming up to Seattle to agitate our Negroes. But all of us were born here. So that's that's something to think about. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you very much. All right. I don't see any other questions. And just a couple. Did you have anything you want to add? No, not unless there are any legal questions. Okay. Okay. Councilmember domestics have a little time, but this is, I think, for Nick. The fact of nonpartisan county offices is relatively recent. If I'm correct, can you enlighten us a little bit on the history of the executive and the council or any other elected offices in the county? Were partizan versus nonpartisan? Sure. The first office to become nonpartisan was the sheriff's office, which was made a charter office in 1996, and it was made a nonpartisan charter office. Then in 2008, Initiative 26 made the offices of assessor, council member and executive. Nonpartisan. 2008 Right. Also 68 when I think the Charter was adopted on Royal Charter until 2008, all those offices were partizan. Right. And how did that charter amendment come about? The 2008 charter. It was by a recognition. Going to give credit where credit is due. Customer of mine, right? Yeah, that's right. No. What does that mean? Sorry. It was by by initiative. And also that same year, a different initiative. Initiative 25 made elections director, a charter office. And it too, was nonpartisan. Oh, I had forgotten that one. Yeah. Great. So you're all alone, and that's not a fun place to be, so. Well, it is a fun place to be in the sense of being pro-second turning is a tremendous job and a great responsibility and tremendous challenges. And I think that eliminating that partizan label, you know, in the end, whether it's me or anybody else, we want to be judged by the people on our approach to justice, on the decisions that we make every single day, not by the consonant that's next to our name, but rather on the content of the administration of justice. Thank you. Councilmember Dombroski has a question followed by Councilmember Chair. And this is maybe more of a legal issue, but it's it's kind of a novel legal issue, given the attorney general's opinion of last November, I guess it was I was just looking at the statute here. 2904 110 the parts of the statute. Subsection. The statute. Yes, sir. The state statute. Arcia between now 411000 county officers. Right. Except judicial officers and those officers for which a county home rule charter provides otherwise. Those are the parties that officer. So the issue is, is your office a county office or not? When you bring charges, when you file. Right. An information or or brand charge, isn't it, in the name of the state of Washington? Yes, that is the charging language. And I think the attorney general's opinion distinguishes a county office for the purpose of the election versus a county office for the purpose of the function of many of the functions that we do are not state functions. When we provide advice to our clients in this from the civil division, we're not acting on behalf of the state of Washington. We're clearly acting in the best interests of the people of King County. And so that there are definitely functions where we do invoke the name of the state of Washington. But for elective purposes, it's clear from the attorney general's analysis that it is a county office. So that's the distinction. It's the only center that analysis is. What area are you talking about? You're talking about the function of the job or the how the how the job is elected. That's right. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Because it sounds like. Although. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've heard your arguments, and what I've observed about you is that despite the fact that you're a Republican, it doesn't appear as if you let that get in your way. Because I studied the way you and some of your top deputies review cases, some of which are very serious, like three strikes. And I have written down here that I you. Excuse me, concerns that you and your top deputies and over the last since around 2008 have been willing to support 15 or 16, I'm not sure persons that were in jail for three strikes and now most of them were sentenced before you became a prosecutor and you have ended up writing letters and that the low level of their charges, robbery tools are such that it's not likely that you are, given what you understand the circumstances to have been in their cases would have a levee that three strikes you're out on these persons and the governors whoever they might have been and the the pardons or clemency boards. I forgot the correct name over these last 12, 13 years. I have ended up concurring with you. And I think all but one of these three strikers or a man, all of them were black and they ended up getting out. And most of them that are out, all of them, as far as I know, have been able to reassess their lives. And I live in a positive community, contribute to a lives. Now that they're out, why do you have to have your office changed to continue that kind of fair assessment? Why do you have to be nonpartisan? Well, thank you for bringing that up, because I think it's a perfect example of the justice function of the office, where we're we're more like a minister of justice. We're not the judge, of course, but we have that we're in that same line of work of trying to do the right thing. And in each of those cases, I believe that the men had and the one woman had served sufficient time and that their their conduct while in prison made them no longer a threat to public safety. And that to keep them in prison until they died would have been an injustice. So when making that decision, I'm motivated by what's the right thing to do. And I didn't go and ask the political party if they thought that was a good idea or not. I just did it because that's what I thought we should do. So I think by removing that label, then I don't we don't I can be judged on the decisions that I've made and not some shorthand of, well, you're, you know, this are next your name, so you must believe in this. You know, the things that I believe in, I as a prosecuting attorney, I believe in because I've been in the office for almost 31 years now, and I have a sense of what a just outcome is. And so that's what I want to be judged by. Okay. Madam Chairman, I would ask a question about prosecutions. And then we need to wind up after that. Thank you. Have you had the opportunity to read Bob Ferguson's opinion that he is delivering as the Washington state attorney general? Yes. Yes, I have. And I like that. I know that is evolved, but I've always been confident that you render independent judgment. What is your opinion of that opinion? Well. We've looked at it pretty closely, actually, and our conclusion is it's the better view. It's the better legal conclusion. I would say that it's not settled unless or until a judge were to decide that issue, and that is a possibility. However, you know, having been looked at it and looked at the authority cited in there, I do think we're pretty comfortable that it is the better view. Thank you very much. Senator. Councilmember. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dan, have you had occasion to speak with your counterparts in other counties? I have. Sure, I have. And it's important to note first that about half of the elected days in America are nonpartisan. So we were outliers across the country and in the state of Washington. Those prosecuting attorneys who are from charter counties are very interested in pursuing this as well. In fact, the question came from the newly elected prosecutor in College County to the attorney general, because the College County is undergoing, you know, its charter formation. And so I think that is that that and I should go back to in 2009 and 2010, I had two bills in the state legislature that would have made this. Office, a nonpartisan office, statewide changing the RTW. And neither Bill got out of committee. The legislature is a partizan place, as you may recall, from your experience there. And so I was I was I said, fine, we tried. And at that time, I had every member of WAPA on board saying, yes, we think that this is more consistent with our function as ministers of justice than it is as a partizan office. And so there's widespread support for this in the state. And how many of the 39 counties are Charter seven? Seven. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So our plan is that we will vote on this in two weeks. And so we will look forward to seeing you then. And thank you for coming and sharing this with us. Thank you. And in the meantime, if any questions, you know where to get me, I'm on the fourth floor. Thank you. We thank you and thank you for living out what Norm said to all of us, that we are the face of justice. Thank you so much. Okay. We're going to go on now to number five. No, number six are going to get number five until the end and bring up number six right now, which is

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification of 1601 W. Jewell Avenue. Rezones property located at 1601 West Jewell Avenue from E-SU-Dx to PUD G-14 (office and telecommunications tower to planned development) in Council District 7. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 11-29-16.

DenverCityCouncil_01092017_16-1166

12 Eyes counts of 1125 has passed. Congratulations. All right, Councilman Flynn, will you please put Council Bill 1166 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill 1166 series of 2016 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved in and seconded. Councilman Susman, will you please offer a motion to postpone? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that final consideration of Council Bill 1166 with its public hearing be postponed to Monday, February six, 2017. Right. First and second moves and seconded. Councilwoman Sussman, please offer a comment. Oh, thank you, Mr. President. This postponement was requested by the applicant and the applicant's representative, who are both ill this evening AM. And they, of course, would like to be here when it's heard. So they've requested that it be postponed. All right. It has, but it has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary. Roll call, too, on a motion to postpone. Sussman. Guy Black. Clark. Espinosa. Flynn. I. Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman, i. Can each I. Lopez. Hi. New Sussman. Hi. Oh, sorry, Mr. President. I please close voting or announce results. 1212 eyes. I just knows both of them are ill this evening. Yes, they're both going around. Or they're at the game or they're watching the game.

On the message and order, referred on May 19, 2021, Docket #0685, Regarding a Text Amendment to the Boston Zoning Code with respect to parking minimums for affordable housing, the committee submitted a report recommending the order ought to pass in a new draft. The report was accepted; the order was passed in a new draft.

BostonCC_10202021_2021-0685

Docket number 0685. The Committee on Government Operations, to which is referred on May 19th, 2021. Docket number 0685. In order regarding a text amendment to the Boston Zoning Code with respect to parking minimums for affordable housing submits, a report recommending. The order ought to pass in a new direction. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I now would like to record. Recognize. Councilor Edwards, the chair of the Committee on Government Ops. Councilor Edwards, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Again, this is a stock. It is about making sure that we are building appropriately and avoiding frivolous lawsuits as we're trying to house some of our most vulnerable populations. This is not about getting rid of parking. This is about making sure that if we are going to be increasing the affordability in this case, up to 60% of the units having to be at 100% or less that there should be an exchange not just with developers, but also with the neighborhoods. We don't want people to be subjugated or to be prevented from being housed because one person doesn't want those kinds of people in their neighborhood. That's what prompted our colleagues today to push this forward. We believe in affordable housing. We believe in building, and we don't think that we should have. This parking requirement currently is written as an excuse for those who don't want those kinds of people in their neighborhoods. This is a very well crafted ordinance that essentially would only apply to 46 projects in the last two and a half years, and only nine of them actually even needed a variance for parking. Again, the appropriate amount of parking can be built with this ordinance. It is just simply removing it as an opportunity for someone to sue to block a building from being built. I'm excited to support this. And I can tell you, I was one of the first early skeptics about it because parking is a huge issue, especially in East Boston. Majority of these projects that are 60% or more aren't being built right now in Boston. So it wouldn't actually impact a lot of folks in the neighborhoods I represent. But it is as much as there's that wonderful project that comes along that's 100% affordable that is going to house our seniors, house our families and make it a place, a neighborhood, be vibrant and thrive even further. I want to make sure I remove any excuse from those who don't want those people in their neighborhood, including suing over the fact that there isn't enough parking. And that's what this is doing. I want to congratulate the sponsors for this ordinance. I want to thank Councilor Bob, Councilor O'Malley. And I believe this councilor now Councilor Boston Councilor O'Malley, for your leadership. And I will now turn it over to those sponsors. But I do recommend that we move forward, that we build forward for families and we make sure that parking isn't the only thing we're focused on, but housing people. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Edwards, the chair now recognizes. The lead sponsor, Councilor Bar Council. But you have the floor. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you so much to Councilor Edwards for her work leading us through the government operations process with this and to my colleague, President O'Malley on it, as well as Councilor Edwards said, this is it's a targeted measure and it's really meant to prevent us from losing and delaying critically needed affordable housing for seniors, supportive housing, etc., on the basis of of these parking minimums in the zoning code. And we have seen a number of lawsuits that have gone that are based on the variances being granted for these projects. And parking is is one of the key components of that. Often I have to say that I was very moved. We there was a protest in Councilor O'Malley's district on September 18th, and we heard from a lot of the folks at Mass Senior Action there. And the number of them came to the hearing and also testified this month. And, you know, when you really put a face to the unit that you're not getting, when we talk about those 38 units at the JP project and you really realize that this is an it's not a theoretical debate. And and I think that, you know, this we we still have to send to the zoning commission. But I think that it would it would reflect a really important update to help us get more of those units through. And I think this is a body that agrees that we need more units like that all over the city as fast as possible. So I, uh, I'm very grateful to the chair for her recommendation today, and I would urge colleagues to join me and President O'Malley in supporting this measure. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, Councilor Bach. The chair now recognizes the co-sponsor. Councilor O'Malley. Councilor O'Malley, you now have a. Oh, stop. We. Can I have the floor? Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank you, of course, to the chair of the Government Operations Committee, Councilor Edwards, and my dear colleague and co-sponsor Councilor. Very simply, there's a old expression many of us know for me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. I'm not going to let us be fool twice on this. And we actually had two very concrete examples of this weaponization of parking minimums to prevent needed affordable housing in my district, directly across the street from one another, Pine Street, and had a project that was for formerly unhoused individuals. Right across the street, the JPM, DC, one of the premier neighbor development corporations had a heated senior affordable housing. All want both 100% affordable. They went through a robust community process. And I want to be clear, because I think some skeptics may say, well, the community process is sacrosanct. Of course it is. And as a district councilor, I know that better than most, and you know that better than most. Both of these projects had a robust community process where the community came together, hammered out issues around parking, around gentrification, around affordability, around height, around shadows, around environmental ism. You run the gamut. And both projects were almost 100% supported by every neighborhood group, every civic association. That's no small feat in Jamaica Plain, particularly, ladies and gentlemen, both of these were as positive and as supported a projects that I've seen, and both have been held up by the same individual under the guise of parking. And what we're seeking to do here is to have a simple but impactful change to the zoning code that will no longer allow parking minimum minimums to derail otherwise incredibly supported projects. This this text amendment does not change the fact that we do need parking people have cars. This does not change the fact that anything can be built without any community process or any opportunity for folks to weigh in. But what it simply does is it allows a fix of a real problem which is holding up affordable housing units right now. Thank you to the co-sponsor for her great work today, the chair of the committee for her leadership and again to the individuals who came and who testified and who offered their perspective. That was the most compelling reason why we should vote for this. So thank you for allowing me to speak on this and look forward to urge you all to please vote on the affirmative present. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilor O'Malley. The chair now recognizes the District five Councilor Councilor Arroyo. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the sponsors for this ordinance. We in District five had a project. It predates my tenure by just a little bit that was a 100% affordable that was actually killed due to parking concerns prior to getting approval. And we know as district councilors that parking can often be a five letter word depending on who you're speaking to. But we also know in this city we are facing record levels of displacement, the cost of survival and living, and is making it from today to tomorrow in the city rises every day. The cost of living in the city and buying homes or property has drastically increased. If you look at what it cost my parents to move into Hyde Park in 1981 to what it would cost and has cost my siblings to try and continue to live in Hyde Park today. It's it's night and day. And so I see this as dealing with climate change being the other imminent crisis, the crisis of the day, which is affordable housing in the city of Boston. And anything we can do and I and I strictly mean this, I see it as our obligation to do anything we can do to lessen the burden on developers and on communities to welcome and to have affordable housing in their neighborhoods. I will always argue that having that housing for an individual and we heard moving and gripping testimony during the hearing for this makes a world of difference. And if the tradeoff is a parking space so that somebody can leave a shelter, somebody can have a place to call home, somebody can lay down roots in our neighborhoods and be valuable members to us. I would take that a million times to one, and so I hope that this passes. I hope that we as a body put our strength behind this unanimously. But I am thankful that this hit the ground. And I welcome more more ordinances like this that make it easier for affordable housing to be built into existing city. Boston. So thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the makers, Councilor O'Malley and Councilor, but. Thank you, Councilor Arroyo. Anyone else looking to speak on this matter? Councilor Edwards, chair of the Committee on Government Operations, seeks acceptance of the committee report and passage of docket number 0685 in a new draft. All those in favor say I'd add. Any opposed? The ayes have it matter has passed. Thank you, Councilor Siby George, for taking over the podium. Madam Clerk, we are now moving along to when you please re docket 0958. Sorry if that's. Drug it's 0958. The Committee on Strong Women, Families and Communities to which is referred in September 15th, 2021, docket number 0958. Message In order authorizing City of Boston to accept and extend in the amount of $100,000 in the forms of a grant for the No Kid Hungry award by sheer strength to be administered by the Office of

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending and restating Section 2.03.040 and Section 2.03.060, all regarding City Council Meetings, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_09102019_19-0865

Well, thank you very much. And with that, we have a motion in a second. Please cast your votes. Ocean carries out in 16. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code regarding City Council meetings red and adopted as red strike. Thank you. This is the second reading, Mr. Goodhue. Ms.. Cantrell, a mislead. Please come forward. Grand Prix P2. It was in tone earlier. We should have. We should go back to work. Would go back to what worked so well for so long. Period. No limitations on you. We have the three minute time limit, which is 3 minutes should be enough. Whether it be a consent item. Or an irregular agenda. But don't mess with that. If you don't like that, consider another. Occupation. Part time job. Period. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Lee, please. I'm sorry. Miss Control's next. And Cantrell. I have a lot of problems with this ordinance, starting with the fact that I think there's been a number of violations of the Brown Act. Start looking at. The description of what this ordinance is about. Is very vague and no one reading this would know all the changes that you are making tonight. Changes requiring people to sign up before an item is heard. Changes that if there's more than ten speakers, we only get 90 seconds. It even has changes for you. 5 minutes on an item, but you get to talk multiple times, whereas the public does not. The worst part of the violation is that you started implementing this. Three weeks ago. We were required to fill out the cards. Before. The item was written. That's why I have signed up for every item tonight. I don't know whether I'm going to want to speak on an item until I hear usually of our staff report. You aren't doing much of that tonight. But we should not have to sign up before we've heard what the item is going to be about. If your council meetings are too long and I agree they are. Put back the fourth Tuesday of the month and have a council meeting then. I think you can amend this. Or nets to make everyone a little happier. And I suggest that if there's a lot of people signed up to speak, the first ten get 3 minutes. The next ones get 2 minutes. Or if there's a lot of people towards the end, you could cut it down to 90 seconds. When people start repeating themselves. I understand. But this 90 seconds, especially last week to speak on all of the budget in 90 seconds was impossible and I think a violation of the Brown Act. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Lee. I also oppose the streamlining ordinance as written. I would also suggest 3 minutes be given to the first ten people and then restricted to 2 minutes after ten speakers. But after people take the time to drive all the way down here, it's because they are passionate about that subject and you owe it to them to listen to what they have to say. And 2 minutes is not too much. Last week I attended to speak on on the agenda item about the water rate increase. It was item 110, one, dash ten. There were four people here to speak on it, although like about 20 people had showed up at the water board. I was about. It was about the budget. There were like 16 different topics listed under line item one and then the interests of streamlining. The mayor lumped all 16 under one and gave each person 90 seconds. This ordinance had not been voted on and passed. Additionally, the Council was not asked to restrict their speaking time, which according to the same ordinance, proposed ordinance should have been 5 minutes or less. This is clearly an attempt at restricting Democratic free speech by the public, and I don't intend to drop this. I don't know what I have to do to turn it in, but I don't intend to stop. I think this is wrong. Thank you, Miss Lee. We have the first and second reading. Vice Mayor Andrews. Any comments? No concern. Response? Any comments? Okay. Councilor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And, you know, and supportive in in in general of of doing this. But I do want to say that I consider this still a test run and we need to be open to making adjustments as needed. And so I'm just looking to Mr. Modack or whoever is monitoring this. We have an opportunity to check in six months, see how it's going and if there needs to be some adjustments. You know, from one standpoint, I understand making meetings more efficient, but from the other standpoint, I know it's a big shift. The sign up for each card is a big shift for some folks. And I want to make sure we are getting some kind of feedback and not diminishing folks participation in the meetings. Certainly these are your roles, so we can certainly look at those and six months or nine months or a year in terms of the sign ups that actually is going to be continuing to change as we get technology, it'll be a little bit easier. So we're currently looking at some technology solutions, but we can certainly come back and change this. This is an ordinance, but it's not set in stone. Thank you. Customer Pierce. Thank you. I also wanted to check in and just what's the notification in the hallway as to what the rules are so that people know that typically don't come to meetings, that they need to sign up for each item. If I can have the city clerk speak to that, we did put some messaging out so that people know what they need to do when they get here. There's no notification in the hallway. We've had an employee in the hallway handing out cards and not talking to people when they enter the council chambers. We've also put something up on our Link Elbe to notify people of the change and put it out there on the agendas as well. Maybe Madam Kroger we could do also, I think would be helpful is where we have the table out. If we could have some visible signage as to what the procedure is so that folks, it's very clear and I think we appreciate the staff member as well. If it came can be having the signage would be great as well. Fantastic. We'll do that. That would be great. And then just also to clarify, at any given time, we can suspend part of that if it's one of those heated nights. That's what I recall the mayor saying. Before. Council can always suspend the rules. That would be up to majority of the body. Mr.. That's correct. The first line of this ordinance is this is your order of business that you're adopting this evening. However, you may waive that with the consent of council at that meeting that night, you don't have to come back and amend the ordinance. So if there was a specific item you wanted to address. Yes. Thank you so very much for answering those questions. Please cast your votes.

A bill for an ordinance submitting to a vote of the qualified and registered electors of the City and County of Denver at a special municipal election to be held on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, the question of whether the City shall be authorized to issue or incur general obligation debt for the purpose of financing and/or refinancing the cost of repairs and improvements to the Denver Facilities System; providing the form of the ballot question; providing for other details in connection therewith; and ratifying action previously taken. Refers a question to the November 2021 ballot to allow the City to issue general obligation bonds for the purpose of financing and/or refinancing the cost of repairs and improvements to the Denver facilities system. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-3-21.

DenverCityCouncil_08162021_21-0864

Councilmember Cashman, will you please put Council Bill 864 on the floor for publication? Yes, Madam President. I move the council bill 21, dash 864, be ordered published. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. The combined one hour courtesy public hearing for council bills. 864865866867924 and 868 is open. Speakers may address any or all of those items after the conclusion of this public hearing. Council will vote on each item separately and we're going to go ahead and have the staff report from Brendan Hanlin with the Department of Finance. Good evening, City Council. Thank you for having us here tonight. Brendan Hanlon, the city's chief financial officer. You're here to provide the staff briefing on the following six bill requests. 864 865 866, 867, 924 and 868. We have been presenting these in two committee meetings over the previous three weeks, reviewing and asking for council's approval to refer five bond measures. Now that's up from four from from the last time we were briefing council. Five bond measures to the ballot for consideration by the people of Denver for the municipal election to be held on November 2nd, 2021. Wanted to briefly provide some some overview that's been provided at the committee level, then focus on the primary purpose that we're here. This is part of our recovery effort. The package includes 80 unique projects that would create 7580 jobs, $483 million in labor income, and $1 billion in economic output. So this is a foundational element of our recovery. It is not the only element of our recovery that also is going to be paired with other federal funding dollars and other city dollars both this year and into 2022. So briefly reviewing the package of projects that are in each of the five questions, these are this is going to be an element of the sixth ordinance request or bill request that has the companion ordinance that outlines these projects. The first question is on Denver facilities, a total of $93.7 million of projects, 1832 jobs created by this package, $116 million of wages provided through these projects. $255.8 million of economic output. You'll notice that the projects are a combination of city facilities, cultural facilities, both new construction as well as maintenance, housing and sheltering. Two projects. These projects total three $37.4 million, providing jobs of 457 wages at 26.1 million, and economic output of 60 million focused primarily on our sheltering facilities. Again, these should be paired with other investments that the city has made by way of CARES funds, as well as proposed American rescue plan dollars that are also containing housing investments as well. So this is one element of a multi funding stream. Transportation investments totaling $61.2 million, 877 jobs, 54.7 million of wages provided through these projects. Economic output of $122.4 million. Again, a combination of both concentrated new construction as well as maintenance of an expansion of our transportation system. Parks and rec projects totaling $52.7 million. 947 jobs. Wages provided 60 million economic output of $115.4 million. Again, a variety of both new construction as well as maintenance projects throughout the city, both large and small. Projects. And the last question, this is a new question from our Conversation Committee. Two weeks ago, two projects totaling $190 million of investment for 3467 jobs. Wages of $225.5 million. Economic output of 490 million. And these two projects are concentrated in in the National Western Center campus facilities. There are other elements of this. You have the questions that have been provided to you. These are elements of those questions. These are table required numbers. Below that estimate, the paramount or the principle that would be transacted through each of the questions. The maximum total repayment cost, principal and interest is in that category and the maximum annual debt service. All of these elements are required as part of the table of questions that that is a legal requirement of any debt questions that go on to the ballot. And that concludes my update and staff report. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Brendan. And tonight, we have 40 individuals signed up to speak and we want to hear from as many folks as possible. We're going to allocate one hour to the courtesy public hearing. And we also have some folks that we're going to have interpretation services for them as well and will allow them 6 minutes for the translation. And we're going to go ahead and call up our first set of folks who are in chambers. And so Nolan Miguel, L.J. Suzuki, Mercedes Gonzalez, Jocelyn Hill and Angela Angelina. Scuse me, Torres, are all the folks in person in chambers that we're going to take first? And our first speaker is Nola Miguel. Good evening, council members. Thanks so much for for hearing us tonight. My name is Nolan Miguel, and I'm here with the global response here, Coalition Organizing for Health and Housing Justice. I wish that we were here tonight in support of this. I really do. Mostly because the fate of local area Swansea is really intertwined with the National Western Center. Especially our most vulnerable neighbors that have been facing already involuntary displacement. Nine out of ten neighbors facing involuntary displacement. Now, with the pandemic, the issue is even more heavy, something that we're all dealing with every day. Unfortunately, community benefits have not been identified yet. After eight years of talking about it, and I'm happy to give a more detailed history of those eight years as I've experienced them. There hasn't been real community benefits identified. We haven't we don't feel like a real partner in this development. We don't feel like we're engaged in this development. We have lost homes and businesses, in particular in the Elyria neighborhood in the triangle that have not been recovered nor mitigated. And we feel like this isn't being done right. This is being rushed. We feel like this the rushing this actually puts the national Western reputation at in danger. Is it and is is irresponsible in a lot of ways because it frustrates the voters. It divides our community in globally response here. And it really feels negligent and harmful to not have done a proper process for this. And we have time to do that. We have time to do that and to finance this right in a way where community benefits are prioritized and really have a path forward. We talk about recovery. Is this is talk about recovery for a minute. Is it to re cover? Is it to recover our eyes to the reality that was before the pandemic? Because we know that the pandemic has unveiled structural inequities around housing, around health, and we can't go back that those things have been unveiled to us. And we need to see our leaders really rethink these types of things that plans that were formed in 2014 and shift to a resilient plan that builds on the strengths of people. We feel like we're this is just plowing forward with tons of unknowns. I have so many unanswered questions about what's going on in this plan, and we don't feel like doing this is smart governing or putting this out to the public when there's not enough of those answers to those questions right now. We have been working as a coalition on really thinking through what could happen at the National Western when there is a gap from the P3 not going through anymore. We really took that as an opportunity to say what would we want? What is the vision? And we started working on that earlier this year. And we have a vision document. We have extra copies and are happy to give them all to you. And we can talk more about it at. The time we have this evening. All right. We're going to go ahead and go to our next speaker, LJ Suzuki. Good evening, Councilwoman. Councilman and fellow citizens. My name is L.J. Suzuki, and I'm here representing the Globeville first R.A., which is the primary registered neighborhood organization of Globeville. We had a meeting last Tuesday night to discuss 924 for the funding of Phase three of the National Western Center and have released a resolution on our stance, which I will happily circulate with you all when I'm done here. In summary, we support the economic development of our neighborhood and therefore we support the Phase three development bond issue with the following firm conditions. First, we insist that the City of Denver and the National Western Center approve the Community Investment Funds proposed community impact fee. This fee is not the same as the already committed to. Roundup is an additional mechanism which will be presented to the National Western Center's Board of Directors in the coming weeks. The committee carefully designed the fee to scale proportionally with the growth of the National Western Center. Therefore, the campus's success is also our community's success. Phase three, therefore, stands to benefit Globeville in a significant way, but only so long as the community impact fee is in place. Also approval of this fee is a non-negotiable condition of our organization. Support of the bond. Second, we expect the city of Denver to make good on the projects in the 2017 bond issue and verbal promises made by several city officials over the years. These include adding improving pedestrian infrastructure, traffic, calming measures to keep our children safe. A pocket park at the site of the former tiny home village and cleaning the underpasses our children and commuters use every day, which are typically filthy with pigeon feces and habituated by homeless people. While several projects are planned and in process, many remain verbal promises only. We respectfully request written commitments from the city to perform these basic services which are already being performed in Reno and other neighborhoods. With legally binding consent for these two simple conditions. Global First will enthusiastically support the city's bond package and the November ballots, and we will encourage our neighbors to do the same. Thank you. And I'll remain available tonight for further questions. All right. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mercedes Gonzalez. And as she makes her way to the podium and with our interpreter and I would ask that our rules of decorum, we ask everybody to have a seat. And so we can't allow anybody to stand against the wall in the back. Thank you. Go ahead, please. When I start this, the lengthy list for Permettere, the mayor of LA presidency. This one here, which going to see is La Coalition. De is Globeville. Elyria. Swansea? Yes. They represent other island residents. This does those for money, that is. Brett Johnson for management. They proclaim under Proceso de la Ciudad the embed in Valencia Canal, this Arroyo del Complexo Nazionale. The lawyers thing. Good evening, Council, city council. And I want to thank you for for allowing us to be here and to give a comment. So the G as Coalition global area Swansea represented represents the residents of these two communities, rejects formally the proclaim the proclamation in the process in the equities accretive process of the city of the Denver in relationship to the development of the national Western stock. Lot. Miembros de la Junta. I mean, don't yell. L'll call them Hancock. So you get enough in this area, they'll complain. Who is particular de la soul Neville to not gonna see that commercial triangulum say I gave him the former costar he acted that diva bit unmistakable is that's a feeling I feel my slowness begs I feel my processor continua on only legato the practical, the this arrow, your sister, this poor quality, a lack of money that you Basil's promise as well as you that other them better they want this arroyo that he the poor la comunidad. City council members and the and Mayor Hancock affirm are they continue to affirm that the developments of this complex and in particular of the triangle zone that is known as the triangle has been taken in a way that is a just and equitable. But for our community it rejects these affirmations, does affirms that this process continues to be taken by our racist practices for this development. It has been displacing land for the community and false promises that the city of Denver for a development that is led by the community. Sierra Young got me into the embed in Sierra Leone process so that I meant that it was the SEC Optometry Congress. Miembro de la Comunidad Tribal Association Profunda Gay Incluida Escuchar incorporate aspect of the La Comunidad Para Los Banos Anteriores Contra la comunidad. That will be the lateral precedentes. They'll address the residents in an elegant central Vegas solicitous you that guarantee in a disaster your equitable maybe anything. If city if Denver City Council would like to be able to do a truly equity tive process of righteous process, it would commit to gas or with gas and with the members of the community through a collaboration that is a deeper collaboration that would include listening and incorporating the petitions of the community and to be able to repair the damage is done before against the community by returning the property of the land of the residents in concrete, G.S. is asking the city to advance in a development that is equitable , more equitable through. The Polar bear a la Comunidad Reno's gives it a spot on the river turtles in El Bahia. The Complex Nacional de la is the common part of this arroyo a largo plazo that. So it would commit by giving back to the community those lands that were taken from the community, from the neighborhood and through the National Western Stock Show as part of a development in the long term for Denver. Established Heroin Association Significativa as commonly gathered locally, Circrnas and Nazionale was their para provider. Dentists border with Assisi on this arroyo. This was the barrio from operating their pocket, their bones in equal care. This arroyo posterior. To establish an association, a meaningful association with the communities, with the local communities nearby and to Western Stock Show to be able to give residents the power over the decision making, over the development of the neighborhoods as part of the package of the bonus package or of the bond package and whatever other development that happens. Zero. That's an error that that general this Arroyo. The studio in Berkeley, Los Banos and Servicio Salud. We end up at a Los Habitantes the but most notably we end up losing touch on Bebe Indesit Ghibli e Programas Empleo. It would stop the development of the stadium and invest the bonds in certain health care services homes for the people of Denver, such as solutions for housing, solutions for the homeless homes, accessible homes and programs and employment programs and housing, accessible housing and employment programs. Gilmore resident It is one Seattle labor that is for me. Yo siento completamente. They're on the prowl the other a post border stop pasando in already adorned with comunidad en todo el these are all your triangulum yellows. This are all yours. Then the lizard. Then to the DeSalvo Is Salvatore Mendel getting all this stuff done? DoCoMo comunidad eu mas afectado solos mas vulnerables gets quarters for this place. Sarmiento gives a stubby indoor color the masked Imus displacement of water systems. This arroyos intones as more or more blessed enter labor that e so you're not abuela they they all choice equals yes, he says nietos he says these nietos Joe we are laboratorios tambien body yours or mi familia. Over time, darling, or you'll have to let the Vietnam Police straight up stop us and. So as a resident of Swansea, I am very disappointed by what has happened and I am disappointed by the development that has happening all around the area with I-70. With everything that is happening and with all the homeless communities that we see all around. And as a as a mother of eight, grandmother of 16, and great grandmother of six, I worry about their future and about other things that are happening with it, with the lack of housing in our communities. All right. Thank you very much. We've got to go ahead and move on with their spirits. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Next up, we have Jocelyn Hill. Thank you. It is an honor to be here tonight speaking with you council members. I am here. I am Jocelyn Hill. I am a Denver resident. I am here representing the Colorado State University system. The CSU system is expressing support for the inclusion of the arena, an historic 1909 stadium building bond on the November ballot. CSU has been a partner of the National Western Center redevelopment since 2013. Our CSU Spurr campus, currently under construction, will be a public facing satellite campus, bringing educational and research opportunities of our three institutions to Denver and to learners of all ages. Our mission at SPR is to promote educational equity and inspire the next generation to tackle big challenges in food, water and health. Critical to this mission is our engagement and connection with the surrounding neighborhoods and to the city and county of Denver over the last eight years. We have listened, offered community responsive programs, partnered with existing local organizations and are on the verge of opening physical spaces that can host our neighbors for programs in just a few short months and can over time become an anchor institution for the community providing good jobs and economic sustainability. The arena matters to CSU. It would include local families, and our vision is that when they visit the arena, they also visit Spur when they come to events. They will also come to experience our hands on fun learning experiences that connect young people to career pathways they may not have considered. In this environment, children who may never have had the opportunity to see and experience how food grows or what it means to be a veterinarian can dove in and explore those opportunities in a setting where learning is open and designed for them. I see us whose presence at the National Western Center also represents a partnership with Denver schools and Denver youth that ultimately aims to ensure that more students will be ready for careers and connected to the educational pathways that those careers require. We believe we will reach more families and young people with the arena and 1909 stadium building energized and drawing visitors in addition to local families. We also know that visitor visitors will come to the arenas from around the country and around the world, providing an opportunity to showcase North Denver and the state of Colorado. The 1909 stadium building offers something a little bit different a chance to focus on what CSU has done for over 150 years to connect people to food. The vision for the market space in the 1909 includes opportunities for small businesses, a chance to showcase Colorado's food products, and a way to incubate new ideas, all while opening up possibilities for fresh, affordable food being more accessible to those nearby. Both the Arena and 1909 have been part of the overall vision for the National Western Center and bring strength to the larger project. Along with the rest of the National Western Center. They will provide economic impact and long term jobs. For these reasons, CSU is asking that the council vote to include the arena and stadium building public market in November's ballot. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Angelina Torres. And we're going to allow 6 minutes for translation services. When I started. Looking at. The numbers letters. So to see them through this one in. Good evening, City City Council. My name is Angelina Torres and I am a resident of Swansea. And. Nor is there equitable Bono to buttress. Portugal National with the notice of promises in polio. They use this rule. Familiar Italians who live in the center of Circle National. Was this just a participant in this? Who molested the girls in the lawyers technical 7-Eleven is the automatic comment this. These are local. No care of that apology album. No Birkin? No. Is Diciendo. Look at the very end, I said. Embrace the Latino necesitamos viviendo. Farkas. In the local community areas. Is passive, communitarian. Lara's request. But alas, 1 million still within that inner. Further, it cannot happen in the theater. Contreras Eagle National Wisdom Taken from Metalcore La Comunidad. If your mando bull compromise socialism everywhere don't. Gadhafi. I am not in agreement with the Phase three bond because in north the National Western Stock Show has made promises that did not fulfill that they did not fulfill. They displaced families that had their homes in the lands close to the national western. They disappeared. Stores such as the store called Sinaloa into La Botanica and 7-Eleven, which were automatically displaced. I don't want the city to support this bond because they are not doing what they should do. Instead of the arena, we need housing, parks, local stores, community spaces, recreational places so that the families in the neighborhood and we need them to support the community land trust with lands and for the national western to commit with the community by signing an agreement, a solid agreement. That is true. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Silvia Hernandez. And she is joining us online. And it looks like we don't have Sylvia with us. And so I'm gonna go ahead and call the next speaker online. We have Jack FINLAW, Marvin Thomas, Kevin O'Connor and Bob Sarlo, just so you can be ready if you're not right by your computer . And so we're going to go ahead and go to Jack FINLAW. Jack, if you can hear us, we've got you cued up to speak. You might have to unmute yourself. Okay. We'll go ahead and move on. We'll try to get Jack back in the queue if we can. Marvin Thomas. All right. It doesn't look like we have Marvin Thomas. Kevin O'Connor. Thank you, President Gilmore. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you very much. And thank you. Members of the city council. My name is Kevin O'Connor. I reside at seven seven for Saint Paul Street. First, I want to thank the city council and the city government for this excellent technology that makes it possible for myself and other citizens to testify from our homes. I think that's a terrific advancement of democracy. I also want to acknowledge that the bond issue. I am speaking on behalf of completion of the Central Library Project. In doing so, I want to acknowledge that two very important library additions are in this Bond project. Certainly appropriate given that the city has grown 115,000 people and that these neighborhoods are properly served. I want to refer back to an article on April 28th in the Denver Post when the mayor announced a approximately $400 million bond issue in concept, saying that it was to jumpstart the pandemic recovery, create 40,000 jobs by the end of 2022. I also want to refer to the report that was received by the Finance Committee, where the completion of the Central Library was a Tier one project. There's many reasons for that. Most importantly, the current project is on time and it's on budget. It's also already planned and ready for construction. So if we're to meet the goals that was were in the introduction of the bond issue by staff to create jobs by the end of 2022. This seems like an ideal project and would secondly save the city money because construction is on site already. So by by being on site, the contractor can continue without the start up costs. So I would I would encourage the city council to restore the $19 Million necessary to complete the Central Library Project. And appreciate your consideration. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and ask Jack FINLAW to go ahead and leave the Zoom meeting and come back into it. And we think we'll get your audio and video working. Sometimes we just need to have you pop out and pop back in and we can get it going again. So if Jack FINLAW would do that, our next speaker that we had online via Zoom was Barb, Bob Sarlo. Bob Sarlo and it doesn't look like we have Bob in. And so we're going to go ahead and transition back into chambers and I'm going to call the next five folks if they can join us up in the front pew or get ready to come up. We have Sara Lee, Paul Andrews, Alma Urbano, Ernest House and Carol Briggs. Our first speaker is Sarah Lake. Thank you. Council members. My name is Sarah Lake. I live in District nine and I wanted to speak about the development of the national western complex and in particular the arena in the 1909 building. I'm speaking tonight not only as a longtime Denver resident, but also as an economist over from Boulder in economics, sociology and meaning. My training and my career is dedicated to looking at how economic development either exacerbates or improves inequality. So tonight I'm approaching this question about this bond from an academic perspective, from a research research perspective. And if we look at the research, it's very clear the arena is both economically untenable and also unjust in an equitable. Several council members have already pointed out in previous sessions there's many problems with the feasibility study that has been conducted. So let's start there. First. We've already invested $765 million in this project, and now they're asking for more because the original plan counted on a public private partnership of which companies pulled out of because they themselves did not trust that this was going to be profitable. Second, we know that the feasibility study stated that it will not be profitable unless 10,000 housing units are built in the neighborhood. That's nearly four times the number of all housing units in the Reno neighborhood right now. Next. Any recovery is expected to be 3 to 5 years out. We're not talking about economic returns from the arena any time soon, and especially not for the neighbors surrounding the arena. This project is not shovel ready as it was originally claimed. Next, the study notes that the arena is going to compete directly with other venues. There are over a dozen venues in the Denver and surrounding areas that hold 5000 or more people, and the feasibility study even notes that it will be the same types of events that will be held at this arena as well as the other dozen arenas. Next. There's been very little thought put into the sources of revenue for the investment fund. The bare minimum solution of rounding up on purchases is highly contingent on sufficient sales and doesn't even offer the scale of investment necessary to support the community. And next, the feasibility study. It was conducted from 2013 to 2014. It uses data from 2012. We're talking about a decade old data source that we're relying on to tell us that this is going to be economically profitable and sound. And last, the feasibility study emphasizes the challenge of developing the arena without available land. It requires the disenfranchisement of local community members. And as we've heard from the global Globeville, Elyria, Swansea Coalition, they are not supporting this development. So to be fair and just, it is essential that we vote no on this bond and allow more time to investigate how to do this process in a just and fair way that does the right thing. Q That time we have allotted our next speaker up is Paul Andrews. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, members of council. It's always a pleasure to be here with you. I am Paul Andrews, the president and CEO of the National Western Stock Show. A event that has been successful for 115 years in the great city of Denver. I'm here in. Support of the new arena. And I'm here in support of the 1909 stadium arena, which we built in 1909. The new arena is the catalyst to the entire. Nation, a Western stock show development and the nation of Western Center development with projected numbers of more than 150 events a. Year at that arena. It's the centerpiece. That makes everything else work on this site. The National Western Center, once fully built out, is projected to generate. Economic impact of $230 million. A year and host a projected 310 events each year by passing this bond. Payback is immediate. The new arena is the most important building to the nation. A Western stock show. And our 29 rodeo. Performances. The successful business model for this 115 year old Colorado institution hangs in the balance as you cast your vote tonight. To support the community. The National Western Stock Show has voluntarily decided to implement the round up this January on all food, drink and ticket purchases on site over the 16 days of show. We continue to be a good neighbor to our friends in Globeville, Larry. Elyria and. Swansea. Please, complete with the voters in every district passed in 2015 ballot measure to see complete the master plan for the nation Western Center. And vote yes on the new arena and the 1909. Renovation here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Alma Urban. You. Hello. My name's Automotive Piano pronounced her and I am a resident of Swansea. Today I would only speak as representative of the Community Investment Fund Committee, a committee that has been organized to make sure funding is secure and distributed to the communities impacted by the National Western. I will be reading from a letter composed by the committee members and organizers from the three connecting neighborhoods. As residents of the Globeville, Elyria and Swansea neighborhood. We have been tasked as the Community Investment Fund Committee with negotiating a system for the receive, the funds and their distribution. To make it clear, as a Community Investment Fund Committee, we are aware of the impact the Arena mentioned in the plan will have in their efforts. We are also far more aware of the impact this type of development will have in our communities. The development of P3 will directly affect. The revenue of the CRF based on our current proposal, and I hope this makes our stance more impactful. We are accepting the consequences this takes to make sure our communities are respected. We are opposed to the international western arena, part of the Bonn phase three, and as a result it will be hard for us to support the ban as it stands in the midst of an ongoing and convoluted. Discussion about additional funding for the 10,000 seat. Arena. The community is being pulled to both sides when we should be at the center. City officials alleged the development of the National Western Center is the only way. Community needs and glitz can be addressed. They want us to believe encroachment and disruption is their only path to address housing issues. The lack of food outlets or other essential resources. The city of Denver has been content to acknowledge the issue, but has taken minimal steps to respond. Before we talk about a new arena, shouldn't we talk about housing? At what point do we become outraged and ashamed that our fellow residents are treated with such disrespect, with the conditions that exist in Swansea and Globeville be allowed to continue in neighborhoods located elsewhere? Sadly, we have had little financial value to the businesses and companies to invest in this area. That is until Denver ran out of land. So now our value is so-called unoccupied land. We now have transactional value for financial interests. However, this bond is not is an. Example of. Us asking the same system to repair the same issues they have cost. Our question is, do we not have this backwards? Should we not start by asking what is in the best interests of our communities? What do the residents need? How do we honor. The value of the people who have tolerated so much from neglect. Intrusion? Simply put, the community must come first. Therefore, we oppose Phase three development of the National Western Center until the city has first focused on resolving basic community issues and global variance once again. Myself and a few other members of the Community Investment Fund are available to answer any questions to your time. Thank you. Next step, we have EARNEST House. Well, make the argument the way. Madam President, members of council. My name is Ernest House Junior. I'm a member of the National Western Center Authority Board of Directors. I'm here to speak in favor of all of the go bond measures. This is the right time to invest in our economic recovery. In particular, I want to make a few comments of support of Bill number 221, dash 0924 that refers to the voters, a bond measure to fund improvements to the National Western Center campus. I understand this placement broken promises, and it voted my career in acknowledging that history. I'm an enrolled member of the new tribe and work as senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center. I spent a lot of time working with communities and acknowledging that in the U.S., authorities must be diligent, diligent about working together with our neighbors . The arena in 1909. Buildings are important to the campus. And if we honor our board adopted community benefits principles, we can ensure that these buildings support the authority operations and support the community. Our goal with these buildings and the entire campus is to create jobs and opportunity for our guests, neighbors and broader community. The 1909 market will be the center of opportunity for farmers and ranchers bringing their product to Denver. And with community input, we can create opportunities for our neighbors by providing space for makers to sell their products. The arena will bring more people to the campus, something that is critical to the success of the market. Both these buildings were increase funding to the Community Investment Fund. I sit on the Community Benefits Committee and while we have a long way to go, I'm confident that our relationship with all of the community entities will grow and we can all share in the success of this campus. We are excited that the Community Investment Fund Committee is coming together as a self-governing group that will decide how CRF revenues will be distributed. A partnership with Councilman Ortega and Councilwoman CdeBaca has made this possible. Thank you for helping get that process started. We look forward to working with you, our neighbors in Greece and the broader community to make this campus something special. The arena in 1909 are the next steps. And I ask you to support sending the ballot measure to the people. The. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Carol Briggs. Thank you, Counsel, for this opportunity to speak. I am a resident of Swansea. And I speak against. Including the. Any more money is going to. The national western. In the bond. The City process. The city development process provides for community comment. Possibly community benefits. Agreement and equity commitment. However, over and over again, the process fails. Denver Neighbors The CBA and equity, culture and equity commitments are drafted by the city with input from developers and then brought to the neighborhood for comment. The neighborhood heads are expected to accept the city planning with only superficial comment. This was confirmed by a city planning and development staff on a Zoom call in fall of 2020. A staff member told us it was the neighbors job to comment and his department's job to decide what will be done. This statement is part of a pattern of systemic white supremacy in the city's process. The neighborhood representation at the National Western CACC is a city packed community member with no voting power. When the neighborhood requested a grocery store, the National Western ranged for an urban market that does not meet the. Needs of the neighborhood. When the neighborhood requested affordable housing that keeps neighbors in their homes, or at least in the neighborhood, we are told that there is no plan for affordable housing. The housing will be elsewhere in the city. In other words, you can't stay here. There continues to be talk of how the national restroom provides career jobs for neighbors, even though nobody knows of anyone in 8 to 1 six. That has ever had a. Career job at the National West. It has not happened in decades, but continues to be talked as if it is a benefit for the surrounding neighborhood. What is playing out here is the white supremacist tactic. Of look at everything the city. Is offering these people and they. Are not grateful. There is no. Recognition that what is. Offered is not what is needed. Or requested by the. Neighborhoods. There can be. No true input from community, no agreement, no commitments that mean anything unless the community is an equal at the negotiating table. Neighborhoods know what their issues are. Neighborhoods have solutions. I join with my neighbors and other concerned groups asking the bond not include additional public funding for an inequitable redevelopment of the National Western. There are other ways to to economic recovery that meet neighborhood needs. Please take a step closer to true democracy by keeping public land. In. Public hands. And public money to help every resident of Denver. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, we're going to move to the online virtual format. We have Jack FINLAW, Amy Berman, Marilyn Masterman, Jessie Perez and Kate Barton. And then we also would like to we understand they had a little bit of trouble getting in Silvia Hernandez if we see Silvia Hernandez in the queue. And so we're going to go ahead and go to Jack FINLAW. Good evening, Madam President. I hope you can hear and see me at this point. Yes. I had a switch to my iPhone thanks to a new laptop that wasn't working very well. It's great to be here tonight. I'm a resident of Denver, a long time resident of Denver. I live in the Congress Park neighborhood. I'm a former city official. I worked for Mayor Hickenlooper and I served as chief of staff to mayor of DOL. And it's good to see so many friends here on the council and in the audience tonight. I'm here to really just speak to the lack of funding for this central library project. Was very disappointed to see that that $90 million project, which is underway and could be completed with another $90 million, is not going to be part of this bond package. We've had a lot of very articulate, passionate comments tonight about equity and equity serving institutions. And the Denver Public Library is probably one of our preeminent equity institutions that provides services to all the people of Denver and beyond for free. It is one of our greatest institutions, and while we're appreciative of seeing some funding for some of our branch libraries, the central library is where is the center of the action. It's where everything flows from. And so I would just urge you, urge Brandon and the city officials to find money from the capital improvement budget or from some other source to finish that central library renovation while it's still ongoing. Because if we stop and just have to start again, it'll cost a lot more money. So please keep the Central Library project in your in your budgeting process in the months ahead. Thank you. Thank you. And a quick time check. We've got about 18 minutes left in the one hour courtesy, public hearing. And so if folks wouldn't mind if you are repeating information, we'd appreciate you just being a little bit more concise. Next up, we have Amy Brymer. Okay. It doesn't look like Amy Brenneman is in the queue. We're going to go ahead and move on to Marilyn Muster, man. All right. No, Marilyn. Next up, we have Jesse Paris. Yes. Good evening. Members of council, those watching at home. One of them is just a missing person presume for Black Star Blackstar and move for self defense of the Mexican man for social change as well as the Unity Party of Colorado and frontline black males. And I will be the next mayor Denver in 2023. I am against. This. Tonight's the bond package tonight, especially in regards to the arena. Hearing the compelling testimony from the coalition and the solidarity with. I have to. Definitely go against this. This is going to cause more so after displacement than what is already occurring in the area of Swansea and Globeville. The unintended consequences of this arena are just. Unsalvageable at this point. No one within a two, three mile radius of this arena is going to be able to survive the unintended consequences that are going to occur from having such a structure built. This is not what the community needs. These communities have been neglected for decades and they do not need a thousand person arena. That is the last thing they need. The need services within their individual neighborhoods. Any grocery stores. They need access to free, healthy food. What they do not need is an arena that's going to cause more displacement, and that's already occurring throughout this city. This is going to be an epicenter of epicenter of displacement and gentrification. If you go through with this tonight so you can make a stand tonight, city council and you can say, look, enough is enough of this. We don't need any more unintended consequences from on more growth, more development that is going to cause rapid gentrification and displacement of our black and brown communities. Someone has to take a stand against the mayor. This is not okay. These communities have made a collective effort for decades, and it appears that they're just going to continue to do this and pass this to me. So we would ax you in solidarity with this coalition. It would actually not pass us to me and allow. Don't bring this to the voters. We don't want to vote on this. This is not something that these communities need. Thank you. Thank you. Our last two speakers online for this set are Kate Barton and Stephen Bencic. And so we'll go to Kate Barton. In the evening. Members of council. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for having me this evening. My name is Kate Barton. I'm executive vice president at the Downtown Denver Partnership. We are excited about a number of projects listed in the in the proposed geo bonds, many of which we have worked on or advocated for with our members and stakeholders for years. The downtown Denver Partnership's work is driven by the 27 downtown area plan. This plan created a 20 year vision for downtown Denver that is ultimately enhanced by long term investments through efforts such as the general. Obligation bond issue. We believe in. Investing for our city for the long term and applaud Denver City Council and the city for leading this process to determine key projects that will impact Denver now and into the future. The partnership has a long history of supporting geo bonds, and we believe in the economic impacts delivered by a number of elements of the bond package , including the National Western Housing, Mobility, Parks and Arts related projects. Several of the projects included in this bond issue support long term plans that were previously prioritized by the community. Others that address infrastructure needs will help to ensure that we are maintaining the current built environment and also building for the future. Recognizing that others have talked more about several projects listed in the bond package. We want to call out one of the projects that we've been deeply engaged in the 50 to 80 trail. The Downtown Denver Partnership has been leading the efforts to create the 50 to 80 Trail, a bold project that will transform how the public right of way is used in downtown Denver. For several years, the 50 to 80 will link neighborhoods and connect people by reimagining underutilized streets into the into the essential downtown experience uniting urban life with Denver's amazing Denver and Colorado's amazing outdoor culture. This Vision Visionary Project is shovel ready, with one section already underway on 21st Street and will create much needed public space in the heart of downtown. The Golden Triangle neighborhood has shown great enthusiasm about this project, and we believe that this connects to many key infrastructure and mobility projects, both in districts nine and ten. The 50 to 80 trail development proposed in the bond will not only create jobs and result in positive economic impact, but sets the stage for the future development of the to 80 trail throughout the center city, resulting in millions of dollars of economic impact. And we just provided we believe the 50 to 80 trail demonstrates a project that will help us build a city for today, thinking of the needs of tomorrow and we'll attract residents and visitors to our community. To reiterate, the downtown of our partnership is excited about many components of the proposed geo bond package, both city wide and downtown specific. We look forward to the great impacts that will happen as a result of these proposals, and we thank you for your consideration and leadership in making long term investments in our city. Thank you. Our next speaker online is Steven, Ben, Chick. And then the three folks that we're going to have in person in chambers after Steven speaks are Alfonso Espino, Brian Loma and Katie Blakey. So you can get ready or come up to the front pew here so we can get you up quicker. Go ahead, Steven, please. Although City Council, there are many things the city can do with $160 million. We can build streets where those walking or biking don't have to fear for their lives. We can build safe sidewalks in the 40% of the city that goes without them and maybe meet the city's self-imposed goal for miles of sidewalk constructed for the first time since we started measuring it. We can make improvements to transit along some of our big busiest corridors like Colfax and improve our air quality in the process. However, these things are not necessarily being considered by the city with this bond issue at the level that they deserve. The city is currently considering spending about $160 million on was effectively another Pepsi Center. This is the last thing we need right now in light of all of the issues I mentioned before, the city is not struggling for capacity for events between the Pepsi Center, Convention Center and Denver Coliseum, just to name a few. Its proposed arena would really do nothing but just line the pockets of a few politically connected individuals. There's a serious problem when this project's being given 160 million, whereas the critical infrastructure that I mentioned is being only given around 73 million. This money that this 160 million should be put into transportation bonds to give a state to have a safe streets, better transit options, and maybe finally, some sidewalks. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker in person is Alfonso Espino. Good evening, counsel. Thank you for having me. And it's also really nice to be in person for once. And I hope you're all well. I'm here to speak again, sending the bond proposal in relation to the National Western's proposed arena and public market to not send it to the voters. I think that the process, or better said, the lack of process to have arrived at this decision to rush through a bond process, not just for the arena, but several years before the accustomed to ten year period in which bond proposals happen is ridiculous and unfair, not only to the people who I am here in solidarity with , because I understand that I do not speak for all the people in my own community. I do not speak for all of Denver, but who I do speak for, who I do stand in solidarity with, are those that have been historically marginalized. The people that are currently or have already been displaced. Especially in my community and this process. Or once again, lack of process that has been going on around the arena amounts to what I would view, and I think correctly so, as extortion. You have the people. That support the arena, always stating the health and the necessity for economically driving the success of the complex. So there's this diluted idea in this chamber right now that that amounts to the success of my community, that that amounts to representation of the people who I am standing in solidarity here with today. This extortion of we will give you everything that you've lacked for decades. Better set a century of existence. As some of the oldest neighborhoods in Denver. Only if you once again give up more concessions. Give it more, give it more. That's all I ever hear. That's all that's ever asked of us to do. And when we come down here and we beg of you to rethink this, not only for my neighbors, because I stand in solidarity with my unhoused neighbors who are sitting in the street right now. I'm standing in solidarity with the people across north Denver, east Denver, south Denver, who are also going through the same thing where these bond money, which is vital to the recovery. Should be going to instead. They're trying to push through an arena with a lack of process that will not address any of the problems that we are currently facing. We are not currently facing a lack of arenas in Denver. We have tons of them. What do we lack? Do I have to state them? I'm very sure that you all know exactly what's missing. I wish I could be up here today supporting this arena. I wish I could see it as something vital to my community. But as somebody who's been living in this area for all 25 years, right up the block from National Western, the only thing we ever got was parking where we used to charge people to park in our backyards. And now we don't even get that. Thank you. Thank you. That's your time. Thank you. Next up, we have Brian Lamar. Evening Council. I like this gentleman. Couple of important things he said. One of them is that we really don't have a lack of place to have events and. The bond issue. I was trying to figure out how this is going to get on the ballot. I've been out, as many of you heard earlier, for two months now, talking to Denver voters about what they want. And I've seen a lot of ballot measures and not once if I had anybody asked me if I would support tax dollars toward rebuilding the National Convention Center. So how are we going straight to the ballot with this with taxpayer dollars when, as we've heard time and time again. Illyria. Swansea is some of the strongest neighborhood community groups in the city of Denver. And I know because as Lisa Calderon's former field manager, they were the most active people working on getting out. Michael Hancock as well. Right. This is a far fetched idea that we need more places for more entertainment. We had 31 million people travel through Denver in 2018, 31 million statistic. And everybody's had plenty of places to go. There's not enough housing in the area. There's not enough housing anywhere. We just stopped a man from dying outside the outside this building tonight. We need housing. We need services for people to be off the streets. So when they come to Denver, people actually enjoy our community because it's pretty. And the houses are are for everybody and not the sidewalks for everybody. This is absolutely ridiculous that we're talking about millions of dollars for entertainment when people are dying in the streets daily. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Katie Blakey. Hello. It's nice to see you in person again. Um, my name is Katie Blaikie, and I live in District ten. I'm here to ask you to please vote no on 20 1-092 for the jazz community has not been meaningfully included in the process. They'll be impacted the most by this construction, but will receive the least benefit. Katie, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but if you could pull the mic down a little bit so we can hear you. Okay. Thank you. During the single meetings on this project, several of you asked some really good questions about the proposed ordinance. I really appreciate your attention to detail and thoroughness. In its feasibility study. The 1909 market success is contingent on the building of thousands of units and has not been zoned for that purpose. There's also no solid strategy for allocating funds to the community, and relying on a round up program is insufficient. With the city's lack of of through with 2017 bond and measure to sea funds, it's hard to believe that the money will reach them anyway. Another significant concern is the lack of overall vision for the arena. The details on it are sparse. The constitutes the majority of the bond allocation, knowing that this bond will not cover the full expenses expense of the project and that there's not even a projection of the cost of its completion. Putting this vanity project on the ballot means Denver taxpayers may be on the hook for hundreds of millions in additional costs. The jazz community has a cohesive vision for the site. Please vote no on this and consider investments into community led projects and neighborhoods that have been marginalized for too long and into truly affordable housing to combat our growing homelessness crisis. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and transition back to online for a couple more speakers and then we'll be at our one hour courtesy public hearing time online. We're going to have Samantha Haviland, Harmonie Cummins, Lydia Pena and Theron Macleay. And so we'll go ahead and start with Samantha. Thank you. Good evening, honorable members of City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Samantha Havilland and the executive director of Career Development Student Supports for Denver Public Schools. And I'm here in support of a zero 9 to 4 to support the National Western complex. National Western has been an excellent partner, community partner with Denver Public Schools and has helped us to expand career exposure and opportunity for students in various fields. That they previously didn't know existed. And helped to identify areas and challenges within their communities. They also have been an excellent partner in helping us to address the affordability of college with providing scholarships and I think will. Continue to be. A great partner and a great opportunity for employment in high demand, high wage jobs within Denver for our students. So having said. That, I know we are short on time, so I will respect all of our peers and give that back to you. All right. Thank you. Okay. Our next speaker online is Harmony Cummins, and it looks like we don't have harmony with us. All right. We'll go ahead and go to Lydia here. Whoa. Can you hear me? Yes. Perfect. Okay. I am speaking. In. The Western Stock Show Arena. There's a lot of things that we need. And if I ask for bathrooms in our parks and I'm told we don't have the resources for these sort of things. I'm ask for our pools, our cooling centers, our city processes are on reduced hours or reduced services. From public comments, I was told that when I called in because we don't have the funding and that's how my years of savings civic center part ask about bathrooms, drinking fountains, solar panels so we don't have to have aerators on our food trucks. That's not something in our plan because we're making these things fountains. We spend a lot of money on things that we don't need. What about. Trash services? I asked the CASA office about trash services and everyone points to RTD or Dotti or someone else. Why don't we provide more trash services? Our city looks disgusting right now, and there's trash everywhere. And a recycling rate is terrible. What about housing? When I take my child to homeless sweeps and I had him talk to Evan Dreier and that's why we're sweeping the homeless when people are unhoused and poor and sick. And he tells me that this is a city connecting people to resources and it's working. I think we need to do a lot better than resources. An arena is definitely not. Let's see what else. Is an impasse and feels the pain of the earth. The last two weeks in Denver have been. Apocalyptically depressing $160 million. You want to know what? That's the same number as the task, the environmental task force recommendations for last year of what the city needs to address our climate goals. We need 200 million each year to a is going to provide 40 million and we're short 160 million. Why don't we take this $160 million and invest it in mass transit solar projects and have an equity lens on those things? Because you know what we all need instead of arena that only benefits a few and gentrify the neighborhood, we all need to be able to breathe the air here. Do you want to breathe? I want to be able to breathe and. Yeah. I don't know what this is about. I don't know if this is because our mayor wants to leave a legacy, but I don't want to be a part of that rodeo, and I don't think any of us should have to be. I spent a lot of time in the genius neighborhoods. And decades. After decades, it's one of the most poor. Polluted, and people are afraid of losing. Their homes. We need real housing solutions so people don't have to live in this fear. We need true jobs, not arena jobs. We need air to breathe. We need bathrooms in our city. We need trash services. There's a difference between needs and wants from a lot of people in this call. Who wants another arena. That benefits just the. Wealthy? Who can participate in it while also cause is more concrete and takes away from the things that we actually need here? Please do not support. This to go to the ballot. Thank you. And just to clarify for folks that was there on Macleay and our last. Harmony. Cummings Oh, well, when it's had that she was talking, it was there and meekly. But okay. Harmony Cummings, our last speaker this evening will be Lydia Pena. Lydia Pena, a sister of Loreto. And our graduate of Loreto Heights College. Years after graduation, I returned to teach the history of art that I did for 23 years. The made May biography theater for the Performing Arts was thriving during the years that I taught there. The theater is in a part of the city that benefited southwest Denver residents, as well as other areas of our great city. For many years, during the months monthly meetings that Westside Partnership has held for over two years, residents from all areas of the city were there in support of the theater. As a Latina who values diversity and inclusivity, I thank you all for the work that has gone into getting the Loreto Heights Theater on the Bond list. A bond that I wholeheartedly support because it will enrich many lives. Thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to thank the folks that signed up and both online and in chambers to speak. And that is we went a little bit over our one hour courtesy. And so we are going to go ahead and now ask for questions from members of Council on council bills. 864865866867924 and 868. And a reminder, this is your opportunity to ask questions. Once we closed the public hearing, we're going to go ahead and make comments and vote on on all of them separately. But we're doing questions within the hearing here. And so, first up, we've got Councilmember Cashman. Thank you, Madam President. I think this is for Brendan is. Well, you can pass it off if it's better for someone else. So I'm trying to understand why we're doing a bond issue at all now. So as we all know, we had Elevate Denver in 2017. And Emily Schneider was kind enough to get me some information out of the 484 projects that were part of Elevate Denver 268, or in the earliest phase of her project Life Cycle, the development phase 109 are either in design or construction, and 107 are complete. Of the 937 million passed as part of that bond issue. We've only spent 270 million, which leaves another 667 million to be spent. So it seems like we've got an awful lot in the pipeline to jumpstart the economy and at a time where it's tough to get people to do work. So I'm trying to trying to understand that. I mean, if you look through the list of projects, there's a lot of great projects in the rise. Denver Bond. But I'm just trying to figure out why we're doing a bond issue now. Sure. And Councilman Brennan Hanlon, the city's chief financial officer. So I'm going to have Laura Perry come up and talk about the status of Elevate. I think what we're trying to do here is lean into the Elevate strategy. So one of the things that we did in the 2021 budget was actually invest more funds and accelerate the Elevate Denver Bond program and went with a larger allocation from the market at the end of 2020. So this would be this issuance with rise would be paired with that paired with the remaining balance, which you're going to have Laura talk about. I think we have some conflicting numbers in terms of what the spend down is to date, but the goal is still to invest in capital like we have done during the Great Recession. That's a strategy that is that has benefited us in the past and continue to invest in our infrastructure, in our construction industry. One of the things that I mentioned was that the construction industry here in the Denver metro region was the fifth most impacted in the nation. So we're leaning into that industry and recovery around that industry. But let me bring up Laura to talk about a little bit of the status of where we are with with Elevate relative to the numbers that you just shared. Yeah. And the numbers I got came from Emily on the 13th of this month. Good evening. Members of City Council Laura Perry, Director of Capital Planning and Programing with the Department of Finance. So as Councilman Cashman stated to date, about 107 projects as of July have been completed and the Elevate Denver Bond program, and there's about. 50 projects. In the design stage and 59 projects in the construction phase. Many of our projects that are coming up are entering into the construction phase and are fairly large in nature. So the timeline to complete them is a little bit longer. And so we're anticipating construction on many to start soon as of all the 484 projects that have been started. There's about 268 in the earliest phase of the project lifecycle and 216 in either design construction or complete. So that's a summation of the numbers that I just gave you. On the financial side, as of July, we have spent $269 million, although $937 million authorized for the program. So that's roughly about 31% of the dollars. And to date, 94% of the projects are on schedule. And overall projects have remained on budget, with only 10% of the total programs purpose contingency being allocated to projects to date in terms of long term benefits of the bond in tandem with Elevate Denver. This prize bond approved by voters in 2021, will provide for a. Longer, more sustained job. Duration as it will be completed in tandem with Elevate Denver. In addition, it will deliver some enhanced delivery efficiencies for some projects, such as ADA projects. As a reminder, the city has a mandate from the Department of Justice that we need to reach, and certainly this bond will help us achieve the funding we need to address that mandate in a timely fashion. That's the other question. Last my my other question. Trying to understand the answer I got when I asked with all these projects left to do from Elevate. Now we're adding, I believe if all these were to pass 80 projects to that and try to understand so the some of the other elevate projects get pushed out even further then than they are now. The answer I was given is that now happen in parallel. And the only information I got that gives me a hint on how projects would be timed is that the arena, if it were to be approved design and construction early next year and completion in 25. So it's it's just it's hard for me to understand how we then take 200 million or I guess 160, because I don't think the answer included the nine or nine building. But how we then take another 160 million in construction dollars, get that done in that time frame and not bump other projects. So is there any one can. Adam, do you want to try to address delivery and. Optimization of contracts? Good evening, council Adam Pitts with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. Councilman, it's a good question. We want to make sure that when we resource our projects, we resource them so that we can continue to deliver them on schedule and on budget. When you look at the diversity of projects, the project count is just over 400 for Elevate the project count and this new bond package is just shy of 100, if I'm correct. It is with when you look at each individual segment like the Elevate Numbers and we've staggered our staff and we've resourced up appropriately to be able to do this. Part of the economic recovery is not just the implementation of the construction, but it's the design sector, it's professional services, it's program management, it's project management. And so when you see the layering of these bond issuances, it allows us to impact industries across the board, not just in construction. Okay. Those are my questions. I'll comment later on. Thank you for the answer. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Next up, we have council members say to Baker. Thank you. I have several questions. First, can somebody familiar with the framework agreement tell me what the timeline is in the framework agreement to figure out the funding for the arena? I believe it's page 35. I'm going to ask Jen Wellborn to come up. Thank you. I brought it counsel to Orson. I can flip right to it. 35. I'm John, and I'm with the city attorney's office. And the answer is that the. The city committed to. Moving conversation forward with how to finalize the master plan that was adopted by City Council in 20. 16. I'm going to say that wrong. And so we have an obligation in the framework agreement the city does to make attempts to complete the master plan. And that is the unfunded part was the phases three through eight. So that. The city is supposed to do that. There's not really a timeline on it except that what it says is that the partners can, if the city fails to accomplish that by 2027, that the partners, then CSU, the Authority and the stock show can bring forward a plan that is both financially and sound and construct able to the city. And then the city, pursuant to the framework agreement, is required to evaluate that plan and if it is feasible and construct able to make the land available for the construction of those facilities that are in the master plan phases three through eight. Got it. So in that sense, in short, we have until 2027 to figure out a plan for this, for the arenas. At least until then. Yes. Got it. In the feasibility study that was mentioned several times this evening. I don't know who else might be able to answer this question, but it does mention that 10,000 homes minimum would need to be created in order for the arenas to be successful in the market. To be successful. Can somebody speak to why we're choosing to operate in this order and put the arenas before the residences? I can't speak to the feasibility the feasibility study, but I will say that the master plan doesn't have any private development in it. And so the opportunity is for us to locate the, the phases three through eight facilities and see if there is land available. We expect that there is. But I think to to get to your order question without sorry, really addressing the feasibility study because I don't I'm not familiar with it. The order of these things is really because the the cultural facilities that that are created in the masterplan include this arena and the expo hall and the refurbishment in the 1909 building. And, and if there is to be additional land available or land of excuse me, land available, it would be after those phases are built. And that's I mean, that's just because the way the master plan works, I think. So along those lines, how much land was acquired from private owners. Before we pulled together all of our parcels for National Western. There's a total of. I'm sorry. Sure. Good evening. Council members Brad Dodson. I'm the deputy director for the mayor's office of the National Western Center. So, Councilman CdeBaca, thank you. Your question was, how many acres were acquired as part of the campus? Yes. So the total campus boundaries is 250 acres. Now, that includes land the city already owned within the Coliseum area. It also includes land that was given by the Western Stock Association, as well as a private land that was acquired. I don't have the specific acreage of what that private land is. But overall, 250. The entire campus boundaries or 250. Acres of public land. So how much of the land in the triangle was going to be traded in the P3 to the private developers in exchange for the arena renovations? So I can defer to someone else on the details of that procurement. But the area that was commonly referred to as the triangle is roughly 60 acres. So we were going to give 60 acres away, essentially in exchange for the developers who received it to renovate or construct these arenas. That was the total area that was contemplated. So that included both public assets, private assets, infrastructure, open space, etc.. Got it. And so is there. So given that it's public land and we're proposing to publicly finance the arena, renovation and construction, is there a plan to. Return that acquired. Land back to the public in some form, like the community land trust or something like that? I think your question is, is there a plan for what to do with the land after the public facilities are built? Correct. What? They acquired a lot of land. Yeah. I just want out here. I didn't necessarily need it. So within the proposed P-3 that was publicly available, we did have a plan that was it was, you know, you're going to do X amount of affordable housing. And and we had seen a little bit about what those teams were going to respond with in terms of what they were going to do with private land. And since we're not doing that, that was one of the advantages, frankly, of doing it all together, was that it all sort of moved at the same at the same time and at the same pace with with not doing a three. What we're doing is the first step, which is building in the public facilities so that we know what we have, because that's the completion of the master plan. But we know there isn't. So we, we haven't gotten there because it's now we're doing it sort of in a linear, sequential fashion instead of all in a. But we can't make those public facilities successful without the housing that was required in the feasibility study. So my question related to the plan was what was the overall cost associated with the plan for the triangle when we had the whole package together? Well, that that included that included the Expo Hall and include I mean, housing, all of that whole bunch of stuff. What was that cost going to be? Well, we we would not have made that public because it was I mean, we wouldn't have made any estimates that we had public because it was on the street. So I don't know that I have a number, but now it we certainly didn't have that. I don't know if we have an estimate that. So we made a plan and we could. And it's not. On the street for a contract. I just don't know. I don't I don't know that we have one. Can anyone share the number? I don't know that we. That was not a number that we made public. We had internal estimates and then essentially protected those. As we went through the negotiation process, we would have to follow up on what the details of those numbers were. I just want to clarify one thing, though, in terms of the mechanics of the 60 acres. That wasn't a one for one transaction that was being that was being dealt with. I think what Jen was trying to say is that the whole campus had a transaction that brought multiple public assets and that put in play certain areas of real estate at the same time, along with other community benefits that were defined in that procurement at the time. So it wasn't just a parcel that was dedicated to an individual asset. The issue here is that where we have somehow arbitrarily prioritized the arenas in that plan that we say we had for the triangle. And so what I'm curious about is if we understand that in order for this plan to be successful in the arena, to be successful and we're throwing out big numbers to the taxpayers to fund why didn't we ask them to fund the whole cost of the triangle to make sure that the community's priorities on the housing side were paid for as well? So I don't think that the that the strategy of of advancing the arena versus the reason that that asset was was selected was because it is that economic engine that Mr. Andrews had testified about. So it had the best return on investment. It provided the most activation for the campus as a whole. I don't think that the balance of the conversation around other community investment opportunities is precluded by starting with this one asset. I think what Jen was mentioning was that this is going to be a more prolonged process. Now that won't just end with this one asset. We're still required to fulfill the master vision for the campus as part of the framework agreement. So two. Questions. On that. What is the potential for you all to take into. Consideration what you've heard. From the community tonight and get that non-negotiable commitment to the community and investment funds request? Before this gets to us for second reading. So we heard a few things tonight, the you conditions, if you will, around support for the program. I'm going to actually ask Laura Perry to come up. We we received the list. I think we have some responses on some of the projects that were identified on there. We don't have answers for all of them yet, but we have we have the answers for some of them. And I want to just be sensitive to my role here in the city CFO. But the authority is the custodian of the Community Investment Fund in that process. So I might ask Brad Buchanan to talk about what the next steps are around the Community Investment Fund and commitments made through that process. So I think, Laura, if you could talk first about those first asks and then Brad Buchanan could come up thereafter. Thank you. So there are. Several infrastructure. Assets that had been made, including sidewalk improvements. And currently there is $70 million included in the Elevate Denver Bond, which is currently moving forward and making progress. There were several traffic calming infrastructure. Improvements on Lincoln Street. And 51st. The bike lane from North Lincoln to Washington Street is an active project and includes some traffic calming, which is funded via Skype and we are still confirming a couple of the other traffic calming projects requested. The replacement of LED water sewer lines. That is not something that is handled by the city. But certainly we can have conversations with Denver water regarding those assets. And the Washington Street Reconstruction Project is currently under the funding from the Elevate Denver Bond Program. Can I save you some time yet? That list. I'm not talking about projects that are already in place. I'm talking about the impact fee that the Community Investment Fund group is requesting a commitment on prior to this going to the floor. Thank you for that. Yeah. Sorry, I can come and speak to that. So many moving parts. I don't know who to call. So thank you. Thank you. Members of Council Brad Buchanan, CEO of National Western Center Authority. So the Community Investment Fund process, it it was, as I said in. Committee a few weeks ago, it was embedded in the P3 process. When the P3 process was halted in January. We started working on and actually with with you Councilwoman. CdeBaca and Councilman Ortega in the. Formation of a community investment fund committee, which you seeded in and they began meeting. In. In April. That is the beginning of the process. It is not the end of the process. The the next steps for the community investment fund process. And I, I don't I don't know how we could commit to it, to providing an answer to what I think will be a. Much longer process in the next week around the Community Investment Fund. To me, the next step in the process is that we're going to one need to stand up a fiscal agent to receive those campus investment fund revenue streams. Denver Foundation is ready to go. Yep, it's great. That's great. And and then secondly, our community benefits committee. Chaired by Lucia Guzman, who's here tonight. And Ernst House, who spoke earlier. Is sits on that committee as well, working with myself and our chair, John Iker. And in talking with you council members as well. I've identified clearly that technical assistance advocacy for the communities is an important step so that they can have the resources they need. To. Be. Expert. Negotiators and to be able to identify best practices nationwide. And so we have been in conversations with the city and with the Department of Finance have had very favorable conversations. And we're going to be requesting $400,000 to be transferred to the authority, to then be transferred to the Community Investment Fund Committee so that they can go through the process of procuring and selecting a technical assistance expertize so that they can then formulate those their their their requests, their desires. They are the experts. Proposal on the table. Right now, because. What I'm hearing is what I heard in 2016 and. 2017 and 2018 and 2019 and. 2020, the community benefits agreement was baked into an MCU that happened many years ago, and the CRF was baked into the framework agreement, which was approved in 2016. And so we're in 2021 having the same conversation. We didn't invest in the community up until now. And so the community, from my understanding, has put a proposal. On your. Desk for the frame, for the authority asking for an impact fee, not a round up. Impact fee in addition to the roundup. What is the position of the authority on the impact fee? The position is that we've heard from two neighborhood organizations that have brought us ideas. We have asked that those be folded into the community investment fund process and considered with all of the community input that will be. Involved in that process. But we have no decision on the impact fee. Not at this time. Thank you. Can you speak to the ask? Have you. Guys done. Any kind of analysis or study on the impact of your public. Investment on the surrounding community? Maybe you. Guys, maybe. The city, anybody? I don't know, however. I might have to have NewCo come up and talk about the kind of neighborhood assessments that go into installing a project on the campus. Is that take us or Brad Dotson? And I bring this up. Because I didn't realize until public testimony how old the data was from our feasibility studies. A lot has changed, including the addition of Mission Ballroom and some other venues. So I'm wondering impact on community. Has that been studied and the feasibility of these venues? Have we studied it now that there are new venues? Good evening. Council members take us hallways like a director of the Mayor's Office of the National Western Center. I'm not sure that the feasibility, the intent of it was to study the impacts to the adjacent community, because the demand for those type of facilities as the campus builds out and also the convention center, I do know that there's others here that can speak to a little bit more of a feasibility study in itself. I think what you're hearing and seeing from us, though, is while that wasn't studied, we do want to continue to work through the true terms of community benefits, whether that's the lower case, community benefits and the return on investment that can come directly to the community through the Combined Investment Fund, the Community Benefits Committee. But also, as we continue to move forward, how do we continue to develop the land in a in an approach that is balanced with the community desires and needs and commitments, but also balance with the economic return that's needed for the economic development to support continue to support the operations of the campus. But also, like I said, the community needs as well. So how was that. Done prior to advancing this proposal? How did we how did we work directly with the community to balance the needs and priorities in this specific proposal? So I think to two fold. First of all, the requests that came out from the city was for projects to submit that are part of jobs and recovery for the city. So knowing that the campus, again, plans, neighborhood plans, 2013, the actual campus plan itself, 2015, identified these as public assets is part of the comprehensive approach to the campus itself. Again, can have a disagreement on the level of community engagement and who was involved. But over 500 meetings have been pencil to date with community members to talk about this again. So when the city asks for projects that can help support economic, short term and long term recovery for the city, the arena is one of the most economic stimulative projects that we have on the campus. And so we wanted to bring that forward for this discussion. Again, I think that the way that it sounds is it's more about an OR and what we're saying is it should be in and jobs and housing. There is a linkage, obviously, between the two. We know that the public asset with the arena can help us do economically. And what could we do for the campus as we figure out what the return on investment is for the community through Community Investment Fund and other things. But the land development process, which we speak about in the P three, of course, we don't have that mechanism anymore. And we want to be able to bring forward what a land development process is, while yes, addressing the community needs and commitments as well as jobs, housing, community oriented, retail, community supportive related items. My final. Question was there a single GSE resident that supported. This initiative tonight. Without conditions? So we can say that we have presented this material through the Community Advisory Committee, understanding we have a difference of opinion on that group with initial support for moving forward again with the campus and the arena in 1909. And so we do believe that there are individuals and community members who support this approach. And correct me if I'm wrong, the Community Advisory Council, led by National Western, is facilitated by CRL, who was also the registered agent on the negative mailer. I'm not sure about the mailer. Carol does help facilitate the conversation with the campaign advisor. Thank you. That's it for my questions. All right. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca and the City and National Restaurant Authority folks that answered. Up next, we have Councilmember. Black. Coming up a a. Week. You need to honor our rules of decorum. We ask that you take a seat. We ask that you take a seat. Yeah, go ahead, Councilmember Black. Thank you, Madam President. A lot of the questions I wanted to ask were already asked, but I just wanted to clarify a few things. Based on some things that some of the speakers said. So I'm sure. Any one of you can. Speak to the master plan. It is from 2015. It was from March of 2015. I think. There's only a few council members up here tonight who. Who voted on that. But a number a few of the speakers said that the discussion about the arena in the 1909 building were rushed. And so. I any of you in the front row, you. Want to comment on what is. In the master plan specifically from March of 2015. Related to the arena in the 1909 building? So the planning process, I'm familiar with the planning processes. I was Executive Director at CPD when those plans were. Can you speak up, Bret? I was executive director of CPD when those plans were created, but the Globeville Neighborhood Plan. As well as the National Western Center Master Plan. And they did have the arena and 99 marketplace in the public market. As well as the. Expo Hall on the east side of the tracks. Great. Thank you. So it wasn't something that was just conjured up this year? No. Right. Okay. And then. Jen, you are our legal. Expert, and I know you worked really hard on that framework plan. But it was really helpful for me to hear you explain it as being linear instead of doing it all at once. And I know there's a great community desire. For housing on the triangle, but what I heard you say is that none of that is possible until the public facilities are built. And so once those are in place and we know where they're going, then you can start contemplating. Other things to do with the land, including many of the things that the community members are asking for. Thank you. I think you just said that much more clearly than I did before. Okay. Well, all right. That's all I have. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Black. Councilmember Sandoval. Thank you, Madam President. Brendan, I think this is for you. So I was doing some research, and I was trying to figure out, has Denver ever done a geo bond on land we own, but then we give to a third party entity? So I was looking at the 1989 when I was looking at the 2007 and I was looking at the 2017. And just to give context to my question, I know that we find for, let's say, the museum, but the museum owns that land we own. We bond for other cultural facilities, but they usually own the land. I see someone shaking your head. So have we ever bonded where we own the land, the taxpayers? We would build the project, but then we give it to a third party entity to run, not the city and county of Denver like arts and venues. Councilwoman I'm now stretching my memory like my mind automatically goes to our cultural institutions, but we retain the ownership of those assets. Laura. Laura, come on up. So there is one entity that the city consistently has included in our general obligation bond programs, and that's the Denver Health and Hospital Authority. They are a governmental entity under state statute, so therefore we are able to issue general obligation bonds for their benefit in constructing public health facilities that will benefit the county, city and county of Denver. And do we own the land? So in the national waste, we own the land right for the arena. And the 1909 building. Does the city and county of Denver own the land where the Denver health is? To my knowledge, we do not. But I can triple confirm that that's. That's what I keep thinking about. Where have we where the city and county of Denver own the land and then we bond to build the project. And then we turn it over to a third party entity. Those were city assets initially. Yep. The cultural, as Brendan referenced, other cultural institutions, the city owned land building for those entities, and they also participate in our joint obligation bond programs where we finance improvements for those campuses, for those facilities. So the Denver Art Museum, the city and county of Denver owns the land. I think the assets may be. Let's. Yes. Yes. I think that, John, we're in with the city attorney's office. The city the examples I would use are the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The Denver Botanic Gardens and the Denver Zoo are, I think, the most clearcut examples of that, where the city owns the land underneath those facilities, owns the facilities, owns the collections, and the nonprofits actually have contracts with the city to manage those facilities. So that said, the Botanic Gardens, the the ones you just named are non-profits, correct? The operators are nonprofits. Is the National Western Center who we would give the 1909 arena to or the 1909 building and the Arena. Are they a nonprofit? Well, we're talking about, I think what we're not talking about giving them the building. We're talking about letting them operate the building. And the National Western Center Authority is a nonprofit. Yes, it is a nonprofit. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Sandoval, Councilmember, can each. Thank you, Madam President. My first question is we have some conversation in committee, I believe, about the library and the central library. And at that point, the only explanation of how it might be funded was maybe the CFP. We discussed the fact that the IP generally would be the entire amount for an entire year. So my first question is, has Finance had any further conversation with the library commission or, you know, the head librarian about funding that project since your last conversation to committee? So we do have a meeting scheduled coming up to further discuss that. And so it's important to note within the Central Branch Library project, there are individual scope components that have independent utility that can be funded through CIP. Certainly the full 18 million, as you mentioned, would comprise an entire year discretionary funding for. But those elements could be funded over multiple years to achieve the same outcome. Have you calculated the cost escalation of demobilizing and recontracting for those in phases versus utilizing the mobilized. Construction. Contracts that are already in place? We have not to date. Okay. Would you acknowledge that there will be a cost increase from separating out scopes rather than completing as a complete scope? Certainly there is there's always additional costs of mobilization, certainly escalation as time goes on and projects continue to progress forward. But certainly utilizing and optimizing existing contracts could mitigate some of that risk. And can I just ask a you know, this is it. I know there was a long list, but is there any other project that was already mobilized and had already approved plans that was passed up in this economic stimulus? Get people back to work as soon as possible. But. I wanted to get back to you on that to take a look. Yeah, I realize that's a tough one. I have a question that might be either for is maybe Brad, maybe Josh lately I see who's here. But Jen Wellborn answered some questions for my colleagues about that. You would have to do the public facilities first, and only then later would you figure out the private development. That's really not my understanding of what the P3 would have done. It would have programed both simultaneously and so I just want to have someone who was involved with the P3 solicitation just, you know, not to put you not to have you disagreeing with your colleagues. But I think it's an important question about whether it was going to be build a public facility and then figure out the private or really whether and how interrelated the two are and why they are. That this has been a theme and I have a few more questions on it. But would someone who was familiar with that RFP want to speak to that, please? No, no. I want you to follow up, but I just want to maybe correct the record because that if I said that, I apologize. That's obviously not true. What I was saying was that the P-3 actually did do everything together and that what we're doing now is considering because we were able to locate the public facilities at the same time. I'm not saying we can't do that now. It's just going to be in multiple stages. And so we need we need to know we at least need to know where the arena is going to go, for example, before we can say that there's land available for some other purpose, because the the framework agreement calls for us to finish the master plan. So I apologize if I was unclear. Did. So I don't want to belabor that. Sorry, Josh. Lately, chief projects officer for the Mayor's office. If that answer your question. But I think the quick of it is the P three. The concept was to do it all at once to your point. And I, I want to just, let's just take it to the next question then or the next, you know, consideration, which is that it's not just a policy choice where we thought we'd do them together before, and now we're going to do them separate. When you choose a location for this new arena, you will be considering whether that location would be better used and how it would be potentially impacting private development. Yes. Yes, we want to be informed with good land use decisions. So it's not really true to say it's just about the public facility first and we'll figure out the private later. We are going to continue to consider the two together. Yes. I think I'm going to I'm going to say yes to kind of both of those things. I think they can happen a little bit simultaneously. But there's also a legal agreement that we have with our partners that say we're going to move these public facilities forward. As we move those public facilities forward, we should have that conversation around as we develop this site out and we figure out where those public facilities go on the best use of land. Let's talk about what other uses of land can be opened up for other commitments. So I think that I appreciate you, you know, acknowledging the connection and you know, I hear you that the framework agreement. But I will just say I mean we I brought this up in committee and a few speakers have raised it tonight more so the 1909 building than the arena depends on private development, its feasibility, its actual like whether it's worth it to spend $30 million is 100% related to private development. Yes. I don't know about 100%, but I will say that the current investment is, I think, $30 million for 1909. There's some additional investment that's going to come in to kind of finish it out once we have the plan of exactly what we want to do. But this gets that mechanical and all those, you know, gets the bones of the facility back in. And then for the next phase of finishing out, hopefully we would have a plan to start activating with residential. Because you're right, 1909 needs residential activation. So I think that the reason I'm asking these questions is because one of the things we're challenged with tonight is determining whether this package for this particular project is ready to go or not and whether or not we understand the implications of the decision we're making well enough to send it to the voters who will not have the benefit of this level of detail. Right. They rely on this body. And I think that to the extent we've tried to say that, all the rest of that will get figured out later, I just think it's really I think that I mean, and again, you know, it's not just you, Josh, I just wanted to bring up the P-3, but. The idea that what we do with this funding decision has ripple effects that are not part of this discussion, that do not have answers, that do not have commitments and that do not have details that would have been done in conjunction with another method. And so I just you know, if you want to respond to that, I had to do have an actual follow up question, but I realize I'm sneaking a comment in. But no, I think you're right. I think, you know, previous procurement method, we would have laid out a large plan out in front of you with a contract that you all saw, the draft RFP that was about that thick with a lot of requirements in it and a lot of plans on what was going to happen in a rezoning that was going to go with it. All of that was part of that package. Now, as Ms.. Wellborn pointed out, now we're in a little bit more of a linear fashion if we're going to take down chunks at a time. And that creates challenges to figure out, okay, how do we walk through this process? The upside of that was last time you're going to have one decision and then we were going to sign a contract and we're going to have ap3 developer start, move it now. We're going to have we're going to come back with a contract for the arena. And then if we're going to develop land, we're going to come back with a contract for a developer. And there'll be many bites at the apple, so to speak, or many conversations to be had in the future of how this all gets done because we're in this more linear fashion. Yeah. So I'm going to change gears. I have a question it might be for you, former Senator Lucia Guzman. It's always a pleasure to have you here with us. But if you would, would you be willing to come up for a question, please? And if it's you instead, Brad, feel free to to work it out. But. Something happened to my shoe. It doesn't work. It's probably going to sail from the benches. So I appreciate that you're chairing the Community Benefits Committee. Have you had a chance to look at other major entertainment venues, community benefits in equity conversations nationally and how they played out? Is that something you had a chance to do as a committee yet? You know, I have. Earlier on, I know when. I was first working with Councilwoman Ortega, she had. Shared some. Information. And I think that you might have been part of that. So that so I know something about that, but not really. I think this is a major process that needs to happen with with the members of the community committee as well, is to really look at what others have done. This is a big deal. And how how has it been done? How how is it going to be how are we going to make sure that the community is responsible for this? Who's going to handle the money? How is that fiscally physically fiduciary going to be taking care of what how that happens. All the things that I have read and looked into really point to the need for a major I'm not going to say a director, but some kind of major facilitation, not not in the scope of taking over the community, but under the I guess in a way that the community, the members use this facilitation to their to benefit their goals and their aspirations for what this can be to to balance the correct kind of facilitation, you know, facilitator maybe with the community committee. And what they want to do is going to be very, very important. Yeah, I will just share that of the most successful community benefits agreements I'm familiar with nationally that were on major entertainment venues, Staples Center of the Nashville Soccer Stadium are the two most significant examples. Both of them negotiated agreements before they had a funding commitment from a public body. That's how it worked. One question I've been a little confused about in tonight's conversation. You've talked about the Community Investment Funds Committee, and then you have a community benefits committee. Is it your understanding that your committee or that committee is looking at the development questions and the land use questions and the affordable housing questions that the community has asked to prioritize? Or just this question of dollars? The investment committee that I've worked with and and saw is one of my responsibilities as the member of the committee of the authority board is to enhance the. Really the investment fund. What what's going to happen there? Now, there are people, as I understand it, that on serving on the investment fund, council or committee, I'm not sure what the formal name is yet, who are also members of the coalition that are very concerned about the land. But my involvement right now has not involved both of those both of those items. But I, I believe that the. Folks who are serving on the investment fund do not separate, you know, the interest of the coalition, some of the Coalition's interest and their interest where really my my work has really been centered on the major opportunity for that, for this, this group or council to receive officially be the group. That receives. Dollars. From the. Revenue that is due to them and how they set that up and how they then work with their community to decide how they want those funds to be used. So I'm going to ask. I forget if it was you, Brad, or who spoke about the capacity building dollars, maybe. Can I switch to the. If it was it was it the money. That we were asking. For? Right. Because this is a really big deal. Yeah. Money to build your capacity to receive funding and distribute it responsibly is very different than money to build your capacity to engage in a conversation about the land use decisions and the affordable housing requirements. And the equity principles that will be built into the overall development of the remaining acres. They're very different. And I want to understand, because I think we are using the terms community investment fund and community benefits interchangeably and we should not be doing that. They are not the same thing, right? The Community Investment Fund may be one example of a benefit, but it is not the thing that particularly where this much land is involved, it's not the largest thing. Right. It may be a factor. Right. If the dollars are used to support development on that land for affordable housing or if they're used for community land trust, they may overlap. But we've been talking about them like they're the same. So I need to understand that. $400,000 better. Mm hmm. So, Brad, did you want to talk about either of you? But which is it? Is it is it capacity building for distributing the funds, or is it capacity building for engaging in the overall use of the site and a full range of benefits, which might include co-op businesses and may include, you know, worker policies that help to make these really good jobs, which we have some that are coming from the city policy side. But every project I described, you negotiated unique job specific things on top of standard policy. So it's a much bigger package of questions than just what to do with the dollars. It is both of those things. We've been prioritizing the Community Investment Fund dollars piece because in 2022 the campus. Will generate community investment fund revenue. And obviously when the livestock center comes on and and we hope the arena. The dollars become much more substantial. Yes, there is a whole. Family of opportunities all around community. Benefits from those jobs, the sustainable jobs, the. Training, the small business, entrepreneurship, all the things that can happen here on the 1909, how that how that process is set up. 99 has been assumed to be operated by a nonprofit, not not the authority, but a community led nonprofit. So, I mean, all of that is going to take capacity building expertize to to to to help the community receive those those. Benefits and and to have. To create the outcomes that they want that they define. Not that we define. I have another question, but I'll go to the end of the queue. Madam, I understand. I am asking quite a few. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Kenny. Next up, we have Councilmember Ortega. Here we go. That my microphone was on. I wanted to ask Josh if you wouldn't mind coming up to the microphone. If if this were not ready to go now, how far down the road would this be? Punted. I mean, is this something that this administration would be able to continue to have conversations about and and try to move it forward? Or does this potentially get pushed so far down the road that we're talking about a whole different administration that's going to be having to deal with this? Sure. Josh, lately, chief projects officer for the mayor's office. I'd love to answer that. Yeah, we'd move fast and come up with a new plan and get that done. But I think reality would tell us that to come up with a new funding plan, which we haven't even thought of yet. Aside from this geo bond issuance we would have, that would take time and it would obviously take political support and community support, and it takes time to put those things together. So I think during this administration that is probably not going to happen. So this was the backup plan to the p three proposal to try to get it funded by a private entity. Yeah. And I just want to tweak those words a little bit because we didn't have a backup plan originally. We, we thought we were moving forward with ap3 and I think I joked with our CFO, Brendan Hanlin, like tourism revenue was never going to go down. Come on, we're Denver, Colorado. And then it happened and nobody expected that to happen. And so we had to take a hard look and reassess. And, you know, I was very engaged in that part of the project and it wasn't an easy thing to do. And this is this is how we retooled to say what is what is the next revenue generator that can help bring to fruition the campus in the master plan that was previously envisioned? So let me ask you a different question, because when this came to committee, one of my colleagues had asked a question about the tourism dollars, both the lodgers tax, as well as the car rental tax and. Why we would not be just looking to that. And as we all know, we were expecting that revenue to be coming through to take care of what was part of phase one in phase two. Correct. So can you just speak to that? Correct. And I can. If I mess up anything, the CFO Brennan will correct me. But yeah, that was bringing phase one and two to fruition. And then for phases three through eight, which were the triangle, we hadn't formally committed any dollars. The overflow of our tourism revenue goes into the general fund, so we hadn't committed those. That's what we would have done had we brought that contract forward, we would have asked you to commit those dollars. So technically, what was anticipated? To be for phase one. And phase two is not money we can rely on for phase three to do these these buildings. In other words, there are just asking the question in a different way. Correct. So let me see if I can answer it in a different way. And and hopefully to you, there is no current funding identified other than the geo bond for the triangle or the phases three through it. Okay. And I wanted to ask a question about whether or not we. Jeopardize any of the state RTA funding if we do not bring the arena online. I'm going to ask someone else to answer that one because I'm not. Brett Dotson. Good evening. Brad Dodson, deputy director from the mayor's office of the National Western Center. Councilman, your question? The arena was not prescribed as a required element in the in the RTA agreement or the RTA resolution. But it did it did project a certain volume of jobs being generated. Right. The the RTA application talked about looked forward to an arena. However, at the time when we actually made the commitment as part of the RTA, the arena was not funded, it was not there wasn't a timeline established and so it was not included as a required element. So we think we're meeting those goals with the buildings that are being constructed today. Yes. And I think the if you if you take a step back by what the looking at the goals of the RTA, which was to increase tourism activity regionally, I think the arena absolutely gets to the spirit of that commitment, even though it wasn't defined as a required element. Okay. And you were Brad can answer this question. So a new arena is intended not only to serve national Western in the annual stock show, but any of the other partners on the campus could book that facility for any any number of types of activities or events. Correct? Yes, absolutely. So it's a it's a year round facility. 16 days in January, obviously, it'll be the National Western Stock Show with the rest of the year. It's it's a concert venue. It's an entertainment venue. GSA and high school sports events throughout the year, expo space, exhibition space. A lot of different kinds. Of users that have shown exhibited some interest in the in the arena. And if I could, I did we pulled some information from the 1909 market study because. As what I recalled. On the housing was that there were 10,000 units in the. Pipeline at that time. Of the. The market study. And we can we'll send around the exact language in. 20 and we can actually. Go and see how many of these happened. But at that time, there were 10,191 multifamily units in the. Pipeline within the five mile radius that they talked. About. So we do we. Do believe. That the. The market study. Requirements that were listed have been met. But please let us get that information of the facts secured and back to you. So does that potentially include all of what's going in along the Brayton court corridor, some of the big projects in the pipeline, for example, Fox Park. Some of those kinds of things. Yes. Yeah. They they call. That a five mile radius from the from the triangle. Okay. My my last question is about a commitment to the process that will engage the community to be part of looking at the Coliseum property and what that timeline, the commitment to that timeline is. I don't know if this is something that Josh would speak to or Brad, if you want to speak to that. I'm. Because we know that. If these two projects move forward. We still have the 30 acres where the Coliseum campus is, and it's it's critical for the community to be engaged in that conversation about, you know, what happens there. We know that part of that is a conversation with historic Denver, for example, about whether the Coliseum stays or whether it should go. But at the same time, you know, there's there's a lot of land there. There's some environmental issues that have to be addressed as part of the the bigger picture of what would happen there. But and we've seen contaminated sites develop all across the city, Shattock Gates site. So this would be no different. Asarco has commercial, you know, development on that site. So. I guess I'm just asking for what that timeline would look like in the commitment to. To move forward with that process that would engage the community in a full blown way around all of that. I think that's. Josh, do you want to take this one? It's one of the things spelled out in the letter that the mayor and Councilwoman Gilmore signed that sort of went through all the documents and pulled out all of the community commitments. Yep. And and maybe you can elaborate more on the letter, I think would be good, but I think it is contingent upon development, right, where we've got an urban renewal area that is set to collect. You know, we would like to get a tip in Metro District in place to start doing things like that. Putting roads back in. Cleaning the site. It is an EPA Superfund site and we need revenues to clean that site up. And so this would generate some of that and would kick that process into play have. I don't know if you know the answer to this, but have we, the city, ever taken on doing our own tiff, or has that always been with a private partner to address some of those infrastructure improvements? I can't answer that one. I've come up in comments, not that I'm aware of. I believe we've always used the Denver Urban Renewal Authority as as our partner for that. Is that what you meant? Like. Transacting ATF on our own? Yeah. We've always leveraged our urban renewal partners. Typically, they leverage bringing a private development partner to the table to help do that. Right. Because I'm not aware I'm trying to think of so many different projects that have been done across our city, but they've all involved. A private development partner to leverage the tax increment financing? I believe so. I might look at the cost. Laura Perry There is one area that I'm aware of, East Colfax. So the urban renewal area and the project plan were established before a developer was at the table with Dura to bring forward a firm project for that area. That was the motel property, so correct. That was redevelop not. 100% on that one. I can't comment. Okay. All right, let me just make sure. So I didn't hear a solid time frame commitment to engaging the community. And in the letter, I'm working through it right now that says in I mean, if if you think about where we're at now, you know, by the time this gets on the ballot, that's November. Right. There'll be the whole process of all of the projects that everybody's going to be trying to get passed before the voters. And then we're going to be in December. So we're into 2022 before, I think in the letter commits to starting this process in 2022. So I've I've requested that we have funding to make sure that that process can move forward. And I don't know if that would come out of. You know, national Western funds, if, you know, the finance office is looking at someplace else that these resources would come from, but that process has to begin in 2022. I'll let Brendon speak to the funding in just a minute, but I do want to point out GE's coalition is actually we're meeting with them tomorrow morning, I think at 9 a.m. in our offices with our Community Benefits Committee. And we are setting up a special community benefits committee meeting for later for mid-month to meet with the Community Investment Fund Committee who wants to discuss their work so far. And then the Community Investment Fund Committee, I believe, is coming to our September. Board meeting as. Well and and agree that setting up timelines. Is, is first job, first thing of order. Do you want to take it from there? Councilwoman. We, Brad and I and a few others have begun that conversation. I don't have a transaction before council this evening. One of the things that at least finance is contemplated is this inappropriate use of a one time contingency transaction to help support this and give clarity and certainty immediately . So we should see something in the 2022 budget. I would try to transact that this year. Okay, great. Thank you. That's that's it for my questions. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. And we're back up for the second time. We've got councilmembers CdeBaca and Kenny. So go ahead, Councilwoman. Thank you. Just a quick clarification and also a request that we get a split of the 400,000 you guys are considering using on the CRF. Process and the CPA. Process. How would we split it? Who would be those entities? Who? Who is the CPA committee? I know the CHF group, but I would love to see that all on paper and just want people to recognize that there is not necessarily a process needed for the CIF that was promised to the community and embedded in the framework agreement. We only had not yet chosen a revenue source, so a roundup optional roundup was a baseline potential revenue source, but not the only one. And so community is proposing that plus an impact fee and there's not a lot of process needed around that. We can get a commitment on that before we vote on this. But the CBA process, I definitely would like to know who are we planning to involve? When are we going to have these meetings? When will it be completed? What's on the table? I would like to see all of that before we vote on this. And that's it for my questions and clarifications. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca, is there any response or more to come, I guess, to those questions? We're in the questions for me to be. Following up and providing that information. All right. Very good. Thank you. Councilmember, can each. Thank you. Council President We've had just a teeny bit of debate about this study, and would you indulge me in answering a question that was raised about what the study says about the household proximity, just to put it in the record? Would that be okay before asking my final question? Thank you. So, page 60 of the 1909 study starts a list of challenges, and it says this. It's page 6061. Actually, that demand from residents within the five minute drive time area is not currently sufficient to support a market at this site. The difference in the half mile radius between Denver, we have about 1200 households within a half mile radius. Pike Market, which we've described as the model that we want with fresh food, has 11,000 in the half mile radius. So it is a significant difference. The other cities that have a small number of households in the half mile radius in this study, in this set of pages, 58 to 62, if you're short on time, focus on those pages goes into detail that they don't provide fresh food. They have markets, but they're more like flea markets. They attract tourists. So the comparable level of household. So if this vision is for a fresh food market, if you take each of the pieces of this study together, there are not sufficient households. It's very clear it says it black and white is not sufficient to support a market. It does rely on the additional development we can debate with. That number is right. It does make a point that there are 10,000 units planned in the area. There's there's several references to 10,000. But that that actually makes a point that most of those are at the edge of the radius. They're not. And it kind of interchanges, sometimes a five minute radius with a half mile radius, which I'm not, I will admit ignorance in not knowing which of those is which in terms of what they translate to for distance. But but I think that, you know, the study does have some pretty strong statements in it about demand needed for success. So, you know, it's all there. Page 58 to 62. So with that, just kind of in the record, just to emphasize that the the question was asked about, we never looked at any other options. And I guess I just want to ask the question, why not? So who from the city. And I really do want to hear from someone from the city. We have two thirds of a bond that's not yet spent. And someone walks in the door and says, Why don't we use a bond for this? What process did we go to to evaluate whether there were other options and why this was the best? What was our options analysis and did we do it? And if not, why not? But just I thought that was an interesting question that got asked and I wanted to understand more. And I might be calling Josh up to talk about that as well. But I just want to make sure I understand the question. How do we get to the place where we're considering this bond or this bond as a tool relative to the arena? Well, I wouldn't mind mentioned separate is we want them to think that they are because they feel like we are. You know, we have a centerpiece here and the rest was built around that centerpiece. Right. So. So I think, you know, but for for this purpose, let's ask you about the National Western Center exclusively. So they say we want to finish. You know, we want to fund these these phases with this source and we want to do it immediately. Can't wait till 20, 22, which I believe is still during Mayor Hancock's term. Yes, 2022. Yes. Yeah. So there is another election during this mayor's term, this administration's term. But so what what analysis did we do? What vetting of the idea what vetting of alternatives did we do before proceeding with this? So I just want to make sure I'm answering the right questions. National Western Center piece of the package. Correct. So. Okay. So I think this goes back to Civil War Josh was talking about we were dependent on that P3 transaction to fund the all of the assets on this campus. We did meet internally to talk about options of moving forward because we do have a multi-year commitment to deliver the assets of the campus. I think to the question that was brought up earlier about, well, why was this one asset selected relative to others? It was because of the economic return on the campus and the activation it brought with it, as well as to the activation it brought to other assets on the campus. So there was an element that went through the deliberative process with the bond executive committee was proposed by the NewCo team and supported by the authority. These were ideas that came in through that process and it went through that deliberative process and reviewed the mechanics that and the and the values that it delivered as part of the geo bond process. I'm just going to ask it a different way. Okay. You didn't analyze any other finance mechanisms for it, so you evaluate it. Is it is it a good project or not or doesn't meet the bond criteria? But I'm asking, did you do an alternatives analysis? Did you say, is there another finance mechanism? Is there a copy? Is there I mean, you know, I don't know what the list would have been, but did you look at other ways to pay for it? So, I mean, we considered other financing tools. So there's two things that were going on at the same time. There's the financing transaction. So that's that's going out to the market transacting a debt debt amount that would then finance a project. But then there's the revenue stream component to it as well. So we did look at other revenue streams that had a nexus with the campus. But as we discussed before, they were tethered back to the option, which was the P three and they have been very impacted by the pandemic. So we we we looked at those as a possibility, but they still had not been strong enough to to provide a sufficient alternative to provide not the debt service amount, but the revenue that would be needed to repay the debt service once it was issued. Last question, I promise, in terms of the amounts, right. I mean, it's concerning to a number of us that the the Central Library Project is not in here. And so was there any effort to find a mechanism or an alternative source that could have shrunk the amount of this ask in order to fund a core free service that provides safety net services to so much of our community? Right. Was there any attempt to value engineer the amount and find the the remainder from another source, any attempt to do that? So we reviewed the project list repeatedly, internally, repeatedly with with council members, individually as well, and tried to make sure that we were honing in on what that project list looks like. I think it's also goes back to Laura's earlier point about the next step in our work is was finding those increments of independent utility items that could be carved off. I agree that there are capital escalation that would come with that, but I think we've been trying to be solution oriented relative to individual independent utility scope items. But we also were trying to make sure that we were being true to the conversations that we've had with all of you around projects and prioritization . Okay. Thanks. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Koinange. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on council bills 864865866867924 and or 868. And a reminder, Council members, this is the only opportunity to offer any comments on any of these after the vote on 864864. Excuse me, the floor does not open back up for comments. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I know that it only came up once this evening in the testimony, but I wanted to thank Sister Lydia Pena and also Guadalupe Lloyd, who is a neighbor whose backyard backs up to the Loreto campus for their comments on the efforts to revive reopen the May Bonfils Theater that's included in one of these packages, the city facilities bonds. This was something very important to my community in southwest Denver when we did the small area plan and talked about reviving the campus. This is an opportunity for the city finally to expand the arts and venues portfolio beyond that of downtown well and Red Rocks there's that. But to provide a performing arts facility to bring cultural opportunities, cultural growth to frankly, a very underserved part of town and high inequity part of town. A facility for performing arts that's accessible to small groups. A facility that would provide not only the stage for performance, but also meeting rooms for just for community meetings. I believe this facility can foster growth in the arts. Among, say, tier three SFD groups and foster establishment of new groups. Moreover, it has been nearly 30 years since the city last invested and a major community facility in southwest Denver. And I wanted to thank the Department of Finance, the mayor's office, for listening to the outpouring from Southwest Denver. The last facility that the city invested, I think, was from the 87 bond issue. That was the Southwest Recreation Center, which, by the way, just opened today after a year and a half of being closed due to COVID . So I just wanted to I know that most of the discussion tonight has been on National Western and the Arena and the 1909 building. But I just wanted to make note of one of the other significant investments that we have that I hope my colleagues will pass on to voters and let them decide whether to proceed with this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn, Council Member Sawyer. Thanks, Madam President. There was something I heard from the public tonight that was it was really concerning to me, and that is when several people said, we don't want to vote. And that is really, really disturbing because when we're looking at what is going on across the world and we're looking what happened in Afghanistan today, the fact that someone has said, I don't want to vote on this. I don't want people to be able to use their voice and make a choice. That is the single thing that the United States of America has been built on. It's what we have been fighting for in Afghanistan for the last 20 years. It's what we lost today for an entire country that is extraordinary. And whether I agree with the idea that the package that has been put in front of us is worthwhile or not, it should go to the voters. It should go to the voters to decide to have this conversation, because that's what we do in America, because that's democracy. And frankly, there's not enough in this package for District five. But that's okay. That is a decision for District five voters to make. It is a decision for the voters of the city of Denver to make. And I feel really strongly, especially with what is going on in the rest of the world today, that we pass we vote, we pass this along, we refer it to the ballot, and we allow the people of our city to have this conversation and to decide for themselves whether this is something that they support or whether it's not something that they support, because it is too important for us to give up our vote. That's not okay. So I'm going to vote to refer these to our vote to publish them today. I'm going to vote to refer them next week. And I just wanted to make sure that I was really clear about that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Sawyer Council member Cashman. Well, thank you, Madam President. It obviously a difficult, difficult decision to be made. I mean, I love the the National Western and I took my kids there for years and years, take my grandkids. I think it's an important asset to the city and county of Denver. I also love sidewalks that are in good repair and that are wide enough for wheelchairs to traverse. I love sidewalks where people walk rather than sleep because we have enough housing. I love libraries that are open when people need them to be open and in 2021 condition rather than, you know, 1995 condition. And I love that that we can breathe without our throats getting scratchy and mountain views that still exist on a regular basis. So this is is is difficult. It's not a matter of of anything. I'm not a hater of the national western. I'm not a hater of a whole lot that's in this package. But I'm struggling with, you know, how what I want to pass on to the voters and what I don't I very much appreciate Councilor Councilmember Sawyer's position and it's one I'll I'll take into account, but I'm still measuring my votes. I appreciate everybody's efforts in putting this together and answering questions, but it is troubling to me. Thank you, Councilmember Cashman. Councilmember, can each. Thank you. Council President I first just want to say that I reject those who have cast aspersions and disparaged the folks who brought this package forward. I think that everyone has good intentions. And I take it as a fact that this. This package has things that are important in it and that are long delayed. And I also take it as a fact that even the project I've had the most questions about the arena is necessary and is a key to the the campus, the national western campus. And so and that we have some obligation to participate in the solution of of funding that. So I, I just want to make really clear that, that I think that that the intentions are good. I like Councilman Cashman struggle with the timing of this package overall with three quarters of a prior bond unspent, with the delayed nature of some of the stimulus that's coming, and with the ability that a year would have given us to answer more questions. Right. So I, too, am struggling. And I will just say I really appreciate Councilwoman Sawyer's point. I guess I would describe it a little differently. We are elected in a representative democracy to vet things in the first instance. And when I send something to the ballot, I think they're my questions were based on the idea that the voter expects that I've done some work to figure out the readiness of the issue and the implications and the future costs if you're going to have to demolish the Coliseum later and we're on the hook for that and there's no funding for it in this package. Right. That's an example of a consequence that I could be taking on with this vote. And that's not in the ballot language. And so so I do think that not everything always is appropriate to be referred, because that's why we're here, is to vet those things. And that's really important. It costs a lot of money to have an election and it's not equal footing. Everyone doesn't have equal information. And so I do trust the voters to make sound decisions, but they also trust me and the people up here to do some vetting. So that's why I think it matters a lot. If we feel like it's ready and we feel like it had the best vetting that it could have, the voters don't have a chance to say that they would have liked to put a project in. That's particularly what they don't get to do. Only we get to do that, and they're projects that were left out of this that would have an immediate stimulative effect. And I struggle with that, too. So thank you as well for all the answers to the questions that folks were able to give. And to my colleagues for your good questions as well. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Kinney. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I want to thank everybody for being here tonight. This is one of our late nights that we've been here since we've come back to the chambers. And thanks to Councilwoman Sandoval, you now have cushions on the seats to sit on. So they're not hard seats. I've been involved with this project going back to when I was a staff member for Sal Carpio. And conversations have been ongoing about, you know, what kind of investment should the city be making in national western? Over time, we've spent money on various buildings from bond, you know, from the voters supporting various bond packages that built some of the buildings that that are there and are still being used. We know that the 1909 building needs major upgrades for that building to be usable for anything. And there's been a commitment made that it would be used as a public market. The the package of items that have come forward. Some of those were vetted with input from the community and some of that came from input from members of council, which is not unusual in this process. I can remember one round when we had a package moving forward and I wanted the bridge underneath that connected or the connection. It's a tunnel actually that connected the Coliseum to the National Western campus because 46th Avenue would have to be closed and residents would have to drive on I-70. And you know that that got put into the package. It's part of the process. It's not unusual for members of council to push for some of these things to be included in these bond packages. And what you have before you tonight is a reflection of accumulation of all of that input. The reason I put together or asked the administration to work with me in putting together the letter that Councilwoman Gilmore and Mayor Hancock signed was to take all of those commitments to the community benefits. And they're it's not it's not intended to be the entirety of what can can be for that campus. But that is what is memorialized in each of the documents. And that was done with input from residents, from the community. We had many people that sat on the the National Western. What's the right name of the group? The Community Advisory Committee. That's where many of those things ended up in the framework agreement because of input from the community. And same with the 1909. A number of residents from the community sat through those meetings to give input. We had the gentleman who ran Pike's Market in Seattle, who was the consultant that worked with the community to say, if you want this to be successful, it has to be a community driven program. It can't be something where you bring in chain restaurants and that kind of thing because that's not a public market. That's not going to work. It was intended to not be just food, but to have a variety of different kinds of things, very similar to Pike's Market that would have a robust interface with the community. We haven't gotten there yet. Right, because these these projects have not had the opportunity to move forward. We didn't get to the P3 process. This is the opportunity to really move in that direction with with these two buildings that are part of this package. And I would just say that if these two buildings are not part of the package for the national western campus, it will be punted so far down the road that we probably won't see it before some of us who are term limited leave in 2023. And I think this is an opportunity to ensure that the revenue that will be generated from these buildings will be added to what is already being proposed with the existing buildings that have been constructed or are getting ready to open that were funded in phase one and phase two, that lifts up how much more can be generated from the Community Investment Fund. And again, that is the floor, that is not the ceiling of what the opportunities are for these communities. And I just think that it will be a missed opportunity for the residents of these neighborhoods to not have this be part of the package that the voters should be able to make a decision about. And this is this is our opportunity as members of this body to put this forward and to create the opportunity to then engage in that conversation with funding that our finance office is going to find to make sure that we have that robust conversation to engage the community. And what happens with the 30 acres at the Coliseum if these two buildings are built on the north side of I-70? We still have all the land on the south side of I-70 to figure out what do we do with that and have the community involved in that conversation along with, you know, what are the funding, other funding sources that could be had to make sure that we have this these opportunities for the neighborhood. So I'm going to be supporting the full package tonight. I was adamant that if these two properties these two projects were not part of the package, I wouldn't support it all moving forward. But I think this is critical for the kind of jobs that are going to be generated and the benefits that will come to these neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ortega. Councilmember CdeBaca. I thought I was done, but I'm not. Thank you so much for letting me. Close us out on this. And I just want to. Respectfully disagree with Councilwoman Ortega. We've had several things memorialized on paper. Over the last 5 to 10 years related to the community commitments here. We've got an Emmylou. For the Community Benefit Agreement. We've got a framework that talks about the Community Investment Fund. And only. Now that we're. Asking the community to give up more, are we committing to that process in a meaningful way. And so I don't think. Another letter. Is going to get the community. What they're asking for. I think that we need community driving, how. We. Prioritize anything that happens within the next. Ten years leading up to our deadline. I personally feel that, you know, community consistently comes, shows up, testifies, tells you what they want, tells you what they're asking for, and we ignore them. Tonight there was not a single resident that spoke in support of this. This is the most marginalized community and the most impacted by these projects. Yes, we split it up. And I absolutely do not support the national western side of this. But I also think that it's irresponsible for us to be going to the voters, to the taxpayers, asking. Them to take out another. Loan when we have already expedited the debt on the previous loan we had them take out in the middle of an economic crisis. This is not a hotel and tourism tax. The reason that we didn't generate enough revenue is because of COVID, because that's not something people could attend, could do. We don't know if covid's over. So we're planning for a venue that will be shut down that we may or may not generate revenue on. And we're calling that an economic jumpstart. It's not. Were lying to the voters. We're not telling them the truth about this. This project won't even generate revenue for another 5. To 10. Years, if that. So I think the package is irresponsible. At a time like this, we're relying on the taxpayers and their property taxes, which we just raised this year, to fill the shortfalls of our of our revenue gaps. From last year. It's not a. We're at this time and I don't support the whole package, but I absolutely don't support the National Western package. And at minimum, I encourage my colleagues to pay careful. Attention to the National. Western piece and recognize that the people speaking here tonight did exactly what you asked them to do. And they don't want this piece. So please, at minimum do not support the piece for National Western. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember CdeBaca. And I'll go ahead and wrap up the comments and then we're going to go ahead and vote on each one individually. I hope we've heard a lot tonight about National, Western and 1909. Something that we haven't heard a lot about are all of the other projects that are part of this package that are transformational for other parts of our city. And folks have been waiting for some of these projects for decades and. It doesn't have to be an either or. It can be a yes. And earlier tonight, we approved a rezoning for a Costco in the Montebello neighborhood that's going to create well-paying jobs that have benefits. One of the things that we all saw over the pandemic, especially for hourly wage workers, are if you don't have access to benefits or PTO or sick leave, you're just out and you can't pay your rent. You can't buy food. That's why we had so many folks in food lines during the pandemic that they were just like, I can't believe I'm here, but I don't have sick time. My child got sick, my spouse got sick. I lost my job because I didn't have those benefits. This is something that we can start this process and start it over or re spark it so that there is the will of this body behind it to ensure that we get that 400,000 to see this work so that folks aren't able just to say what they want, but they can actually be at the table, community members can be at the table and negotiate around national, western and 1909 and we're going to find that 400,000. We've got the 2022 budget process coming up. If we don't have it figured out before then, I can assure you that there's going to be some sort of amendment that creates that funding stream, because the will of this body , we all feel that it's very important that we follow up on the promises that have been made to this community and that we make sure that we're empowering them to be at the table to make those decisions. I want to really thank Councilwoman Ortega for her leadership in. Pulling together that high level summary letter that really just puts everything in one place. So it's easy for the community to track, for the public to track for our city agencies and administration to track. This is something that myself and Mayor Hancock have both signed, and I feel a huge sense of responsibility to ensure that we see this through. We have had community organizations in Montebello, Montebello organizing committee that have been very, very successful in getting a fresh food market with affordable housing on top of it. There are models within our city that are already being funded and work, and so I hope that we can continue to build off of that. And then I also want to sincerely thank Council Pro Tem Torres and her partnership through this, because the amount of meetings and weekends that we have spent working with Brendan Hanlon, Laura Perry and your entire team, it's been quite a process. And was it going to be perfect? No. We knew that that wasn't going to be the goal. Was it going to be something that we could revive the economy and make sure that we were providing well-paying jobs with benefits and jobs that could lead to careers along with that partnership of our universities? Yes, that's what we were trying to accomplish. And I feel like we have done that here tonight. And so I am in support of everything that we have in front of us, because I know that the time has been short, but the need is great and now is the time for us to act on this. And so appreciate the community members for staying along with us on this and council. Bill 20 1864 is on the floor for publication. Madam Secretary, roll call on council bill eight six for please. Flag I. CdeBaca. No. Clerk. I. Swim I. Herndon, I. Cashman. I. Each I. Ortega, i. Sandoval, i. Sawyer, I. Torres, I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results.

A proclamation recognizing and celebrating Denver’s Sister City relationships and the success of Denver Sister Cities International.

DenverCityCouncil_08292016_16-0766

All right. We're going to move on to our second proclamation. Councilwoman Black, will you please read proclamation seven, six, six. Thank you, Mr. President. Proclamation number 60766. Whereas, following the mayhem of World War Two in 1948, Denver Sister Cities International was founded with a relationship with breast France. Denver now has ten sister cities, each of which has a public park named in its honor as a tribute to the importance of these relationships. And. Whereas, Denver Sister Cities International hosted the fourth Annual Worldwide Festival, a free daylong celebration of the cultures of Denver's global sister cities. And. Whereas, memorable delegations from each of Denver sister cities were formally invited to participate in Denver's World Wide Festival and in meetings with municipal officials, area businesses, educational and cultural entities and tourism offices to further strengthen the many impacts of these powerful relationships. And. Whereas, 2016 marks major anniversaries of two of Denver's ten sister cities. Denver and Kunming. A relationship established in 1986, is celebrating 30 years as sister cities and the Denver Ulaanbaatar Sisterhood, established in 2001, celebrates 15 years. And. Whereas, Denver Sister Cities International has been named the 2016 best overall program for a city with a population greater than 500,000 by Sister Cities, International proudly expanding Denver's list of honors and awards. This award is based on the high level of activity and impact proven by Denver Sister Cities and our global sisters. And. Whereas, the city and county of Denver and Denver Sister Cities International have a strong and mutually supportive and cooperative relationship. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, that the Council heartily welcomes our esteemed guest colleagues and friends from our sister cities to night and always, and offers congratulations and gratitude for their part in winning this prestigious award to our Fair City. Section two that the Council congratulates the many volunteers of Denver Sister Cities International who worked tirelessly to bring this honor home and to keep Denver's global connections vibrant and innovative. Section three that the Clerk of the city and County of Denver shall attest and affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and transmit a copy thereof to Denver Sister Cities International. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Your motion to adopt. Thank you. Mr. President, I move that proclamation. Seven, six, six. Be adopted. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of council. First up. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. Mr. President, I'm really excited to sponsor this proclamation tonight. There are ten sister cities, and I am going to read them all because it's an interesting geography lesson. Acxiom I don't know if I'm saying it right. Ethiopia. Chennai. India. Cuernavaca. Mexico. Karmiel. Israel. Kunming. China. Nairobi. Kenya. Potenza. Italy. Takayama, Japan. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Brest, France. And as the proclamation said, there is a park in Denver for each of those cities. BREST France is the most special sister city to me. Many of you may have been to the park. It's on the Cherry Creek Drive and Colorado Boulevard. It was our first sister city, and it was founded in 1948 by a teacher from East High School who, together with students, raised $32,000 to help build the Brest after World War Two. $32,000 was a lot of money for a teacher and students to raise. In 1948, breast is the westernmost point of Western Europe. It's where the Atlantic meets the English Channel, and it was devastated by World War Two. There were huge battles fought there between the allies and the Germans, and unfortunately, the beautiful medieval city was mostly destroyed . And so it has had to be rebuilt over these many years. I have a personal long history with breast. I said this last year when we had this proclamation, but my dad was on the board of Sister Cities in the seventies and in 1980 we had a young man named Frank Bellion who lived at my house and he worked for my dad. And since 1980 we have had a long relationship with that family. I've been to Brest numerous times. Members of the Bellion family have visited Denver. Frank Ens Kids have all lived at my house for a summer. His nieces and nephews have been to visit and we're going on 40 years of relationships with the Belgians. It's a very, very special relationship. Last month, I had the pleasure of giving visiting students from Brest a tour of the city and county building. And we did a little history lesson and a Denver civic lesson, which was really fun. And I'm really proud that I've been living the sister city's mission of cultural and economic exchange. Today, I had the greatest pleasure because it's a very, very small world. So we have our guests here from Brest, France, and they know Frank Bellion. Frank is the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Brest. He's actually going to be in Houston next week, and I'm going to have them all come up in a moment. But we have the deputy mayor of Brest, France, Raisa Salome, director of International and Economic Development. Julie Newitz, Director of Brest Twin Cities. Armel Geismar. And the chair her breast sister city's Lorette have Pepple who is going to refresh my French, which I did take for many years. And and Beth Hendricks is the director of Denver Sister Cities International. Really excited to learn from them that next year they're going to be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the the liberation of breast from the Germans. And so everyone will be invited to go there and attend that celebration. I plan to attend. My dad, as I've said before, was a pilot in the Army Air Corps and participated in the liberation of France. So I really look forward to that. And that's all I have to say. Thank you, Councilwoman Carlson. Gilmore. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to thank Councilwoman Black for sponsoring this proclamation. You know, in November, Councilman Clark and I were honored to be part of a mayoral delegation to Takayama. And we visited the Red Cross hospital on what seemed like an endless day of viewing different areas and hearing about what they did at the Red Cross Hospital and all of the great work. And earlier this month, I was honored to host in my family home in Montebello, a surgeon who was coming to the and shoots medical campus to receive extended education from the Red Cross hospital in Takayama. And so it was great to be able to share with her the pictures that we took. She knew exactly where the Denver sister city park was in the in the town. And just building those cultural relationships I know go a long way. And it makes Takayama Japan not seem quite so far away from Denver, Colorado, and I'm sure that she's going to come visit us again. And so I just wanted to share that. Mr. President, thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. As Councilwoman mentioned, I had the honor to visit our sister city of Tokyo, Japan, last year, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that. They. Like we have a city of Tokyo, a park. They have a city of Denver park, complete with one of our signature green Denver Park signs and even a couple of. Rocks. Shipped over from Red Rocks Park. And, you know, well, that was fun. It was really very moving when we arrived at their city hall and were greeted by hundreds of people and then went, you know, our entire delegation went and rang a peace bell right outside their city hall before entering to celebrate the peace between the United States and Japan and the relationship between Denver and Tokyo. And it was really opened my eyes to the power of the Sister Cities program. It's something that is so fantastic for our city. It does make the world a smaller place. And whenever it's a smaller place, it's a more peaceful place. And so I'm so happy to be listed as a sponsor of this proclamation. And just want to thank you, Councilwoman Black, for bring it forward. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. And I'll make a couple of comments. Thank you, Councilwoman Black, for for sponsoring this. You know, I didn't even hear the proclamation, but anytime I see Sister City involved in something, I am incredibly supportive. And one of the reasons is I call it my freshman year on city council. I found out that we had a sister city in Nairobi that was pretty much dormant at the time, and we took a delegation over there of your high school students and some nonprofits and a couple of business leaders and got the opportunity to help start or revise this partnerships, this 35 year relationship with Nairobi, which spun into a trice, a tri sister city relationship with Kunming, China. And and, you know, it is great that it's, you know, it's goodwill, it's connections and things like this. But I think there's something deeper there. I think there is a lot when when cities begin to connect, because we don't get into the global crisis issues that sometimes countries get into when they are building relationships with one another. We find common ground quickly and with all of these exchanges that my colleagues were talking about. But there's also economic opportunities which we've been seeing. And who would have thought that cities trade with each other, that we do import export opportunities and things like that? And we just got done with the deputy mayor from Kunming and she was in town. Yes. She by the way, they had an all female. Our delegation and they were dynamite just saying. Haven't seen that in a while, but she was incredible. And she talked about all these import export opportunities that we hadn't thought of before. And she talked a lot about microbrews, which was awesome. So this is an incredible opportunity and it's something that we as a city don't invest much into the Sister Cities program, yet it thrives. And I couldn't be more supportive and I hope my colleagues would get the opportunity in other Denver city residents get the opportunity to see what we do understand why we have a main park. Right. All of the history, the rich history with sister city. So thank you, Councilwoman Black. It has been moved in second to Madam Secretary. Roll call. Black Eye. Brooks Clark I by Vanessa Flynn, I Gilmore, I. Herndon I can I can eat. Lopez I knew Ortega. I Susman by Mr. President. I am a madam. Madam Secretary, clothes a resounding renounce results. 13 Eyes. 13 Eyes Proclamation 766 has been adopted. Councilwoman Black, is there anyone you would like to bring up? Yes, I would like the entire delegates up. Beth Hendricks is the executive director of Denver Sister Cities International. Come Up. Deputy Mayors. Salome. Julie. New Eats. Armel Guimard. Laurette Hempel. Their President there. Conrad Black, honorary councilor, ladies and gentlemen. 60. Eight years ago, our parents decided. For these trainings. 60 years ago. It was a very big event because. These trainings had a very important message. Other parents said No more Ras. War that. So it's very important when we see our world now, everywhere we see we are human. Kill. Human. Human. Hate, human. We can. We can accept it. Our message must. Be the same off message that other parents. Six years ago already. And. Other trainings doesn't even have. One word. Clean wrinkle. Yeah. Thank you. I think we have the honorary councilor. We have a very, very important opportunity, a big, great opportunity today to solidify this partnership. These trainings. And surely this message of peace. Because the friendship. Is like a flower which need care and attention day by day to keep it fresh and healthy. Therefore, all of us have a duty to protect this beautiful and precious flower, to nurture and nourish it. We are really very happy to see you. Everyone here. And it's the first trip for us, for Julie and me in in Denver. It's not surely the last the trip in Denver. It will be very fun for us to see you again in breast in your city of breast. And thank you for your lot today. Thank you very much for this invitation. Thank you, President CU. Thank you. Thank you for being here. All right, resolutions. Madam Secretary, will you read the resolutions.

Recommendation to receive and file a report from the Long Beach Fire Department on the status of illegal firework outreach, education, and enforcement plans, and a presentation from the Third Council District Committee on illegal fireworks.

LongBeachCC_06232020_20-0592

Thank you. We're going to hear items 16 and 25, which are both fireworks related together, please. Communication from Councilman Price, Councilmember Pierce, Councilman Super Knob, Vice Mayor Andrews. Recommendation to receive and file a report from the Long Beach Fire Department and a presentation from the Third Council District Committee on illegal fireworks. And item 17 is a report from Health and Human Services, a recommendation to award a contract to Volunteers of America to provide operational I'm sorry, $0.25 item. Actually, I'm going to do one at a time. I just wanted to note that to hear one after the other. Okay. Sorry about that. So why don't we go ahead and do item 16? The recommendation receive and file a report on the Long Beach Fire Department from the Long Beach Fire Department and a presentation from Third Council District Committee on Illegal Fireworks. Mr. Mayor queued up. I think you're good to. Can you guys hear me? Yes we can use as he comes on our earth. Is the video queuing up or. Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you on this. And if you'd like to start your presentation. Okay. So I think there is a video for this presentation and I don't know if it's getting queued up or not, but I do have some comments on the item before we show it. It's one of our public service announcement videos that we work with Cal State, Long Beach every year to create. Oh. My name is Biscuit. When I was a puppy. I was really scared of these loud. Bright lights in the sky. I used to hide wherever and whenever I could. But then I knew. Coming. Comfort me. No matter what, everything is going to be okay. But then. My husband went away for a. And when he came back, it was the happiest day of my life. But he wasn't the same person. He used to be. My police dog friends tell me it's from these things called fireworks, which are these wild things that aren't allowed in Long Beach, but the humans use them anyway. So now it's my job to let my human know that no matter what, everything is going to be okay. I. So. So we wanted to kick off this item with that PSA. I think many of my council colleagues know that for the past several years we've been working really hard on education and outreach for fireworks leading up to the 4th of July. A few years ago, our office created a citizen committee to deal with fireworks. I know that, Ken Wise, I hope he's on the call right now. I think he wanted to give an update on the fireworks committee. And I think the importance of that is I don't know how many of my council members remember in 2018 when they did a presentation, they spent over 100 hours interviewing different public safety personnel throughout the city of Long Beach. They pulled data on hospitals in terms of 4th of July fireworks related injuries. They interviewed cities all throughout the region about how they deal with fireworks, education and outreach and also enforcement and prosecution of violations. And they presented a report to council. And as a result of that report, we brought several items over the past few years asking for the city attorney's office and the city manager to look at things such as administrative citations and other ways that we can better enforce and regulate fireworks activity in the city of Long Beach. This is to me, the situation is even worse this year. I know I've talked with Chief Luna about it and I've talked with Councilman Austin, who I know is also very concerned about this item and has brought an item as well tonight. This is an issue that for me, this year appears to be a lot worse. And in talking to the chief, I don't really know what the reason for that is, but the situation is out of control. It's almost nightly now, especially that on weekends. And so we're we're bringing awareness to the issue because I think it's important for us to have outreach and education through the pieces. I know that Ken Weiss, who's on this call, has been very successful in getting those pieces introduced into Long Beach Unified. He's worked, and I think he can speak to this himself, but he's got thousands, tens of thousands of views on these pieces just through the work that he's done with the committee that we created. And it's completely volunteer committee. So I'm really grateful for that. I also want to acknowledge our city prosecutor, Doug Halbert, who I spoke with earlier this week, who is going to be announcing, I think later this week a public facing website that will allow residents to be able to upload videos and to be able to lodge complaints. And we have that for price gouging. We're going to do a similar thing for fireworks, and that will allow the opportunity for home owners to also be held accountable for activity that's taking place on their property, even in the situation where the police officer doesn't witness the violation, which is necessary for a misdemeanor offense. So I'm going to turn it over. If it's okay, Madam Park, I don't know exactly how this would work, but I would love to hear from our fireworks advisory committee member Ken Weiss, if he's on the call and have him give a few updates and then and then we can move the item forward. And I know Councilmember Pearce reached out to me because this is an issue that's of great concern to her as well. So I know she's going to want to talk, but if we can ask Mr. Weiss to talk before she does, I think that would be great. Mr. Weiss's on the call. However. Mr. Weiss. Met. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor. City Council members, thank you very much for letting me make a few more hours and make a few comments tonight. Our committee has worked really hard this year on developing a fourth PSA relating to addressing the PTSD and how the fireworks effect affect individuals that have that problem. And we worked with Cal State, Long Beach and the Veterans Administration, and we just had a wonderful experience with a different administration. They were just anything we needed. They stepped forward and helped us. With the project and they did it. They were wonderful. I want to do it real quick because I know time is short. We all the pieces are now in the Long Beach Unified School District curriculum and are being shown to all the elementary school children. They are also in the Long Beach library system and are going to be available, I believe, through the youth learning part of the library. We we developed a static piece of art to go along with the with the pieces. And that's that piece of art is on the Long Beach Convention Center. Billboard As we speak, we have a language on the. On the Veterans Administration billboard on Seventh Street that has that was started at the beginning of June and has been run through 4th of July. We took the we had kind of a I think it's a wonderful thing. We had a citizen a protest and ask he he wanted to be involved with our committee, but he couldn't make the time commitment. And so he asked us, he said, of all the things that you have done this year, what haven't you been able to do? And I immediately said, Well, I'm going to do a bumper sticker or a Windows sticker. And he said, Send me the artwork and I'll make make it happen. And two weeks later, I had a box of 5000 bumper stickers on my on my front porch. And we've distributed them to different organizations around Long Beach here. 5000 isn't enough, but it's a start. The the pieces are on Long Beach TV. Parks and Rec is going to show them in front of the movies in the park when and if things get back to normal. The VA has. Has put out the and the the the yes A's through their social media. We worked very hard last year to develop a distribution network specifically in Long Beach, and we have 140 partners who are now distributing the pieces, all four of them to their organizations. And they are people like the Boys and Girls Club, Homeowners Association, just a whole myriad of organizations in Long Beach that are concerned and upset about the fireworks situation. We as of yesterday, the safety squad pieces. I have I have earned 24 million views. Which I think is just outstanding, just amazing and blows me away to think that 24 million people have seen what we created. If any of you have any questions for me, I'm. I'm more than happy to try and answer. And I don't have any additional questions for you, but I wanted to thank you on behalf of the city and on behalf of me and my team for the amazing work that you've done. I know that when we started this process, we talked a lot about trying to do outreach and education at the grade school level and the middle school level, just to teach the future leaders of Long Beach that this is this is not okay behavior. And and to maybe call upon the adults in the room who are breaking the rules to say, you know what, that's not okay. Kind of like our kids do sometimes. If we're picking up the phone while we're driving, they'll call out bad behavior and we want kids to understand that. But I think the work that you've done has been amazing. And the initial research that you did to get us to this point has been fantastic. And I just want to thank you. I know there's a lot of discussion to be had tonight. I also know that Chief Luna has shared with me that the attention of the police department toward this particular issue is going to be enhanced leading up to 4th of July from this point forward. So I want to thank you. Ken. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I have no additional comments. Thank you. Could I say one more thing before? Hello. I could say one more thing. Our committee is in the process right now of putting together recommendations for 2021, and we look forward to presenting them to the City Council in late August or early September. Council meeting. So I just wanted to make all of you aware of the work that we're doing on that. Thank you. Let me go to the coolest Councilman Pierce. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Price. And to your team that's been doing work. I, I did reach out to see if you were going to do this. And so I'm glad to be a part of this item. I have questions and I think I'm going to save for for the next item. That way we can have them all in context, but really appreciate what you guys are doing and really appreciate just doing the education component. I think that there's a lot more that we we can do, but also recognizing how difficult this situation is to manage. So I'll say my comments for the next one. Thank you so much. Councilman. Your anger. Thank you. And thank you, Susie. For bringing this forward. I know we're all districts are trying to do their part in trying to control fireworks. And, you know, actually, they're they're explosive devices now. And there are some fireworks out there that I. Yet the margin of being called a firework. The explosive devices, anyway. All that to say is that CD1. Mary said there has been four years of ice. Mary Andrews and myself were hosting a town hall meeting this coming Tuesday, June 30th at 7 p.m. to invite the community to talk about the fireworks and where the city is doing in terms of trying to address the issues. And you're absolutely correct. The fireworks, it appears, are getting worse and worse every year and much more violent. My my wife was on Facebook and she heard earlier today that one of our neighbors lost her dog to a heart attack because of the grief and the panic that that dog was experiencing. And I make sure that I always bring in my dogs early enough before it really gets going to like shield them from all the noise inside. So please. Those are two in the community that are listening to us. Please tell your neighbors that fireworks are illegal in Long Beach. Thank you. I mean, thank you. Any public comment on this item? Madam Clerk? Yes. We have one public comment from Cameron Berger. Your time starts now. Hi. I'm just appreciative of the fact that everyone is pushing for education and I think the push for firework education is really important. I am a little disturbed to keep hearing that the police are going to continue to be involved in the enforcement of firework laws. I lived in Long Beach for three years now and reminding the public that fireworks are illegal has clearly not worked. I think that the city should probably also push its efforts to educate high school students rather than just elementary school students, since they're the ones lighting the firework. Not elementary school students, but in the city should focus more on education and less on enforcing the firework ordinances to the police. Thank you. And I yield my time. Black Lives Matter. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Okay. Rule cover, please. District one. District one. I am. District two. I. District three. District three. District four. I. I. I. I. District six. I. District seven. I. District eight. Hi. District nine. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 25, which is also fireworks related.

AN ORDINANCE relating to planning and permitting; amending Ordinance 1888, Article III, Section 5, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.01.150, Ordinance 10870, Section 334, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.08.070, Ordinance 10870, Section 335, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.08.080, Ordinance 10870, Section 336, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.08.090, Ordinance 10870, Section 407, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.18.030, Ordinance 10870, Section 536, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.30.080, Ordinance 15606, Section 20, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.30.085, Ordinance 10870, Section 537, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.30.090, Ordinance 10870, Section 547, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.32.100, Ordinance 10870, Section 548, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.32.110, Ordinance 10870, Section 549, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.32.120, Ordinance 17485, Section 43, and K.C.C. 21A.38.260 and Ordinance 13623, Section 37, as amended, and K.C.C. 23.32.010, adding new sections to K.C.C. chapter 21A.06, adding a new section to K.C.C. chapter 21A.55, adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 6, repealing Ordinance 15974, Section 5, and K.C.C. 21A.06.1427 and pre

KingCountyCC_10072019_2018-0241

Thank you. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to motion 2019 367 as amended. By an objection, we'll place all four motions on the consent agenda for Council. And with that, that takes us to the Winery Brewery Distillery, Distillery Ordinance and public comment. Same rules apply for public comment. I will try to stay about three people ahead in calling people to testify. And when it's your turn, if you please step to either one of the two podiums. We I however I take part of that back. I will ask you to try to limit your testimony to one minute. We have at present a page and a half of people signed in to testify. The first three people will be Susan Boundary Sanders, Cliff Otis and Chase Killebrew. Good afternoon, counsel. My name is Susan Bounds Sanders. I am commenting today as a private citizen, not in my capacity as one of the city council members. I'd like to thank Carlton over Ball Dutchie for her striker that made so many improvements toward protection of farmland and rural land in King County. But I am here today to ask for more protection. I want to remind you that I've submitted testimony in the past that there is plenty of room inside of city limits for these quintessentially urban activities of tasting rooms and event centers. There are over a hundred acres in Woodinville and over 1000 acres altogether in the city surrounding the Sammamish Valley. And I want to ask for improvements that I've given on a single page of testimony to you today, because the ordinance still provides for death by a thousand cuts to rural and agricultural land in the Sammamish Valley through and allowing providing an environment for land, speculation, providing loopholes in the code and providing for incremental weakening of the code. Thank you. Hello. Council members. My name's Clifford Rosen with MATTHEWS Winery. Winery's tasting rooms in unincorporated Kent County of Work collaborative with you over the past three years to find a legal pathway that both protects rural agriculture and allows small businesses like ours to flourish, providing jobs and a much needed tax revenue to the county. As a result of reviewing this amended ordinance, we have just a few questions that are left. What's the rationale for the percentage of a tasting room to define the percentage of 15%? It's like going into deeper and saying, your kitchen can only be this size. So it's kind of a ridiculous structure. That index to parking, we would have about 8 to 17 parking spots. Where are we going to park the cars that come for a wine release? There's so much concern about an EIA statement. Why don't we do one? How is the recent hearing examiner's decision for breweries impacting this? Can the state vesting law be preempted for a local vesting ordinance? Can the county require a business license that is tied to alcohol sales legally? We don't think so. So we urge you to take the time to forward legislation that's balanced, fair and balanced. And I think you just need to take a little more time with this one. Thanks. Following Mr. Killebrew will be Laura Cherry Case. Interesting to be. And Craig Peck. Hello, my name is Chase Killebrew. And you're. You're out of order. Please sit down. I'm sorry for the interruption. Hello. My name is Chase Killebrew and I am representing Blue Line and land use planning and consulting until Engineering Consulting firm based in Kirkland. We have written a long letter that is included in your packet for today's meeting, but I would like to highlight a couple of the points. First, the parking maximums that have been proposed lean toward redundancy when the proposed code provisions regulating maximum impervious surface, maximum building size and setbacks plus the county surface water standards should be adequate in prohibiting the negative effects of pollution generating impervious surfaces. However, if a parking maximum is considered necessary to ensure a reduction of the potential effects on water quality and runoff of development, one possible solution of reaching a balance would be to add a condition that allows the parking maximum to be exceeded. If an applicant implements more alleged bbmp stormwater runoff, such as pervious pavers or by retention wells. Second, we ask you consider the Department of Local Services permitting process as this will affect the enforcement of the proposed ordinance, particularly the proposed compliance period. With our extensive knowledge of the deal process, it's pretty lengthy and we know that it will be for these existing facilities coming into compliance. So we appreciate the determination of the Council to guarantee the ordinance can be fairly implemented once approved. Thank you. Hi. My name is Laura Cherry and I'm the owner of Dragon's Head Cider on Passion Island. And I just have a couple of points that I'd like to share with the council today. This ordinance, as written, would have a significant negative impact on the fragile economy on Passion Island. And it's frustrating that all of the time and money is spent by the county on stakeholder analysis did not include a single resident of Ocean Island. So Councilmember McDermott and his staff have reached out to the community, understand, and drafted a carefully worded amendment that would better meet the needs of the island. And it's extremely narrow in its focus, but it resolved the issues created by this ordinance for the fashion community. So I'd like to urge the Council to approve the fashion amendment. My second point is, with respect to the broader ordinance, I'd like to emphasize how important it is that the Council finally take action on this ordinance today . The delays resolving this issue also have severe consequences. As a small business owner, I can't make plans for the future of my business. I can't make additional investments in the growth and expansion of my business. Until you make a decision, we have it. I don't envy you because it's really there's no great answer here and there's no way to keep all the stakeholders happy. But it's time to own the issue and do what you can to resolve it in a timely manner. So to continue to kick the can down the road would only continue to make more issues. But please vote to approve the ordinance today so that we can all start to make plans for the future again. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So let him refinance us to instead of complete emotionally and physically. Really beginning health care exists to help people in this optimal state of healthy. In 250 the population of the United States you or you say spend any is in demented city in the to rebuilding of healthy can't cause that's how this thing the exception to instead by as you say National Research Council people shouldn't in through under that is to 300 to something should that Americans. Did. To young younger. Thank you. Thank you. Following Mr. Peck will be Carla Da, Eric Gordon and Vince. I'm Ben in. I'm missing something in the photocopy. Good afternoon, friends. My name's Craig Peck. I live in Woodinville. And I urge you to reject the changes to the current law that are essentially an up zone and a repudiation of the compromises that we made decades ago. The Sammamish River Trail is where I walk, stroll with my wife, exercise and dream. And my kids played soccer and baseball in the Sammamish Valley on land protected from commercial development. It would be a permanent loss to King County's residents if you sacrificed or even risked. The current balance of beauty, agriculture and built environment to benefit a handful of illegal business owners. And please don't make it possible to open new bars, liquor stores and event sites. While there are plenty of other legal locations for these kind of businesses in the area. Don't reward land speculation. We spent together millions of dollars buying development rights to the Sunny Image Valley to protect it. And it's not just the agricultural feel of the valley that benefits the current hospitality industry there. People are actually growing food in the valley, and I buy my produce 5 minutes from my house. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am Carla Da with MATTHEWS Winery. Whatever ordinances you decide to put in place will greatly impact the community, our friends and our employees restricting hours or minimizing retail space, which subsequently reduces our parking capacity or strangle our business and many others. The policies you mandate may force us to abandon the incredible property we have developed. For the community to embrace no farm, no flowers, no expansive lawns, for families to play games on or linger on a sunny afternoon. No embracing grazing deer or scurrying covey of quail. Please carefully think this through. Let's work together to design a fair and balanced ordinance. Please look at this situation logically and with a local focus. Please take the time to truly evaluate how your decisions will impact our business as so many others. Please work with us to determine a balanced answer that both preserves the rural character of the area being nurtured in our farm and garden while promoting the destiny of Washington wines. Thank you. Good evening. Counsel. My name is Eric Ohene. I am a farmer in the Sammamish Valley, and I want to thank you for your mention of the Salish tribes here this evening. Mr. McDermott. I am a for profit farmer for salmon. I hope that you all recognize the importance in the open space conservation of habitat, this habitat so close to the city over the three years that I have employed folks in the Valley, people from Fremont, Ballard, Capitol Hill, U District, Renton, Duvall, Lake City, Kenmore, Woodinville, Kirkland, Redmond, Cottage, Lake and West Seattle have found employment or opportunities on my farm and among my neighbors in the valley. The smallest valley is the first opportunity for young and aspiring farmers to immerse themselves in this vocation while remaining near the cultural attractions of the city and support network networks of their families and affordable housing. The violators in the district are taking that housing away by using what were once homes in the valley for themselves. Places that I will not be able to settle if and if I decide to continue farming in the valley. Thank you. Thank you. Vince Followed by Sarah Totally. Kurt Is it fun to make her in? Andrew. Eli. Thank you, Cosman. And my name's Vincent N. I study your ordinance and I have a trouble with a word demonstration. What is the purpose of a demonstration? Demonstration? For the winery. For the. All those things should be already in the. When we do the Woodinville Wine District, there should be already there. Why go to another demonstration project? The second point I have to made is when demonstration completed and occurred and recurrent a five day violator was at were according to the ordinary study is continue to operate so so this ordinance really to me is really not for a study or to a study is really all in for all those illegal violator is a back door for them. The third one I have the problem where there is a code enforcement or according to the code in the meeting I have in the Woodinville and the county. Officers say the code enforcement is not NSA is not in the county code. That was necessary. So how can we know the new ordinance will enforce the code? Thank you. Hello. My name is Sarah Tankersley and I manage Blue Winery on Passion Island. There aren't very many of us here today representing fashion because it's the middle of crush. We're getting our fruit and we're making our product. But this is very important to us because this ordinance affects our island's economy and our businesses. In a. Very real way. Our winery is small. 500 club members. It's cottage industry and has been for almost 20 years. This ordinance would shut us down and it considering. The fact that. This ordinance was made not to regulate fashion but to regulate the sammamish valley, that is just. So difficult. To come to terms with. We are. Councilman McDermott has created an amendment that is coming up for a vote today, and I hope that you will support it. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi. My name is Kurt Tong, Homemaker and I farm in the Spanish Valley and we are subject to the development above us because all the water from those implements runs down on our farm. And I'm just looking at where this ordinance is written and it sounds like they're going to be able to change a lot of the homes potentially to start having more and more impervious surface. And they say that they're going to manage it where the King County rules, but then they talk about what about the waste? And they said, well, it's not equitable. And one of the questions on the the CPA report that they did, they say this is not applicable, this report is not. And so they didn't fill out any of the stuff so far and explain why or how they're going to manage this. And being a farmer down below are just concerned about the levels of water that are going to come down and make the land even harder to farm. And so I just encourage you guys to rethink this and give the farmers in the Smash Valley a better chance to survive. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Evo will be followed by Rob's Sandra mine. Can I bring I'll bring her and Robin Lao. My name is injury. Thank you, counsel, for having me here to give you a little bit of public insight. I just want to start with one. The Department of Ecology website reads Purpose and Intent Keepers intend to ensure the environmental values are considered during decision making by state and local agencies. When SIPA was adopted, the state lawmakers identified four primary purposes. One declares a state of a policy to encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between people in their environment. Two To promote efforts which prevent to prevent or eliminate damage to the environmental and biosphere. Three To stimulate public health and welfare. And for to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems of the natural resources important to Washington and the nation. The SEPA checklist that was performed for this ordinance was filled out and not applicable for every single line item, and it is utterly discouraging to have the county not take action on that. This was authored by county employees itself and it just doesn't make sense that if such a large area of agricultural and agricultural buffer areas, it should be taken into consideration what the environmental impacts are going to be before an ordinance is even proposed. Secondly, I just want to reiterate that there are numerous nonprofit organizations and and ecological conservation groups that are endorsing friends of some limited values version of this striker. And I think that the democratic representation of those organizations far outweighs the representation of the private businesses that are so that are so encouraged by the financial gains of exploitation of land. I thank you for your time, and I encourage you to reconsider moving this ordinance through today. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Rob. So and first of all, I want to thank Councilman Baldacci for the changes we've made. But that being said, I want to make it clear we oppose the Kathy Lambert's proposed amendments that are before you today. We don't we think those are taking us from reverse. Specifically, I want to talk about the fact that the WB definitions now require to take two stages of production for a winery, one of those stages that's fermenting. Unfortunately, this does not stop sham wineries such as MATTHEWS, who have two barrels in their back closet that are fermenting and aging. And that's the only and none of that is that wine is being sold onsite. All the wine is being produced offsite. So there's a loophole there. The current strike does not address this type of sham operation is totally and make it totally illegal. It's just what we really want in this amendment. Lastly, I want to make sure I think down the road in closing, 50 years from now. Are your grandchildren going to thank you for adding a few more wineries or for protecting this valuable resource where they can enjoy God's beauty? Thanks. Canal, Bangor, resident of Kirkland. This ordinance is billed as a proposed compromise, but a compromise is not the right way to protect our farmland. Here in the Sammamish Valley and throughout the county, the wineries and breweries do not seek agricultural production here they want and then develop tasting rooms and event centers, but allowing tasting rooms and events centers on agricultural production areas and the buffer zones will compromise the legitimate use of this farmland for production. It will and has already driven the cost of farmland beyond the means of legitimate agricultural producers. I urge this committee to remove tasting rooms and event centers from the allowed uses of agricultural protection areas, the adjoining environmental buffer zones and rural land. This ordinance and use this ordinance to strengthen the definitions and rules so that the county can effectively enforce our existing rules and regulations. Garden God knows we need to preserve this farmland. Our residents are relying on you, our elected representatives, to do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. Robin will be followed by Tom Quigley, Dominique Jorgensen and Dean Scramble. My name is Robin Lough. I would like to request that this committee focus on untreated sewage. That's what we have. You have a choice. You either have treated sewage through it, through a sewer system, or you have untreated sewage that comes from septic tanks, which is what this entire area uses, that you're that you're you're proposing be turned into a commercial area. Generally, what happens in my own home, I have a 3000 square foot home. I have a thousand gallon septic tank, which is designed in two tanks. It's a modern design. You have wineries that are operating right now that are a two bedroom, one bath manufactured in the 1920s. It is operating as a winery and event center. Call it whatever you want. The issue that you have before you is when that sludge and I know solids come out of that sewer system, go into the drain field, it goes downhill. Just as that farmer said. It will literally pollute farmland. And you have a river. That is that is right there with the salmon swim up. You must have a sewer system or you've ignored untreated sewage in your proposal. My name is Tom Quigley and the President's Moonee Valley Alliance. And I am. Also serving as the current master of this municipality, Grange. I'm here representing both those organizations. A lot of people are asking, why in the world are we here? I am so proud of being a King County. Farmer and on. Farm land. And the reason we should be so proud is that this county has. Been held up for decades. Across this nation as exemplary in our preservation of farmland. And that is because it was visionary thinking that got us there. And as an early stakeholder in this process, nowhere in the process have we committed or challenged each other to get around a table. And focus on visionary. Thinking. We're talking about greed and laziness and other factors that are forcing us to go away from a plan that has worked for decades, that has been exemplary. And to abandon it for. A few violators. Why would we even consider that? So I encourage you to. Take whatever it takes to go back to what we have not even go back just to say what we have works for the majority. It may not be working for a small minority, but it's working and it's been held up nationwide as being an example. Let's keep to it. Thank you. Dominique Torgerson for Horsham Brewery. We need to remember our Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. We are all created equal. But our county does not treat everyone equally. This ordinance proves just that from the increased citation fees, the restriction on business hours on building size when there are already impervious surface limitations for all properties in the unincorporated area. This is not being treated equally in King County. And this ordinance violates our 14th Amendment rights for equal protection and due process. Governments are instituted among men, deriving just powers from the consent of the governed. We do not have our consent for this kerfuffle of an ordinance. Nor has King County properly, properly informed from the consent of the population for the heavily increase zoning regulations that have been passed over the last 30 years. These oppressive restrictions are strangling residents and businesses to death, and we're turning a blind eye to it. Among these, we have unalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And what world does King County feel they're honoring this? King County is explicitly derived, deprived us of all these unalienable rights. I ask that either this ordinance is voted down or that we at least grandfather in all the businesses that were issued a state license, as that was the county's opportunity to either deny or authorize that license at that time. According to the state process. Thank you. Dean will be followed by Melissa Earl, Kim Prince and Barbara Lowe. Good afternoon, counsel. Sorry. This always gives me such anxiety. It's. It's our livelihoods that are at risk here. But I'll keep it simple. This room, I measure two. It's 2800 square feet. It's tiny. I mean, yeah, my operation can fit inside this room, and there's still restrictions being added to it. And it's just. It does not make any sense. I mean, there's 2800 square feet in this room, so. Yeah. Every single person in the rural area has an impervious service limitation. So ours is 20%. We can't exceed it. That's the house. That's. I mean, the planter boxes we have or if we have a little pond, birdbath, back deck, whatever. So I don't know. And the other thing is October 3rd of 2018, that's when the hearing examiners report came out. We still don't have our permit. So this is just we need to take more time on this. I mean, to prove that it is an allowed use and we still don't have our permit. There's something going on and we just need more time. So thank you. Hello, counsel. My name is Melissa Earl. I've come to these public testimony since the very beginning, and I'm going to try to sum up some of the key points here. I've had a couple of questions about where in the Growth Management Act do we feel it's violating the Growth Management Act, some of the things that are going on in this new ordinance. And so I wanted to kind of point out the Growth Management Act, adjacent cities and counties through the countywide planning policy process are supposed to be touched base with. So that means that my city that I'm next to Maple Valley, Covington, Kent, all those towns and cities should have been communicated with and their input should have been received in order for my particular business in District five to have been affected so much or I believe I'm District No, I'm in Reagan's district. Wherever Reagan and Dennis district is, I'm going to try and give a personal feel to what it's done for me. This process began for me about three years ago. King County stripped my business license from me and pulled my title based on access. They threatened my family land, my business, my income, and it's still unabated. Unfortunately, the most important of my basic needs were under threat for complying before with whatever I was receiving from them, and it continually changed from the deeper department. So when this process began, I was pregnant with my second child. My story is kind of hard for me to say because it caused a lot of personal stress. I fell ill after the deeper department, threatened my home and threatened my livelihood. It felt like a shakedown. My my doctors told me that the medical decision was they needed to take my baby from me early because I was not well. And the delivery process almost took my son's life and it almost took my own. I don't say this because I want sympathy. I say this because this story of mine is very similar to a lot of the businesses and families that I've heard go through this process. It has caused not only a financial burden, it has caused a physical issue. There are other problems that can be caused by just this process. I don't want to be homeless or without food by the end of this process. We are talking about a homeless crisis in this community right now, and I can see how I was damn near pushed to it. Excuse my language. I'm asking you guys to not pass this right now because I don't feel as though it's addressing a lot of the outcomes, like mine, for example, that I don't feel are warranted. Again, if you guys look at the GMA, you can see that my particular area probably should have been reviewed before I'm being held to some damage standards. Thank you for your time. I know the Stryker is really difficult. I hope we can get through it with a little bit more. Grace. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Prince. Okay. Hello. My name is Barbara Lough. I am a surface water hydrologist and I have written environmental impact reports and statements. So I see this as an issue of need over greed. Our future, our children. You. They all need fresh food from pristine farmland. Our orcas need salmon from the Issaquah Hatchery and from local streams throughout the Puget Sound. If this ordinance is passed, what do you think the vision will be in 20 years? What I see as a hydrologist is a state of pristine farmland. I see a toxic bog. I see a foul canal instead of the Sammamish river, where I saw a fish jump yesterday going up to the hatchery. I hear Cathy Lambert saying the farmland is protected. No, it is protected from development. It is not protected from environmental degradation which will occur if you do commercial development within the rural area. So we opposed any amendments that create loopholes in the current version. We oppose amendments. And remember, Mathews sells wine by the case at Wooden Villa Costco. They are not a small business. We need to protect our resources, our future, our grandchildren, our farmers, our people of King County, natural habitat, salmon and the orcas. Thank you. Hi. My name's Kim Prince, and I live in the farm area in Woodinville. The demonstration overlay rewards five violators under the guise of a demonstration. It can't be a demonstration win once everything's set up and in a few years, you can't take it down. We already have data on what happens when commercial businesses are located in the rural area where commercial infrastructure does not exist, like the sewers, the sidewalks, roadways . We don't need a demonstration and there is no way to pull out of it. At the end of the demonstration period. It contains the demonstration overlay contains 13 parcels extending south well past the last violator. Why is that? Why why the the eight more additional parcels? Because that last parcel is owned by the Lil Greg Lill, who was one of the authors of this whole proposal. Another thing I'd like to bring up is that the farm one in this overlay is a parcel that belongs to RCC and RS. And in the farm there's a. So do they get pulled out of our neighborhood? Do they no longer pay our dues? How can you just include a parcel that is, you know, part of our community? Thank you. Thank you. And I feel out of line in giving people advanced warning. Michelle Granada. Terry Strum. Strum Bear. And Barbara Carlson. Go ahead. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Michelle Granada. I'm a resident of the Valley and I specifically am here to ask you to keep the retail land uses of the code exactly as they're drafted. I'm speaking to you as a resident, a former city planner and a retired real estate attorney. And it is my opinion that that section of the code is clear and unambiguous and unequivocally limits sales to products produced on site. Currently, you have eight businesses in the area in the valley that are operating in violation of this clear code language. This current striker will grandfather these violators and allow others to follow suit. I ask you to keep the current code language as drafted. When I was a city planner, we didn't reward code violators. We enforced the code. And I'm asking you to do the same, to do what is right and not what is expedient. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I stand in strong opposition of the beverage ordinance. This proposal will not balance the needs of farmers, small business and tasting rooms. It will do the opposite to all three parties. It will not bring the outliers into compliance with the zoning code. It threatens farmers and dampens small business by discouraging shoppers who are distressed by the traffic and parking issues. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, sewer is an issue. In conclusion, I also want to mention this the sewer was brought up. This is the Feliciana tasting room, which is a two bedroom house built in the 1920s. It can hold an event by its current permit of up to 200 people. They are on septic. How well do you think that's going to work? The answer is not very well. So in conclusion, this is what we're fighting for. And the judge, the. Sorry. To paraphrase Jeremy Bentham, it is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, which is the measure of right and wrong. Thank you. And we've barbara coulson is next followed by Nicholas to demand Montague. I'm sorry. I'll apologize now. I'm Carolyn Tansley and Serena Glover. Good afternoon. My name is Barbara Calhoun. I've been a resident of Woodinville for 50 years, and for 25 years I've owned commercial property in the city of Woodinville Tourist District, released space to six tasting rooms. The majority, the vast majority of the 125 or so tasting rooms in Woodinville are following the rules. And it's extremely unfair to them that the violators are being rewarded for not following the rules. As a commercial property owner, we've had to pay engineering and architectural fees, city permits, mitigation fees paid for sidewalks and street improvements, street lighting, landscaping, paved parking lots, daily sewer. The handful of violators have paid none of those costs, and yet they take advantage of what the legally operating visitors are paid. It's past time for King County to enforce its zoning codes. Thank you. Hi. My name is Nikolaj Walsh. I am in Super Belleville. I'm representing myself and any other volunteer organization. The two main point I'd like to bring to your attention is I love wineries. They're great, but the top priority is protecting the valley, and I would like others who are more. The second part is code enforcement. First, thank you to Councilmember Lambert and Permanent Director Chan, who showed up on 911 and 21 to encourage and explain to us all the code enforcement. But they both acknowledge and recognize that there some deficiency. Right now you are a legislative body, but you also need to exercise oversight. I think you would agree that both sides are saying there's clearly. Lack of funding or staff or regulation or not regulation, but execution and businesses and others should have a framework by which enforcement is consistent. Government needs to be deterministic and fair. It can't be arbitrary. So I would recommend strongly to you make sure that that is properly done, because it's not right now and that's not fair for boat people protecting the farm and also businesses. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello. I'm Carolyn Tankersley and I live in Rural King County and I appreciate the work you've done. Although some of the improvements have been presented in the latest Stryker proposal, which look better. I do oppose the amendments, as they've been suggested by Cathy Lambert. The proposals do not go far enough to protect the Sammamish Valley and they actually reward violators. They negatively impact all of rural King County, both inside and outside of currently protected egg and farmland areas. There are farmlands in the rural area that will be lost. Once lost, farm lands are gone forever. Not only will food sources be lost, but as a resident of the rural King County area, the proposed ordinance will also negatively impact the quality of our day to day life, reducing open space, allowing increased retail and event operations, threatening water quality and dramatically increasing traffic on rural roadways. We do not want to see what happened in Kent Valley occur again. Please save our farms and rural King County. Kathy Lambert's proposed amendments must be opposed. Ms. Glover will be followed by Shawn mILLAR, Adelaide Leroy and Michael Tankersley. Hello. I'm Serena Glover, executive director of Friends of Sammamish Valley. The striker opens the Sammamish Valley to retail drinking establishments via dpoy and murky weed definitions. It attempts to mitigate the damage from these commercial businesses operating without proper infrastructure by limiting their activities and parking, retail space and hours. The violators claim they can't work within these restrictions. You've heard this yourselves from them. Add to that a complaint driven code enforcement system, murky code language, de minimis fines and a handful of restrictions which are impossible to uphold in real time with customers on site. This approach, which basically splits the baby by letting commercial development into the Sammamish Valley with some restrictions, will lead to endless code enforcement battles and commercial developers will. When the result is, violators will keep growing. Eight more retail outlets will be allowed, and land price speculation will continue, and the environmental and public health and safety issues will only increase. We will never, never be able to stop this onslaught. The demand to locate beverage retail outlets in King County is huge and growing. You have one chance to get this right. There's no mulligan on development. Clear legislation from the council that locates all retail drinking establishments with no production into the urban area is the only way to protect the Sammamish Valley. If you adopt the striker or any of Sam Lambert's amendments with a split the baby approach, you will lose the Sammamish Valley and that will be your legacy. Thank you for. Hey, everyone, I'm Sean Miller. I am a farmer here in King County. In this valley. I own tuck muck farm. This is my son, Yoshiaki. He supervises the farm most days. We came here to say, just to tell you how important and valuable the Simi Valley and the rural character this valley is for us, both as farmers and as a place to raise my children. Currently, as a full time farmer, I most certainly can't afford childcare. So my baby is at the farm with me every day, as are many of the other farmers, in that ability to have our family close to us in a place where we work side by side with our families is so crucial to us and that is definitely in threat. The current demonstration. One of our brothers said earlier to I have questions about this idea of a demonstration. It's 2019. We know what happens when we develop on the uphill side of rural farmland. That runoff comes down into our farmland, and our farmland is right on Sammamish Valley. This is a semi salmon bearing river that are on the river and we are the final buffer. Our farms are the final sort of environmental protective buffer. So the more that that's encroached upon, the more that threatens, the more water that runs down onto our land and into the river. Definitely on balance is that, you know, pristine sort of nature that we have in this valley. And I just encourage you all to take a step back and vote on what's the most reasonable course of action to protect the valley and to protect the farmers today and not continue to let it be split between somehow farmers and wineries. I think that's sort of been framed in that weird way. And we don't want to be enemies to anyone. We want to cooperate with everyone, so please help us. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's nice to see that the King County Council is not the only place of employment where they take your baby to work. Good job that this is true. And you have my sympathy to having to follow that. Totally good. My name is Adelaide Le Roy. I'm here on behalf of Alcoa Market Garden and my brother Marshall Le Roy, we are a family run, small farm, a regenerative farm in the Sammamish Valley. And Len speculation is killing small farmers. And it doesn't matter that the King County buys up farm land development rights because if in 15 years it is severely degraded and we cannot use that farmland, that is useless to us. I apologize for our friends here from back on island. I understand. And you have my sympathy that this affects your business. And I'm sorry you're lumped in here with us, but we are a business as well. We are working to grow and we cannot grow if we have no land to grow. Wineries, tasting event rooms, they don't need the land. And we do. And we can't have access to that land if we can't purchase it. If we can purchase it because we somehow have $1,000,000 to buy a parcel, it doesn't matter if it's severely degraded past the point of being usable and we want to do U-Pick pumpkins next year. I would like to think that that's a more family friendly event than wandering around on a lawn in a wine tasting room. That's just me. You have legislation in theory to support your farmland by buying the farm land. Great. Your legislation in theory to support your food insecure constituents. We operate at farmers markets and we utilize the WIC program supplying nutrient dense food grown with organic practices to your constituents. And the fact that there are so many people in this room who have shown up and well shown up to just statistically, we don't want this , the people who want this or five businesses who directly receive benefits from it. So I don't understand why we keep pushing the issue. I'm not for this ordinance. Thank you. Michael B, followed by Lamont Alexander. Hello, Michael Tinsley with the Hollywood Hills Association. First, I want to thank Claudia for stepping into this and making some incremental improvements to what was a very sloppy, messy ordinance that you guys were handed last year by the executive. But it did make some incremental improvements, mostly, though, on secondary issues and things that, quite frankly, just followed. The big issues, the primary issues, which are those loopholes that were written in there for what reason? We don't know. I still remain. It has to do with the definitions and that somebody else earlier mentioned. The clear thing in the code now that says only a product made on site can be sold on site. That's fine. It's very clear. And that's been removed and that should be kept. There's a rich legacy or legacy or a culture in our rural areas that extends all the way across us. And this ordinance is going to affect all of our rural areas. So there's been a lot of talk about farmland and appropriately so it is very important and it's very, very at risk with so many pressures on it. But what many people might not understand is that this agricultural community extends into our rural area in general. I have the county's website. It says 51,000 acres in agricultural production in King County. Of that, 14,000 only are actually under protection, which means only 34% of the farmlands are protected, 66% are not protected there in the rural areas. So as this code is written now, is extended to the rural area. It's going to have a massive effect on the whole rural community, which gives a lot of quality of life to not just the rural businesses and the rural citizens, but also to the urban citizens that come out and enjoy this bounty for the very many those it reaches to it. So I urge you to support I would like Mr. McDermott's proposals for Vacation Island. We are against Kathy Lambert's amendments proposed for these existing strike, but really we think this should be revisited altogether. I know we all want to get over this hangover from too much wine talk, but this isn't about wine. This is about land speculation. Thank you. I'm just here to say that our friend Lamar basically couldn't make it because there was no spaces in the parking garage and no place to park. So he couldn't make public comment. Thank you. The last person signed it in writing to testify is Alex Zimmerman. Thank you very much to you. Very good to me. It wasn't my intention. On the occasion of my funeral. Why do you listen to Zimmer? Why are you supporting him? Nice and quiet. Why are you a rabbit? A slave? They destroy not only you. They destroy all America right now. Small businesses go down different between corporation and poor. People got bigger and bigger and bigger. It's America. The Soviet Union, German Nazi. Why are you so quiet? You're frickin idiot. You. You're America. Not who you are. They support Amazon Microsoft Sound Transit never supporter do not united people look statistic matters. Last week I met a couple in Darwin in doubt, arguing that people lose everything right now. Why are we so quiet to them? Why are you like them again? You understand me or not? You were too quiet. I don't see nobody in this place. Stand up and talk cleanses, dirty chant. But. But I'm this crook from this mafia, from James Democratic Vendetta. Stand up. Your time is up. Yeah, exactly. Is there anyone who didn't have a chance to sign in to testify? You're welcome to approach either podium and identify yourself. And I'm sure your comments. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Deepak by barge. I am here on behalf of myself, a 21 year resident of Sammamish Valley, Hollywood Hill, also the president of rest of your homeowners association. It's a 44 home community. And I can tell you that my community, as well as many of my neighbors and neighboring communities, are unanimously against this particular ordinance. We think that it's unnecessary and in fact, does the wrong thing by rewarding a small handful of speculators. We are concerned that maybe this is a Trojan horse that is being set up for abuse of rural, agricultural, land zoning for other areas. And we strongly recommend that you you vote against it. And again, you know, we're all good people here. We've been around for a long time. And, you know, we vote. And, you know, we're going to be watching this very closely. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anyone else? Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. My name is Jennifer Drury and I live with my family in the urban part of Woodinville. And so I live on a smaller plot. And I understand that that's part of urban growth. And but I love that I live next to the rural part. And I took my children last week into the farms, and I talked with the farmers and I talked with one of them about regeneration, farming and putting carbon back into the soil. And I think that's something that we need to keep in mind with climate change and what we need to do to bring carbon out of the atmosphere. And that's a very important thing that our local farmers are doing. And I support our local farmers, the farmers market, and I buy from them every week in the summer and I take my children. And so this is why I don't support the proposal. Thank you very much. Hi. My name's Becky. I'm really sick. I have the worst sinus infection in the world, and it really should be working in my business right now. And I've come to every single one of these meetings, usually with a better statement. I wasn't really planning on talking what I which is I want this to stop. Like I can't keep taking time out and coming to these. I mean, I don't live anywhere near here. I live in Woodinville. It takes forever to get here. The parking sucks, as they talked about earlier. I don't get paid to be here either. And I just think that. We can't continue just I've heard the term kicking the can down the road. This has to end at some point, right? Like we got to just make a decision and move on. And I'm just hoping that we can do that today. Please. Oh, and I'm totally against all of this. Anyone else and anyone else to offer testimony. Then we'll close the public hearing. And as we know, the council has been working on this ordinance for more than a year, almost a year and a half. It was first taken up by the Local Services Regional Roads and Bridges Committee. When the committee finished that work, it went to full council and then has been reassigned to the committee of the whole. It is our intention to take up the ordinance and amendments today and to walk us through some of that before us is Erin Adams of our council central staff. Good afternoon. Yes. Let's get organized first. You shoot rubber bands across the room. That was good. Good afternoon, Aaron. Austin's council staff, Christi Craig from the prosecuting attorney's office is with me, as well as Jenny now from central staff. You have a very large staff report packet here. It includes the striking amendment and the and one title amendment, as well as a red light version of the striker and a summary matrix. I wasn't planning to go through the summary matrix again, but I could take questions on it if anybody has any. So we covered it last time. You also have a separate packet on on the dais that has some green and blue shading in a matrix form. You also have the thing that you hold up Consumer Gazette is the public comments that were received since the package was distributed? Yep. So I could brief the line amendments or the members could read them themselves, whatever you prefer. Members would be my suggestion that we have briefed the striking Amendment one and the amendments for the most part, follow amendments that were briefed at our last meeting. I'd suggest we take up the ordinance and brief as we take up each amendment. Can't remember up to now. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do you mind a question on the. Underlying staff report and. Matrix before we get going with that? Please be appropriate. And and forgive me, this this may not have a simple answer, but I had heard some conflicting information today that got me questioning my understanding. Could you talk. About allowable retail uses under the current. Code in rural agricultural zones? Yes. Is it required to be grown? Are products required to be manufactured or grown on site? So the current allowance for sale of beer and wine goes under liquor stores. The condition for that requires that it be limited to accessory to a winery or brewery. Isn't separate, but that's what it's intended. And limited to sales of products produced on site and incidental items where the majority of sales are generated from products produced on site. With that, I'd entertain a motion. Councilmember Belushi. Mr. Chairman. Move. Ordinance 2018 zero two for 1.2 without recommendation. Council member Belushi is moved that we advance ordinance 2018 241.2 without recommendation Council member Belushi. Move striking amendment as one. Council Member Belushi's move to striking amendment. S1 Do you wish to speak to it before we take amendments to it? I would like to work through amendments and then speak to it, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to move Amendment point five. And Councilmember Lambert has moved Amendment 2.5. Council Member Lambert. Thank you. This amendment increases the amount of building space that can be dedicated to testing activities from 15% to 30%. The limitation on testing space was a new concept introduced a couple of weeks ago, and I think the 15% restriction on testing space is a little aggressive for this concept. If we were going to restrict the taste in space, a business can have without a clear understanding of the impact on the ground. And I think we should have a little bit more space than that. I believe the CAP will accomplish my colleague's stated policy goals while protecting against any unintended consequences. So I urge your support. Discussion of Amendment Further discussion of Amendment point five. As a question. Councilmember Belge. Can you speak a little bit to what that means in terms of the square footage limits on building size and then what that would mean for the size of what is this testing and retail areas that the underlying maximum aggregated floor area didn't change. So it's still 1500 for facility ones, which doesn't allow retail space and so doesn't part of this and 3500 for a facility to use in the area and a zone. And then this would be of that square footage maximum 30% could be dedicated to retail and tasting areas. Can somebody do the math and tell me what that I'm trying it myself means doing that right now. Okay. I think what I'm coming up with is wrong. And I've been I've learned never to try to do math live here. Yes, we do. For a 3500 square foot winery. 15% would be 525 square feet. We make sure that that totally live math and at 30%, they'll be 1050 square feet. Okay. For an 8000 square foot winery brewery distillery, that would be 15% would be 1200 square feet and 30% would be 2400 square feet. Thank you. Councilmember De Mirsky Thank you, Mr.. We have representatives from the Executive's office here, and I wonder what their position on this amendment is, and I'll ask the same question as we move through this. Who. Who from the executive division might be willing to take that question? I think she's upstairs. Can. Kelly is upstairs. Miss Wolfe is downstairs. Miss Wolfe is moving. Karen Wolfe with the King County executive's office. We're just looking at this amendment today so we don't have a position on the percentage versus the actual square footage. That's one of the most famous. Sharon, do you have a position on the underlying percentage, the 15% in the striking amendment? We were supportive of the 15% in the striking amendment. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell duty. The 15% was added in the most recent version. I just want to make sure that people understand where this particular issue has been. There was no percentage limitation, if I recall correctly, in the Executive's proposal, square the rest square footage. What worked well was the square. There was no limit. There was no limit. So 15% was something that was introduced only in the most recent striker a few weeks ago. And it was based on, as I understand it, a staff review of some other codes. Is that correct? Can somebody speak to me about what? Because I had one understanding about what the 50% was based on, but today I was told something different. So I just want to be clear what it was based on. We were asked to look into it and so we did a review of a lot of different jurisdictions. Most of them don't have a percentage associated with an accessory use, or if it does, it's specific to a different type of use. We found that 10 to 20% appeared to be reasonable for an accessory to use and had put in 15% as a potential example of use. I thank you. I just wanted to sort of set some backstage for where this came from and why it was part of my most recent proposal amendment. And maybe Councilmember Lambert could speak to why 30% makes more sense than 15%, but just to provide context. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. So as it came over from the executive and as is currently, there is 100% that you can use in your property. So we went from 100% to 15%, which is a huge difference. So one of the things that that triggers is how many parking spaces you can have. And when we looked at the number of parking spaces, it was way too small. And so we looked at what would be a more reasonable amount of parking spaces for that size. Again, as a staff and council member, Balducci said, we have not changed the square footage requirements. We have not changed them. And so and we looked at what the trigger would be for parking, and we wanted to make sure that it was reasonable and not more than is current. In fact, it's not more than its current. So that's where we came up with the 30. So it came up from the executive at 100 and we're talking about 30 so far left. Thank you, Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a question on facility wise and facility. Are they just tasting rooms in unincorporated areas or would they be tasting rooms that exist in the urban part of like Woodinville and where they have the same kind of limitations? I'm just trying to see if there's any difference. So the facility one's facility to the facility, these are production facilities. They are allowed in several zones, including the commercial zone. Okay. They are allowable. Yes. The requirements for specific production apply like two stages of production. That applies only to the A and ARI zone. Remote tasting rooms as a separate use doesn't require production and that those are proposed to be allowed in the community business, regional business committee, business and regional business zones and then into in one area for in the ARI Zone near Woodinville. Okay. So as a demonstration project. So they are allowed in both the incorporated cities as well as unincorporated areas. They're allowed in the urban. Unincorporated in the. Rural unincorporated, but we don't regulate inside the cities. So other cities have their own rules for wineries, breweries is Hillary. And we're talking about it. We're only talking about it. And rural, unincorporated. Area, rural and urban. But yes, just in urban. But like Skyway that I represent, that's where I am. Thank you for the discussion. Councilmember Lambert to close, if you wish. Thank you. I think that this is a reasonable amount and impacts, as I said, parking, which is an important thing. And so I think this is a reasonable compromise. Thank you. I urge your support. All those in favor of amendment point five. Please signify by saying I. I oppose. Nay, the ayes appear to have it. Division has been called for all those in favor of amendment point five. Please raise your hand. All those opposed. The ayes have it. Point Amendment. Point five is adopted. Councilmember Caldwell's Would you be kind enough on my behalf to move the adoption of the Amendment 1.5, one point to be so moved? Mr. Chair. Thank you. One point to be is before us. As we heard in testimony today, the legislation that was originally drafted by the executive branch and sent to council addresses issues that were identified and extensively study in the Sammamish Valley. The similar issues don't exist on Fashion Island yet. As written, this code would apply indiscriminately to Valentine as well. So I would ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment, which would allow existing businesses only on fashion to be exempted from the minimum size, their arterial access, the setback and the square footage limitations to not impose the least amount. What I might consider this Mama's Valley solutions are the issues that have been identified in Mama's Valley that don't exist on vacation. So I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment for the discussion. Councilmember Gossett. What was the original reason that Bardstown was included? Is it just because it's located? It's considered unincorporated and rural. That it or would that impact that what we're talking about for the Mama's Valley? Yes. The underlying ordinance covers all of unincorporated King County. Okay. Which includes bash on. All right. Thank you. Mm hmm. Seeing no further discussion of those in favor of 1.2 B, please signify by saying I oppose nay. The hosts appear to have it. The ayes have it. Amendment 1.2 B is adopted. Amendment 1.5 B Council Member Col Wells. Would you be kind enough to move adoption? Thank you. 1.58. No, no, he skipped over that. I mean. Are you. I switched him up the other way. Okay. Great. Consistency would be very bad. 1.5 a please council member. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move adoption of amendment 1.5. Okay. Thank you. I'm amendment council member calls has moved. Adoption of amendment 1.5 a to speak to it. This amendment would set the minimum locks area at two acres, allowing up to 7000 square feet of aggregated floor area and exempts them from the size limitations on retail and tasting sites. This is to apply to in the red zone to winery brewery distillery twos for historic properties. Property is exclusively stored property. I would ask my colleagues to join me in supporting the amendment. I see no discussion. Council up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do we know this? This this is not. Based on specific, correct? Or are we aware of a current inventory of historic properties? Yes. Is it just one? Yes. I mean that this would apply to. Yes. Okay. That we know. We know. All right, Mr. Chance, remember. DEMBOSKY So could could somebody explain to. Me the policy rationale for bringing historic works? It feels to me like what we're doing here is looking out for one particular business. What is the policy rationale that this should be of general applicability? I would defer to the sponsor, but I will say that there is code in here now about historic properties, treating them differently in some cases. With the point that Austin's just made about the legislation already addressing historic properties. The the work I barely plan to invest time has a history and part of its history is fruit preserves. And so as we look at wineries and if possible, use for the site, that is the nexus in my bringing the amendment. See no further discussion. All those in favor please signify by saying I oppose nay. The ayes. The ayes have it. Amendment three. Councilmember Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. At this point, move Amendment three and two speak to it. Councilmember Dunn has moved adoption of Amendment three. Councilmember done very. Well. It's important that we recognize the rural areas of the county are very different in nature than the suburban areas, as we heard today. And they certainly require a different approach in regards to the winery code. I'm offering this amendment in order to differentiate between rural for rural areas and other suburban areas throughout the county, which have different dynamics to account for. I want to recognize that many people who live in the rural parts of the county that it is important to have these types of event spaces available on some occasions. It's my hope we can preserve this aspect of rural character while also safeguarding rural businesses. My amendment is narrowly tailored to allow wineries, breweries, distilleries and tasting rooms on very large properties to host private events as part of their business. It makes sure to include certain conditions are mindful of potential impacts in those areas. Under this amendment, private ends will be allowed if the following conditions are met. The event must be in the rural areas. On the property on which the event is held must be at least eight acres. Buildings used for events must be set back 150 feet from interior property lines in order to further avoid being seen or heard by neighboring properties. The property access must be on a main arterial road. This will avoid impacts to local roads in the rural areas zone and it's consistent with our comprehensive plan policies. In addition, a temporary use permit wouldn't be required as long as the event doesn't include amplified outdoor sound between 8 p.m. and noon the following day . This time restriction is meant to be considered of the potential impact that any noise could have on neighboring properties. The amendment only applies to existing businesses with production liquor licenses from the state. This will allow current businesses to continue events and only on sites that cause no further impacts to local roads, neighbors and the rural area. All of these conditions ensure rural character is preserved and rural residents will stay at places to hold events. This amendment is consistent with our rural economy, strategies and plan, and it provides opportunities for businesses to supplement their income and stay in business. Thank you for your consideration of Amendment three. For the discussion Councilmember Epigraph. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Similar question for staff. How many parcels does this apply to? And we know the ownership. Of the properties that have been identified to have existing production facilities or potentially there's five that are over eight acres. Over. Council member buildings. That would not otherwise be eligible for this use. No, they would ask. The exemption could possibly apply to because they're over eight acres. But they without the exemption, these five properties that you're aware of would not be eligible for this. They would be subject to the limitation of 24 events per year. Okay. That's in the underlying. And with this amendment, what would be the rule about? There would not be a specific limit on events. ATP wouldn't be required unless there was amplification as stated by Councilmember Dunn. Right. Okay. Thank you. Council member up there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And be clear. Under current code, not current proposals. These properties are in the rural agricultural zone and therefore their products would need to be grown on site were it not for us changing the rules. That's correct. 60% would need to be grown in Puget Sound counties. Okay. Under current code. All right. Seen no discussion. Others in favor of Amendment three please signify by saying I oppose. No. A division has been called for. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Well, I. I believe that's five others opposed for the amendment. Kerry's. Count magazines. Help me. You're about to get this one or both. Title. Title, just T2. But do the striker first. We have one as amended before us. Further discussion on this one as amended Councilmember Double duty. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to try real hard not to give a final passage kind of speech because there's more process. I want to start by saying I am definitely feeling both people who said, can we get to the end one way or another, whether this passes, whether nothing passes? I think that we have reached the point where we need to move to a decision. Anything that we do with an ordinance, we can change with an ordinance. But I think that just continuing to spin on this topic isn't helping people. A few words. So I think the three principles we all agree on, we agree that we want to preserve and protect the agricultural lands and uses of this county. We agree that rural activities should be appropriate, size and scale and use. We agree that rural owners and and people living in operating in the rural area have property rights and they can operate appropriate businesses and they do in their unincorporated rural areas. And farms are businesses. That was a good point as well as somebody's made. I think what we're disagreeing with is how to balance all these things and sort of what the real on the ground impacts will be of a proposed code. I want to point out that we know what the on the ground impacts are of the current code. You can go out there and see it. Part of the reason that this whole issue was taken up was because of the complaints that were coming into King County from people out in the rural areas about what was going on on the ground. And by the way, also that we were hearing from businesses that they couldn't possibly comply with our code, even if they were trying to comply with our code, because it was impossible to understand. So that was the that was the basis that we began with taking up this code. And when I say we, it started with the county executive. He did do a public process out in the Sammamish Valley, focused in the Sammamish Valley. It's correct that this is a county wide code. I'm glad that the Bastion Island Amendment passed because you brought to our attention something that we were having an unanticipated impact for doing this in the rest of King County. I think that this is better. So thank you for that and for being here today again. But. The challenge we've had and I'm going to read just a little bit, I apologize with your with your indulgence, Mr. Chair, I asked the executive branch to tell us what kinds of problems they were having with enforcement, because I have said many times that we haven't enforced the current code, and that is the problem. So I asked them what is going on? Why isn't the code being enforced? And part of its resources? And I want to say one thing we haven't talked about it here at all is that there is a companion budget proposal which I have brought, and we're going to be taking up the budget, starting in our budget and fiscal management committee tomorrow that will add resources to the Department of Permitting to allow for education and enforcement of the code, because we can't if we adopt the new code and we don't enforce it really right back here again. But let me just say and some of this I'm taking from from things that have been written to me, and I'm happy to share this with people. So some of the things that we have going on here, the current code doesn't address or define processing requirements for winery and adult beverage businesses. In other words, no production is required on site under current code. So folks who say there should be more than one step, two steps, there should be all steps, no steps currently required in order to be legal. If the current code were enforced. Wineries, adult beverage businesses would not be required to conduct any stage of production of their product on site. The state issued liquor licenses without requiring production at the state address for the license. That happens as well. There's no definition of an event in our current code. So what's an event and how do we actually manage events if we don't have a definition of what an event is? Probably the clearest example of inadequacy in the current code is that we don't know how many of them there are or where they're located. If a business is operating as a home, occupation or industry, it doesn't even need a permit. So we don't know where they are. They require a ton of other things, you know, clearing and grading and pervious services and other. But they don't require a use permit under current under current rules. So that's why this new proposal, as it came to us from the executive and still contains today a requirement for a business license and establishing some definitions so that we can identify and regulate businesses. I want to remind everybody that businesses, even if they're allowed under this code, will still be subject to all other portions of county code, including critical areas, building codes, public health codes, which include septic and all of that. I will say that. Yeah. I'm just going to pause there. The current code also doesn't include adequate mitigating provisions for impacts related to traffic, parking, arterial access. Number of guests allowed at events and hours of operation. None of that is in current code. So I believe that this code helps us in the sense that it establishes clear parameters. It allows some businesses to continue, but at a smaller scale. And that's what we're hearing from the businesses, that they will be at a smaller scale. You know, I, I there are and will be businesses in unincorporated King County outside the unincorporated growth boundary. That's just the case. But there should be an appropriate size and scale, and that's what some of the requirements in this code do. I will also say that I believe that a large part of the challenge in the Sammamish Valley is development in the city. The city boundaries are such there that there is a a carve out. And if you were drawing the city boundaries today, I'm not sure you would do this. That allows a large number of wineries, a growing number of wineries. There's a large new development that's in process right now, as my understanding, in the same general area that has all the same impacts of traffic and people drinking and and pervious surfaces and all of it. But it's in the city boundaries just across the street from where we're talking about. So the majority of this activity is out of our control. So we're trying to set reasonable regulations, a reasonable approach. I mean, I would not be in favor of this. I would not have proposed it if I thought it was going to lead to a massive expansion of environmentally damaging activities in this area. I do not believe that. I don't. And I know that you all believe it. And I know you believe it earnestly, but I don't believe it. And so I think this is a very fair and balanced code, and I think we should pass it. But right now, it's being proposed to pass out of this committee without recommendation so that we can get to the next step, which is another 30 day comment period. And so you all you don't have to come down to do it, but you can continue emailing us and you can send me the email that says CPA and all of that. Okay. When you when you pass something that's more restrictive, you don't do an environmental analysis because it's more restrictive. You're doing environmental analysis when it's less restrictive, when you're allowing more impacts. So that's why there was a determination on significance here. Okay, I'm going to stop now. I would urge my colleagues to move to the next step and to just get to a place where we can have an up or down vote at final council. Thank you for the discussion, Councilmember Gossett. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask Councilman or about duty a question, if I may. Councilman, a bit about duty to yield to a question. Here at first. Okay. What's your question? Remember Gossett? Yeah. In the book, I was struck by the number of people that said that last speculation is killing farmland and that we are allowing it. But just listening to your explanation a moment ago, you said things like, well, we don't we we don't necessarily have certain kinds of regulations. So someone can start, what, a house or an unincorporated area. Turn it into a tasting room or something. And then that was probably all right. So are you saying that although that might be true globally. We can't necessarily say that every structure out of an unincorporated area that's now facing no more or some other purpose related to distilleries and wineries, it's not explicitly that they went out there completely illegal, and the only reason they're there is because we didn't enforce it left in the U.S.. Mark, you were saying it's much more complicated than that. And I heard a lot of questions in there. Councilmember, you do my very best. Okay. So with regard to the your your frame of speculation, speculation is a huge problem in the Sandwich Valley and probably elsewhere. I'm most familiar with the Spanish Valley in my district. I, as you know, very well represented the city of Bellevue before I came here. And so it was a great surprise to me upon being elected to this position and knowing what I knew from following the issues of the farmland preservation fight of some decades ago, and where and all the different subsequent waves of that soccer fields and everything else we've talked about. I was very surprised when people started coming into my office almost right away and rolling out their their big drawings and saying, This is what I would like to do with the property that I own in the Spanish Valley, Arizona. And I would look at it and I would say, but you can't do that in the Sammamish Valley and you can't build all those homes. You can't build that giant one. You can't but whatever it was that the person was coming. And so I think that the lack of clarity in the code and exacerbated by the fact that this has been pending for so long, I mean, it's been with us for a long time, but it's been an under discussion for years that has contributed to speculation. I think putting this to bed will be the only thing we can do to help start to quell speculation. But truthfully, land values are just up everywhere. So I think the land values will continue to be up. But I think we are feeding speculation by our failure to act and by the lack of clarity in our code in the ag zone. And so that would be my answer to your overall question. When you say is it more complicated about violations of code versus the clarity of the code? I think there is a wide spectrum of what's going on out in the world. I think there are some places where you have or had owners that just didn't follow. The cop knew it, chose not to follow it, and now are like in this position where when we finally get done, there will have to be some enforcement. I know personally of businesses who have tried very, very hard to follow our code. They understood it, they tried to follow it. And they have been actually pointed out of times as good actors and they still can't get themselves permitted. So I think there's a wide range of good, good and bad actors, if you will, out there in the world. I hope that answers your question, Councilman. I thank you. Councilmember. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell, as we've just been talking about code enforcement, and that's come up quite a bit, how to what extent do you believe the language of this striking amendment will take care of this issue? Are we still going to have gray areas? Will people likely still be able to disregard the rules and the codes and are or will there be ample enforcement? And I'm sure so. You don't know all of that yet. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Colwell, I can say that we worked very closely with the Department of Permitting and asked them to review all of our proposals with the lens of can I enforce this? So let's just say, for example, the content product requirement, the 60% of your content has to come from Puget Sound counties. Deeper tells us that that is very hard to enforce because their ability to figure out where the grapes came from that are sitting in the bottles of wine that are on the shelf is limited to none. And so we tried to do things like set numerical targets, certain percentage of floor area to move away from home occupancies where they have to do things like determine does that person who points at that can't actually live here? You know, I mean, we're trying to get away from standards that are very hard to enforce. And we tried to get to standards that were objective and easy to enforce. And we tried to do that in in working with deeper. And my understanding is that they support the standards in this code. Maybe, I don't know, I'd have to ask them if that's a universal thing. But we tried to get to a place where they felt they could enforce the code with appropriate resources, which, as I said , are coming with the budget. It's coming to us as part of our budget deliberations. For the discussion. All those in favor of striking amendment S1 as amended, please signify by saying I. I oppose me. The ayes have it. That that brings us to. Ordinance? I don't know. Time to teach you a title amendment? Yes. Title of the amendment to Councilmember Bell to. Remove teacher. Title amendment two as before. I see no discussion. All those in favor. Please say I oppose nay. The ayes have it. Total Amendment two is adopted. Ordinance 2018 241.2 as amended. Further discussion Council member up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I think members probably know this, but I understand the motion is to move it out without recommendation. I just wanted the record to reflect that. My willingness to move it out, to vote yes on moving something forth out recommendation is not indicative of necessarily support the underlying ordinance. Thank you for the discussion. Councilmember Caldwell. Mr. Chair, thank you. I also would like to say the same thing as was just said by Councilmember at the Grove. I have some serious reservations about this, but I'm willing to vote for it, to move it forward so that we can try to protect it. Thank you. Thank you. See? Nothing further. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell. Duchin. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. I. Council Member Basin II. Council Member Cornwall Council Member Lambert Council Member of the Group. Councilmember one Right. Mr. Chair. All right. Mr. Chair, the vote is a nice one. Thank you. By your vote, we have advanced ordinance 2018 241.2, as amended out of committee to full council. There is a required advertised hearing. Possible amendments would be submitted to staff to be part. I'm included as part of that advertising. And so with in the advertising period is 30 days once it starts. So letting you know it will not. The regular course of action for a normal ordinance that doesn't require an advertising period would be for it to become come before a full council a week from this coming Wednesday. That is not the case. It will be more than 30 days from now in order to gather anything that needs to be advertised as part of the public hearing and then have the 30 day advertising period. So with that, Councilmember Lambert. Wanted to know if there's any part of this we should turn back in so we don't keep killing the same trees or different trees. All of this goes out to recycling thing. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you. Thank was. Chair.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding section 5.90.290 related to local enforcement and penalties for illegal marijuana businesses, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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Motion carries. 25. Communication from city attorney recommendation or clear ordinance, amending the Long Beach Municipal Code related to local enforcement and penalties for illegal marijuana businesses. Read for the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Councilman Price. Mr. Vice Mayor. So I've had the probably should have went to staff, but I thought this was yours. I should probably go to Stafford. That's crazy. Thank you. City manager, vice mayor, members of the City Council. On May 2nd, the council requested that our office prepare an ordinance, and we did so amending Chapter 5.9 of the municipal code. And we believe that this proposed ordinance will assist the city in its efforts in conjunction with the enforcement remedies already available to the city to ensure compliance with 5.9 and hopefully discourage illegal operations related to medical marijuana dispensaries. Very quickly, the ordinance we have added, the ordinance did declare non licensed facilities a public nuisance. And so we have added in the ordinance in the discretion of the court to issue a maximum civil penalty of up to $5,000 per day per violation for those illegal dispensaries. We do talk about and authorize the disconnection of utilities after following all the proper procedures. The criminal penalties we believe, were already in place. And so this ordinance at this time does not impose additional or further criminal penalties. And we also have additional enforcement tools allowing us to to institute a one year ban or end up to a five year ban. And with that, we're open for questions. I would like to thank Monica Goleta, deputy city attorney, who was who wrote the ordinance and did a lot of work on it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. City. Attorney Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I, too, want to thank the city attorney's office and Monica specifically for working on this. I think the ordinance includes all the components that our report requested and the agenda item, initial or agenda item requested. So there are civil penalties associated with it. There is a punishment for the commercial property owner who's leasing to an illegal dispensary. There's the opportunity to get involved with the operation of of utilities at the site, which will hopefully discourage illegal operators. In short, I think that the statute covers all the different aspects that were raised and all the areas of concern. And obviously, once we've implemented the statute, if new situations arise and that's obviously something we can go back and modify or amend our statute to deal with any trends that we might be seeing or may not have anticipated. Again, the genesis of this item is that illegal dispensaries or illegal businesses in general doesn't just have to be dispensaries, illegal businesses, and especially illegal marijuana businesses, because there are several categories of marijuana businesses that will be permitted in the city of Long Beach. Those illegal operations are a disservice to the residents. There's no quality of life regulations that are in place at an illegal operation to ensure that quality of life concerns and issues are accounted for. They're unfair to the legal operators who are paying taxes and incurring the costs associated with following the regulations that the city and the state have set for them. And they're obviously very detrimental to the city because the costs of enforcing our existing laws, state and local regulations, is very burdensome for the city and can cost the city millions of dollars per site, as we have seen from past experience. So thanks to the city attorney's office for for giving this ordinance to us to consider tonight, and I think you did a fantastic job giving us a great start that we can modify later as situations present themselves. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Ewing. Thank you, Ms.. Mayor. And I want to agree with Councilmember Price and all the concerns that are out there regarding the illegal activities in illegal dispensaries. I think it's very important even those individuals who are planning to have legal dispensaries applied and want to get some business going here would agree with with this ordinance. They also would would support something like this in order for them to be able to operate legally, which is the total effort that we're trying to do here. So I'm totally supportive of this ordinance. When I thank the city attorney for putting this together, I think it is going to work very well for the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Andrews. Yes, thank you, Mayor. Councilman Price, I think that this all of a sudden finally we got some tooth and nail to this ordinance, because I know when we came to it the first U.S. on the diocese at that time, but it was really hard to get to those individuals who were illegal. But now I think that this will let them know when you talk about $5,000 fine, that will let them individuals know. I don't know how much money they'll be making, but that will at least make them understand that we are serious about the illegal operation of the marijuana. And thank you again for bringing us and especially our city attorney putting us together. Thank you again. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? Please come forward. You have 3 minutes. Very good who Kirk has the. I won't go into all the details that I referenced last time the subject came up. These would be the fact that the Long Beach Police records. Incontrovertibly. It will show that the landlord for that property has been highly irresponsible and has provided, in essence, a sanctuary for extraordinarily violent criminals. Signet. Syndicate. Syndicate. Period. No trier of fact will ignore that. And I know the city attorney may have given thought. Some flock to this issue. But I think it and the council failed to think about that, which you did not think about. All right. And I'll be going into more of those details later. But essentially, you established areas where you felt it was inappropriate to have that type of activity. But what you failed to consider is the roots that those same individuals that you're trying to protect more often than not on a daily basis. Walk. Like. Scooter. Right past. Period. And that's something I admonish you to. To do that and to consider that. And speaking of and banishment, I think if my math and history is right, we're about nine days short. You know, nine days shy of an admonishment that you might consider, i.e., that one that was admonished by highly, slightly . 30 years ago at the end of this month. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Seven more. Sincerely a second district. I wanted to speak on behalf in support of this particular measure. It's a great, solid piece of legislation that provides clear guidelines and explicit consequences for those who are choosing to operate illegally within the city. The only two comments that I have about it are concerning kind of a policy issue behind us. I spoke to some of the council offices earlier about the use of the Long Beach Police Department during these administrative citations. Christopher Ingraham from The Washington Post recently wrote an article detailing some pretty good information that's been gleaned from police, from national police statistics showing that these so-called kinetic or militaristic raids using the law, using the police departments in general raises the specter for violent incidents to occur during where essentially now completely civil and administrative procedures. That's both a waste here locally. The use of police during these administrative inspections essentially is a waste of resources and largely unnecessary, unless there's a specified and articulated reason to believe that the operator, the illegal operators there would be armed and dangerous. I say that being entirely conscientious, that the Code Enforcement Department suffered a murder believe within the last decade of an inspector by mistaken about that. I'm sorry, but I believe I remember that happening. So obviously there is a concern for inspectors out in the field and we and that is to be respected and that has to be upheld. But again, without a specified reason for believing that this could be the case, most of these illegal operators I mean, I'm sure all of the people here would be shocked to believe this actually don't know that they're operating legally. Many of them have just decided it will decide to just start putting plants on the ground without ever consulting an attorney or reading the municipal code. Hopefully, this particular instance provides them the notice that's necessary so we don't have that happening again. But it is. Two other quick comments, too. SB 94 has been recently just was signed, I think today by the governor. So unfortunately, Charlie, the wonderful regulatory packages of the AMA and the NCR say that your office has been working with for the last couple of months, there have now been more or less erased and they're being combined into one particular bill, which means that we might have an entirely new comment period to three starting soon with all new regulations from the state level. In terms of in addition to this, the only this particular ordinance, I would recommend highly that the code that the code enforcement or whoever has the jurisdiction over this particular issue develops a disposal policy for any seized cannabis they that they might obtain. Not all of it will be useful for it will be useful, are being put are being able to be cultivated immediately. But for those that I know, the Santa Ana Police Department is suffering from an overwhelming just barrage of seized materials. And so developing a policy to provide those medicine to the people who need it would be a good idea. Thank you. You got it in 3 minutes. Seeing no further public comment. Members, please cast your vote on this item. One motion. Carries. Thank you, Madam Clerk. What is the next item we have? I know we're a little out of order here. Study session one. I don't know if you're ready for that. Yeah. Thank you.

Adoption of Resolutions Appointing Kristin Furuichi Fong, Samantha Green, Scott Means and Dianne Yamashiro-Omi as Members of the Social Service Human Relations Board.

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Adoption of resolutions. Appointing Christian for you to function at the Green Scott means and Diane Yamashiro on the as members of the Social Service Human Relations Board. All right. We've had a motion by Vice Mayor Val and I see Councilmember Knox White has raised his hand to second. May we have a roll call vote, please. Councilmember de SAG. I followed her, Spencer. I will be allowed to speak on this item. You want to speak for 9 minutes? No. No. Yes. So we've had emotion. We've had a second. We will take discussion and then we'll have our vote while we keep our share of members waiting. A potential separate members waiting for. Yes. Councilmember member. Spencer, the floor is yours. I did want to say that I appreciate these nominees and I do plan to support them. And many of us may know them from the community and all of their efforts. So I support. Thank you. Thank you. Anything further? I agree. They are awesome and it was a really tough field. We've had amazing applications for our boards and commissions. All right, Madam Clerk, may we have that roll call vote now, please. Councilor. Oh, well, again, I. All right, then, sir. Only counts once. Not quite. All right. Vice Mayor Vella, I. Mayor, as the Ashcraft I. That carries by five. I thank you. And with that do we still have our nominees present? We're going to promote and look at that. Here is Ms. for Chief Fong. And I'm seeing and apologies, everyone. Sometimes the time gets away from us and that we see Scott means what with your names? We'd love to see them. There you are. Hi. Hi. I see. So good to see you. Diane Yamashiro Omi. I see your name. And then we're just waiting on Samantha Green here. And I for her. I have to tell you, these are all just superstars. It was a pleasure getting to know them. Well, some I knew from before. Pleasure getting to know them in the interviews. So thank you again for your commitment and welcome aboard. Not seeing Miss Green. Looks like Miss Green might not have the most current version of Zoom because we've tried to promote her and we're not able to, which is the problem we run into. But she is here. Okay, maybe. Raise your right. Hand. Yes. All right. With that, Madam Clerk, would you please administer the oath? Do you solemnly swear to support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of California, and that you faithfully discharge the duties upon which you are about to enter? And you can just all say, oh, you can unmute and say. I do. I do. I do. Yeah. And then, you know. Really quick answers here now, by the way. Yay! Hi, Ms.. Green. Right here. Yeah. You want to. Have you got your camera? If you want a picture? Yes. Yeah. Hi. Welcome. And you had your hand up. I just know so really quickly because you know, the hours late, but I'd love to have each one of you just go and I'm going to go in the order I see you on my screen. So Miss Fruity Fine, followed by Ms.. Yamashiro on me, followed by Mr. Meads and Miss Green. Just give us a little thumbnail about you, because you all have amazing skill sets that you bring to this important commission. It's for you to find. Good evening, Madam Mayor and City Council Members. Thank you so much for the kind nomination and the reappointment. I am currently an instructional coach for the Alameda Unified School District. I am based out of Ruby Bridges Elementary School, and so I'm a great big West proponent, a big fan of kids, big fan of teachers. And I'm just really feel very honored to be part of this community and to be able to contribute in any way that I can on behalf of our Social Service Human Relations Board. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Again. Thank you. The honor is ours to have you join this board. Ms.. Yamashiro OMI. Good evening, everybody. Thank you very much for the nomination. I'm very excited about serving my community and the city of Alameda. I've been a resident for over 35 years. I spent 30 years in the philanthropic field and also has served as a nonprofit administrator for 12 years. I'm retired, but volunteering and on a couple of national boards, including Community Change, just got off the race board, which is an anti-racism organization. And just. Willing to jump in and do what I can to. I think Alameda is great already, but make it even better. Thank you. Everybody. Thank you, Mr. Means. Thank you. My name, Scott Means. And in my work life, I'm the aging services manager for Human Services Department in Oakland. And I've been working a lot on age friendly cities in a very inclusive model where we build livable communities for people of all ages. And I'm really excited to be here in Alameda trying to do the same type of work here in this community that I live in. So I look forward to working with you all. Thank you. Likewise. In this green. Thank you, Samantha Green. And I thank you for the appointment. And I have spent the past decade of working in social research, primarily doing community needs assessments, working on homeless needs assessments, including the point in time counts for the county of Alameda. Largely working with young people 18 to 24 years old are transitioning to youth as well as those in older adults over 55. So I'm very excited to apply the work that I've been doing for the past decade to my own town. I'm a relatively new resident to the city of Alameda. I've just been here for two years but very excited to get involved in my own community and know that we planted roots here. So thank you for having me. Thank you. We're excited to have you. Anyway, we are all delighted to have you join Social Service Human Relations Board and thank you so much for your time and your perseverance tonight. Yeah. Welcome and good night. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so with that council. Mayor cliche, I totally blew it earlier. I apologize. The when you're calling do vote to call the question. It does require four votes. And I totally missed that. It was three two. And so that actually motion failed to call the question on item five. And so I apologize for procedurally messing that up so badly. And I just wanted to clarify that. Okay. Well, in any event, we're taking a break now. We will be back in we will be back at ten after ten. So ten. Ten. We'll be back. Thank you. Point of order. Well, we'll be circling back. We'll come back to that when we get back. My turn on. Never quite know. Okay. Already. Okay, everyone. We are. Are we all back? Tony, I see you. Sean, I just saw you. There you are. Malia. Trish. Okay, Madam Clerk, are you ready? Yes, we're ready. All right. Good evening, everyone. We are back from our break. I am going to turn things over to the city attorney, even Shen and the city clerk, Laura Weisinger. Mamma mia. Perhaps I'll start on a piece in light of the city clerk's advice earlier. My recommendation to the council would be that you take a vote to reopen the item to given that the motion did not pass, to give the time that's necessary for Councilmember Spencer to complete her comments. Okay. So that we take you said a motion to reconsider. Yes, that would be my recommendation, assuming the city clerk agrees. Yes, I agree with that. Thank you. All right. I think in my haste to move things along, I forgot that a call for review takes a 4/5 vote. And I probably talk so fast I was faster than the city clerk, but staff never hesitate to jump in and interrupt me. But anyway, going forward, Councilwoman Knox. What? I think I set your hand up. I move. We reopen the item for discussion. Do I have a second? Counselor. A desk. Second, any discussion on the item? CNN. May we have a roll call vote, please? Councilmember Chase. Yes. Herrera. Spencer. I'm not quite. I well. High mayor as he Ashcraft High that carries by five eyes. Thank you. All right. So what's next, Madam Clerk? So now we will return to item five, and we will put the 4 minutes back on the clock that Councilmember Herr Spencer had. And I believe everybody else hadn't really spoken much sooner. Just going to round up to five and then start again there. Sure. All right. Councilor Harry Spencer. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I would like to thank the city clerk and the city attorney for correcting that error. I think it was extremely unfortunate. That being said, in regards to continuing my comments, I want to share with the community. When you look at the proposed resolution and when the city council started the state of emergency, the language in the resolution is conditions of extreme peril to the health, safety and welfare of persons have arisen in the city of Alameda. And that was back in March of 2020. And so I am not going to support continuing the state of emergency in our city. And when you look at the end of this resolution, it oc the DEC until the deficit, until the state's declaration of emergency related to COVID 19 is rescinded, or sooner shall it be appropriate to lift the local emergency declaration prior to the state action. And Mike, something I wanted to share with the public is that you may or may not know that currently that prior to COVID, the state was already under a state of emergency declaration for a wildfire that started in 2008, when the fire was in 2018 that killed 85 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise. And while that fire is no longer worrying, the state is still cleaning up and rebuilding. And thus the state is under a state of emergency for that wildfire in 2018. There are things that will happen when the city decides to lift the state of emergency, and there are clocks that start from that point. And so that whenever the city decides that we are at that point where we can do that, then, you know, things will happen from that point. So I just wanted to go back and since. So currently the city we are at 85.1% people vaccinated that are eligible from the age of 12 and up that are partially vaccinated. That means they've received their first vaccine. We have 71.4% that are fully vaccinated. And so I think because of the cooperation from our community members and that sometimes that we know the vaccine, if you're getting it like a couple of weeks after. So these numbers should be jumping even higher. And so this when you already know the vote, I don't expect anyone, any councilmembers to change their vote. However, then it can come back in 60 days. And I think it's important for community members to be thinking, when is it appropriate time to list this? We, of course, know we will not get 100% vaccinated if that's the measure people are looking for. We do have space in the hospital, as I shared the numbers earlier, and I appreciate the opportunity to complete my comments. Thank you. Any further comments? Members, Councilmember de so great. Well, thank you very much. Prior to the meeting, I had asked the city attorney's office to put together bullet points on the way in which the public health emergency has implicated both renters and small mom and pop landlords. And it is a it is an important issue because so long as the state of emergency is in place, then small mom and pop landlords and renters are kind of court and certain policies that we've put into place here, particularly to protect renters. But the reality is, is that small mom and pop landlords, many of them are also affecting the suffering from the economic impacts of this. So I'm going to support this this public extending the public health emergency. But I do want to note, though, that that the that that there are impacts that that continue. And so I think the the bullet points that the city attorney's office put together was certainly welcome. It talked about what would happen if we did not extend the local emergency, what would happen with regard to the repayment of rental debt, with regard to eviction protections? So I think we should extend it. But but I will say, though, you know, small mom and pop landlords are also experiencing difficulties. So while I can't say what will happen in 60 days from now, when we're asked to extend or not extend, you know, it will certainly the concerns of renters and small on the pop landlords will certainly weigh heavily in that decision. But for now, I support this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember de SAC. Other Council comments. Anyone wish to make a motion? Councilmember knocks white over purple. All right, then move by Councilmember Guisewite, seconded by Councilmember Gay said May we have a roll call vote? Councilmember Tasha Herrera Center. No knocks like Vela. May I say, Ashcroft? Hi. That carries 4 to 1. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right. Are we now safe to close the st calendar? Yes. Thank you. And my apologies again. We're human already. I believe her on six. Is that correct? Correct. All right. Were you introduced at 18? Press, please, Madam Clerk.

Rezones property located at 4625 West 50th Avenue and 5030 Vrain Street from PUD #273 to PUD #G11 in Council District 1. (NEIGHBORHOODS & PLANNING) Rezones property located at 4625 West 50th Avenue and 5030 Vrain Street from PUD #273 to PUD #G11 in Council District 1. A PUBLIC HEARING WILL BE HELD AT LEAST FOUR WEEKS AFTER PUBLICATION. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 12-10-14.

DenverCityCouncil_01202015_14-1075

Madam Secretary, please for the voting and announce the results. 3939 1047 has been placed on final consideration and does pass. All right. We are moving on to the next one. 1075. Councilwoman Fox, would you please put council Bill 1075 on the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move the council bill 1075, as amended, be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved. We need a second on the computers council members. It has been moved in. Seconded public hearing for council bill 1075 is now open. And may we have the staff report? I think so. Sorry. I just want to make sure I have the right show up. My name is Tina Axelrod. I'm a planning and development supervisor at CPD here tonight to present you a rezoning application for four 4625 West 50th Avenue from PD number to 73 to PDC 11. I quickly, quickly orient you to where the subject property is located. We take you from the city view showing that it's in the far northwest corner of the city. Little, little more honed in. It's in Council District one, Susan Shepard's district. It is just north of I-70 and west of Tennyson, surrounded virtually all sides by the Willis Coast Municipal Golf Course. It's in the Regis statistical neighborhood. But we often refer to the surrounding neighborhood jointly as the Berkeley radius. You can see both there on the on the neighborhood map. There is an aerial close up view of the subject property. The rezoning request in front of you today is for this 5.24 acre site. The current owner is the Eligible Shrine Association and on the property is their current association building, which was completed construction in 1930. You can see it there on the western side of the property and the rest of the area is vacant or surface parking lots. Currently, the property is being used as a fraternal club lodge for the Eligible Shrine Association and a special events center as well. The applicant on the rezoning application in front of you is the Shrine Preservations Partners, which is a limited liability partnership form to move forward with acquisition of the property based on whether the entitlement is approved in the proposal, in the rezoning application and is for a mix of single unit two unit and multi-unit residential redevelopment, including potential reuse of the existing shrine building. The current zoning again is a former Chapter 59 or old code pad number 273, and the request is to rezone into a Denver zoning code, put a new capacity. A general type of PD would be number 11 in our account. The current pad is is pretty restrictive, particularly in terms of use. It allows. It was adopted in 1989 pretty much just to freeze what was in place on the property. And that was to allow the club lodge use to continue and to expressly allow the rental, the facility to the general public for special events like weddings. And it has been used as such since then. There's also an allowance in the pad for accessory eating and drinking space within the existing training, building up to 20%. And there is actually a carbon cap cabernet cabaret license associated with the property and there is an active eating and drinking space within the building. The current pad does not allow any residential use of the property. It does require a minimum of 325 parking spaces, and it provides an access easement along Vrain Street, which is not a dedicated public street to properties to the north. There is a provision in the current PD. It's just a one line in the PDA that the southern facade of the existing shrine building must be maintained. The other existing zoning around the subject property to the north and east of the subject property, but west of Tennyson is an E as udc's zoning on those abutting couple of residential blocks. That's an urban edge single unit D as a minimum lot size of 6000 square feet. And the little X means that you have both. Both imply an urban house and a suburban house building form allowed. And of course the surrounding existing context in terms of zoning is our municipal golf course, which is zoned OSA open space a which just signifies it to city owned or maintained open space or in this case, a recreation facility. In terms of existing land use, I've described already what's occurring on the subject property adjacent in the surrounding neighborhoods. We've got, of course, the golf course and primarily single family in the blocks to the north and east of the subject site with a few scattered duplex uses, preexisting 1956 duplex uses in the neighborhood as well. In terms of building form and scale. There's a a picture of the existing eligible shrine building you see attached to the red arrow. It's the magnificent building if you haven't been out there to see it, hopefully you've looked at the pictures, but it's got that Moorish Spanish architecture with lots of of the 1928 1930 design still intact on that southern facade that you see there in the surrounding neighborhood. There are a variety of one, two, two and a half storey single family homes. The streets do not have sidewalks here. Mostly vehicle access is taken direct directly from the street. There's only there's there's no alley in the block where you see between Vrain and Utica, though, there are alleys on the block between Tennyson and Utica. They take a little bit of time to walk you through the the content of the proposed update. This is a fairly complex period and there's a lot of text in it. The PDA draft is in your package. It's the document that comes right after the staff report. The primary intent and bringing forward a plan unit, development zone district as described by the applicants in their application, was to preserve and facilitate the adaptive reuse of the existing shrine building. In addition to that circumstance, which is fairly unique and special on this property. The party was intended to account for and take advantage of some steep slopes that cut across the property from west to east. And the fact that sub sub area A is labeled on your screen doesn't have the regular pattern either of an urban edge , an urban neighborhood. It's a big super block. There are no public streets chopping it into what we would typically find in an urban edge, urban neighborhood of a rectangular blocks and lots with alleys. A bit of a challenge in figuring out how to have zoning work on that type of sort of area. The other intent of the pad is to achieve compatibility with those existing residential uses on frame and Utica to respect the golf course. As a neighbor, we don't get a lot of new development in Denver at this scale adjacent to a municipal golf course. And there were some concerns raised by parks in planning over what that edge should and would look like. So that's addressed by some special standards in the PAD as well that we don't typically see in our standard zoned districts. And then the desire to create some type of gateway in terms of form and use along 50th Avenue, which will be the the only vehicle access or the primary vehicle access into this site. The PD Zone District divides the 5.25 acres into three sub areas. Again, you see it there on your screen, Saberi, A, B and C. There are different standards attached to each of those sub areas. But overall, the PD does establish a total density cap of no more than 78 dwelling units across the entire PUD. So sub area A, B and C, no more than 78 dwelling units can be constructed and maintained. That includes anything that gets built inside the existing shrine building as well as on the grounds around it and what gets built in B and C walking through each of the sub areas and some of the highlights of the zoning for each sub area is the largest portion again where the existing shrine building sits almost neatly in the center. As you recall, for general pads, we tie our pads to a to the closest base. So base standard zoned district in the zoning code to try to move and frame the pad to be as close as possible to what we would we would require in a standard zone for a sub area, a the base zone district is the urh3a, which is an urban row home, two and a half storey maximum height. The A is for a special allowance for apartment forms that don't play out here. We chose the U r RH three for a variety of reasons. Probably the most important reason was to use the applicant wanted to establish multi-unit dwelling uses. They want to divide the existing building, hopefully someday into apartments or condos. That's a multi-unit dwelling use. You need at least a row home zone district to get that use. So we started with that. That row home zone is key to allowing the multi-unit to unit and it does allow single unit land uses. We use the real home building form from that base zone district and modified it to to make the existing trade building conforming to legalize the building form not just the, not the use inside of it, but just the building height and mass. There are some very detailed standards and I'm happy to answer questions that are in the PD zone district that preserve and maintain the integrity of the architectural features of the existing shrine building. And they are fairly detailed, they're fairly rigorous and probably most important, they you cannot demolish that building under the PD. You cannot voluntarily demolish the. Building. You can do some very limited edition additions to it on the back end, but those additions can't house dwelling units, they have to be very compatible with the rest of the building and you cannot add or alter the exterior of the southern third of the building, which has all that original rich detail still on it. Outside the existing building, the Sudbury A zoning standards essentially allow duplex buildings around subtree outside the building. It's a row house building form, but you can't have more than two structures per building. So it's a bit bulkier than a standard duplex form, but still only two units per structure. You could you can go three stories, but a long range street where that is where the existing context starts, you have to step back the mass of anything above 25 feet from the street. So you can't have a sheer wall. Three stories tall at the setback from frame. Sudbury, Abbey and Sudbury C are really part of the same block, existing block in the neighborhood. They're an extension of what's a pattern already established and which is continued through the day with some some changes. The suburb zoning is based on an urban edge single unit D one zoned district, which is the exact same zoned district as the zoning to the north, except that it allows accessory, dwelling, unit use and form. But even that's limited here. If you look at sub area B, there's the Pudi zoning would allow a minimum of 6000 square foot lots. You can you can get a maximum of six lots there. Of those six, you could only do adus on the Southern four. So you can't bump up an ADU form or use against the existing neighborhood. You sort of have to take a break for those two northern lots and then you can do 80 is through the concept site plan process and the review of the rezoning application. A few essentials were mapped out for the applicants in terms of public street improvements that would be required here. And one of them is to put in a new east west public alley, and you see the dotted yellow line on the screen between sub area B and sub area C. That indicates a requirement by the city of Denver for a new east west alley. This was part of an effort to not have this half of the block taken up with a lot of driveways and curb cuts. But to use the alley for rear access. So that's in the zoning as well. You were there won't be any curb cuts for front loaded garages or driveways. All the vehicle access will be from the rear of of new homes. Finally, in deference to a predominant building form in the neighborhood, any new single family home in sub area B has to have a pitched roof . That's a design standard that was added to the pad in deference to a more compatible architectural form that exists in the neighborhood. In sub area C, which is the end cap of the block. The base zone district is E2 C and the pad does some limited variations from that West 50th Avenue rather than rain or Utica becomes the primary street. So the homes will typically face 50th that similar to or actually the exact same condition that's found just to the east of Utica. There's a allowance for additional height to incentivize incentivized pitched roof buildings, but those pitch roofs are not required. Again, rear alley access will be required. We've done some tinkering of the design standards in the zoning to assure a more pedestrian friendly face on 50th by requiring the entrances to face 50th and not the off to the side. Finally, we've got some special design standards sprinkled throughout that apply in the various sub areas, mostly to address the edges between the golf course and the new development zone sub area A We have some heightened quality fence and wall design standards for any fence built along the public golf course boundary or between a building and the golf course. And we also have some special building specific rules of height to address a change in slope so that you can build multiple buildings on the super block and generally all have them the same height, even as your slope changes in sub area B and C, that continuation of the existing lot. There's some special height and landscaping and screening standards for the edges around the new alley to screen that alley and garage doors that might be visible as you're coming up and down rain in Utica and also in Sudbury, AC. We have some special heightened standards for fence and wall design with required landscaping to soften that edge where you transition from single family homes to duplex homes facing West 50th. That in a nutshell, is the content of the PD. Obviously, the PD has probably a lot more detail on it and again, happy to take questions. In terms of process, this has gone through the typical process. There's been quite a bit of back and forth between the neighborhood, the general public, the applicants and CPD over this PD prior to this city council hearing and after the neighborhood and Planning Committee meeting on December 10th, we got direction from the committee, we being the applicant, CPD and the neighbors to continue working on, covering and maybe gaining some greater consensus on some few outstanding issues, including the issue of density and greater compatibility. So I just want to note there were some changes since this has been in committee. For those of you who sit on the committee and to what's in the PD today, specifically what was added to the PD or changed in the PUD since the committee meeting on December 10th is the cap on total density of 78 dwelling units in sub area a surrounding the existing shrine building new homes can contain no more than two units per per building. That was a change since committee again to limit the density and in sub area a any expansion allowed the existing building. It was clarified that any bump out of that building cannot contain dwelling units. You can make a bump out or an expansion to add excess or common areas, but no dwelling units again to control the the potential for an ever expanding shrine building to to morph out across the site. Our review criteria. I'll walk through each hour briefly. We've got additional review criteria for a rezoning to a PD that you're familiar with. We'll also go through this tonight. First and foremost is consistency with adopted plans. There are two adopted plans that are in play here, a comprehensive plan, 2000 and Blueprint, Denver, which was adopted our adopted land use and transit transportation plan from 2000 to Comprehensive Plan 2000 provides a great set of general principles and strategies and objectives by which we can hold up this rezoning application and listed. There are a number of specific strategies that CPD has found. The rezoning is consistent and would further among them is that that important legacy strategy of preserving Denver's architectural and design legacies certainly that Gord is eligible. Shrine building is a legacy that this PD, as its cornerstone, seeks to preserve and facilitate, hopefully its adaptive reuse. In terms of housing strategies from the comp plan, this does offer an opportunity to introduce a greater variety of housing types, including the accessory dwelling units and a limited number, including more duplexes and multifamily units in a corner of northwestern Denver, where a lot of those options don't exist. In terms of promoting infill development services and infrastructures are available and adequate in place. The The Street Network will be improved by future development at the subject property according to minimum Denver Street and fire standards. And then land use strategy three be at the bottom. I want to point out it states to encourage quality infill development that's consistent with the character, the surrounding neighborhood that offers opportunities for increased density and more amenities and that broadens the variety of compatible uses. Again, CPD found that particularly in sub the efforts in sub areas B and C to craft the zoning that really extends what's already there on the rest of the block. But then to look at the opportunity, the unique site around the eligible shrine building, surrounded on all sides, not by existing homes, but by golf course. And that openness as an opportunity to introduce some increased density and offer a broadened or variety of housing types. In terms of blueprint, Denver, as you know, Blueprint Denver is comprised of a number of different parts. One of its component part is the future land use map. The future land use concept for the subject property was is a golf course. So in other words, the recommendation for future use for the eligible Shrine Association property is is golf course looking looking at this with 2020 hindsight and knowing a bit about how blueprint Denver was a higher level view of the city CBD really since early feels as where the recommendation was based on a mistake of fact that the eligible shrine property was part of the Willis Municipal Golf Course. It never was, never is. There are no intentions to acquire this property by the city of Denver. And certainly if we were to zone it to open space, that would be a taking. We didn't there's little guidance provided in that other than, you know, an interesting question mark and how how we got there. But it is in a designated area of stability and there are a lot of principles that come into play for reinvestment of redevelopment in a blueprint designated area stability. What I want to point out to you and Blueprint Denver, I know we haven't talked about this concept much in city council, but we we talked a lot about it in 2010. And area stability does not mean no change. Okay. It's not the opposite of an area of change. Blueprint Denver does very clearly anticipate reinvestment and some level of change in area stability, and it describes areas, areas of stability as being one of two types committed areas and reinvestment areas. A lot of what we see in areas of stability are committed areas. They're stable. There's a pattern is there? And the overriding direction the plan gives us is that any future infill and redevelopment should be compatible and consistent with the existing pattern of land use and scale. And certainly that's what our zoning does for the most part in our areas of stability. But Blueprint Denver also very clearly note that even in state and I'm quoting Blueprint and even in stable residential areas, there are often areas that would benefit from change. These areas due to their lack of reinvestment, have a negative visual impact on the surrounding areas. Blueprint goes on to describe these types of areas as reinvestment areas, and reinvestment areas, according to Blueprint, are places where it's desirable to maintain their character. But it is also beneficial to support reinvestment through, quote, modest infill and redevelopment or major projects in small areas. Many Denver neighborhoods, as we look around, contain that are stable, contain both committed and reinvestment areas. And Blueprint acknowledges this now doesn't provide us a huge amount of detailed guidance as to what a major project could look like in a reinvestment area. But this pad is in front of you to suggest what a major project could look like in a reinvestment area on this unique peninsula of land, in an area otherwise area stability. We see this as an opportunity area as well to implement blueprint and comp plan policies in regard to introducing those housing types I just talked about. And an opportunity for for some increase in density to take advantage of the site and to enable the preservation of the existing building. And some CPD has found in as detailed much more greatly in my staff report, CPD finds that the proposed PDE zoning is consistent with adopted plans. As also reported in the staff report. We find that the proposed zoning would result in uniformity of district regulations and further the public health, safety and welfare in terms of the existence of justifying circumstances. CPD finds that this criteria is met due to changes on the unique site, really social and economic changes that has made this institutional use, which has been there since 1928 to 1930, just no longer viable for the eligible Shrine Association to maintain this larger facility for its original institutional use. It leaves a zoning in place that was really there specifically to enable that institutional use and nothing else. And we feel that with the change in time and demand and the drop in membership for this type of use, there's a need to change the zoning, to acknowledge the changing conditions around this type of use generally and around this property specifically. And the consistency with neighborhood context, zone district purpose and intent has really picked up in the additional review criteria for PD. The first is whether the proposed zoning is consistent with the intent and purpose of PD, and that's spelled out in Article nine of the Denver Zoning Code. Essentially, a PD, as is, is justified or could be appropriate, where you're seeking more flexibility to respond to unique and extraordinary circumstances, and where in return for that flexibility, there are some significant public benefits that arise out of the PUD zoning. So in this case specifically, CPD has recognized the presence of unique and extraordinary circumstances. Obviously the existing eligible shrine building is at the is really the objective fact that makes particularly sub area a unique and special, but so does its geography. Surrounded by a golf course as well as the change in slope across of an over three acre parcel. These are not going to be divided into smaller zone lots. It's got to be treated as a whole. So there's some need for flexibility in the way the zoning should work here. Also to accommodate some of the needed street improvements resulted in the need for some flexibility in what would otherwise perhaps be standard zoning applied here. The whoever develops this will have to widen Vrain, Utica and West 50th Avenue to our minimum local street standard and improve it, which with curb gutter paving sidewalk tree lawn. And as a result, there's some eating up of what would otherwise be developable land area and some flexibility requested in return for the public improvements of some reduction and minimum lot with. So that's the type of flexibility in response to those circumstances. In terms of the quid pro quo and what the city of Denver gets out of flexibility and custom zoning with a PD, the significant public public benefits, obviously the mandated preservation of the entire eligible building, which is not something you typically see in a zoning ordinance, but which we negotiated in this case in the city's interest to see that building preserved. It does enable easier reuse of the shrine building while ensuring compliance with minimum architectural design standards and guidelines. Other public benefits include introducing at a fairly moderate scale more diverse housing choices, including the ADU, some limited number of apartment or condo units in the existing building, and duplexes where some exist in the Greater Berkeley Regis neighborhood, but not a lot exemplary pedestrian connections, amenities and considerations that comes into play with the siting of new homes in this development very sensitively to the golf course, not turning backs or building eight foot walls or putting the vehicle drive access abutting up against the golf course where flipping it so the homes present a friendlier face, whether it's backside or front side to the golf course, and then still resulting in a public benefit of compatible development patterns with nearby areas, particularly for the sub areas B and C and assuring in the PD that that is still a benefit. Finally, the remainder of the review criteria for compliance with division nine six standards and criteria have been and have all been addressed through the peu de development is not feasible under any other zone district and would require an unreasonable number of variances or waivers and conditions. CPD as fact finds that the multiple deviations in this party would result if we tried to craft them around a standard zone district and a lot of variance request or a lot of waivers and conditions. At that tipping point, a PED becomes a much more obvious zoning choice. CPD also finds that permitted uses in the PD are compatible with adjacent existing land uses, particularly in some areas B and C as a committed area. The single unit and duplex uses play well with what is existing in the surrounding blocks. The introduction of duplex and some limited multi-unit uses and sub area a are there to to add the density to facilitate the rehab and re-use of the existing shrine building and are compatible with what's immediately surrounding it, which is the golf course. Finally, permitted building forms are compatible with adjacent building forms or are may compatible through appropriate transitions. And through my previous description of all the PD standards, CPD finds that the proposed rezoning is consistent with this criteria as well and some. And thanks for your indulgence and a longer than usual presentation. CPD recommends approval at the PD. Thank you. Thank you. Kiran. All right. So we've got 22 speakers signed up for this. And so I'm going to say the first five and please make your way up to the pew so that we can try to make this as efficiently as possible. Bill Schwartz, Steve Childs, Glen Sibley, Charles Buck and Jeff Laws. So you five can make your way to the front pew. And Mr. Schwartz, you can go ahead and begin your remarks. Mr. President, members of Council, thank you first for staying so late to hear us out on this matter. I come to you as as the Treasurer of the Eligible Shrine Association, as the train, as a Shriners. I find myself in a very ironic situation standing in City Hall City-County building, asking for a rezoning to facilitate the sale of a building so that we remain financially solvent as an organization that was founded in 1887 in the Old City Hall down at 14th and Larimer. I look around this room and I see the preservation that has done and been done in a building that was built and broke ground in 1929 as our building was completed in 1929. I look around this room and I feel ashamed at what could be had we preserved our building to the best of our ability. However, I stand here also inspired by what can be when we reuse and repurpose our building. We feel that. We can be inspired by the people who have come to us to attempt to purchase our property. We had multiple offers on our property and we had the opportunity to hand select our buyers as people who are connected to the fraternity, as some of them have fathers or other family members who have been Shriners in the past. One of the purchasers of our building, his uncle, was a potentate of our fraternity in 1908. Our potentate is the equivalent of a president and most organizations. So we stand inspired by some people that are wanting to purchase a building that is a financial challenge. It has been a financial challenge for many years, as those of you who have been to it can see over the past several years, we have attempted to supplement our income to keep the property afloat by holding more events at our at our building. Unfortunately, those events have not proven to be profitable enough for us to be able to maintain the building at our current membership levels. Some of you have even attended events at our building and you have seen how large our events can grow inside of our building and the traffic problem that it can create. Once those events let out, what we are here today to do is we are here today to ask for your approval of PD g 11 so that the Shriners can move on gracefully to a new facility. Somebody with a vision and the means can come in to save this historical treasure and redevelop this property and commit resources into it that will eventually give back to the city and county of Denver. These resources, as CPD has stated in their staff report, will create infrastructure. They will add sidewalks and tree lines so that it becomes more pedestrian friendly. For those who have been out there, you know that west of 50th there are no sidewalks. This will add sidewalks so it becomes more pedestrian friendly. It will also add investment back into an area that has frankly been neglected by the Shriners for a number of years. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you staying late. Apologize. Thank you, Mr. Schwarz. Steve Childs and Mr. Childs, someone has allocated 3 minutes to you, so you have a total of 6 minutes. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, members of City Council. My name is Steve Childs. My address is four six South Street, Denver, Colorado, and I am a member of the Shrine Preservation Partners CO Applicant. With the. Eligible Shrine Association. We are pleased to ask for your support for the beauty and proposed rezoning with the changes Tino Axelrod has outlined. I would like to focus my remarks on three important topics one process and the interaction with our neighbors. Two concessions we have made to ensure neighborhood content, context and tree preservation in the iconic shrine building. With respect to the process, we have worked hard to be sensitive to the neighbors and their concerns. We have held multiple public meetings, three design charrette, countless individual discussions with all of our interested neighbors. Starting in March of last year, prior to submitting an application for rezoning. We hosted three town hall style meetings in addition to these large meetings we have had. We've also met with smaller working groups to modify the proposed rezoning on as many as six occasions. Why I am why am I belaboring this? Because anyone who suggests to you tonight that this rezoning has been hastily pushed through or not enough attention has been paid to neighborhood concerns, is simply not being truthful. Majority of the neighbors either support or neutral on the zoning rezoning. Supporters include every neighbor who lives directly across the street from the site and who will be directly impacted. Mostly along and mostly mostly along 50th Avenue. Who have offered support or remained neutral. With respect to changes to ensure compatibility and context, we have agreed to substantial changes to what was originally envisioned for redevelopment of this infill parcel . Originally, we envisioned multistory, pedestal style retirement apartments or condos for the site. But after meeting with several neighbors, we realized that there was no support for this. By our own calculation, we have reduced density from what was originally envisioned by over 150%. Importantly, before this bill was filed for city council considerations, we responded to our neighbors requests and agreed to the following one. A hard cap of 78 units across the entire site parcels A, B and C and the shrine building itself to no expansion to the shrine. Building itself on the exterior walls for four additional living units. Three. Only after a single family. And two. And only single family and duplex lofts can be built outside the shrine building. So that's only two buildings to a form. You may hear from some tonight that this rezoning allows too much density on a portion of the site. Those same people have made it clear to us that they prefer to see a shrine building torn down and only single family homes built on the site. The Shriners. My partners and I all disagree with this approach and prefer this and prefer the approach to preserves the shrine building and adds homes in and around it. No one can deny or hide the fact the parcel is not a precise replica of the nearby neighborhood pattern. In essence, it cannot be. The shrine itself makes PASSO a nonconforming with the neighborhood. In order to save and repurpose the shrine, more density is necessary and appropriate and appropriate. Parcel A has no immediate neighbors is surrounded on three sides by a golf course, sits below and away from the existing homes and has a massive looming building sitting in the middle of it. The duplex house for whom we have committed to will complement the shrine and prevent the row house canyons. The some of the neighbors have described as offensive. Please also note that we purposely designed parcels B and C to serve as a visual transition or buffer to the more dense parcel a. Beyond density. We made other significant concessions to address the concerns expressed by the neighborhood traffic due to the neighborhood concerns about traffic. We agreed to Alley Road and South Park. All housing in this development. We will also limit we will eliminate traffic down these dead end streets such as Utica and brain. No home will have street facing driveways or more ever. Even the city engineers did not require. We recommended we commission a traffic study to analyze traffic impacts. Our traffic engineer, charles buck of f h you is here tonight to address any questions you may have of him with regard to design guidelines. We have met, discussed and developed consensus guidelines with our neighbors that specify enduring and quality architecture and construction to match the neighborhood in order to put these guidelines into effect. We will restrict the deed. When the property is conveyed. To us. That deed restriction will establish an archway or metro district which which will become the enforcement mechanism for architectural guidelines. Importantly, this process will ensure the guidelines run with the land and are applicable not only to us, but every future owner of the property. I also want to point out that many other important design features requested by the neighbors are already embedded in the PUD requirements for incentives for pitched roof homes, landscaping, fencing requirements, setbacks to minimize sightlines to garages, limits on a number of units per building structure, height and massing limits, setbacks and that and unique bass baseplate, measurements and rear loaded garages. When combined with the design guidelines, these elements ensure that vertical development is compatible with and enhancement to Northwest Denver. Mr. Childs, your 6 minutes is up. Thank you. Next is Glenn Sibley. Good evening, Mr. President. Council members. My name is Glen Sibley. I address 2825 East Alameda in Denver. I'm a Denver native and my father grew up within blocks of the shrine building. I'm here to talk to you about the preservation of the shrine itself. The preservation and repurposing of this type of building is never easy. Conversion from an assembly hall to other uses. It's difficult by any standard. The eligible shrine has unfortunately outlived its usefulness. And. Is not cheaply or easily converted. I'd like to commend you to the language of the preservation language that's contained in the. Because it's very restrictive and prescriptive about what should be done to allow residential flats, either condos or apartments to be built within the shrine building. Preservation and repurposing is the smartest way, in our opinion, to preserve the historical buildings that become available for redevelopment. Historic designations are important, too, but often those provide a trap that leaves a vacant building, not reusable. For any other purpose. Once this rezoning is approved, we will begin in earnest to analyze the shrine and what is necessary to convert it to residential uses. I strongly urge you to vote in favor of this rezoning as it is the very best and only way to ensure another 100 years for the shrine. I'd also like to take a moment to read a letter that was prepared by Charlie Wyllie, the CEO of St Charles Town Company, with whom we've been working on the historic matters regarding this paddy. As I am regrettably unable to attend tonight's meeting of the Denver City Council, I am writing this letter to communicate Saint Charles Town Company's support for the proposed zoning of the eligible redevelopment in Northwest Denver. Over the past several months, Saint Charles has worked closely with Sheraton Preservation Partners on a development plan for the redevelopment of the eligible shrine and surrounding property based on the proposed zoning. Saint Charles has extensive experience in repurposing historic structures, including numerous preservation projects in the city of Denver over the past 20 plus years. We have a thorough understanding of the preservation covenants requirements in the proposed PUD and strongly support them on behalf of Saint Charles Town Company. I strongly urge the Council's support of the proposed zoning and of this important project so that we might continue to apply our historic preservation expertize in the redevelopment of this property. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Sibley. Charles Buck. Good evening. My name is Charles back. I'm a traffic engineer with Helzberg Holten Olivier. I was hired by the applicant to do some limited traffic analysis for this proposed development. I'm just really here to answer questions, so I'll be available for that. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Jeff Laws. And as Jeff Laws comes up, I'm going to call the next five to the front pew. So those people who spoke, you all can go back to your original seats, Jim. So, Amy, I apologize for mispronounce that. David Ramirez, Philip House, Karen Harris and George Marino. And as those five are coming up, you may go home again. My name is Jeff Laws. I live at 5086 Vrain Street. I'm not an immediate neighbor, but I'm one house away. And I would also like to point out, as Mr. Lim simply stated, that all the neighbors are within three or 400 feet. So while there may be a couple of neighbors that are directly across the property that support it, there at least at least two that are immediately adjacent, that object. Our concerns are three in this case. And we would ask that you either take these concerns in consideration and tabled this motion for further work or decline it tonight . The first concern we have is the preservation of the shrine. Shrine preservation partners trust but verify. When we got the planning board, we figured out that there was no language in the original PDS that had anything that would require the shrine to be preserved. It was sent back. To make sure that language could be constructed. And we now have language that says if the shrine is preserved, it must be done thus and so. However, if you read it carefully, there is nothing in there that says that it has to be preserved. We already have one white elephant in my neighborhood. It's called the Ilitch Theater. Often like the Lowenstein Theater, it was talked about for years about being preserved. In fact, it was part of a Peabody, but it sits empty and vacant today. Unless there is language inside the page requiring that actually be re utilized. We could end up with a white elephant at the shrine. Our second concern is that the density of the RH units in Zone A surrounding the shrine is completely unknown. This is because we do not have a site plan. It seems to me that any development proposal would be carefully considered with a site plan, and we have asked often and many times, why do we do not have a site plan? We're always told that this will happen later. Unfortunately happening later means that the public and this council has no input on what that site plan looks like. And so we actually know how many units we do not know how many units are h outside the shrine and how many units are condo apartments inside the shrine. That is a huge unknown. And we think that it should be a part of this pretty. The third issue that we would like to bring to your attention is design guidelines. Now, these fellows purport to say that they have a design guideline form that they have developed with input from the neighbors. The input from the neighbors consists of one set. Of documents that was given to them by our neighbor, Esther Kettering, and their original draft letter on what that might look like. The neighborhood has never agreed to the design guidelines and I'm finished. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Laws. Jim. And I can't say how to pronounce your last name, so I'll say thumbing. There goes Jim. Thumbing. Mr. President. Mr. President, members of the council. My name is Jim Thome and I live at 12. Excuse me, 1176 South Jackson Street. I am here. I am a member of eligible. But actually, I am also a practicing residential real estate broker. I have been in central denver for 40 years. The peu de approval process that you have before you allows a very significant infill site in denver that is basically a parking lot surrounding a wonderful old building that can no longer realistically be maintained to the style that the shrine would love to have it maintain and have this you d redevelop the entire site all at the same time. The density is appropriate for what is in demand in the city and county of Denver right now and what is desired by the people that want to find a home in the city and county of Denver but don't have many choices to find one. This move, this change of zoning, will move parking lots to residential taxpaying property. It will complete the access to one of Denver's premier golf courses with one of the neatest clubhouses there is. And it will influence the neighborhood in a way that over time will be positive. That will raise the bar for changes that invariably come to different neighborhoods over time, and it will allow it all to be done within a very short period of time, as opposed to piecemeal, like so many of the neighborhoods. Bonnie Brae, Cherry Creek. I was I showed the very first duplex built on Fillmore in Cherry Creek North when people said, What's that? And now Cherry Creek North is no, it's interesting, but it's a hodgepodge of design that is no longer a neighborhood for Denver residents. It's a lot of out-of-towners. And this is creating a neighborhood for new residents to come and find their home here in the city and county. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Domingue. David Ramirez. Collective forgiveness here is gathering her comments more in line with Mr. Law than I'll follow up with her. Well, we don't want to change the order, but if you want to if you want to not give comments, that's fine. If you want to make a comment. But I think her comments more along with Mr. Laws and my comment would be more appropriate following her not understand. Unfortunately, we can't change the order. So you have the opportunity to speak. You can speak right now. Not a problem. Afternoon. Good evening, members of council. I'm a homeowner on the 5000 block of Utica at 5055 Utica. I resided on this block for 25 years and have lived in North Denver for 50 years. I've raised four children on this block who've attended neighborhood schools. I'm a retired district court judge in Denver. Prior to that, I was a county court judge in Denver, and my career started in the city of Denver as an assistant city attorney, where I supervise the prosecution and code enforcement division for the city. Since 2008, I've been employed as a hearing officer for the Department of Community Planning and Development. I have heard a variety of cases involving the Denver zoning and building code. Given an entire career interpreting the code, I've had the opportunity to preside over many cases involving the code in 30 years with city government. I have gained some knowledge and experience with the code, including zoning and building in my orders. There are three constants. One Make sure the law is correct as it applies to the facts to protect and consider the public health, safety and welfare of the community. And three, do no harm to the community. In my 30 years as a judge and now as a hearing officer for the department, I have been reversed a handful of times, including one of six actions to the District Court in hearing the cases. I find on average that the city is correct in its interpretation of the code. However, in many instances the department is wrong. Based on my experience with the city. It's clear that the development under the existing code is not justified. It's not consistent, and in my opinion, may not be legal. And I respectfully request that it either be denied, amended or delayed pending further review of all factors noted by my neighbors, including Mr. Laws and Ms.. Harrison. I'm grateful for having the opportunity to work for the city and county of Denver for the past 30 years. My career, like my home, is very special. Our neighborhood is unique given its location and bordering Woolas case golf course. It is a neighborhood that should be visited in person and not viewed on a map, a diagram, drawing or slides. It's important to note that 50th Avenue is the only access street to the area. All other streets are dead end. Even 50 of dead ends. Every street in their dead ends except 50th on the outside at Tennyson. Changing the width of the street will do nothing. They all will dead end after the fact. Currently there are events at the golf course and the Shriners Temple, and traffic is a public safety issue. Emergency vehicles have no quick access to the area. Imagine a 5 to 10 foot increase of the residential units given the same street, same street. Conflict of figuration and accessibility. Mr. Ramirez, I apologize. Your 3 minutes is up. That's fine. No problem. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next is Phillip House. Thank you, Mr. President. And city council people. My name is Phil Hawes. I'm a property owner in the city and county of Denver. 4444 Morrison Road. But I'm also a longtime member of the Shrine. I've been a Shriner for 38 years, and I have watched the membership grow from when I joined of 13,000 members down to 1300 members. As you get older, your family moves away, you find that your house is too big. That is where we're at now. If we don't do that, the boards will go up on the windows and it'll sit there and be another Ilitch Gardens. So I encourage and I recommend that the city council look at this to redevelop this property with the developers. We've looked long and hard and worked with this developer, and I think that they will do what's right in the neighborhood. With that, I encourage you to support the passage of this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hawes. Next is Karen Harris. Ms.. Harris, you have 6 minutes. Thank you. My name is Karen Harris. I live at 5090 Utica. In addition to being a neighbor affected by this project, I am an architect who has been on both sides of the process of rezoning. I am probably committing professional suicide with this testimony. However, the process I have been involved in here is broken, and the result is a document that is flawed in many of the ways good urban planning and a predictable zoning code should guard against. I hope you had the opportunity to read the neighborhood report that was distributed last week. We know that it varies drastically from the analysis of CPD in speaking to the need to change the entire process. A difference in observations and interpretations contained in these two documents illustrates just one of the many problems with the proper process. There needs to be a transparent and well-defined public process that is moderated by a neutral party familiar with the Denver Zoning Code and the neighborhood. A neighborhood context and character report should be the initial basis of the entire process, not something that a neighborhood should have to find the resources to develop will have to defect when there are vastly different interpretations of existing conditions. There needs to be some defined mediation process to reconcile context before moving forward. Public meetings should not be run by the applicant, with only the applicant presenting information and supposed facts. The first draft of the code should not be written without CPD staff having visited the neighborhood. The peu de which becomes official zoning laws should be written by the city, not the applicant, and the city should be the entity that answers all questions of the zoning form and measurement. It should be up to the city, not the neighbors, to understand the zoning code and to insist on limited and necessary modifications and waivers to its provisions. It should not be the neighbors who must figure out that a preservation buddy has no preservation language in it, and that the applicants probably intended it that way. It should not be up to the neighbors to request that applicant planning board testimony be horrified as the Denver Zoning Code says it shall. Only to be told that the city is just fine with unlimited numbers of units built on a property with no open space and no other mitigating constraints. Up until right before this idea was introduced to the Planning Board. There was general agreement with the site plans and the project renderings that were being presented and a certain level of trust and good faith which created a reasonably civil discourse regarding this request for major rezoning. However, the applicant's refusal to supply or to supply. To simply right into the P. What they had promised and presented to the public has become a mystery as to the contents of the g 11 as written. Subquery is B and C may be sufficiently divine to assure the neighborhood and the city of what can be built. Although in hindsight, there was absolutely no reason to have that area included in the Pew D. Simply rezoning that area, with no exceptions, would have provided the consistency and the predictability D we seek, and it would have met the goal of state of stated in the Denver zoning code to limit unnecessary p pds and to the extent possible to to strive to get closer to the existing seven districts. Sub area a however, is a very different story. Not only is what is written in the yard a complete departure from the base zone district that is supposed to mimic it is contrary to the very premise of form based zoning code and within the super block it excuse excuse the basic urban design standards that are so valued elsewhere in the city, including front loaded garages on new private drives through sub area A with three stories and no setback on the facades with the surprise amendment of total units on the entire, would we have at least gone from infinity to a number? However, without a number certain of units outside this shrine building on sub area a it is still possible within the party to create a super block that is nothing but roofs, asphalt, concrete with no pedestrian connections, no street activation, and no transparent transparency. And in spite of the rhetoric induced that inducing two unit rowhouses changes things because there is no limit to how close they can be together. It does almost nothing to change the scenario. HQ unit rowhouse is not a duplex form. If it were, we could get rid of about 50% of the Denver zoning code. It allows. The only thing it does is it allowed to mark these as duplexes without the pesky requirements of creating a code compliant duplex form with the surrounding open space they require. If the idea of a beauty is to take a unique and extra extraordinary situation and create zoning that is predictable and consistent with the zoning parameters in the rest of the city and the Denver zoning code. This would fails to accomplish that task. At the very least, it needs an amendment to limit the number of units on some area outside of the shrine building. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.. Next is Jordan Moreno. And as Mr. Moreno comes up, I'm going to call on the next five. You can make your way to the front pew. Esther Kettering. Michael Hicks, Robert Schmitt, Dominic Lovely and Mark Brissenden. So you five can make your way up to the front pew. And Mr. Moreno, you can begin your remarks. Mr. President, members of the Council, my name is George Moreno. My wife and myself have lived at 3428 Westcott place for more than 20 years. We're both Denver natives. I'm a retired Denver public school teacher. I'm also a member of the shrine. I am pleased to be here tonight to strongly urge your vote to pass this PUD and rezoning for the shrine building and property. As many of you know, the eligible Shriners have a long and rich history in Denver. They have a substantial philanthropic presence in Denver for over 125 years. This redevelopment project is about preserving the rich history of the area while making a very positive economic impact to the Berkeley Regis neighborhood. And on a greater scale, the city of Denver. To take this thought a step further, the Berkeley Regis United Neighbors defines the Regis portion of their association as I-70 to 52nd Avenue and federal to Sheridan. Within this area, you will find single family homes, duplexes and even some row homes on Lowell. You might hear some in opposition speak to context as just their two streets as a limitation to the neighborhood. However, I feel that we should use the precedents from the Neighborhood Association of the already mentioned boundaries. We understand the importance of balancing the interests of everyone, which is why the development team agreed to design guidelines, limited density and did a traffic review to make sure that this development would ultimately fit into the context of this neighborhood. Some may suggest tonight that the entire neighborhood opposes this rezoning. However, this is not accurate. The most glaring example of this is that most of the neighbors on 50th Avenue who will be impacted the most by this project have written letters of support and or will speak in support tonight. Moreover, the residents that look directly west across the parking lot who may lose their mountain views have written letters of support and or will speak tonight. The density being requested at 78 for approximately six acres of land constitutes a small residential infill and is a significant reduction from the original proposal of approximately 250. The final density is less than one third the original plan. This is a significant compromise on behalf of the applicant and fits in nicely to the character of the Regis neighborhood. Pdg 11 reflects more than a year and a half of work by the Shriners and Shrine Preservation Partners, LLC. It is time to approve this Pudi and allow the Shriners to move gracefully to their new home and repurpose and reuse the beautiful shrine building again. I strongly urge your yes vote on this PUD and rezoning. Thank you for all that you do on behalf of all the residents of the city and county of Denver. Thank you, Mr. Marino. Esther Kettering. My name is Chester. Kettering and I live at 52 Utica Street. I am a commercial real estate broker and land developer. I have been involved with development. And sales of land for 38 years. Having developed and sold as a principal. Well over 12,000 acres. At least 2000 single family home sites. Several multifamily. Projects, at least three major industrial parks and many other projects, including a golf course. Never. In my. Entire career. Have I. Seen such a major change in density introduced into a stable. Predominantly single. Family neighborhood. With so little detail required. During the approval process? This, especially when site plan approval. Is simply. Administrative. Planning is intended to create predictability and to. Ensure a. Specific. Outcome. We as neighbors have virtually no assurance of any specific results from the proposed project except density. As to design guidelines. In our. Frequent communications with the developer. They produced a rather amusing set of documents that referred to things like Cape Cod style Moorish Spanish. Influences. That. Was almost. Comical. In an effort. To inspire a better quality design. Guideline effort. I produced some suggested language from projects I've developed in the past. Thinking that. This would inspire a better. Product. Alas, they simply copied some of the information verbatim in hammered it in to what they had already done. It's a far cry from the design guidelines that we had hoped for. It was better, however, than what they produced. As to. The neighborhood. Our density. Between Lowell and. Sheridan. I 70 and 52nd is under four due per acre and they are proposing 16. I respectfully request counsel, deny approval of this project and recommend re. Submittal. By applicant of a detailed PUD. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kettering. Michael Hicks. Thank you, Mr. President. And council members. My name is Michael Hicks. I live at 23 one South Jackson Street, and I was approached by an architect to actually speak against this. After due diligence, I could conscious cannot speak against this. This group is doing the right thing. I've been to this hall. I was at an anniversary, 50th anniversary for my wife's uncle. And I will tell you, the Nietos and Guerrero's throw a heck of a party service. It was cold and the dance floor was full of beautiful Latinas. So it was something I didn't want to leave. I had a difficult time finding the eligible and I had a difficult time leaving the eligible for other reasons. But I will tell you, these guys have done the right thing. This developer has worked with the neighborhood. They have created a good process. They have also brought in some of the best people, the Davis Partnership Architects. It's an architectural legacy in Denver. Charlie Wooley, the equitable building, the officers quarters at Lowry, one of the best historical developers in Denver. They've done the right thing, and every time they listen and make concessions, this cheese gets moved. How long is a piece of string? How are we going to develop and infill our neighborhoods if we can't have good developers come in and have a process and a dialog with the groups surrounding the development? Denver deserves housing. This is a housing infill site. This fits with this neighborhood. This makes this neighborhood complete. I encourage you to pass this, to approve this, to do the right thing. Denver is on a dangerous path. In San Francisco, sometimes it takes ten years to buy a piece of property and developer. And do you know what it costs to rent an apartment in San Francisco? Or buy a home. This can't happen in Denver. You have to approve this development. They've done the right thing. They're good people. On a personal note, Councilman Brown, I know you're going to miss these hearings. So when you're done and your term is up on Monday night, you walk that couple of blocks to my house. We'll open a bottle of red wine and we'll watch Channel eight. Thank you. Thank you, Miss. Thank you, Mrs. Robert Smith. My name is Robert Schmid. I reside at 58 Utica Street in Denver, Colorado, adjacent to the eligible shrine property. Besides being a resident of that neighborhood, I'm also an architect and I am the past chair of Air Denver's Zoning Code Task Force during the discussions and work up to the implementation of our new zoning code. Members of Denver City Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight about this important matter. My email to you all on January 16th outlines my concerns with adopting this podium. Those concerns exist on three levels a disregard of blueprint, Denver community planning and development, support of a flawed PWD document and creating a precedent that is destructive to Denver's established residential neighborhoods. First and foremost, this application asks for the establishment of a pad that would cause a development that is out of character with the existing neighborhood. The map on page 21 of Blueprint Denver 2002 notes The Berkeley Regis neighborhood is an area of stability. The plan strategy on Plan 20 on page 23 of that document notes, quote, Preserving and revitalizing neighborhood character has been a prevailing concern throughout the planning process. The need to direct and manage the location type intensity of future development is balanced by an equally strong desire to preserve those areas of the city with an established character, unquote . It is further stated that area of stability phases two concerns character preservation and reinvestment. Although it is recognized that the Shrine property will be redeveloped, that redevelopment cannot damage or alter the context and physical fabric of an established neighborhood. My January 16th email also endorses the Green Utica 50th Street Neighborhood Report, which is in response to CBD Staff Report of 25 2014. Preparing and publishing this report was necessary in light of CPD's mismanagement of this matter throughout the entire public process. You have heard it tonight and from some who don't live anywhere near this site to one extent or another as to neighborhood support of this PD, making it seem that the applicant has addressed and satisfied concerns of the neighbors. Let's, however, be clear about the aspect of acceptance in one way or another, at one level or another, regardless of the depth of desire to preserve the existing shrine building in whole or in part. A majority of the neighbors oppose this PUD as written. Anyone coming before you saying anything differently is not being truthful with you. Besides the immediacy of this project's impact on my neighborhood, adoption of this PUD will set a dangerous precedent for future development in Denver that could occur in any of your districts to any of your established residential neighborhoods. I urge you to consider your vote tonight and vote not to adopt this PD. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schmidt. Dominique. Lovely. I'm Dominic. Lovely. I live at 5000 Tennyson, probably the corner that is going to be most affected by the traffic of this redevelopment. But I do lend my support to the redevelopment. Currently, I have reviewed the traffic study that was put in place. That was my initial concern was how is it going to affect me and my neighbors on 50th and Tennyson? I didn't find the traffic study to be overwhelming, an overwhelming increase in traffic, especially when I look at, you know, all the traffic lights coming at me from sorry, all the car lights coming at me when the big events let out of trainers. Now, I'm also a fan of urban density and moreover, I'm a fan of considered urban density. I'm a fourth generation North Denver resident, and I think everybody should have the opportunity to live in this neighborhood. I have two young children who go to or who will be going to Centennial in the future. Centennial is a Title One funded school, and I look forward to knocking on every door of the 75 residents that will be there to help us improve the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lovely. Next is Mark Brissenden. And before Mr. President speaks, I'll call up the remaining speakers Kristy Drum. Ellen Metter, Marv Greiner, Julie Eck. Jim Tarrant, Jeff Seaman and Sandy Schramm. So you can make your way up to the front pew. And Mr. Burson, you can begin your remarks. Thank you. My name is Mark Brissenden. I live at 45, 38. We're now in the court, so I'm not an immediate neighbor to the shrine. I live about a half mile south on the other side of Berkeley Park. And when I first heard about this project, I guess it was the density I was worried about. So I started looking at the neighborhood. The block I live on has about 25 or 30 units to the one block that's both sides of the street. And so I looked at some of the other areas. The most adjacent area to the shrine, which is the block between Tennyson and Utica, is actually less dense than that. It only has about 17 units, judging by Google Maps anyway. Now this project would be in an area that's just slightly larger than one city block, so the density there is going to be more than 60 units per block. So that's about three times what that adjacent block between Utica and Tennyson would be. And I think that's that's just too high considering that a zoning zoning should be trying to keep the neighborhood keeping the character of the neighborhood. And also, I don't think it's a good site for that kind of of very high density because of the fact that there's only the one road going in and out. It seems like there will inevitably be big traffic jams there at rush hour. And one other concern I have with the project is that there's no mention of trying to save the ballroom, which in my opinion is really the most historically meaningful part of the entire shrine. And he would I know it's probably not possible to say that, but it would be nice to have a plan that did that. So I would urge you to not grant the the rezoning now, but try and get one that has a density that's more in keeping with the neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brisson. And next is Christy Drumm. Thank you. I'm Christy Drumm. I live at 4435 West 50th Avenue, which is right at the corner of Utica and 50th. So every day when I look out my windows. I will see this new development. I share my neighbors. Concerns about the. Density. But the way I. Understand the process is. The pad. Is one step. And following this, the next step is the final. Site. Design, layout, approval and discussion, and that we will have the opportunity to have discussions and provide input. So as such, I support this, Peggy. And hope we can move forward. To those more detailed discussions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ellen Metter. I live in the Berkeley neighborhood and I do welcome new neighbors and investment in our neighborhood. I'm excited to see changes, growth and improvements in our neighborhood, which is in part unique for its blocks of older homes and yards and many now being rehabilitated. It's a very cool neighborhood. You got to come see it if you haven't been there. The number of units now being proposed is. Out of character for this neighborhood and reflects a much higher density. I feel that the density proposed for this development. Should be decreased. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Marv Greiner. No. Mr. Greiner. Okay. Next is Julie EK. I'm Juliet. At 2301 Blake Street, I'm with Davis Partnership Architects, and I'm here to answer any questions that may be technically. Involved in the PD. Thank you. Next is Jim. Charette. My wife, Sandy Schranz. She's yielding her time to me. My name is Jim Strand. I have lived at 5036 Utica Street, adjacent to eligible Temple for 69 years, including 40 years of teaching at North High School. Our family has lived on the Hill for over 100 years. My grandfather, a founding member of Eligible, sold them this beautiful property for their shrine in 1925. Even though I've lived next to the shrine longer than any of my neighbors, I share some of the same concerns. I just want to apologize for interrupting, but just want to verify the account. The Secretary 3 minutes was not yielded to you so you don't have six. You only have three. So I just want to make sure you're. Aware of that. No problem. Go right ahead. Appreciate that. I feel like I'm back in the classroom. As I was saying, I share some of the same fears that my neighbors have had concerning the changes this product will bring to our quiet little neighborhood. In spite of these fears, we all need to accept three simple facts. One The shrine is committed to selling this property as they move to a new location. Two. This site will see new constructions soon. And three, the population of our neighborhood will increase. The only remaining question to us as a neighborhood is who will be responsible for carrying out this project and how will this be accomplished? This is where I feel very comfortable and confident in giving my support to this project as proposed by the Shrine Preservation Partners. This group represents our best chance for a sound, quality redevelopment of this unique property. This group has met with the neighbors many times. They have been very upfront with their plans and they've been very accommodating about making countless changes as relates to our wishes for this project. To date, 44 letters of support have been presented. I cannot imagine any other redevelopment group that would have been so willing to listen to us and then make changes to accommodate our wishes. As have the shrine partners. Therefore, my wife Sandy and I wholeheartedly support this over this overall plan for our neighborhood. Thank all of you. For the effort you put forth not only tonight, but every Monday night and throughout the week. And thank you for your vote of support for this project. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shrimp. Next is Jeff Seaman. Mr. President, members of council, I'm Jeff Seaman. I'm legal counsel to the developer applicant. And I'm here for questions only. Thank you. And our last speaker, Sandy Schramm. No. All right. We had 21 speakers. All right. That concludes our speakers, this time for questions from members of council. Councilman Brooks? Yeah. Hey, Mike. Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to. Is Steve Charles still in here? I think you're one of the only speakers that didn't get you. Probably want to bring your notes. Because I want you to read that last. Page as you didn't get a chance to read. You're one of the only speakers. Didn't get a chance to finish up, I think. So I just wanted to hear your last testimony. Did you? I'm sorry. You wanted me to read the last email. Yeah, whatever. You didn't finish reading that picture. I think where we left off was a. Design guideline, so we got down to the shrine preservation. I think the preservation of the shrine. So indeed we have preservation language in this part which will ensure the historic shrine building is repurposed and usable for residential purposes, while at the same time preserving and restoring the unique and ornamental portions of the building original since 1930 and as bill drawings which are included in the piece. This flexible language affords us or allows us to enhance and improve the building to ensure that the Shrine Long remains an architectural icon of northwest Denver. Charles Boyer reports that the letter was proffered earlier this evening so for us was not able to be with us today. But we believe this reflects the changes needed to ensure the best use of the infill parcel which will allow us to repurpose the Shrine Temple for the next 100 plus years while at the same time improving and blending the property with the existing homes and neighborhood. There is no question that the restrictions in the property will ensure the redevelopment fits the context of the existing neighborhood. We remain committed to working and communicating with our neighbors as this process continues forward in the site plan review process on behalf of the African of Shrine Preservation Partners and our Coalition to the Eligible Shrine Association, we thank you for your consideration and urge your support for this rezoning. Thank you. Was Councilmember. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Councilwoman. Ortega. Thank you. I have several questions. And so I know there are other people that do. So let me try to just plow through them. First of all, I want to thank everybody for your patience in sitting through the previous meetings and for being here tonight so we can hear all perspectives on this issue. My first question, I believe, would probably be best directed to Tina Axelrod. So why, Tina, if you can tell me, why does this application have two separate sub areas, B and C? It actually has three. No, I know. But on that side of. I understand that. But why are those two two separate as opposed to one zone lot, for example. Two. I mean, this is a PDF. It's different than, you know, the traditional form based zoning that we now have. Really to align those different portions of the of the block with a standard zone district that aligned better with the with the proposed use primarily. There was a distinction between the two sub areas between wanting and allowing just single family in Sudbury to be versus allowing single family and duplex in Sudbury, SC So it's easier just to draw a line, create a sub area and make that distinction in use between the two primarily. Okay. My other question for you is about the the the traffic issue. The one road in there is a project similar to this. And this is the old mail well envelope company down by Cornerback Park. I believe that project had the zoning so it didn't come before this body to be able to be to allow the kind of density that exists there. Do you know how many units are on that particular development? I do not. Come to one. Monteiro, I know this is your district. Do you know how many are on that site? You think there's over 400? Okay. And that's one road in and out of that site. Okay. I was just trying to sort of understand that issue of traffic flow, if you will, on the land to the west of the site. Is. Wonder the the drawings that have been presented to CPD does that is that where parking for the eligible building is supposed to be? Where were they supposed to park that building. Under a future development or redevelopment? Under the redevelopment efforts being. Whatever gets developed and sub area A, the western portion of the PD has. To park it. So has to park itself within sub area according to the minimum parking requirements of the Denver zoning code. And the primary location to do that is on the West Side, correct? That's where the land is. If it could be if they were to do just surface parking. Yes. I understand there's capacity actually inside the shrine building to fit some structured parking as well. But that will be up to whatever specific development proposal we get. Generally got to park it to the minimum and it's got to be within the boundary, a sub area. Okay. So one of the challenges I'm having having been around when we did lots of different pwds is that we would normally this body would normally see a greater level of detail with a PUD application. Which is under the former Chapter 59. That's true. Right. And and so, I mean, I'm I'm understanding some of the uneasiness that some of the residents have with the lack of specificity of knowing exactly what's where. So one of the questions I have is how many units are going to be and how many units will be on sub area be and how many will be on on C? Can you we can theoretically answer that question. The easiest answers are in Sudbury, A, B and C, because given the proposed paddy zoning. Members. Sub Area B because of the minimum zone. Lot size of 6000 square feet generally. Okay. You could you could fit you could only get six zone lots. Maximum in sub area be single family is allowed so you can get six single family homes. You could also do for a separate dwelling unit. So in theory you can do up to a maximum of 12 or ten. Yeah, I can add six plus four equals ten in sub area B, that would be the maximum theoretical allowed. In Sudbury, AC, you also have a minimum 5500 square foot zone lot. You can get a maximum of above a five zone lots with the duplex use allowed. That's a theoretical maximum of ten units. So just in Siberia, B and C talking theoretically, if you're to max out your zoning entitlement, you could add six plus ten primary units plus four accessory dwelling units. So then that assumes the balance of that goes into. A then the balance, if you were to max out A and B leaves you with 58 units to be built in A, now there's nothing in the PDA that says you shall max out B and C, but theoretically, that's one 1 to 1 scenario. Councilman. I'll yield to others who have questions and then if you can just put me in the queue to turn back. Certainly. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. I have two questions. I'm going to start with Tina. First is, you know, there's a lot of concern about there not being enough design guidelines. But I wanted to just check with you. You said something very interesting during your presentation that there was a requirement for pitched roofs. Yes. How many zone districts or pads are you aware of where we require pitched roofs? I can certainly answer. And in regard to the standard zone districts of similar residential none. So that is a design standard unique that was added to this particular pad just for sub area B for those houses to be built on the zone. Lots closest to the existing 13 or 14 houses on that block. Got it. Another question that I heard was that there's nothing in the Pudi that requires any pedestrian access or infrastructure that you could have a super block of just structures and concrete. Can you speak to that? Yes, I can. We have site development standards that are found in the Denver zoning code as well as public works. Minimum standards for private access drives. And they would come into play. So definitely there will be sidewalks on West 50th as it gets improved through this project. So from Utica into sub area A that will be local street would sidewalks on at least the northern side that's under the that half of the public right of way is within the control of this development. There will be a private access drive to get into the interior or sub area a you need to have something there . It's not going to be a local street. But, you know, at a very conceptual level, public works and fire have looked at this and have said, yes, we'll need essentially a loop road to create a you to get through an around the existing building into the if you're going to put houses right up against the golf course , we need to be able to reach them. And that that would be a 20 foot wide driveway, paved travel way, plus a five foot attached walkway. There are also standards in the Denver zoning code for providing pedestrian connections through the site, particularly from Vrain and Utica. We have pedestrian entry requirements for all the residential buildings. That requires essentially a front door facing West 50th and rain and internally doors facing the private drive. Now, I think, to be fair, there's no maximum building coverage in some area like you would see in a single unit zone development on a single lot. Typically, there's a 37 and a half maximum building coverage on a 50 by 125 foot lot or a 6000 square foot lot. We don't have that in the Rowe home zone districts. So theoretically, yeah, you can build a lot of building, but by virtue of requiring the roads, the walkways, the utilities, there is a minimum spacing between buildings not in the zoning code but in the building code. That's generally a minimum of ten feet between buildings. You can't. Cover 100% of Sudbury, a land that you see today with building. Can it be a lot of hard surfaces while between building walkways, a private drive? Yes, but you're surrounded on three sides by green and open space. And everyone. Not every maybe not every unit will have direct access, but many of them will be looped around and accessing through their back door, front door, visually and around the edge. Mark Excellent. And then I have just one more question, Mr. President, with your forbearance. All right. So I heard the question about not requiring any preservation. And, you know, I went to the pub. So I want to just read to you a couple of the things that I see in the pub and make sure that I'm reading them correctly. So I'm in section 4.1.1, which is page six of 29 for council members. So subsection one says the exterior shall be retained. Subsection two says existing exterior design features and elements original shall be preserved and maintained. Subsection four says. Alterations shall not result in the voluntary demolition of the structure or cause damage or alterations other than those allowed. And there are some sections where things are allowed, such as removal of things that were added to the building later in time, you know, things like that. So I just I'm confused. So to me, when I read those three statements, it seems very clear that the language shall, shall be retained, shall be preserved, shall not remove, shall not demolish. So are you aware of any limitations to this language that I'm missing? Is there another section of the document that somehow says, no, not really. I mean, what what do you think that concern is coming from? I agree with your read of the PD that there is an an absolute requirement that the building be preserved and maintain. Now, it doesn't require and nowhere in our zoning does it require an owner or developer to take proactive action to rehabilitate it and reuse it. We don't require that in any of our zoning. We don't even require that in our landmark ordinance. The landmark ordinance has similar language you must preserve and maintain in good repair, not essentially let it fall into what's the word neglect and or let it deteriorate. Similar kind of bar out. Even though we're not landmarking the structure through the zoning, we're creating a minimum standard of minimum preservation. And so I don't. There's nothing else in the party that would take away from what you read. And yet and yes, there is nothing that proactively requires somebody to do something with this building. Once you start in, then everything comes into play in the zoning as to what's the ladder and not allow as to exterior alterations. They have a lot more freedom to do things inside. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. Those are my question. Thank you, Councilwoman. Next, Councilwoman Shephard. Well, thank you. Council president. So my first question was actually the one that councilman can each just asked and had answered. So that one's out of the way. The second thing is, I really want to go back to this discussion of areas of stability, committed areas versus areas of reinvestment. And I've learned a lot more about this during the discussion of this particular rezoning. So, Tina, if you could just go over once again the area like how an area of reinvestment is different than a committed area in an area of stability. Can I run and get my copy of Blueprint Denver? Please do. Oh, shit. Okay. I'm sure you all have this under your chairs, right? Okay. So, blueprint ever adopted land use plan? Now you can see I use it like other doctors. There's a number of areas where area stability as described generally. I'm I'm saying to you from chapter seven, which is called Areas of stability in areas of change. A lot of what Blueprint really focuses on and is what happens in areas of change. Granted, you know, in the overall scheme of the plan, there's there's a lot less detail perhaps about areas of stability, but there's still a robust discussion about areas of stability versus areas of change. Again, Blueprint says areas of stability is includes the vast majority of Denver, primarily the stable residential neighborhoods and their associated commercial areas where limited change is expected during the next 20 years. Right from Blueprint. The goal for the areas of stability is to identify and maintain the character of an area while accommodating some new development and redevelopment. And then there's a section on page 122 that talks about the types of areas of stability. That's what the heading is called. And it says While residents of many parts of Denver want to maintain the character of their neighborhoods, these predominantly residential areas do not have all similar characteristics. The areas of stability can be thought of as belonging predominantly to one of the following two categories committed areas and reinvestment areas. So committed areas are stable neighborhoods that may benefit from the stabilizing effects of minor infill development rather than large scale major redevelopment. For example, reinvestment in the Washington Park neighborhood is not necessary to improve its character. Tools appropriate for this neighborhood seek primarily to maintain present character and to motivate modest redevelopment of selected areas such as commercial corridors or neighborhood centers. Infrastructure, which is generally adequate, needs to be maintained. That's the general description of committed areas. They still face many different challenges. These committed areas, for example, some neighborhoods have primarily concerned about the transitions or lack of transitions between commercial and residential areas. Some neighborhoods are focused on traffic issues. Other neighborhoods are more concerned about replacement housing that has a design incompatible with the rest of the neighborhood. The challenge in these latter neighborhoods is to preserve character without preventing residents from upgrading their homes to meet contemporary standards. That's the end of the description of committed areas and Blueprint Denver on page 122. Then it goes into a description of reinvestment areas, reinvestment areas or neighborhoods with a character that is desirable to maintain, but that would benefit from reinvestment through modest infill and redevelopment or major projects in a small area. These areas would encourage investment, but in a more limited and targeted way than in areas of change. Residents in these areas face a variety of challenges and opportunities. Examples of challenges include concern about deteriorated and poorly maintained housing stock, inappropriate land uses, or inadequate buffering between uses, lack of services, lack of curbs and gutters and other infrastructure and maintaining affordable housing. Opportunities for improvement in reinvestment areas can also vary widely. Examples include redeeming vacant land for a neighborhood park or redevelopment. Redeveloping underutilized land to provide needed services. Blueprint Denver, however, does not identify specifically committed areas or reinvestment areas. Tools are provided in this plan for both approaches. The appropriate tools for each neighborhood can be selected to deal with a single issue or multiple issues through a small planning process, for example. In fact, many neighborhoods contain a mix of these types of committed and reinvestment areas and will not cleanly fit into the into either of these approaches. That's my reading to you. Not mapped. It's not map. No. It's something that is determined. How like. Ideally. Yeah. E a for a planning process. Through a site like. For example, through a small area plan. So you've seen a number of small area plans come before you in the last few months. And those are essentially taking a closer look from the Blueprint 30,000 level of areas that change their ability to start breaking down into smaller, more to the ground level of where change should occur and what that change should look like even within an area stability. Here, we're presented with an application for a change in zoning to a small area, five and a quarter acres within a larger neighborhood, Regis or Regis, Berkeley. And being asked to consider whether reinvestment of the type enabled by this zoning is appropriate. Okay. Thank you for that very detailed response. Be good counsel. Thank you. All right. Next, we have Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. I had a question for each side. First of all, was it Mr. Sibley who read the letter from Mr. Wooley? Who was that? Yes. Is as Mr. Sibley still here? Yeah. If you could come to the microphone. I have two questions on this issue. First, I'm a little confused about how Mr. Wooley fits into all this. Is he going to be the developer? Mr. Wally has helped us and guided us in this process, and he may or may not be the developer of the developer of the shrine itself. Okay, then I do have a second question. Has there ever been discussion of any type with any suggestion of ways to access public money for this development? No, we have not. Thank you. And is Mr. Ramirez still here? No, no, no. Then I am going to just pose this question to the people who were who were in opposition, because it was very curious to me, although people can claim this all the time, I really wanted to know what the rationale was in Mr. Ramirez comment about his comment that he felt that this period could be illegal. And I wanted a legal explanation of why he thought it would be illegal. Is there anyone who could speak for him in his rationale? Hmm. And let's move on. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Rob. Councilman Brown tried to chime in, but his name didn't pop up as okay if I put him in. I'm happy to yield. Go ahead, Councilman Brown. I'm in trouble now, Bill. Couple of questions on the your is a reminder to my colleagues Bill Schwartz was the first speaker tonight. How long was this property? How long was it put on the market? And was it listed with a realtor? How was it sold is what I'm getting at. It never hit the it never hit the market. We had three answer unsolicited offers within a matter of two weeks. And it was, you know, for the two by four to the forehead that said, hey, there are people interested in this property. And we evaluated all three offers and chose who we chose for the reasons. So the word got out, obviously. Absolutely. It's a it's an iconic property. So just as soon as they heard the shrines for sale, we I fielded a number of calls from realtor since then. Commercial realtors. What is the stacks tax status that you were five or would three see? We're not a5a1 seat three. We're what we are a51c ten domestic fraternal corporation. However, the building is held by a5a1 seat two, which is a property holding company for a domestic fraternal corporation. All right, let's get right to it. Are you paying property taxes? No. We have not paid property taxes since we bought the property in 1924. So we can talk about change and that will be a change. That will be a very large change. We welcome that change in terms of taxes, I can assure you. What happens if this fails tonight? What are the the plans of your organization? The plan is to scramble like mad. We have we've scrambled for the past three years. We've had additional events held at our facility over the past three years to attempt to supplement. We have failed miserably at that. We're a fraternity that operates a philanthropy. We're not event managers and we're not facility managers. And it's very sad to say, but we've lost about $300,000 over three years trying to operate this facility and trying to maintain it. It's just not working anymore. We just financially cannot continue to bleed that kind of money. And finally, of the three prospective buyers, why this outfit? The first one came to us and he had a very vague plan and he made actually a higher offer with a 30 day cash close. And he said we asked him what he wanted to do with it and he said, I think I'm going to live in it. And to us, we've been very good stewards of our properties in the past there at 18th and Sherman, which is still a is known as the eligible mosque. That was our first building. And now this property, we've been very good stewards of our property and we did not want to dump the neighbors with a person that we didn't understand their own plan. We didn't know what their intentions were. We didn't want to just take the money and run. We've been invested in this neighborhood since 1924. So that, combined with the connection of the three folks that we chose, are all Denver natives. One, they've graduated from high school here. They've spent a lot of time here, not to mention the connection. One of them, his uncle, was the president of our organization in 1908. And the other two, they have family members and fathers who were Shriners. And so that personal connection that we have, shrine family, what we would consider shrine family involved in the and the redevelopment of our building gave us a warm enough feeling that we chose to go with them rather than more money. Interesting. Do you guys have a secret handshake, Ernie? We might have a great answer for the walls of the old city hall to talk, huh? Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman Brown. Next is Councilwoman Rob Bell. Typically, this is going to be very boring after Councilman Brown's questions. This is really basic. But I want to understand some Area B and I don't know Tina or Steve or Glen who wants to answer this. But some area B, you got that alley running east. West is the one right next to the homes. How do you access a rear garage or do those houses that I assume face the street have curb cuts? The PD and sub area B does the zoning does require a vehicle access from the rear of the zone lot. So it's either got to be from a public alley or not not the rear. I'm sorry. Let me try to strike that. Let me answer. The zoning requires for sub area B that vehicle access be taken from either a public alley or a private access drive, and it cannot be directly from Raine or Utica. So there there might also be a North-South drive. Exactly. Yeah. That dead ends. It'll be a private driveway, essentially. That's what the zoning backs you into. And so the reason I ask is so all of the those are the single family lots. Correct. All of those will face either rain or Utica. Correct. Okay. I didn't realize there was that much width there, but. Okay, I got that. Then I wanted to go back to the design guidelines. And Juliette, did Davis partnership write the design guidelines? They did not. Could you come to the podium, please? Because I know, at least with one of the developers at ninth and Colorado Davis was working on the way we worked on that was we were. Not hired to work on the design guidelines for this project. The three partners. Worked up with that on those guidelines. And and so Tina, why aren't these design guidelines in the PUD? As Robin said, the pitched roofs, there are things that address design in the PWD, but these particular design guidelines. Well, typically, as as council members might be aware, we don't get to the level of detail of architectural style which we understand and qual and minimum quality materials for residential buildings. In our zoning, we haven't treaded into that territory. And so it felt more like the domain of design guidelines. And you know, in those design guidelines typically are done outside the zoning code. Sometimes we do for large reinvestment or redevelopment areas. You know, draft city required design standards or guidelines. But that's typically because there's guidance specifically in a plan or guiding document like a GDP or a small area plan to get us to design guidelines. We didn't really have that call here for something above and beyond what the zoning would require in terms of building form and massing and scaling beyond what we took. We've put in the in the pad so we didn't feel a need for city adopted design standards. I appreciate the difficulty. If you go back to the old style PD pre new Denver zoning code, sometimes we did write materials in it and then there still was such a broad range. We got something called Don't in Colorado, but I'm commenting, I'm just trying to I had another question along that line. Could someone from the project talk to me about the design guides guidelines and give me some specific because we don't have a copy of them here. I hear they're to be recorded after the transaction. And I, I really I heard some comments that weren't positive about them. So I'm curious. Well, what's in them that's. Are we we. Crafted design guidelines to be relatively simple and straightforward. Ms.. Kettering commented on those, and she was correct in saying that we inserted her comment to our design guidelines verbatim into those design guidelines. We have suggested that we, prior to putting those in place, will continue to work on those. I would agree with the comment that while they're not perfect, they're our best effort to get something done that made sense to us and preserves the. Character of the neighborhood by prescribing materials and building forms and the like. That makes sense. But in looking at, for instance, the Denver Tech Center guidelines, which go close to 100 pages, I think we did not become that prescriptive. Yes, some landmark neighborhoods have guidelines, residential landmark areas, and I would hope there'd be a little bit like that trying to match materials to what's there. But while I have you there, Glenn, in terms of working with Charlestown Company on the restoration renovation of the Shrine, have have you discussed grants from the Historical Foundation? Historic tax credits, both of which would require some level of designation. We have discussed that we haven't made any applications as we don't own the property yet. And does that still remain a possibility? Absolutely. Charlie has given us good guidance on that, that that is possible. We have not assumed that that would occur because we can't really make that assumption going in. But we we're going to explore those opportunities thoroughly. Okay. And then, Mr. President, if I could just continue, because it sort of addresses things I've read or that were said tonight. This is for Tina. Thank you. Oh, Mr. Sibley. One of the letters I read just today talked about why do we why are we using the Urban Rowhouse District as a model in Area A? I should have looked this up before I came. Do we have an Edge Rowhouse District? You know, I think of the townhomes along Mayfair Park, which is in sort of an edge area. We have an edge town townhouse zone district. Do we have an edge? I'm looking at a fellow colleague because I can't I don't have the book and I can't remember. Is there an edge row home? No. An edge has a townhouse. Different townhouse. The townhouse building for is different from the townhouse was more suburban form it. It tends to allow garage facing primary facade, you know garage doors on the primary street facing facade. And that's probably the key distinguishing factor. It still requires an individual entry to each unit. So it is attached to single family attached. But that's the primary difference is that's a little shorter. That's helpful. And I'll address that in my comments. And then finally, you limited the you RH to two units in Area A, but is Garden Court still a form allowed and how can a garden court have only two units? You can still have a garden court. It would just be it would likely be surrounded by more than two duplex structures, if you can imagine, you know, maybe you would have had a row of six units in a row, six units facing a court if you broke up. I see two, two to 2 to 2. You can still do a garden court. Okay. I know those are all technical, but it really gets to how the technical things address that concerns. So thanks. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Robb. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I was also curious about the Urban Rowhouse Zone District and how that differed in some areas. And I'm glad I'm glad that you asked that question. Councilman Robb. One of the questions, and I think I may have missed it in your comments and this is from Bill from the Shriners. I'm curious, the gentleman talked about the Latinas in there dancing and having a good I've spent a lot of time community events. You had a lot of local artists come from all over the place doing things like that. I know it gets packed at times and there's a lot of traffic in the neighborhood. And then you do have a lot of you know, sometimes it's a small event, sometimes a huge event. And I've been there for both. When how often do you have those had those big events and how many cars show up estimated that are parked either on the property in the lot or even in an adjacent street? I can tell you that over the past year we had approximately seven events that went over 600 people. And if you take a look at what our building is actually approved by the fire marshal for its 1485 people. However, our current PD 273 only requires 325 spots. So you do the math real quick. 1485 people allowed in the building, 300 spots for cars to park. So the rest of the cars spill out into rain. Utica, 50th across Tennyson. We've actually had people as far away as about a half mile last year, aka mechanical held of a company conference there. And every single one of their people, I think, drives a company owned vehicle. And we had about 800 of their employees there. And so we had about 675 cars everywhere, and they walked from the neighborhood and they're very intrusive when we do have large events. Okay. And so and I'm trying to figure out how many cars are we planning for? And me and I don't know if this is a question for Tina. And I think you said something earlier. I didn't get to write it down partly because I was I was trying to figure out where you have your little hat with your fares man and the little go cart. I don't know where that is, but I was trying to figure out where you put that so I can cruise it around while you were in here. But. Couldn't find it. However, I do have a question, Neal. Thank you. I do have a question as to how many how many parking spaces are we looking at with this particular zone district? How many would the capacity be? The minimum parking requirements, default to the standard zone district requirements. So for multi-unit dwellings, for example, in the existing building, if those were to be carved up into individual dwelling units, multifamily dwelling units in a urban row, home zoned district, anyone have their zoning code with them by chance? I don't know why. Kyle Dalton from our our department does. A black binder. Wow. I have the plan. He has the code. We make a good team. I mean, you don't have to be exact, but just an estimate, I to know what I'm trying to figure out. Yeah. Kind of like capacity or something similar. And if it's actually. It's it's not going to be as many as 325 I don't think. But it won't be 600 either, right? No, you only you need one. Thank you. A minimum of one parking space per dwelling unit for the multifamily. You need one parking space for each of the duplex units in a structure. If you do purely single family development, the code and all zoned districts, including the PWD, it doesn't have a minimum parking requirement. But as you know, most market built single family homes provide at least one or two spaces. Pointed at me. Okay. And the half would probably go for the go kart. So there we have it. Anyway, thank you very much. I really appreciate that. So I really appreciate that. And Bill, thank you for answering that question as well, too. Thank you, Tina. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman, no data. Okay. So I just have to ask questions that were not asked. So the first one would be for Tina. So since the design process is separate from the zoning, can you explain the process and the inclusion of neighborhood input into that process with. Your department. Sure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're referring to the site development plan review process that would follow the zoning entitlement. And when a specific. Esthetic to the design guidelines and where the neighborhood wants some input into the design guidelines, which, you know, I heard some of those got included in the EPD application, but there it sounds like that was a recommendation from one person, but it didn't really have broad input from the neighborhood. And because it is a separate process, I want to know. Okay, I'm going to have to defer to the applicants to respond because they're not part of the zoning. So wouldn't be picked up in any subsequent site development plan review or zoning review by the city, any design guidelines that are attached as covenants to the land and administered and enforced by nature. We are outside the city process, so I would have to defer to them to suggest what the vehicle and what that review process would look like. So who wants to take that one? Mr. SEMA Yes, thank you. Councilwoman Ortega. The design guidelines that have been developed to date are posted on the website for the project. Our commitment to the neighborhood know where to access that if they want to submit. I believe so and I'll give it to you. It's W WW Shrine Preservation Partners AECOM. Cleverly enough, those design guidelines were developed, we thought, in concert with at least some of the neighbors. I think just in the last week and tonight, we've heard for the first time that they aren't considered to be sufficient. I think I can speak on behalf of my client, the developer, that we will continue to work on those much more important and work on those with the neighborhood. Much more important, though, our commitment to the planning commission, planning board, to you folks, to Councilwoman Shepherd and others has been that when the property is conveyed from the Shriners to the developer, we will restrict the deed to require that those design guidelines be enforced no matter who does the vertical construction. So if we do the vertical construction or we sell individual lots, those design guidelines will apply and they'll be enforced by either a nature way that's established or a metro district that way. Or Metro District will likely also have a design review committee, which will include at least one neighbor, and that will give the neighborhood yet another opportunity to have some input on what that vertical development looks like in the end. So I'm talking about the front end though, and I listen pretty carefully to all of the input and I heard that there is a concern that. There really hasn't been. And I know you all have had a pretty lengthy process of talking with the neighborhood, but I heard some concerns about not really being able to weigh in on the design guidelines. It sounds like most of the discussion was more around density and preserving the building and you know, all of that stuff. So, so that's where I was going. And I thought I had heard Tino mention that there was a separate process with the city. So that's part of why I'm asking this question about where is there the opportunity for additional neighborhood input into the design so that you all reach that you know, that comfort level with one another on on where this goes with the design. There is no formal process for that. But I can speak, I believe, on behalf of the development group and commit that we will continue to work with the neighbors on those design guidelines. Again, it comes as some surprise to me that there's this much consternation about those we did, we thought, develop those in concert with neighbors who were interested in participating. I've seen a number of letters in the last week that suggest perhaps we didn't include enough people. You're right. We did spend a lot of time on density and other matters, but I'll be happy to commit my developer client here to continuing to work with the neighborhood to refine those design guidelines so that they meet everybody's satisfaction. Okay. And I have one last question. And, Mr. Sibley, are you a representative of the development team? Okay. Would you mind coming to the microphone, please? I don't recall hearing anything about what the mix was of the housing units in terms of how many are proposed to be sales versus how many would be rental. Are they all proposed to be for sale units? Can you speak to that? All of the units that will be built in new construction are planned to be for sale units. Okay. So units in the shrine, which would be up to 19 units, I think we have in there to 20, would be the maximum in the shrine. We haven't made a determination on whether those will be for rent or for sale. So 19 to 20 units only would be in. Am I hearing you say 19 to 24 sale units would be in the shrine and then the remainder would be rental? Now we understand what that means because. Units in the shrine. Because when I asked about numbers earlier, I heard that we probably are looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 20 on site A and B, I'm sorry, say B and C and then on A, which is the building we're looking at, probably more like 58 units in the building, unless I understood. That 58 units on the site in total in segment eight. So am I hearing you say that Segment A can have development on the site in addition to what will be in the building? Yes. Okay. That wasn't really clear during the presentation to me earlier. So that's why I'm asking these questions. So given that you're looking at. The majority of these units being for sale. You know, we have an inclusionary housing ordinance that covers for sale units. Yes. So can you speak to what that commitment is to the affordable units? Well, our our current plan was to and our current forma suggests that we will opt out and pay the opt out fee for that. We are meeting later this week, although I saw an email that may have changed that meeting with Paul Washington and his group at the Economic Development Officer, the mayor. And we are going to discuss how we might approach that either in the opt out or by placing units on the side. So it's not clear whether you're going to do them on site or I heard you say your preference would be to do the opt out. Well, our current pro forma suggests will opt out. That's nothing to do. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I have no further questions. Thank you. Can you guys want to take a capsule in Rob's back up. Thank you, Mr. President. One final round of questions. I was looking at the staff report because a lot of the communication I received is refutes the staff report. And as you go through the areas of stability piece that Councilwoman Shepherd was asking about, you point out the blueprint. Denver in this is page 17 of the staff report for council tonight. Blueprint Denver provides guiding principles, respect value development patterns, relationship of building to street location a garage driveway got that respect valid attributes of an area, existing buildings, those adding distinctive character. I get that. Expand transportation choices in the following one Minimize traffic impacts on neighborhood streets, including less cut through traffic. After you go through that, just a couple more bullets. I won't read it. Says it. CPD Staff Finds the proposed rezoning furthers the above goals. Can you address the thinking on the transportation piece? Those two bullets about expand transportation choice in minimize traffic impacts. Okay after preface response to your councilwoman Robb with there's only so much that zoning can do to implement our plans. Right. That's fair. I, I thought about that as a possible answer. Okay. To the extent that zoning has jurisdiction and and influence on on implementing the principles that you cited from Blueprint Denver as to future land use and development, you know, expand transportation choices, including access to transit, I would have to say, admittedly, this proposed zoning in its place doesn't do too much to expand the actual choice of transportation. The choice of transportation is there. Is there. And it's not going to change by virtue of this development. There is there is transit. There is a bus line of 50 that which stops at 50th. And Tennyson is the 52 line. It's not high frequency service, but it's regular service. And it does bring folks from the far reaches of northwest Denver and Adams County into downtown and beyond. You know, the addition of people at the shrine property, you know, would have the choice of using transit to come downtown. Certainly busses there doesn't do much to expand the choice. You know, if you're reading it that way, minimize. You want to talk about the other bullet or. Yes. Minimize traffic impacts on neighborhood streets, including less cut through traffic. Well, here there's there's really one way and one way out, which is West 50th. There are some existing homes there that will, you know, will be on 50th after this development comes. And it's not creating cut through traffic. It's using 50th as a local street to get to to the collector Tennyson. It doesn't encourage cut through on rain or Utica. There's going to be very little directional traffic to the north because you can't get anywhere. So unless you're going to a home that already exists on rain or Utica, by virtue of this development, you're not going to create any incentives to cut through the existing neighborhood. Everyone's going to use 50th to get to Tennyson, to get to the rest of the wherever you're traveling to. And we have found that there is sufficient capacity on 50th once it improved with even the existing stop sign there to handle the addition of. Units, 50th is who's going to improve 50th the city. The developer. The developer as a yeah. As mitigating the impacts of additional density on that site. And that will be required during the. Site development. Plan. Got it. Okay. All right. So what I think I'm hearing you say, just let me repeat it back is Blueprint Rec provides those principles. And as much as land use can address them, their address. That's what the CPD statement below is. Correct? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Rob. All right. Many more questions on 1075. Seeing none, public areas not closed and time for comments. Councilwoman Sheppard. Thank you, Mr. President. I really, really want to thank everyone for turning out tonight. I feel that we have had an extremely thorough, full and fair discussion of all of the issues that are relevant to this site. Thank you to the neighbors. Thank you to the Shriners. And thank you, Shriners, for your continued philanthropic work, by the way. And thank you also to the development team for participating in this piece. I, I want to I want to start by saying this is probably the most unique rezoning application I have certainly considered since I've been on council. This is an extremely unique area, and if you haven't had a chance to go see it in person, I highly recommend that you do have to add it at least three times, most recently this late this past week. I have walked every part of this property. I have been all through this building. I have looked at the beautiful ballroom floors, the beautiful fixtures in the ballroom and throughout the building, discussed some of the I mean, it's there's so many unique design features and elements to this building. It is truly one of the most interesting historic assets in all of northwest Denver. Councilman Brown, I don't know about the secret handshakes. We didn't discuss that. But I will tell you, if you don't go through this building with a guide, you will certainly get lost in all of the passageways. Is a very labyrinthine building and up. Councilman Lopez, I didn't see any of the little mini mini carts, but there is a whole wall of phases going back 100 years. And I bet if you ask nicely, they might let you try. Went on. Anyway, colleagues, if you haven't had a chance to read the history of the site that's included with our our packet materials, you really should because it's really fascinating reading. So I'm I am going to support this rezoning tonight and let me tell you why. Thank you, Ms.. Axelrod, for your very thorough presentation on Blueprint Denver and and where and how this piece fits in. I think some of the really salient points to me is our goal to preserve really unique heritage sites that speak to our history. First and foremost, I believe that we need to while we're doing that, though, to preserve flexibility, to address changing demographics and lifestyle, as also considered in that document document we have discussed tonight the opportunity for a diverse mix of housing opportunities at this site, including townhomes, single families, duplex, potentially condos and or apartments in the main shrine building. We also talked about the need to negative to to decrease negative visual impact. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit later. Thank you so much for all the news to all the neighbors who have worked so diligently on this project and given so much feedback due to directly due to your efforts, the shrine has been returned. The redevelopment has been reduced from 90 units to now a hard cap in this part of 78 units. No expansion of the current shrine building will be allowed per this PD. And only single family and duplex forms on areas. B and C and then the area west of the shrine itself. Regarding the issue of design guidelines, could they be stronger? Yes, I think they could. And I would highly, highly encourage the development team to continue working with our neighbors around that issue. But I will call your attention to a fair number of design guides that are currently enshrined. No pun intended in this pod application, or maybe pun intended those. I will call out and I may forget some are regarding additional setbacks, reductions in height and massing in order to sculpt the edges of some of these sub areas. Allow for more open space. Allow for views. A very specific language about fence and wall design and screening of garages. Also, some areas, a requirement for a pitched roof, which, as Councilman Ken each pointed out, is, I believe, no in no other zoning designation across this entire city, and then additional incentives for pitched roofs and some of some of the other areas. I want to acknowledge some of the comments made tonight. Miss Harris, your comments about the process and actually Mr. Laws as well. You know, we had a meeting about this, I think it was November and discussed this in detail. I will tell you that I have met and discussed this with the chair of the Community Planning and Development, Brad Buchanan, no less than three times. And I've had very serious discussions, and I know this has provoked many internal discussions about how we can improve our processes around this. And there is the full commitment, both from myself and from CPD, to make some changes to address some of your very specific concerns. I think that the part of Ms.. Axelrod's presentation that I found to be most relevant is this discussion of. Areas of stability, committed areas versus areas for reinvestment. I think it's very apropos for this site. We've talked a lot about the single family home character of this area. But the other thing that we need to acknowledge is that there is a huge historic building also right in the middle of this neighborhood that contributes to the character of this neighborhood. And one thing that we didn't bring up, in addition to the golf course that surrounds the peninsula, there's a clubhouse. It's very active during parts of the year. So there's a lot going on in this neighborhood in addition to the single family homes that already exist. There is the episodic use of the shrine as an event center that often brings a lot of traffic, which, as Mr. Lovely pointed out, is really not so nice as those traffic lights leave his house and continue or leave the area and continually shine into his house. I really thought that what Tina said in relation to the areas of reinvestment was important. Talking about minimizing inappropriate uses. Redeeming vacant land and potentially considering major projects in small areas. If this area is primarily single family use. And a neighborhood. I would argue that a large events center is not really an appropriate use for this site. And I would further argue that considering this as some sort of potential commercial use is also inappropriate. I would argue that going to a residential format would actually be a better use of the land, more consistent with neighborhood context than the current commercial use which is out of place. So I think that's an important point. One other thing I would like to say is that. The shrine itself. It's an amazing building. I talked about it. The lady is aging and not so gracefully. Mr. Schwartz, I heard a little bit of the pain in your voice about wishing that your building built approximately the same time as this one was in better shape. I've been all over that building. There's 50, 60 years of deferred maintenance on it. I hear you when you say you can't afford to keep that building. You've got to get out of there. And I would say in a broader context to all community members in this room, as well as community planning and development in this next go around updates to our planning documents. We've got to have a much broader conversation about these huge legacy institutional uses that exist throughout our city that are becoming obsolete as time goes by. And I'm talking about some of these fraternal organizations, as well as many of our churches that are financially going under, which, unfortunately, in many of our church situations are often zoned for single family uses. But they're on the huge pieces of land. As is this. We have to have broader, deeper, more intelligent discussions in our planning process about what will happen to these types of places as the inevitable happens. I wish we could all still belong, that we all still belong to fraternal organizations. And we all went to church and synagogue more regularly. I bet we'd be a better place, but that's not the case right now anyway. I think one of the most interesting things I heard tonight actually was from Mr. Lovely, and that was the phrase considered urban density. I don't know if you coined that or if you got that from somewhere else. You made it up. Okay. Well, I may I will ask your permission to use it quite a lot from now on going forward. This is not been an easy process. It's been very anguishing for many involved. I have lost a lot of sleep over it. I know a lot of the people in these pews have to. This is going to be potentially this will be a big change in this neighborhood. But this decision is not being made lightly. I hope you can tell that by the quality and the character of this discussion tonight, by the attention of all these folks in this on this dais and by the questions that is answered and I have been asked and discussed. So I really feel that I know it's going to be hard. I know it's going to bring a lot of change. But I think it's the right move at the right time for this place. And once again, Shriner's, thank you for all you've done to hold down the fort in that area. Should this pass tonight? I wish you all the best. I bet your next building will probably be nowhere near as interesting, but it'll be a lot easier to take care of. And I'd like one of those visits anyway. Thank you so much. I know that they're my other colleagues. Probably have things to say as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Shephard. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. My comments will be brief. I I've been paying attention to this particular rezoning. It's been in the Northwest Denver Tribune. It's been written about it. You know, a lot of folks have emailed me about it from one side or the other. And, you know, I'm starting to see this happen in a lot of different neighborhoods where they're becoming absolutely desirable or folks are really wanting to live the lifestyle that a lot of us natives have growing up in in Denver, which is still laid back. Denver's a big city. It's a great city. It's a beautiful city, but it's still local, right? It still acts as a as a small town. Has that feel? Has that community feel? You know, I'm a West Sider. I spent most of my time just at the Mile High Stadium. I marched and rode First Avenue Barnum Federal. But, you know, occasionally I'd be catch me wandering in the north side and catch me wandering around eligible shrines, seeing Roberto Gregory and seeing, I think at one point flocking JIMENEZ And a lot of things, a lot of going to weddings at the eligible shrine, going to see community events , dances, dinners, things like that. That's where the community went to celebrate. And that's the neighborhood that I remember. I remember Elegies. I remember 38. I remember Federal Theater, remember all that, those the things that are the soul of our city. Those are the neighborhoods that are the soul of our city. And it's very delicate. And each time we see something like this come up for a rezoning or you see new plans, and a lot of us feel real touched by that, sometimes we get a little defensive about it. And not to simplify the opposition's argument, because I think you have a great argument to the you know, it's absolutely worthy. I heard it in these chambers and I'm glad folks showed up to do it. But, you know, times are changing. Denver is becoming more populated and as as is becoming more populated. And this isn't a question about affordable housing, but it does impact the affordability of housing availability, housing in our city. Yet for folks who live around it, it could be it's a huge change. It's different and it means more traffic. It means you need to have different folks in the neighborhood. It's a completely almost a different. Kind of lifestyle for the folks that are living there. But understand that as we grow, you have to know that you have to plan. Now, I'd be a little bit afraid if we did this with the old Chapter 22, the old zone districts. I'd be a little nervous about it, but some of the zone districts that we have now and some of the things that folks in planning are looking at are much more fine tuned and allow for more creative development . What I am going to plead, although I'm seeking I'm going to support this rezoning. I'm going to plead to the folks who are potentially, you know, working around the shrine. Keep the shrine original. Keep it as a celebration of the neighborhood of who we are. Keep it for the neighborhood, for Denver. Those are the memories, all those faces that are in there. Right. All those weddings do your best. To keep one of our diamonds. Brilliant. One of our old buildings were old landmarks. I almost wept when I heard that Paris on the plot was going to close and it closed. I got sad when when they move dealerships, even though it's in a good spot. I miss it. This is one of those things that we hold very sacred to our city. And hopefully it's in good hands. If I know any better that you know the back and forth, the little proposed ideas about Charlie Willie stepping in, you know, he did a good job with the loans team theory. He actually, you know, it was sitting empty on East Colfax. And to be quite honest, I had never been there until I went to go see my first show where Los Lobos played there. And it was amazing. And I wondered why the heck I never set foot in that theater before. And so it's one of those. It could be one of those. Venues. It could be something that the neighborhood says, this is who we are and it's what we're proud of in the States. So having said that, I want to make it too long of a speech. I promise I'd have shorter remarks. But there you go. I support it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. I certainly understand why this facility needs to be sold. I understand the maintenance challenges that you have. At the beginning, I was certainly wide open to doing that. The comments of the neighbors, not people who are Shriners, but the neighbors started to sink in. And I will admit that the final answer when I asked a question following the role Mr. Wooley would play and then whether they would be accessing public money in any way. And then 2 seconds later, I got I heard the answer to Councilwoman Robb. Yes. They were going to be looking at tax credits, historic tax credits and such that I got the no answer. She got the answer to my very same question. So I am not feeling comfortable about this period and the way things are being presented and whether they are fully baked at this point. Because it appears to me that we're getting different, different answers. Plus the fact that Councilman Lopez talked about the great example. I remember going three through three variations of having the city taken to the cleaners more and more each time on the Lowenstein project. Not a good experience in my memory, and I don't want to sit here and worry about this one. So I will be voting no tonight. Thank you, Councilwoman Fox. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I was trying to figure out if there was another site anywhere comparable to this in the city. So as we're talking about, you know, looking at something that is I mean, most most of the neighborhoods that are stable neighborhoods, when we talk about development opportunities, they're generally on the edges of the neighborhood. And and this site is very unique. I was asking Councilwoman Robb if if she knew this street that I was trying to think of where one of our former school board members lives. It's sort of on the west end of the Denver Country Club. It's a very unique area. There's a there's a swimming pool down there that just some of the residents I think there are like three or four residents that live in that little area. You drive down a hill to get there if if somebody's ever assembled all those single family homes. That's the only thing I could think of that might be somewhat comparable. That's on the edge of a golf course, but it's surrounded by, you know, single family homes where someone might be able to develop it in in a similar way. And I don't know that we would look at that the same, but be that as it may. The one thing I think is important is to continue to urge the development team to keep the conversation open with the neighborhood about the design standards or guidelines, whatever you want to call them. So that what this looks like in the end is something that's compatible with the neighborhood. Hopefully it looks somewhat similar to the existing building, but I think that dialog, continuing that dialog is an important part of this conversation. You know, we're challenged in this city other than all the land that we have at Green Valley Ranch. And, you know, most of Stapleton is is almost completely built out now. We are a landlocked city, and there are constant pressures that are brought before us with people wanting to develop in the city of Denver. Everybody wants to live in the city and it's becoming so unaffordable, which is part of why I asked about the affordable units. Many of us on this day a struggle to ensure that we are working to find opportunities for affordability within the city so we don't become a city of only those who can afford to live here . And so part of those development pressures that we have are, you know, people wanting to build and looking at opportunities to have housing here. But it's important to also look at ensuring that we have that affordability and and opportunities for all folks in this city to be able to live here. And, you know, we struggle with that. We work on that through through other means. You've heard us talk about, you know, social impact bonds that we have had. Some discussions about and we'll be seeing more of that come forward in terms of the kinds of programs or projects that we're going to support with that. But this particular project is unique because of its proximity to residential single family residential homes. It about a golf course. I'm a little concerned about having parking abutting up to the golf course. But you know, again, that's part of why the design discussions become really important between the neighborhood and the developer. I think there's been a lot of work that's gone into this. I know you've all been working on this for quite some time. I'm comfortable with the discussion in terms of where we have landed on this. I want to thank Councilwoman Sheppard for her efforts in trying to keep the conversation alive between the development team and the neighbors and in working. And I think you need it needs to be acknowledged. I mean, I think lots of times people start here because, you know, you're going to end here. But the fact that there was a lot of movement on this project in terms of where it did start and and where we're at in terms of the number of units that will be on site. Obviously, with any development team and with the financing folks that look at them, they always want to make sure that the parking is part of a project. I know lots of times our zoning code will say one thing on parking, but the financing team says no. If you want to sell them, you've got to have the the the parking units. And so I believe that piece will work itself out. So I will be lending my support to this application tonight as well. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Mr. President. I do want to thank Councilwoman Shepherd for her work, everybody who testified either for or against, including the development team, because at committee, there was a sense, as Tina Axelrod said, that more work needed to be done. And I'm glad to see that more work would be done has been done. As I read through the documents and letters before me and my staff and I went up and drove around the neighborhood to to look at it is so unique. The first time I ever saw the shrine was, I think when Rick Garcia left council and I went to his farewell party and I went point what's in there? Because it was pretty cool. But I think all of this material has been about trying to figure out what the context of this neighborhood is and should be. Is context about number of units? Is it about peaked roofs? Is it about sidewalks? Is it about traffic? Is it about preserving the shrine? Is it about materials? Is it about whether parking by the golf course? And by the way, I think I read that it can't you can't have parking right along the golf course. And when you put that all together and try to figure out what is going to fit in, there is not exactly a perfect answer. The one thing we know, and these are broad general contexts is this is an edge context text. I don't think anybody disagreed with that tonight. An edge context is right between urban and suburban, and it even allows suburban forms and urban forms. I was really glad to hear because I had some question about it based on the letters that I had received. Why we chose Urban Rowhouse in instead of a townhouse form. Because if I lived there, I'd much prefer not having the garage right on the front of the building so that all you saw from the street was the garage. The other thing that has become apparent to me through this discussion is that the PWD zoning is definitely appropriate for this site. That's a case that needed to be made. And Susan Shepard spoke to specific pads or you did, Debbie, about what we used to do. And this also applies to the guidelines. I referred to a very difficult rezoning that thankfully happened before I was on council. But we all face these tough decisions. It's right at ninth and Colorado on the west side of the street. We had local architects. We had pictures. We had specified materials. No one likes this particular development. Even though we had it all laid out. So what assures the quality that we want in this neighborhood? Because it's clearly a quality neighborhood and I would argue it's a quality of the development team. The difference between eyes that I see between the project I'm referencing and the one tonight is we have a local team, not a team out of Texas, not that there are good developers in Texas, but we have a team that understands the context of the area of the area. They may not agree with everyone to the point of every bit of that context, but they understand and they understand what Denver's going through. And then finally, I spent a lot of time thinking about the question that this zoning doesn't require that the shrine be renovated. It's based on the renovation and the zone of the shrine, but it doesn't require it. And I got to thinking exactly what Tina said before I came over. I don't know. One zoning that requires a developer to develop. You know, that's why we have so much going on in Cherry Creek. Lots of those things are zoned seven years ago, so there's no guarantee there. But I definitely believe that it's much more likely the shrine will be renovated if we pass this rezoning tonight rather than if we wait for the great unknown. So I will be supporting it. Thank you, Councilwoman from Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. I will be very brief, which most of the points were covered by my colleagues, particularly Councilwoman Sheppard, who was very thorough in describing all of the ways that this developer has compromised and the benefits of those compromises. I just felt it was important for full disclosure because I live closer to this site than anyone else on this council. I live a half mile exactly south in the Berkley neighborhood. And so this is my neighborhood. And, you know, contrary to something I read or heard about biking, I bike up this hill all the time. I can't describe it as fun and I can't say that I'm always on my bike the entire hill. But but I do, as do many others, I think spend time in this in this vicinity. So and, you know, as I was thinking, you know, Councilwoman Ortega mentioned something. She was trying to think of a similar site and immediately jumped into my head. I am five houses across the street and five houses from the Ilitch development. The significant difference being connectivity right there. You have a complete grid here. You certainly do not. But, you know, in fact, the Ilitch Theater is is not shuttered and boarded up anymore. It's actually got an occupancy permit. And I saw Charlie and the chocolate factory there last summer and many people saw many other films. So it is an active site in and in fact, it took a really long time, but the density around that historic building made it possible for that historic building to be preserved. So so I find that to be very similar to this situation, a much smaller building, but also very high cost and a piece of history. The band show was preserved and there was opposition, you know, from that neighborhood about that density. There's both row home townhome as well as apartments and in that site and it works. You know, it's a place where neighbors begin to integrate and they begin to walk through an experience. Yes, it looks different than the historic homes. There are no pitched roof requirement there. But certainly we have you know, you have I think that's your biggest win, to be honest with you. The pitched roofs, most neighborhoods would really like to get that kind of requirement. So so I say all this to say that, you know, I, I, I experience that kind of edge habitat where I live. I hope that you will come to be a part of that process. I think there was a little semantic disagreement about or not disagreement, but confusion that design guidelines are not formal. But the site plan will get at many of the issues that folks are describing as design. So there is a formal process that will address many of the things folks are concerned about. It just isn't called design guidelines. So, you know that that I think may may be helpful. So I hope folks do stay engaged. And I hope that you will find as much benefit from the combination of historic preservation and new density as, as I have found, being near a very similar development. So with that, I will be supporting this rezoning. And I want to appreciate Councilman Sheppard's leadership in making sure that so many concerns were addressed. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman, can each any other comments on 1075? I mean, right before we do the roll call, I want to tell you, I thank you for your patience. I can't imagine you're going to stick around after this one. But the council does have one more public hearing. So I would just ask that you would be quiet as you were leaving so we can go directly into that last public hearing. So thank you for that. Madam Secretary, roll call. Shepard Sussman. Brooks. Hi. Hi, Fats. No carnage, layman. Hi. Lopez. I monteiro Nevitt. Hi, Ortega. Hi, Rob. Hi, Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary, please call the body and ask the result. To advice one nay. One nay. 1025 has been placed on final consideration and pass. All right. We are moving on to our last public hearing of the night, 1076. Councilwoman Fox, could you please put 1076 on the floor?

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Section 6.16.310 relating to the exercise of dogs upon a designated portion of the beach of the City of Long Beach, read and adopted as read. (District 3)

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Item 23 report from Parks, Recreation and Marine. Item 22 recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code related to the dog exercise area on the beach. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading District three. There's. Let me. Let me. Let's go off the motion real quick. Hold on a second. Okay. Okay. As a catch one price. You want to make the motion? Okay. I'm gonna turn this over to staff just for a brief report. George Chapman. Thank you, mayor council members. This is an area of the dog beach that was expanded recently from 2.9 acres to 4.1 acres. We did have a permit before from the Coastal Commission for this area. This would just update that permit to include the entire area of the 4.9 acres. So it was a recent increase. In the size of the dog area. And so we'll also be putting some delineate in that dog area that some art pieces that we should be installing fairly soon in the dog beach area. Thank you. Councilman Pryce. Q I want to thank the staff. This is a very exciting project for us. We love having a dog beach. Our residents really enjoy having the opportunity to be able to have a space that they can take their dogs to because otherwise they would not be able to have their dogs on the beach. So the fact that we are putting some resource and thought into this particular service for the residents of the city of Long Beach and also visitors is very exciting. I want to thank the Parks Rec and Marine staff for working on this project. I know this is an item that we talk about at our monthly meetings and I'm glad to see that it's moving forward. So thank you. Thank you. And this is also my my dog's favorite place probably in the city is the dog beach. So love it. Any public comment? Please come forward. Very good. You click as it has two items on first of all. I'm dead set. I think it makes absolutely no sense to spend money on art. Work down in an area like that would simply get graffitied over in trash, period. There's no. Oh. What has to do is look at the look at the underside or look at any building along the along the bike path or the underside of the Belmont Pier. And you'll see how destructive it is of graffiti lady. A leading it is on the demarcations, I suppose I suggested to the county meeting. I think that best it. Would not cost that much money to mark it off. But just simply put tube made maybe out of styrofoam and a rubber large fire hydrants. What better for and for marking a dog park period clearly recognizable by the dogs. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And the other public comment saying none. Please cast your vote. Motion carries eight zero 23. Item 23 Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to Declare Ordinance Establishing a Small Business Recruitment, Retention and Growth Pilot Program Read and adopted as read citywide.

A bill for an ordinance approving a Service Plan for the creation of Denver Connection West Metropolitan District. Approves the service plan for the Denver Connection West metropolitan district in Council District 11. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 8-9-16.

DenverCityCouncil_09122016_16-0585

Ten? Okay, ten, 10 minutes. So we'll be back here at 940. Thank you. We have three public hearings this evening. Speakers should begin their remarks by telling council their names, their cities of residence, and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. If you're here to answer questions only when your name is called, come to the podium, say your name, and let the council know that you are available for questions. Speakers will have 3 minutes unless another speaker has yielded his or her time, which would result in a total of 6 minutes on the presentation monitor on the wall . When the yellow light comes on, you will have 30 seconds to conclude your remarks. And when the red light appears, your time is up. Speakers must stay on topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to council members. Speakers are prohibited from using profanity, profanity and making personal attacks to council members. Councilman Gilmore, will you please put Council Bill 585 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that council bill 585 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved in session. It the public hearing from council bill 585 is open. May we have the staff report. Academia and John Carter, Department of Finance. I'm going to do a staff report for the Council Bill. 0585 for. The approval of the service plan for Denver. Connection. What Metropolitan. District? A couple of slides to give an overview of the District's purpose. In the related development quickly. The first site here, the proposed district and development is located in the northeast part of Denver. The boundaries are roughly east of Chambers Road, west of Kenya, and south of Green Valley Ranch Boulevard, or 48th Avenue. The site is about 115 acres. It's planned for 700, roughly. 700. Residential units and about 40 acres of open space. This is a rendering here you have east of chambers and south in Green Valley Ranch. The residential properties. Excuse me? The development is also proposing to gain 700 units of residential properties. This is a break out of the mix of those properties and units and the starting price points. Those ranges from 236,000 to about 312,000. And you can see the breakout of the units here on the slide. Couple examples of what the renderings of those units would look like. Both the single families and then some. Of the townhouses. And connected units. And then a little bit of a break out of the open space that the district would be funding and some of the amenities there and the development. This is a rendering of that. Couple of highlights. Again, about 40 acres of 115 acres will be roughly it will be dedicated open space. You have a ten acre park on the southeast side here. And then a highlight what they're calling the hub center, which is at a community center slash recreation center with a pool and community space. So it'll be. Kind of a drawing center. For the developments. All these amenities will be funded by the district and maintained by the district as well going forward. And then finally, just to wrap up kind of the purpose of the district and the financing, the district will coordinate a standard with most metropolitan districts in Denver, will coordinate the manage of financing, acquisition, construction and maintenance of the public infrastructure and services for the developments. And these include a couple items as listed below. The total cost of those improvements are about $55 million, although the district will only be funding 20 million of that and will be taking out debt for about 20 million of those 55. The mill levies will be 40 mills proposed for debt and ten mills, throwing them with a cap of 50 mills. I'm here to answer questions and you also have members from the development team here and answer questions as well. Thank you. We have two individuals to speak tonight. I'm going to have them come to the front row. Maryann McGrady and Russell Johnson. Go ahead. You have 3 minutes. Mr. President, members of the council. My name is Robert Johnson. I'm with Village Homes. I'm here to answer any questions that. You might have. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. It's Marianne McGinty with Maggie Becker. I'm the attorney for the applicant here to answer questions. Thank you. All right. This concludes our speakers. Are there questions from members of council? And I want to give a little bit of time to get our screens caught up. Any questions for members of council? Councilman Ortega. I just want to ask what what the proposed height is for. The. Is there a height limitation? And if so, what is the maximum height? There is a high limitations, 35 feet. I don't think we're proposing. We get that high. Most of our units are typically two story homes. So under 25. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Maybe the gentleman could answer. Looking through this went through it so quickly. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything. Is there any commercial use within the district or is it all residential and open space? There is no commercial use to the existing PD that's in place that we're following. Did not allow for any commercial. Okay. Thank you. The the mill the proposed mill levy that will apply since it applies to residential property, it will be at the lower ratio of assessment. Correct. Okay. Right there, nodding behind you. That's it. Thank you. That's all. Did you get it? Did you get your answer? Even though I didn't say anything. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions from members of council? This concludes our core questions in the public hearing from counsel. 585 is now closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, this has been a plot of land that has never been developed in the the Gateway Green Valley Ranch neighborhood. And so it is east of chambers and on a great corner. And we're really excited to have Village Homes as a partner in the community. There's no way that the city would at this point in time, be able to put something like this together and, you know, the developer pays their way. And so one of the great amenities that's going to come out of this development is the widening of Green Valley Ranch Boulevard from two lanes to four lanes. And then there'll be a Signalized intersection at Memphis. And so that's something that a lot of community members, for as long as I've lived in Monticello over 20 years, have always wanted to know when that was going to happen. And it just took the right, you know, economic climate and I think the right set of partners to make sure that this happened. Village homes never gave up. I think that there were a couple hiccups along the way. You know, to to see this site and really develop it in a way that in modern day terms, you would have walkability to retail, to Councilman Flynn's question around that retail component. But it just didn't make sense right at that point in time to have that element included in. And so we're going to have the residential and the parks and and the amenity piece of it. And so I would ask that all of my colleagues can just consider voting for this piece of legislation. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Espinosa. I just wanted to sort of add, in my past life, as in the affordable housing business, we did a lot of NSP work. Neighborhood Stabilization Project. I don't even remember. In the end, it's interesting because we did a lot of the units just north of Green Valley Ranch on Memphis in the Parkview area. And what it was what was sort of difficult in that recession and post-recession time was that we were there were units that had been in foreclosure, and and they were being sold back on the market for a fraction of what it would cost to build them. And it looked like it was going to be a long time coming before you would have the sort of economy where that area south and that sort of all that acreage could get developed. And so now it's it's it's it's it's good for those, those people that could withstand that that that hit because that area got really devastated during the housing crisis. I mean, the the recession and I mean, where people lost half of the value of their homes. So it's telling me that this this area has come back. It's also speaks to the affordable housing issue. Right. Because those units were incredibly affordable during that recession. And now we're these are still modest homes but and attainable. But they're they're starting to creep. But it is generally. A good thing for all those neighbors that had survived and sustain themselves through that recession. So I just I'm just glad to see having been familiar with it and just glad to see it happening. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to echo the comments before before I took over on District eight, I represented District 11. And so I am very familiar with this property and the movement moving forward. So I'm glad to see this come to fruition. And I wholeheartedly support this, encourage my colleagues to do so. And I think it'll be a great addition to far northeast. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. That concludes our our comments from members of council. Madam Secretary, roll call. But. Gilmore. I'm sorry. Gilmore, I. Herndon, I. Katherine Can each new Ortega. SUSSMAN Black tie. Clark All. Right. ESPINOSA Hi. FLYNN Hi, Mr. President. Please close voting. Announce the results. I'm here to advise council bill 585 has passed. Ortega was that I also was a candidate for vice.

A bill for an ordinance authorizing a rescission, a cash transfer, and a supplemental appropriation from the General Contingency Fund to the Capital Improvement Fund. Approves a supplemental appropriation of $1,450,000 from General Fund Contingency to transfer to the Other Agency Capital Project Fund to provide sufficient budget capacity to fund a settlement in support of the National Western Center Office in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 8-27-19.

DenverCityCouncil_09092019_19-0874

12 eyes one nay council bill 818 has been ordered published. Madam Secretary, if you please put the next item on our screens. Councilman Herndon, would you please put Bill 874 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. Move the council bill 2019 0874 be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. May I have someone from the National Western Complex come forward for questions? Good evening, Members Council. Take us all the way. Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of National Restaurant Center. Awesome. Thank you, sir, for coming tonight and thank you for answering questions. If so, this this bill is appropriating funding for a national western complex. So I'd like to I guess first start with a more general question. How is the National Western complex funded in general? I know that's a large project, so. That's the question. Sure. So in part, there's funding from the Regional Tourism Act and then voters voted on to see. So a large portion of the funds, 765 million come from those sources. Got it. Where, general? Excuse me. Where general funds used in the funding of the contract. And I think this particular bill refers to general funds. Is that correct? So the funds that are currently allocated to it are to sea bond funds and Regional Tourism Act. Okay. And this particular bill is about general funds, correct? Correct. And specifically from the contingency account, is that correct? Correct. Okay. Is National Western currently fully funded except for this 1.4 or 5 million for the for the work that it's done to date? That is correct. It is a program of $965 million that just like every large program we're tracking to where we believe the health of the program should be today. The 1.4 or five is an amount of money that we're seeking approval for to use. That was an overage that we hadn't anticipated as part of the rail settlement agreement. So just specifically for the rail portion. And this this is considered a critical path item, is that correct? Yes. So without moving the rail or or without moving the rail, the national western can't move forward? That's correct. And without the settlement, we can't move the rail. Correct. Or at least as we've negotiated so far. Correct. Is it typical to not fully fund critical path items? Yeah. So again, on a very large project such as this, there's unforeseen conditions. We entered into this negotiation with approximately 15.3 million set aside for the rail agreement coming out of that monumental settlement, which was a really good situation for the city dealing with railroad authorities. There was 1.4 or five that we hadn't accounted for. So the program team felt at the time that this was an appropriate request for the use of general fund and Tennessee dollars. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. I might have comments, but I thank you for your time. Sure. Please. Thank you. Councilman. Councilman Kennett. Thank you, Mr. President. My colleague laid out, I think, a lot of the facts with his questions. I'm just going to comment. I really appreciate how hard the team worked to achieve this rail system. And it's a big deal. And, you know, we often not so jokingly refer to the railroads as the, you know, fourth branch of government. They are impossible to work with except in this case, of course, where they were, I'm sure, very amenable. And we came to a good agreement. So for me, I'm very supportive of the rail settlement. But I, I in this, you know, history because many of this team members have turned over over time. But even early on in this project, there were purchases of land made for the national western site before the voters had a chance to vote on the tourism dollars going . And even at that point, I laid out the very strong expectations since we were headed to dedicated funding streams that the general fund needed to be protected. And it was not appropriate to both go to the voters and use general fund dollars. And so Diane Barrett and some of the predecessors who were involved at that time agreed and made sure that when we got the approval for the voter dollars and through the RTA Act, that we actually paid back the general fund for some of those initial investment. So this has been a principle that I have had for many years. Now I want to acknowledge that, you know, there are different ways to approach large project budgets. We are very early. You know, Councilman Hynes didn't ask, but we've expended a very small portion of the budget for this project because we're just now in the design phase, which means there are hundreds of millions of dollars of costs yet to be estimated and for construction to done. So one way to do it is to go through each section. Of the project and say, Well, we only thought we were going to need this much money for this section of the project. And because we're short in that section, we need help from somewhere else. The other way to. Do it is to. Do each critical path as frugally as you can. And this is a critical path, and it must be done. And then as. You get later in the project. Determine which sacrifices you need to make in design to stay within your budget, or at that point come forward and say, you know, because of the price of steel, because of the price of labor, we can't deliver the project we need to. And let's have a conversation. This is too early in the project, in my opinion, to be asking for outside support. That appropriate time to do that would be when we are much later in the process and we can fully evaluate whether value engineering gives us the opportunity to. Absorb these costs. So it is not my belief that a vote against this settlement transfer of dollars is a vote against a settlement. I'm sorry, I misspoke. I am very supportive of the settlement. We have the dollars in the national Western budget to pay for this. They're just not allocated for this line item. And just like I would not expect you to come here if your electrical bid came in higher than you expected or your plumbing bid came in higher than expected, you have to live within the means of the entire project until you're far enough along that you determine you can't. I want to think finance. They heard my concerns in committee. They went back and they worked hard to try to find some options. None of those were guaranteed payback from the general fund. They were all contingent upon other pieces of the project coming in under budget or having contingency left over. And so because they were not guarantees, I would have been willing if we felt like we needed a loan from the general fund and then we were guaranteed the general fund would be paid back. But as we learned today from the mayor, our general fund is tight. We have a growing city and our budget is no longer growing at the same speed as our city. It is my obligation to protect the vulnerable programs that are in that budget, which we never have enough money to do. You know, our homeless community does not have the benefit of a dedicated ballot measure. Our transportation and mobility needs do not have a dedicated measure. We have two dedicated funding sources for this project. I support it. Our voters support it. But it is critical to live within the means of the project, and it is not appropriate, in my opinion, to use general fund dollars at this time. So with great appreciation for the work on the settlement and great appreciation for the attempt to find potential ways that could maybe be paid back. I need to vote my conscience and vote no tonight. But I and I hope the project does not come forward again for general fund dollars unless and until you are far enough along that we are sure that we need to have that conversation and that there are no other paths. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank Councilwoman Kennedy for comments, and I want to echo them. And I want to say that this is for sure too early for for us to go back to taxpayers and ask taxpayers to dedicate additional funds to the National Western Project. We really we haven't gotten there yet. I mean, we are early in the project. There are a lot of expenses, but there's a lot of funding left. And I don't think it's fair for us to to tell our homeless out loud, folks, no, you can't have funding when we're telling National Western, oh, it's okay for you to have additional funds. So I too will be voting. No, I, I hope that the, that the project does go forward, but not with an additional funding stream from from voters. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. So I've been very involved in the whole National Western project from day one, going back to when they started talking about this years ago, wanting to have a new venue at this at this location to when a number of us came onto the council in 2011 and a decision was made that National Western was going to be moved out and be part of the Gaylord project. And all 13 council members wrote a letter saying, No, we will not agree to let them out of their current lease. We think National Western should stay right where they're at. And the mayor worked diligently to get us out of being part of that Gaylord application, and we have worked to make sure that we had resources to do a rebuild of the National Western complex. There have been many meetings in and with the community. The community is a partner in this process. I share the concerns about dipping into the general fund. We actually pay for the staffing for this operation there. You know, they sort of operate as city staff helping us make sure the project gets built. But moving this railroad track is critical to how this project moves forward. And I equate this to when the city worked on planning out the Central Platte Valley and had planned for the Amtrak line to be moved. And the railroad said, no, we're not moving. So we had to go back and regroup and figure out how to reconfigure the Central Platte Valley with the Amtrak line where it's at in this case. Moving this track is critical to being able to have the interface with the river, to do some of the creative things that CSU is going to be doing that will make this, you know, a green campus. And I think looking at the opportunity for how and where resources can either pay back these funds or if there are dollars left over that are not completely utilized to return them back to the general fund. And Titus, I would like you to take us if you could just speak to that point. I think that would be really important to understand that if we do not have to expend the full amount that is being asked for in this particular bill tonight, what happens to any leftover dollars? Good evening again. So what in councilwoman can each refer to as we heard the concerns in committee. The program team and partners discussed that if we could figure out a way that if just for the rail project, the 1.45 million is not needed for that project, we would give whatever unused portion of it back to the general fund. And so I think to everyone's point, we look at each individual element of this program and we scrutinize it and make sure that we are using the dollars that are appropriated to it in the best interests of the public and the program to make it a success. And we'll continue to do that and commit to doing that for the railroad project. And so any portion of the 1.4 or five that is not used in by 2021, we would then give that money back to the general fund that. Is not used specifically for this project. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. President, I appreciate tike is just clarifying that point. I will be supporting this tonight. I think it is important for the project to move forward. I know we have competing interests. We just got the mayor's budget today highlighting what those priorities are. Much of them aligned with many of the issues this body has identified, homelessness and and housing being right at the top of the list, as well as addressing climate change as as a couple of those priorities. And I'm comfortable with where we're at at this point in time. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. President. I I also will be supporting this tonight, although I. Share. Councilwoman Kenney just concerns about taking money from the general fund and putting it, you know, towards national western at this point. But I think that we need to think about this in many ways as an investment in the community. Moving this rail. Means that that opens up the entire Greenway area. And that is something that the community has been asking for access to green space. There is an incredible plan in place that allows this new access for trails and for all of these kinds of different things that the community doesn't have right now up there. And so I think that, you know, in the cost benefit analysis of this this money, you know, 1.4 or 5 million, it's not ideal. And I and I wish that it had been done differently, but I do think that we do need to recognize that this is in many ways a 1.4 or $5 million investment in this greenway for the community. And we need to to recognize that and be grateful for that because it's something that the community wants. It's something the community needs, and it's something that we should also be providing for them. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. Take us, if you don't mind. So if this. Request. For a. Supplemental is is refused, voted. Down, does the rail not get moved? No. The rail assuming so next Monday is the actual vote on the settlement agreement itself, because tonight is about the the funding, the supplemental. What the program team would do with as partners is start to look to other elements throughout the program to see what other elements could be potentially removed from the program. So it would still move forward, but it would put additional pressures on other elements of the program that are key, that are associated with so key elements that people would like to see at the at the. Thank you to I guess. Yeah, I'm. In a similar place, I think, to. Where Councilwoman Kinney is in that I'm a huge supporter of what you're doing out there. But after looking, taking a first look at our city budget today and realizing all the cuts that have been made to our city budget, and starting now to look at some critical programs that don't have the option that I believe the National Western does, it leaves me. In a quandary. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman CdeBaca. Thank you, Mr. President. This is in my district, and I recall the very day that National Western wrote a letter that they asked Community to sign on to. And Community at that time was only a couple of representatives who were part of the Citizen Advisory Council. And so this request for the consolidation of this railroad did not exactly come from community. In fact, it's very far removed from residences in that area and so is not a direct request from community. In fact, came with some protest from community members who felt that we were making this request to Denver Rock Island, about consolidating this railroad under the guise of health and equity and activating the river and helping the community get access to amenities when right down the street we weren't doing the same thing for the I-70 expansion. And so there was some conflict with this. And I do absolutely support the consolidation of this railroad. I support it. I'll support it next week when the agreement comes to us. But this 1.4 or 5 million is is definitely a big amount of money to us when our budget is shrinking, when our general fund is shrinking, and there are so many competing interests for service . So I don't personally support pulling money out of the general fund when we have hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to this project. I sit on steer comm. I've raised these concerns and I think there's absolutely an opportunity to pull this 1.545 million out of the budget that exists without harming the larger goal and the larger project . I don't know why this came this route, and I'm glad that we're taking a look at it carefully, because we should not be allowing dollars to come out of the general fund for this project at all. We've spent money on on on different parts of acquisition and settlements from our general fund dollars, our city dollars that are not dedicated to this. And so I think we need to really tighten up the purse strings right now for this project, specifically considering it is one of the ones that has two dedicated funding sources. So I do not support this tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Hines, I'm going to go to Councilman Torres because. But Councilman Joyce. Take us can I ask you a question? What is the likelihood of any of this funding coming back to General Fund, even if it's unspent? Finding it elsewhere and repaying this amount. So in regards to the question of the likelihood coming back to the project, can't continue with any certainty that the 1.4 or five is not going to be needed within the rail project. All I can do is commit to the team working really hard to make sure that their savings at the end of the day of the rail project. And that money then would come back to the general fund. And can you just help me understand a little bit better why you can't shift dollars from line item to line item? So within the overall program, I think to everyone's point, there is additional dollars that is unspent associated program. And we are very early in actually because we're very early is why we want to be, I think, as scrutinizing the details as much as possible and actually asking for the funding where we're seeing a gap that has already existed due to a foreseen actually a condition that we know because of the amount of the rail settlement. So we repeat the question, sorry, I'm off on a tangent now. Why you can't move funding from existing source line items to this one? Yes. Thank you. So that through through steer comm and through an action, I think actions associated with the program partners in the program team, we would, if this was not funded, have to go back and look at other elements of the program and other there's miscellaneous projects within that program and find opportunities to either remove scope from other projects to help fund this gap that we were foreseeing right now on the rail project. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Hines, back up. Thank you, Mr. President. So a question. So there are two funding sources. Which are those two sources? Again. The Regional Tourism Act and to Sea. And Regional Tourism Act is how much? 121.51 to. 1.5. And to see is how much? Yeah. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Brad Dodson. I'm the deputy director for the Mayor's Office of the National Assessment Center. Thank you for thank you for coming. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the question. The as Titus mentioned, the funding from the Regional Tourism Act is $121.5 million maximum award over 36 years. So it comes in over time. There is funding from from to see that we have estimated to be approximately $637 million. That is based on current estimates from the Department of Finance. The additional funding is from the WCC, the Western Stock Show Association, as well as CSU as purchasing their parcels for their buildings. And so that's to the tune of $27.7 million. 27.7. Yes. The full budget is $765 million for phases one and two. Okay. And how much has been spent so far? We we are approximately 30% through the program. We provide quarterly financials to luti committee and we did that on July 30th. We have we also publish that information on our website, but happy to give you the most current up to date information. So we have at least $500 million available that we haven't spent. I don't have that exact number in front of me. But that that's probably in the in the ballpark. Is it fair to say that we have far more than 1.4 or $5 million available? There is there's money in the program that has been allocated across the various projects that make up the program. And as Tyco's spoke to earlier, there would have to be a we to take a look at scope if we were not to have this funding. We have to look at the scope of those other projects and see where adjustments could be made. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Just as we're. I heard that we're screwed scrutinizing the details of the National Western Project. I heard that just a couple of minutes ago. I also heard that at 10:00 this morning from the mayor, how we're scrutinizing the details of the general fund. And this National Western project is over 36 years, or at least part of the part of it is over 36 years. We're not going to finish the National Western Project this year. It seems to me that we should be scrutinizing the general fund because it's been is one year. And if we if it turns out that our revenue exceeds expectations for for the, you know, the 2020 budget, then that's great. But I would I would prioritize scrutinizing the general fund over scrutinizing the National Western Fund. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Ortega. You back up? Yes. Fred, would you mind coming back up? Can you just highlight what the key projects are that are moving forward that will be under construction in the next year? I know you've got a number of them from roads to a number of buildings relocating the rail lines. Can you just highlight what those are? Sure. Thank you for the thank you for the question. And be happy to provide you with a detailed schedule that I don't have in front of me. The focus for this year has been on horizontal construction and so that is all of the horizontal infrastructure, the pad ready sites that support the vertical. Buildings. That will begin in beginning next year. We reached substantial completion on the Phase one and two program in 2023. And so between that time, we'll be focused again initially on horizontal construction moving in to vertical construction. The work along the river and the east west bridges into Globeville will will also occur in the next in the next three years. And those are tied to the Washington Street project as well as that work gets done as part of a Bond project, correct? That's correct. That those roads will make connections East, West and in D.C. see the North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative is working on the design of Washington Street and the design of those connections to to the bridges that will land in Globeville. So if council did not fondness tonight. What? What would get cut. I can't speculate at this moment exactly what would be cut. The way that we work with our partners is we we scope to budget. And we work within the budget. That we have for those elements. But that would mean that there would be adjustments to scope. And we would prioritize that with our team, along with the SSA, with the National Western Center Authority and with Colorado State University, to see what items could be removed from scope. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Thank you, Councilman Ortega. All right. No other questions or comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. HINES No. Black. Eye? CdeBaca No. Flynn, I. Gillmor, I. Herndon, I. Cashman Can each. Ortega, I. Sandoval No. Sawyer, I. Torres No. Mr. President. I know. Secretary, please close the voting, announce the results. Seven days, six. Days, some nights, six days. Constable, 74, has been ordered published. That concludes the items to be called out this evening or other bills for introduction are ordered published. We're now ready for the black vote on proclamations, resolutions and bills on final consideration.

A resolution approving a proposed Agreement between the City and County of Denver and OraLabs, Inc. for federal coronavirus relief funds to launch and administer Denver’s new personal protective equipment (PPE) program to support the ongoing recovery and survival of the city’s smallest and most vulnerable businesses and nonprofits. Approves a contract with OraLabs, Inc. for $1,490,000 of federal coronavirus relief funds and through 12-31-20 to launch and administer Denver’s new personal protective equipment (PPE) program to support the ongoing recovery and survival of the city’s smallest and most vulnerable businesses and nonprofits by helping ensure the safety of their employees, volunteers, and customers, citywide (OEDEV-202055081-00). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 8-10-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-8-20.

DenverCityCouncil_07202020_20-0663

Yes, Madam President, I move that council resolution 200663 be adopted. Thank you. Can we get a second, please? Again. Thank you, Councilwoman Sawyer. Questions or comments by members of Council. Council Member Hines. Did you? Madam President, I was going to say, Madam Chair. Still getting used to it. Congratulations to both of you. I wish you both the best. Because as a body, we will definitely. We will succeed if we succeed together. So the but this particular issue is I did receive a briefing in advance of the funding. At the briefing, I expressed some concern about the bill. This is $1.5 million for PPE, for the most vulnerable of businesses and non-profits. So three days after COVID happened, we provided $2 million in relief for four small businesses. We have provided additional relief. And. And so the question that I had in the briefing was, I believe this is part of a $120 million plus relief package. And I want to make sure that we are if we are really considering the most vulnerable. I recognize that this is Dito that is is providing is is leading this charge. And Dito focuses on businesses, not people. But but certainly we have vulnerable populations. We have our first responders who come into contact with people who are for sure, COVID positive. And and so I wanted to get at two questions. The first is this is more than $120 million of the relief funds. So what's the breakdown of this $120 million of funds? I want to make sure that we're considering all of our global communities, not just the most vulnerable of our small businesses, a nonprofit. So I did I did call this out in advance. I did. I don't know if Dito is here or if someone from the mayor's office can respond. It might be beyond outside of Dito. All right. I believe we have Susan Lee on the line or Jasmine Harper. Not so great. Yeah. Good evening, everyone. I'm Jasmine Harper. I'm a Dito, so I'm going to defer this question actually to our Department of Finance just with the breakdown of the CRF dollars and how that was all allocated. All right, great. So have we promoted someone into the panelists from the Department of Finance? And that's just a question for for staff. So you can give me a heads up or not. Looks like Margaret Daniels there has her hand up in the in the attending. Oh, wonderful. Thank you. Margaret, do we have you? All right, Margaret, we're working on getting you unmuted here. Okay. Market, I'm showing that you're unmuted. All right. Can you hear me? Mm hmm. Yeah. Thank you. Hi. Hi. I'm Margaret Daniels from the deputy CFO. And you may recall a presentation to think back in late May regarding. The city's. Allocation of the coronavirus relief funds $126.7 million that the city received. And we broke it into several different phases or buckets. And phase one was the emergency relief fund of $20 million that went to a variety of really necessary and immediate community needs, such as the rent and utility assistance, mortgage assistance, some food support for vulnerable populations , grant programs for the small businesses, which I think is what is before you today, as well as some other community health types of programs, including PPE and testing. And so that was phase one. Phase two, you'll recall, was another $25 Million release. And we received applications from agencies or use of the $25 million and are focused again on community support. So additional support for nonprofits and small businesses as well as some other types of community organizations. But those have not been released. We're in the final review stage for that and we'll be coming back to you based on the council priorities that that you all provided to us. And then so that's $45 million. And then we've got or reserving some of the funds for what we're expecting to be a fall search so that we make sure that we've got enough resources available to the city to take care of needs in the fall. And if it doesn't come to pass, then we will put in place some milestone dates where we will release those funds for community needs. And then we've got some city operations a lot. As you're aware, a lot of our COVID response is FEMA eligible, but FEMA only pays $0.75 on the dollar for reimbursement. So the coronavirus relief funds can be used for the local match. So where were those are the sort of the four categories that we are planning for the use of the coronavirus relief funds. All right. Thank you, Margaret. Councilman Hines, does that cover your questions? So. I was there in Vancouver when we had that presentation. And and this is the exact same question I asked in the briefing. So not not asking anything new. And I was kind of hoping for more than just this big like ballpark of amalgam of set funds just because, you know, so but that's fine. The second question that I have is, do our first responders have an adequate supply of PPE? I know that while we were we had concerns that our you know, our our public safety officers, you know, police, fire, EMS didn't have an adequate supply of PPE or, you know, Denver Health or Public Health Hospital. I just want to make sure that the people who for sure come in contact with people who for sure have COVID, have what they need to. If we're really talking about the most vulnerable that they have, what they need before we go beyond and and start giving PPE to small businesses. And that's my last question. So thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Margaret, is that something you could respond respond to? I can to. The extent that I've been stationed in the emergency operations center for the for 88 operational periods and continue to be involved with the processing of transactions for emergence of COVID related response. And we are still assembling PPE for the city's needs, including our first responders. The PHC doc is still operational and they are the people that are filling in and in taking requests from health organizations for PPE. I don't think I know at the end of the regular activation of the EOC, we saw a significant decline in requests for PPE from health organizations. But for the city's needs, we are building up an inventory. We have it we have a 90 day inventory of PPE right now, and we are increasing that amount to 180 days of inventory for PPE, for city use, including first responders. Does that help? Thank you for. Thank you for your answer. And I don't have any other questions, Madam Chair. All right. Thank you, Councilman Holmes. Thank you. Thank you, Margaret. Next up, we have Councilman CdeBaca had questions and then we have Councilman Black in the queue. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam President. Margaret, can you. So you broke up the four categories for us and you said it was 126.7 million that those four categories broke up. Right. And you listed 45 million, but you didn't give me numbers for the Category three in category four, what is reserved for Category three, the reserve, and what is being reserved or being used actively? Or Category four city operations? Absolutely. So for the reserve, this is the bucket we are calling the reserve, which is for the potential for resurgence as well as for covering the city's female share. That's approximately $57 million. And again, if we if we don't need to use it, then we will put in place some milestone dates so that like by October 1st , if it doesn't look like we need to use it, then we can release funds to the community. And then again on November 1st and then in the city operations budget, it's $25 million and this accommodates total working expenses that are not eligible. Some other technical consultative services as well as some of the payroll that we have or public health and safety employees that are also not EMA eligible but are specifically called out as eligible in the coronavirus relief funds. And so with this script. I've had some major challenges with the way that we've been doing reporting specifically on our small business relief. Those grants. I was getting significant refusal from Dito to report grant amounts. And I think that when we take an equity lens to what we're doing, especially with COVID and knowing that there are disproportionately affected populations, I'm wondering how do we explain not being transparent about grant amounts and will the grant amounts for this particular chunk be disclosed? So I think that is a question that's best directed to the recipient agencies, and I certainly would not be able to comment on the program itself. Can you explain to me how this money is going to be administered and broken down across vulnerable businesses and nonprofits? Yeah. So no. Okay. Okay. Yep. Just so everyone. Can hear me, okay? Mm hmm. Thank you, Jasmine. So we will be posting. A weekly list of businesses that receive the PPE kits. And so just to kind of clarify the PPE kits, we're directly shipping PPE to these businesses. And so there will be no transaction of money or grants in any way. So we will be 1.49 million that will be going directly to all labs to procure the PPE. That will be given to these small businesses or nonprofits. And so each kits are going to be around $300. And we're trying to serve. Around 4000 businesses. And what comes in the kit and how do nonprofits or businesses become eligible or on the list for these? Yeah. So the eligibility criteria, they have to be located in the city and county of Denver. They have to have less than 25 employees. And they would have had been open prior. To March 1st, 2020. And then in terms of what's in the kit, it's 164 ounce gallon of hand sanitizer, 41 ounce sanitizer items, one gallon of surface disinfectant. 100 surgical masks, nine or one. Non-Contact. Thermometers and. Ten face. Shields. And so businesses. Are basically we have a Web page that is not live yet, but it will be soon. Where they. Go register for the PPE kit and you just face a quick review process. Are they located in the city and county of Denver? They have less than 25 employees. So the test eligibility criteria. And are we prioritizing our minority and women owned businesses at the top of that list that qualify? So it will be a first come, first serve basis, but we cannot legally prioritize based on race. But we do ask the question a registration form, but we cannot open first come, first serve. So but we are going to be doing a lot of outreach in all of your council districts. We will be having outreach meeting next week with the bids and community partners who have been a part of our Economic Relief and Recovery Council to really get the word out there. A registration form will be translated in English, Spanish and Vietnamese to make sure that we are, you know, getting the businesses and making sure that. Successful for them to. Register. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. We have Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I just wanted to let everyone know that this was a recommendation from the back in business group that was part of the economic recovery and relief. Well. I was on and we are still meeting. So it's a group of small business representatives and other community leaders. So one of the main recommendations of that group was how can we help our very smallest businesses in Denver? And this was something that the group agreed would really help out those small businesses. It's not going to make or break them, but it's a small part. So I really appreciate all the work that Itoh has done on it and I love how you simplified it and acted okay about getting the word out. I'll be putting it out in my August e-newsletter and making sure that all the businesses. That I can reach out to my district about it. So thank you, Susan and Jasmine. Thank you. Councilwoman, we have Councilwoman Torres, and then we have Councilwoman CdeBaca that day. Councilwoman Torres. Thank you. I think the question that I had, Jasmin, was just about ensuring that somebody with multiple sites or locations might not be able to apply multiple times if they have, whether it's like franchises or something like that. And then just the recommendation if if we can find out when the application is launching so that at our district level, we can encourage some of the small businesses that we know and work with to make sure that they're ready to apply. Yeah. So in terms of process, we will be checking to make sure that the businesses are applying more than once. But I think it's matter of efficiency or speed. So we are going to be checking, but we will be checking for locations in the county, Denver, and they have to self test. So it is going to be an honor. System. To them, self testing. But we will be very. Cognizant of businesses that might be applying once and hopefully I answered your question. And then in terms of the program launch day, we're hoping for the first week in August, so we will be sending more information to council when that date will be and then also when. Our outreach meeting will be next week. All right. Thanks, Jasmine. Councilman Torres. Does that answer your questions? Okay, great. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a real quick question for Councilwoman Black. You mentioned that this came from a referral. Of the. Small Business Relief or Recovery Group. Can you tell the public. When. Those meetings happen, how they can tune in and get information about those or participate? See Councilman Black. Oh, there you go. You're unmuted. Then the meetings are every other Monday from 1 to 230. Adrina Gibson is and Molly Duplass. Are the staff people heading them up? And did it happen this Monday or will it happen? We did today. So we will meet again next month. Got it. Is it virtual? Yes. And how do we find the information for that? I'm not sure. Probably it's from Polly and Adrina. Got it. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Thank you, Councilman. All right, look in here last time and see no additional questions. Bye. Councilman Hines, are you back in? No, I apologize. I wanted to make a comment. So should I make that now or. Yes, please. You go ahead. So. Thank you, Madam President. So I mentioned that I had this briefing about this particular program in advance. It was on July 2nd. I just checked the calendar and and I asked that question specifically the first of my two questions on July 2nd. And so, in general, while I'm supportive of our most vulnerable of our businesses and nonprofits, I am also supportive of our most vulnerable people, too. And and I'm a little concerned about the process. When when I asked for for information on the July 2nd meeting. And I still didn't get it. So I, I recognize that we want to be nimble. I also if we could have even just given a flicker, stab of how much we were dedicating to businesses and how much we were dedicating to people or whatever, the slices of pie that would be nice to get. The same talking points from a briefing that we got a few months ago is not exactly what I wanted. And then the last thing I heard that we are still assembling the needs for first responders and we're building up an inventory. I'm concerned that the people who are for sure are getting exposed to people who are for sure, you know, symptomatic with COVID, don't have PPE. So I'm I'll be a no vote today because I want to make sure that if we if we have PPE and we have a PPE shortage, that it goes to the people who who are putting their lives in harm's way when we absolutely for sure get covered. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Any additional? Comments. All right. Last look there. CNN, Madam Secretary, roll call. Don't. No. Catherine. I. Which I. The novel. I swear. I. All right. I. Black I. Said Abarca. I fart when. I. And then. I. Madam President. I mean, the secretary closed the voting and announced the results. 11 eyes, one nay. Right. 11 eyes one nay. Council resolution 663 has been adopted. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens. Council member CdeBaca Please go ahead with your question on Resolution 707.

A proclamation urging rent and mortgage moratoriums for those unable to pay during the COVID-19 emergency.

DenverCityCouncil_04132020_20-0350

Thank you, Councilmember. All right. I don't see any other. Anybody else. So that concludes our announcements. That concludes our announcements. There are no presentations, there are no communications. But we do have one proclamation this evening and I council member can each. We did it just a second and then go over to you for that. Go ahead. Thank you. Council President Clark. Today we have Proclamation 20 Dash 20350 urging rent and mortgage moratoriums for those unable to pay during the COVID 19 emergency. I'm going to read this a little differently than usual. It's a little longer than our typical proclamation. And I want to thank Councilman Chris Hines and Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca for helping to shape the language. I'm going to summarize some sections, read a few. And Councilman Hines will be reading the closing of it. So thank you for your forbearance and we'll try to make it a little faster by not reading every word. So the first two paragraphs of this proclamation outline the history of the coronavirus in Denver and the health orders that resulted in a massive range of unemployment among the residents of our city. The third paragraph outlines the massive unemployment from those, especially in industries like food, retail, non-essential manufacturing, fitness, hairstylists and all those others, to the tune of more than 127,000 claims for unemployment. But recently employed workers and some immigrants are not eligible for unemployment, and even eligible recipients experienced delays in their benefits and only partial replacement of earnings. Whereas the federal stimulus package will provide most adult Americans with a one time check for 1200 dollars. But many immigrant workers will not receive these benefits in spite of paying their taxes. Low income non-tax filers face significant barriers to getting these benefits, and even filers who are eligible may not receive their checks for weeks or months if they do not use direct deposit. And many households monthly rent and necessity expenses exceed the amount of this one time payment. Now the CDC recommends extreme social distancing. And we have been warned today by our mayor that that distancing will not and suddenly we will come out of it slowly, which means that many of our residents will remain out of work, even as some orders change in the coming months. Whereas many Denver ites were already struggling to keep up with their rent payments prior to this crisis, with an average rent of 1470 $5 and 46% of renters paying more than 30% of their income to housing costs, making them cost burdened or severely cost burdened. And home price appreciation had already outpaced wage growth, causing 24% of homeowners in Denver to be cost burdened or severely cost burdened. Now, our courts in Denver are closed through May 31st, and our mayor has directed the Denver Sheriff's Department to not assist in eviction orders during these health orders. But when these courts reopen, eviction filings have continued to be accepted and there will be a massive accumulation of debt and a risk of housing loss when courts reopen. Now, our governor has issued an executive order that makes requests to help residents of our state and ask lenders to provide leniency and asks his departments to work with them. But that executive order does not issue any requirements to do so. Whereas renters in Denver have shared that some laudable landlords have worked with them as tenants to reduce rents or accept delayed payments. But others have continued to post rent demands on doors, file evictions and have refused requests to accommodate their renters. And while both Denver and the state fund rental assistance programs, Denver already saw a 245% increase in applications for temporary rental and utility assistance in March 2020 alone. And there will not be sufficient city or state funding to pay all rent shortfalls in the city or state. Whereas the closure of businesses to prevent the spread of COVID 19 has also caused significant financial hardship to small business renters, also impacting their ability to pay rent. And. Whereas, the Governor's Emergency Declaration on March 11, 2020, Gov. Polis opened the opportunity to use certain emergency powers under the Colorado Disaster Emergency Act. Now our Federal Reserve Bank has given a massive infusion of $1.5 trillion in loans to banks to help them make due if they are missing payments from those who have mortgages for their properties. And this, in turn, provides the ability of banks to provide relief to those who owe debt on homes or on multifamily properties that are rented to tenants directly impacting those landlords ability to then provide rent relief for rent to tenants. And by halting mortgage payments. During this time, the urgent need for landlords to collect rent will be paused. Whereas to date there is no national rent or mortgage relief program other than restrictions in the CARES Act for properties with federally backed mortgages, which protect only about one third of rental apartments. And there is no government program of any kind for mortgages on multifamily dwellings. And I'll now turn it over to Councilman Hines to complete the proclamation. It's almost a full page document is. All right. Welcome. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to I want to thank Councilmember Canete and Councilmember CdeBaca and the entire delegation for for letting us bring this forward. The proclamation is about everyday working folks. We've all heard about trickle down. We've all heard about the top will get the money and pass it down to the rest of us. In the COVID pandemic, as Councilmember Kinney just mentioned, we're already giving a one and a half trillion dollar bailout to banks. But lots of people are losing their jobs and can't pay rent. And lots of mom and pop landlords are unable to pay their mortgage. This proclamation is about them. Big banks got a bailout in 2008 and another one just a couple of weeks ago, and so did large real estate conglomerates. Yet I've heard from District ten renters that not all they're not all this way, but I've heard from District ten renters saying that their property managers are encouraging people to use their credit cards for rent. And I've heard from mom and pop property owners that the big banks are being inflexible, too. This proclamation is about giving our state and federal elected officials support to get this done statewide or nationally so that our money helps all of us and not just the 1%. And just, you know, Denver and Colorado are not alone. California and New York have mortgage deferrals in place through action at the state level. Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle and our neighbor Aurora have already passed similar resolutions. Both the state and federal officials could use federal rental assistance aid to create rental vouchers, to pay rents directly to landlords, landlords for people who cannot pay. And this isn't about telling our state and federal electeds how to do their jobs. I wouldn't ask them. I wouldn't tell them how to do their jobs, as I wouldn't imagine that they would tell me how to do mine. But it's about giving them the support so that they can fight for all of us who are working and for all of us, through no fault of our own, recently became all of us who are working and all of us who have recently lost our jobs as a result of COVID. So thank you, Mr. President. All right. Thank you, Councilmember. We're a little bit out of order because we're reading the proclamation. But, Councilman Keyser, are we all read our covered on the reading. Can we. Not we? I'm sorry, Councilwoman Hines is going to be 50 it resolved before we went to the comments. Kind of an apology under oath. Do you have it in front of you or would you like me to do that for you. Councilmember? I have it so I can read it. Apologies. Just the down there for. Yes. Okay. You can hear me still. Great. Okay. So now therefore being proclaimed by the city and county of Denver, Section one, that the Council of the City and County of Denver calls upon Governor Jared Polis to use the full legal extent of his emergency powers to impose an immediate moratorium on residential and small business commercial rent payments for those unable to pay due to COVID 19 and public health orders such that no Coloradan or small business who is unable to pay through no fault of their own should be required to pay rent during this health emergency. Nor should they accumulate debt or interest for unpaid rent and to support efforts to achieve similar action from other state and federal elected officials as described in Sections two and Section two that the Council and the of the city and county of Denver calls on the administration of President Donald Trump, members of the congressional delegation representing Denver and congressional leaders, specifically Representative Diana DeGette, Senator Cory Gardner, Senator Michael Bennet, Senator Nancy Pelosi, or excuse me, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Financial Services Committee Chair MAXINE Waters to enact by executive order or law an immediate moratorium to all residential and commercial mortgage payments and rents for those unable to pay due to COVID 19 or public health orders, such that no owner of property in the nation who is unable to pay through no fault of their own, should be required to pay mortgage during this health emergency. Nor should they accumulate additional debt or interest for unpaid mortgage payments. And no renter in the nation who is unable to pay through no fault of their own should be required to pay rent during this health emergency. Nor should they accumulate debt for unpaid rent. End Section three that the Clerk of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation, and that a copy be transmitted to Governor Jared Polis. Representative Diana DeGette, Senator Cory Gardner, Senator Michael Bennet, Speaker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Financial Services Committee Chair MAXINE Waters and President Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. Committee or motion to advance. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that proclamation 20 dash 30350 be adopted. If you had moved in second to now or the comments from members of Council Council, would you like to go first? Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to my colleague, Councilman Haines, whose comments maybe be a minute early, but we're 100% on point. Why would we do a proclamation that's not binding? Well, because the residents of our city are hurting. And they have asked us from day one, the first communication I got when these orders came down and folks began to lose their jobs is how would they handle housing and what could we do to help? We have a rental utility assistance program. We stepped up and increased the application volume that's coming in through that. We have worked with our courts and advocated many council members, signed letters urging an eviction moratorium at the state level and continue to be advocates where we don't have the power to solve the problem directly. It is important for residents of Denver to know that we see you and we hear you. We know that small businesses are struggling with their rents. And we know that property owners who depend on rental income and to pay their mortgages and those multifamily properties. This proclamation connects all three of those levels. Both the banks and the lenders, as well as the owners, as well as the renters. But at the bottom of that pyramid is the renters who are struggling and who are at risk of losing their housing and displacement. This is a challenge that, as Councilman Hines mentioned, is national and scale. And the conversation needs to be national in scale. And sometimes what we have in Denver City Council is the bully pulpit to say we want to be a part of that conversation with colleagues in California and New York, San Francisco and Seattle and other cities like Aurora, our neighbor who passed this proclamation, very similar proclamation just a couple of weeks ago. Thank you for your leadership, Rivera. But to say that we all need to be part of this conversation now, I got many questions today from folks, some of whom I think weren't sure and didn't understand that this was not a binding law. But beyond that, a question about whether it was a wise thing to do or not and what the details would be. And I think one of the things that's really important to highlight is when you raise a conversation, it's okay that it takes different directions. If our state and federal government take these proclamations and the calls of the residents who are calling into every show I've heard every town hall, I've heard every call in show with the news. This question has been asked if they are hearing those voices, perhaps they have an idea we didn't propose in this proclamation. Maybe they know whether it should be 90 days or 120 days, or what the exact eligibility criteria might be to demonstrate an inability to pay. As Councilman Haynes mentioned, it is it is up to those levels of government to debate those details. And I hope the residents who reached out to us today reach out and share their ideas for other ways to tackle this massive housing crisis at the scale at which we have done the pandemic, because the two are connected. If we cannot keep people housed, we will see an increased risk for themselves of homelessness and increased risk of transmission, as we are seeing now. The challenge we have with more people seeking congregate care in homeless shelters than we have hotel rooms to put up. So each of these things is related. If we want people to stay at home, if we want them to honor social distancing, we have to ensure they won't lose their housing. It is absolutely integral to the public health of these orders, and that's the case we're making today. I am also welcome to answer any questions from my colleagues to the best of my ability. Again, this is not a policy, it is a conversation starter. But I know that there may be questions and we were unable to have committee. So with that, I thank you and urge my colleagues to join us in sending the message that this is the right conversation to have at the state and federal levels. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman and Councilman Owens, you already made some comments. Is there anything else that you wanted to add? Yeah, I did. Just a couple of words to thank you, Mr. President. Just a couple of more statistics. The percentage of people nationally who could pay rent in March was 82%, and in April it dropped to 69%, and that's nationally. So we just had a 12% drop in the ability of renters to pay their rent just in the span of a month. And since April 1st, we've had an additional 1213 million Americans file for unemployment for the first time. So that's that percentage of people able to pay will continue to change and become even more taxing for us as a city, but also for us as Americans. And speaking of taxes, we we can't. Our taxes are going down because people aren't staying in hotels. People aren't buying things. And that's half of the city's budget is sales tax and lodgers tax. And so we're we're doing what we can to to to assist. But as Councilmember mentioned, we can't do it all alone at the local level. We can't even do it all alone at the state level. This is a national issue. It's an international issue. But but it's certainly something that we have to take care of as a nation. And I'm excited to give the support to my state and federal counterparts so that they can help get this done. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. All right. Next in the queue, household and tourism, we go to you. So go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. We got a lot of calls in District three, both from landlords and property owners and affordable housing providers, as well as renters and residents. So this this action we're taking up nationally would have a profound impact. And I think even though what we're proposing is a is a symbolic gesture, just letting folks know where we're. Coming from when it comes to our city council. I think what it what it speaks to is what's needed is the entire continuum of housing. Looking at relief for residents. There will still be some folks who complete their rent, those who cannot their rent roads. Everyone has a bill to pay. And that's why this goes beyond just any requests around rent to mortgages and commercial as well. So I really just want to emphasize that for my residents in District three, I recognize how hard this is going to be. For the. Next year. If not longer, for all of you. And if. What we can do is send a message to. Those throughout the country and to our federal leadership. And we will thank you. If you don't have a home in America. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward. A year from now, historians and visitors will read about what actions we took to help Denver ensure the future and vitality of our economy right now. And there will be plenty of time to play my Monday morning quarterback in the years to come. But what's important to the residents of Denver is how we help them today, because they're not getting a ton of help from a lot of places. Right now, the federal government is fighting over whose name is going to get printed on the texts that we're about to get. The state is working to do what it can, but it's facing an estimated two and a half billion dollar shortfall. And that leaves the city as the last line of support, or maybe better the first line of support for our residents and for our small businesses. And we are working around the clock to provide our residents that support. So this proclamation isn't asking for debt forgiveness forever. And it's not a law. Right. We're asking we're asking our government counterparts and the big banks that hold most of these mortgages and our fellow community members to come together in a compromise. And it may hurt a little bit now, but it will benefit everyone in the end. And we're not asking banks to walk away from income that's rightfully theirs forever. We're asking for a pause on this debt collection until our residences and our businesses, our residents and our businesses are steady, are on their feet, and our economy can reopen safely. And our office has received reports from our residents of landlords that are presumably applying for the financial assistance themselves, but failing to pass that on to their tenants. And that's simply not acceptable. That's not in the spirit in which these financial supports were meant to be utilized. And that's it's not okay. Because if there's one thing that's become abundantly clear in the last month, it's that we are all in this together and together we're going to get through this. But that's going to take a little bit of compromise. And the city is doing what it can. We're looking at taking a significant economic hit and making significant budget cuts, but we're still finding ways to provide the community support that our residents deserve, like the true a program and the expanding the bio program to help renters and small businesses and waving our parking fees and our interest on our property tax payments to help our property owners and small businesses. We've helped. We set up the $10 million COVID relief fund, and we're pursuing every possible financial avenue for reimbursement wherever we can, which is a huge job. So thank you to all of the city employees who are working on that. That's amazing. Is it perfect? No. Is it going to be enough for our residents? No. At the end of the day, it is not going to be enough. And so we are all in this together and together we'll get through this. If you live here now and you're a part of what makes the city the greatest city on the planet. But tonight I'm a yes vote and giving the keys of the city back to the people who built it, which is our small business owners and the hardworking people like our service workers who can't make ends meet right now because the help we're giving them simply isn't enough. And so I hope that our banks and the landlords who are able to will join us in that. So thank you very much to my colleagues for bringing this forward. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Next to Councilmember. Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you to my colleagues for bringing this forward and those of you who will support it tonight. While it is symbolic, it does send a strong message to the thousands of people who have been contacting us, asking us to stand in solidarity, asking us to help figure out a solution to this problem and where our hands are tied. As the legislative body, I think that this is an important statement to for us to make. And since we don't get to give the proclamation tonight to somebody or some group like we typically do, I'd like to list off some of the many organizations that had been working on the original rent cancelation rent freeze, mortgage freeze petition. And so those those individuals and organizations include Indigenous Voices of the Poor People's Campaign. Denver Black Educators Caucus. Black Lives Matter 50 to 80. Colorado Latino Forum. Colorado Rent Strike and Eviction Defense Front Range Mutual Aid Network Missing Indigenous Sisters Tools Initiative Johnstone of Inglewood City Council Warriors for High Quality Schools Invisible Front Range Resistance Tae Anderson DPS School Board Bobby La Brea, Colorado Poet Laureate Reverend Reverend Jessica Abel Chantelle Lewis RTT Board Goldie Vandal DC to President Tiffany Choi Hassan Latif Second Chance Center Second Chance Center as an Organization. Our Voices, Our Schools. The Kaleidoscope Project. Lorena Garcia, U.S. Senate Candidate. K.A. Johnson. Our Revolution. Metro Denver. Denver. Democratic Socialists of America. Colorado. No More Prisons Yes. Coalition Focus Points. Family Resource Center Roosters Boxing Club Recovery Lab Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition Doctors Sochi Bailes Aurora. Young Democratic Socialists of America How to Call Indivisible Denver Project Voice Democracy. Enter Colorado 9 to 5 Colorado Megan The Mere East Colfax East Colfax Neighborhood Association. Jasper, Colorado Jobs with Justice Together Colorado Indivisible Highlands Ranch Juan Marcano Abolish Ice Curls on the BLOCK Two dope teachers in the Mike Denver area Labor Federation, United Food and Commercial Workers, Local seven Colorado AFL-CIO, Asian Communities Together, Denver Artists for Rent Control and Colorado Peoples Alliance. Thank you all of you. Please is continue your activism. It's the only way that we can move forward together. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Next up, we're going to go to Councilmember when unmuted. And thank you. Hold on. Just like I unmuted you. Let me do it from here and then we'll start. Going over each other, I think. All right. Go ahead. Yeah. No, they can't. So maybe you do need an unmuted there. Very like a brave new world here. I know some people in my family would love to have that view, but right now for me, I wanted to thank Council English for working with me all weekend in the wording on this because it's beginning and actually much preferred. The resolve that Councilwoman CdeBaca had first proposed. But I am satisfied that in calling for the Governor to use the legal extent of his power to affect the situation, I think I think it's proper and right. So thank you, Councilman Kasich, for doing that. Thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca, for your original wording, which I have been able to witness, is actually happening around the city. In fact, just afternoon, a woman who rents rental properties in the valley called my office and was very concerned about if the governor were able to somehow impose a rent moratorium, it would greatly affect her ability to carry on the business of the rental properties. But on the other hand, she is right now working with her tenants who are impacted by being unemployed or reduced hours and are not able to pay their rent. And she's working out deferrals, waivers and things like that. And I think a lot of our smaller landlords are doing I don't know what the corporate rental companies are doing on their own. And I also want to recognize that a lot of our banks and other financial institutions are working with their their mortgage as well. I can't speak for all financial institutions. She can't speak for any of them, but I can speak about my own. For instance, Firstbank Colorado already has a program to defer payments to waive fees for people who are affected. I think what we want to tell folks is if you can pay your rent and your camp, please continue to do so. Otherwise, I think every effort should be taken in line with the spirit of this proclamation to work with people whose lives are being devastated right now by this this virus and the reaction to it and what's happening in the economy. And so having worked through the weekend with the councilwoman on this subject, I'm happy to support it and to vote yes. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman, next up, we're going to go to you, Councilmember Cashman, and go ahead. Hold on. Just as I can remember, we're having trouble hearing you and Chambers. All right, we should. Okay. Great. Thank you. I want to repeat a little bit of the point that Councilman Flynn just made. This proclamation should not in any way be interpreted as anti landlord. That we recognize that we're calling on our state and federal leaders to craft what is a complex solution that needs to protect all sides. Well, especially the mom and pop landlord situation that there the monthly rent is necessary for their basic living expenses and that needs to be taken into account. I also want to salute the many landlords, big and small, around the city who've been proactive in addressing this situation, reducing rents, giving grace periods. But as I said earlier in announcements when I was talking about so many people are going around the city wearing their masks and social distancing and others many, many others not doing so. We're faced with a large number of landlords in Denver and around the country who are not being responsible citizens. And we as a society, we can't afford that. We cannot afford to have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people thrown out onto the street because of the situation. They had nothing to do with creating hard, hard working people that have just been put out of work by a situation not their own. So I as well, in recognizing the complexity of the problem and the solution, I want to thank Councilwoman CdeBaca and Hines Company for the hard work in moving this issue forward. I look forward to supporting it tonight. Thank you, Councilmember. Next up, we're going to go to Councilmember Sandoval. Go ahead, Councilmember. Thank you, Mr. President. So I would like to offer my support for this proclamation as well. And just to remind my constituents that a proclamation is not policy, we are asking our Colorado delegation and other national leaders who have more power than us at the municipal level to have this conversation. And it is an outline, as Councilman Canete talked about. It doesn't specify policy or eligibility or time period. It just calls upon them having a conversation and as though a proclamation. For me, this proclamation does tell the residents of our community that their pain is heard, that we support the effort to alleviate their pain, and most importantly , that we recognize the connection between people being able to stay in their homes and protecting their health by slowing the spread of the virus. So when you have a stay at home order and you're not able to pay your rent, it goes it's counterintuitive of what we're asking from the public and the public health order. So absolutely, we need to support this. And I have a rental property and I've reached out proactively to my tenants. And so thank you for everyone in North Denver who's been proactive and who's working with their tenants until we can come up with some solution. Thank you for the three councilmembers who worked on this and everyone else who had an effort into getting this passed. And I will be offering my support tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Right. I don't see any other hands raised. So last chance to flag me on comments. And we are going to go over to Madam Secretary and do a roll call. Black back when Herndon clicked for Torres, Silverman got. I. We're going to go through slowly on these remote ones because this is causing a lot of feedback in chambers and we're going back to court. So, Madam Secretary, if you could just can go one at a time and just pause for a couple seconds. Council members, unmute yourself, your remote state, your vote, and then we'll move on once we can hear it in chambers. So we get started again with the ones who are not here. That's. I think they could hear you. So what happens in Europe? I. Gillmor, I. Times I. Question. I swear. To you. Sandoval. I. Council president. Madam Secretary, please both announce the results. 13 eyes. 13 is progress. In theory, 15 has been adopted. Thank you very much. And thank you for your patience, everyone. I was you're going to go fast forward for you. And once again, 15 minutes to read the bills are Internet.

A resolution approving a proposed Contract between the City and County of Denver and Mead and Hunt, Inc. concerning environmental planning services at Denver International Airport. Approves a contract with Mead and Hunt, Inc. for $900,000 and for three years to provide on-call environmental planning services to Denver International Airport (201844905). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 10-21-19. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 9-18-19. Pursuant to Council Rule 3.7, Councilwoman Sawyer called out this resolution at the 9-30-19 Council meeting for a one-week postponement to 10-7-19.

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All right, Councilman Flynn, consideration of resolutions 957 and 958 will be postponed for one week to Monday, October 14th. No formal motion or vote is required under that rule. Madam Secretary, please, for the next item on our screens. Councilman Sawyer, would you go ahead with your questions? Thank you, Mr. President. And is someone from the airport? Angela, can you come and just answer a couple of questions? I had called this out last week for some questions, and unfortunately, the airport wasn't able to make it because it was very last minute. My apologies on that. Thanks for being here today. Thank you. So I just had a couple of questions. This is an environmental services on call contract, and it just was worded kind of broadly. My questions were sort of in the examples of expected tasks under. To work consists of researching, preparing documentation for airport development projects and then g preparing affected environmental and environmental consequences. Analysis for 16 energy supply and Natural Resources. Can you just explain to me a little bit about exactly what that means or what that is? Yeah. Angelica CSM with Denver International Airport. And I'm here to answer these questions tonight. So basically, this contract is a. Consulting contract that sits with our sustainability division. And so these are contracts that when. You develop solar or different. Projects at the airport, these are the people who are going to analyze the environmental impacts of those of that development. So with solar, you're always required to do a NEPA process. And so basically this just keeps us in line with and in compliance with that, with that requirement. And so when you're considering natural resources use, when you're putting like a solar farm or something in on airport property, then basically what this does is it analyzes what the impacts to the environment would be like. If there's a wetland that's protected by, you know, federally protected, how would it impact that or those types of things? Okay, great. Thank you. And so we're in the contract. Does it say kind of the specific scope? Is that all under appendix A? I believe so, yes. And then is there a specific place where we would be able to see in these contracts what exactly where exactly we would know that it was specific to the sustainability project as opposed to some other kind of project? Well, there is there is a line and after we talked, I found it it's on the ordinance request that says where the funds are coming from. Okay. And so there is a line on page two of the ordinance request that gives that information. So this one specifically comes from CERP. Funding and operations and maintenance funding. So that's that is a line item in there. I don't know. How we would distinguish it. Necessarily, other than if I explicitly called it out in an in an ordinance request to kind of say this is for sustainability projects only or something like that. Okay. Is there have we ever gone outside of the scope of a contract previously or is there is has that ever happened previously? No. No. So, I mean, you know, every division has its own set of money and funding. And so we use we usually align that pretty closely with the funding that's available and the needs of the division. So we would rarely kind of. Move move money between divisions. And so if it is specific, the source of funds is specific to this contract, we can look to that source of funds and that's how we would know which division of the airport this was, this particular service. Yes, yes. Okay, great. And so these specific services in this on call contract are in no way related to oil and gas. No, no, they are not related to oil and gas. So this is actually the type of contractor who would actually expose the impacts of any sort of building or other other types of development at the airport. Okay, great. Thank you very much. No, no more questions. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Toia. All right. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published. We are now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members, please remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote.

Recommendation to adopt resolution allowing for the initiation of a Consolidated Coastal Development Permit process pursuant to Section 30601.3 of the Public Resources Code (Coastal Act) in connection with the rebuild of the Leeway Sailing Center, Pier and Dock located at 5437 East Ocean Boulevard. (District 3)

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A report from Develop and Services recommendation to adopt resolution allowing for the initiation of a consolidated coastal development permit process in connection with the rebuild of the Leeway Sailing Center. Parent Doc District three. Can I get a motion? Councilwoman Price. This item was on mute. Mute. This item was on our schedule about two weeks ago, and I just wanted to give an update. I'm going to be recommending we support this and voting in favor of the motion tonight. But we do have some user groups from Cal State, Long Beach sailing instructors who were concerned about proposed the proposed BREEZEWAY and its impact on both storage area and wind patterns in the bay. We've committed to that group. We've met with them. We've committed to them that we will discuss the possibility of redesigning the Breezeway element with the Coastal Commission as this was a design feature intended for public access. The group is supportive of us moving forward tonight with the consolidated permit process and I want to thank city staff for meeting with the the user group. With my staff, I think that was very helpful and moving this forward. So thank you. Okay. There's been a motion. Any public comment? Very good. Hugh Clark as the address. I've been following this project for about 20 some years when it's first when I was a windsurfer, notwithstanding the modifications to address the concerns of the sea, the Cal State crew. The building itself. Is and the design of it, the mansion ization of it. Is at war with the existence of the facility. That design will in fact shut down a large portion of sailing in that area. It's too big. Period. It was in a mansion. It was mansion. It mansion ized. It does not need to have all that room. It's been extraordinarily mismanaged, with all due respect to the problem that the Parks Department, that George Champion is and has inherited. The coaching staffs do a great job. They take those kids and they know how to teach. The problem is they've tried to mix of parodying in there that does not belong there, that it belongs rather in perhaps Mothers Beach or Colorado Lagoon. We don't need a building. Any larger than there is now there. There certainly needs to be some restroom up a restroom brought up to code, particularly with ADA. But that footprint should not expand beyond the existing footprint period. And I plan to if it's I don't like also bundling. There's too much corruption, too many problems, just like we're dealing with with the bluff. We ought to take it slow. The bar is not on fire. And again, it it's financial. We're not rolling in money, period. So I would ask that you step back, take a look at it. Get some accurate intelligence. Wednesday's the U.N. study that was produced was a wind study produced by somebody testing the air conditioner in their air conditioned air conditioning dux in their office and no professional maritime. Wind studies, period. This is further urination of money down the drain. Nothing's going to happen if you hold this one. Warren's not on fire. No. Three, no penalty in contract. So I would I would suggest, if you haven't talked with the individual that I suggested, you talk to the guy that runs the windsurfer shop. Sit down with him and you'll find him. Probably the most expert, the most knowledgeable person in the city relative to that. And he has no financial stake in it one way or another. He just has the he has a history of that and so forth. So I would hopeful, hopefully, that you will put this on hold and take a look at it. But again, we don't have the money, but it's going to be appealed. So take. This. Thank you very much. Thank you. There's been a motion on the floor. The public comment. Please cast your votes. Lucian Kerry six zero.

Recommendation to declare an interim ordinance adopted as an urgency measure establishing a temporary one hundred and eighty (180) day limitation on the issuance of any permit, entitlement, license, approval, operation, or activity relating to adult use non-medical commercial cannabis activity in the City; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-17-0030) (Citywide)

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Motion carries. Thank you. Number 20, please. Communication from City Attorney. Recommendation to declare an interim ordinance adopted as an urgency measure. Establishing a temporary 180 day limitation on the issuance of any permit relating to adult use, non-medical commercial cannabis activity in the city, and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately. Read and adopted as read citywide. Thank. Thank you. And just to clarify, this is Mr. West. This is what we requested back in December to give us time to craft an ordinance. Correct. This is the past, Mr. City Attorney. That is. Correct. Thank you. Second reading. Thank you. Any public comment on this? Stephanie Dawson, Sue of Second District. Again, we had no opposition to this particular ordinance other than just as a reminder that 13 out of the 16 stores in Santa Ana were able to open their doors on January 1st and offer adult use cannabis. Additionally, Bell, Bellflower, Lynwood and Maywood are all coming online within the first quarter of this year. All of them are going to be issuing adult use commercial licenses at a lower tax rate than the city of Long Beach. Again, that if that doesn't prompt a sense of urgency within the city, within the city, as a means to be able to get us to the point where we can open these businesses and have these consumers coming to our city and spending their money inside of our city. I don't know what else could help additionally with if there are any overwhelming concerns within the city with regards to the revocation by the Justice Department for the Cole memo, I just want to again take solace in the fact that Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Xavier Becerra, Kevin de Leon and Alan Lowenthal all issued statements saying that they will be they will be fighting to be able to protect us as a city from any particular federal intervention that might come from this administration. And finally, just one final reminder. This year is an election year Long Beach measure impasse with all of your districts by a pretty healthy margin, as well as Proposition 64, by an even healthier margin. So, again, respecting the this particular ordinance, but at the same time, please hurry up. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Larry King, longtime resident in the seventh District and soon to be hopefully dispensary operator in the ninth District. Happy New Year, everybody on the council. And I'd also like to everything Stephane said, but I'd also like to remind you that it was in the original ordinance that. Won an election that made provisions for. Recreational as well as tax provisions which are substantially higher than medical. And I could tell you from the. Few operators that are operating. Presently, they're turning away 80 to 100. I don't want to say patients anymore. 80 to 100 customers at the door that. Don't know that they don't have a recreational adult use. So they're lined up and then they're turning them away. They're turning away an average of 80 to 100 a day. So that's a lot of tax dollars. We've made it this far. We're this close. The city is going to do all right by taxation again. I think we need to get going on recreational. Or we're losing too much business to the other cities. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.95, related to third-party food delivery service fees; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Citywide) (Emergency Ordinance No. ORD-21-0005)

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Um. We have two more items. Two more. What's your next. Item? 24 is a communication from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending Title five of the Long Beach Municipal Code related to third party food delivery service fees and declaring the urgency thereof. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading Citywide. Thank you. Let's hear from staff. Thank you. Mayor Monica Kalita from the city attorney's office from present Monica. Good evening, City Council. For your request, we've prepared an emergency ordinance to add Chapter 5.95 third party food delivery service fees to the Long Beach Municipal Code. This ordinance would prohibit a third party food delivery service from doing the following charging a retail food establishment a delivery fee totaling to more than 15% of the total purchase price of each online order, charging a retail food establishment any amount designated as a delivery fee for an online order that does not involve the delivery of food or beverages. Charging a customer any purchase price for a food or beverage item that is higher than the price set by the retail food establishment and or reducing the compensation rates paid to drivers or garnishing gratuities due to these limitations. This ordinance would also require third party food delivery services to disclose, in plain conspicuous language, any amount charged to a customer at the time a final price is disclosed. A violation of the ordinance could result in civil and or criminal penalties. And lastly, this ordinance would be reported on every 90 days by the city manager or designee to determine whether the chapter is still necessary based on the city's recovery from the health and economic impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic, at which point in time the city council will determine the chapter's expiration date. Thank you. And that concludes my report. Vice mayor, this city attorney on this item, we will require two votes. The first vote would be on the urgency of the ordinance that would go into effect this evening or today. And then the second vote on the ordinance itself, you will see the ordinance come back at your next meeting on February 2nd for the second reading , as we will pass it both as an urgency ordinance and as a regular ordinance, and with that staff and the city attorney's office. Stand by for questions. Thank you. Let's go to let's go to public comment on this. Is there any public comment? Yes. Our first speaker is Karen Goh. You're in. Go. Yes. Hey, that's. The killer on the 908 and Stacey's district. I'm also a member of the board on the Long Beach Restaurant Association. So we're in support of this item 24. Reducing delivery fees to 15%. A big reason is, for example, if. We sell a burger for $10, the delivery companies take $3. That leaves you with $7. Most restaurants in California. Make about 6% profitability. So they're already eating into a lot of the profitability. And one would ask, why use those delivery services? Well, the reason why you have to is because they have a monopoly on that delivery service and they have the platforms where people. Can order from from their phones. So it's no. Choice. So we support it. It favors quick serve pizza places, places that are big on delivery. Doesn't do much for full service, sit down restaurants. So we really. Need to move at some point to getting patios reopened again. But we support this motion. Thank you. Think your next speaker is Jeff Roe. Jeff Brown. Hi. My name is Jeff from the owner of the Hideaway Restaurant and Ponzu. And rounding third all here in Long Beach. As Kiran said, I'll make this short. It's it's almost impossible with doing take out to make a profit as it is. In fact, it is impossible. We're mostly doing it for our staff with these 30%. We actually lose a significant amount of money, at least on these transactions. You know, and the fact that you're not allowing third party services to raise prices above our prices or take it out is another substantial win for not only us, but for the customers that use our food. We just ask that if we do pass this and we get into a point where we are open at full, that you consider keeping it on as in the city of Los Angeles, so that we can work towards getting back to some sort of profitability or or breaking even. Last comment. Difference between takeout and outdoor dining between November and December, $27,000 to the bottom line. That should say it all. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. Think your next speaker is Stephanie Calo. Hi. Good evening. Council members and Mayor Garcia. My name is Stephanie. I am the owner of Plunge Restaurant in the second district. I also live here as well. As you know, restaurants are in a really bad way. There has been a lot of activity in our industry about. What we. Can and can't do legally right now. Item 24 is something that can be. Done right now. To help my industry and my. Colleagues in a quick and painless way. I'm asking that you pass item 24. It's limiting the amount of third party. Vendors such as DoorDash, Postmates, GrubHub. That can charge our restaurants. Some of our restaurants are currently being. Charged up to 30%. Of the sale. And, you know, we're suffering quite a bit. So while it might not seem like a lot, this extra percentage can be the. Difference between it costing us money to serve that meal, meaning actually. Losing money by. Working or. Making it a. Sustainable sale. Capping the third party fees for at least. One year. After the health order is lifted. Will help our community owned restaurants stay open. During this time, as you know, tons of them are closing. Our businesses and our community really need all. Of the assistance that you can offer us immediately. I'm really. Urging. That you pass this tonight. In the hopes that we can experience a small win and a little relief in our industry. I really thank you all for the work that you're doing. For us all. I know it. Is a really rough. Time with everything going on. And and I appreciate your time and your consideration. Thank. Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. Just a few comments. First, I'm happy to talk. So there's a this was brought up initially at the Economic Development Finance Committee meeting where we discussed the first round of reopening after the initial shutdown. Right. Luis Navarro of Lola's who brought up this this discussion staff has done a good job researching this. They've engaged with the industry and the restaurant sector to make these recommendations. You have a quick question. How do we resolve the issue on of where this when this policy would sunset? Yeah. Hi, Councilmember, this is John Keisler. So in this is similar to the worker protection ordinances the council passed earlier this this past year. And essentially, if the conditions. Still exist as that that warranted this urgency ordinance, then staff will come back to council every 90 days in writing to either confirm or recommend a change. Great. I think that I think that makes sense. I'm happy to make this motion. Who's who is there a second on the motion? To her long. Ago. Okay. I know Mungo's a member of the committee. I'm going to recognize Mongo as the second on this motion. Mango, would you like to speak to the motion council member? Yes. I'm very supportive of this item. And I really appreciate all the restaurant owners that have reached out and the council for supporting this. I know it's taken a bit of time, but it's important and I'm proud to be supporting it now. And that's it. Thank you. Council Members and Day House. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Mongo, for this and that and the committee for actually acknowledging and working really hard with city staff to bring something like this forward. I think this is this really is urgent right now. As you know, our small businesses or restaurants are suffering greatly during this pandemic. And even though this is a tiny, tiny fix and it is and it brings me a little bit of hope for restaurants. And I, you know, just hearing from from the restaurant owners right now. And I was really compelled by their stories. I'm seeing how some of them have gone up to even 30% of their sales. And I think it's it's a really hard time for small restaurants as it is right now. And anything that we could do as a council to help and support our our small businesses, our restaurants, I think is essential. So, again, thank you to your to the committee, to both you vice mayor and Councilwoman Mango for bringing this very important item forward. Fantastic. Is there an additional council comment? Yes. Councilwoman Allen? Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor and Councilwoman Mongo and all of the restaurants that that spoke. I know this has been really a hard time for everyone and I strongly support this p e because we'll provide that economic relief to food establishments, including our small, independent family owned and minority owned businesses. And as we all know, this pandemic has hit our economy hard and lots of folks are just struggling to get by and they're more likely to order food and even order more items from the restaurants if they're not being being charged. And I also want to say that many of our residents are depending on these delivery services. I received a letter from the Dolby in support of this item, and I also want to thank them for their continuous civic engagement. And overall, oh, this is just a strong business and consumer protection piece, and it has my full support. Thank you. Any additional? No council comments. Fantastic. We already took public comment on this, so I think it's pretty straightforward. Council gave direction. We know the situation with our restaurants. We know this is something we can do this in alignment with our inclusive recovery that the city's charting. So that's it. Let's go ahead with the roll call. Councilwoman Sun has. I. Councilwoman Ellen. Hi. Councilwoman Price. Hi. Councilman Spinner. I Councilwoman Mango. Hi. Councilwoman Sarah I. Councilmember Aranda. Councilmember Muranga. Councilman Austin. Vice Mayor Richardson. Yes. Motion carries. Fantastic. Let's have our panel. I'm sorry, Vice Mayor. That was the first vote on the urgency. We need a roll call vote on the ordinance itself. Thank you. Thank you. Same maker in second year of the motion. Same maker and secondary. Roll call vote for the ordinance. Councilwoman said they have. Right. Councilwoman Allen. Right. Councilwoman Price. I. Councilman sapna. I. Councilwoman Mango. Hi. Councilwoman Sarah. I. Council Member Ranga. Eye. Councilman Austin. Hi. Vice Mayor Richardson. I.

AN ORDINANCE related to the cultural development authority; identifying responsibilities of the county council; amending Ordinance 14482, Section 34, and K.C.C. 2.46.180, Ordinance 8300, Section 3 as amended, and K.C.C. 2.48.030, Ordinance 14482, Section 38, and K.C.C. 2.48.065, Ordinance 14482, Section 39, and K.C.C. 2.48.075, Ordinance 14482, Section 40, and K.C.C. 2.48.085, Ordinance 14482, Section 5, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.49.020, Ordinance 14482, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.49.060, Ordinance 14482, Section 9, and K.C.C. 2.49.080, Ordinance 14482, Section 11, and K.C.C. 2.49.110, Ordinance 14482, Section 17, and K.C.C. 2.49.160, Ordinance 14482, Section 18, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.49.170, Ordinance 14482, Section 19, and K.C.C. 2.49.180, Ordinance 14440, Section 3, and K.C.C. 2.49.200, Ordinance 14482, Section 58, as amended, and K.C.C. 4.40.015 and Ordinance 17527, Section 57, as amended, and K.C.C. 4.40.110, adding a new section to K.C.C. chapter 2.49, decodifying K.C.C. 2.49.070 and repealing Ordinance 14482, Section 10, and K.C.C. 2.49.090.

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As written minutes are before us. Any questions? Comments, changes. Seeing none. All those in favor please signify by saying i. I. Anybody opposed. The minutes are approved. So this brings us to proposed ordinance number 2018 0086. As I said at the outset, this item would make changes to the governance for for culture King County's cultural development authority . As I just noted, we had extensive public comment at our last meeting. And today we're going to take up both in this ordinance and a motion on a similar related topic. So I'm going to call on Staff Mary Bourguignon and Wendy Sue, who to brief both the ordinance and the motion up front, if you would, before we go into debate and deliberation. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Mary Bergeron from the council staff. And I want to first acknowledge our colleague Leah Crinkle, Sofie, who took the lead on the analysis as well as the drafting of the various pieces of legislation and is not able to be here today. So I am filling in for her. I will start with a very quick overview of the ordinance, since you had an extensive briefing at your last meeting. The proposed ordinance 2018 0086 would, as you noted, make a number of changes to the oversight of fort culture. Those can be summarized in three specific areas. First, the for culture budget. The ordinance would require that the Council accept by motion four cultures board adopted budget prior to transferring funding to for culture in the next fiscal year. And the ordinance requires that for culture transmit the budget directly to the Council for the Council's review. Next, in terms of the four culture board appointment process, the proposed ordinance would change the composition of the board establishing nine positions that would be appointed by county council member by district, and then six appointments made by the county executive . In addition to the five ex-officio members as exist currently, the ordinance would also remove the requirements for a specific balance of expertize on the board. And then third, the for Culture Executive Director. The proposed ordinance would provide for the County Executive to appoint and the Council to confirm the four culture executive director recommended by the for Culture Board. The ordinance would also provide for the county to remove the executive director by ordinance. So that's a brief overview. Madam Chair, I think captures the main points in the proposed ordinance. Councilmember Lambert has a question. Thank you. There was some language in the the different kinds of expertizes that said business was an expertize. Is that language in or out at this point? There is general language in the ordinance about wanting to have, you know, various sort of interest in ability in arts and culture. But there were some specific call outs for different types of expertize that have been removed in the ordinance. And just a preview. Spoiler alert. I have an amendment to put those back in. Oh, that would be wonderful. I think business is a pretty important one to have. Okay, great. Thank you. So, could you tell me what it is? Sure. It's Page. 29 of your packet. And we are if you look at line 64 and you'll notice that what it says is, oh, sorry, no, this is the public art advisory committee, not the board. Hang on, I'm an I'm council member. I can get back to you on that. I'm going to need to get to the appropriate amendment and I'll be able to find it more quickly. Oh, there's only. About 20 of them, so I can't imagine. Thank you. It's just now I'm almost I am I am here. So the language that was removed from the in the proposed ordinance reads At least one director shall have expertize in arts. At least one director shall have expertize in public art. At least one director shall have expertize and heritage. At least one director shall have expertize in historic preservation and at least one director shall be from the business community. So that expertize language was stricken from the proposed ordinance in favor of the more geographic focus of having nine members appointed by Council member by district. Q Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions about the ordinance before I ask staff to brief the motion? Councilmember TOMASKY Thank you, Madam Chair. Question on point on the last item with respect to the ordinance that removed those a column minimum expertize requirements, did the ordinance does the ordinance replace them or call for that expertize to be otherwise available to for culture? So for culture has a number of advisory committees and the proposed ordinance would retain those advisory committees and retain the expertize that is recommended for those advisory committees. See. So it moves the requirements over to the technical advisory committees to have each of those specialties correct. Okay. And has staff done any analysis on whether there's any change as a result of the available expertize, as a result of where that where those folks sit on a technical advisory committee versus the board? So I think. Mr. DEMBOSKY, two weeks ago in the panel discussion board members presented for cultures perspective that this would be a change in the composition of the board. Right. What the ordinance would do would is focus more on a geographic distribution for the board. Okay. I heard that they were removed. I heard that testimony. I didn't hear the part about the expertize being retained in the technical advisory board. So that actually is helpful to me. Yes. So there are four advisory committees to four culture and those each have a specific focus. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments at this time? All right. Let's move on to briefing the motion, please. Thank you. Wendy Sue, who counsel, staff. And the next item on the agenda is proposed motion 2018 0155, which would establish a cultural development task force. Under the proposed motion, the County Executive in Council, in coordination with for culture, would convene a task force composed of local elected, local elected officials, representatives from Fort Culture, and then also

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 22, 24, 26 and 28 South Garfield Street in Cherry Creek. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property from PUD 470 to G-RH-3 (planned development to row house) located at 22, 24, 26 and 28 South Garfield Street in Council District 10. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-2-20.

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All right. Thank you, Heather. The next item up is Council Bill 285. Councilmember Flynn, we need a motion to take us out of order. Please. Certainly, Madam President, I move that council bill 20 dash to 85 be taken out of order. It has been moved a second again. Thank you. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 285. Council Member Herndon. Thank you. Compels at present. In order to take the action up on this item tonight, council needs to pull this item out of order since it is currently pending for September 28. Thank you. Councilman. Madam Secretary, roll call on taking council Bill 285. Out of order, please. Herndon. I. I. Cashman. I can eat. I. Ortega Sandoval. I. Sawyer I saw as I. Kwak I zellerbach I park I when I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 13 eyes. 13 eyes. Council Bill 285 has been taken out of order. Councilmember Flynn, will you please put Council Bill 285 on the floor for consideration? I guess, Madam President, now that my clock is stop buying, I move that I move the council bill 20 to 25 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved to make it a second second. Thank you. Councilmember Herndon, your motion to postpone, please. Yes, Madam President. I move that final consideration of Council Bill 20 20285 with this public hearing be postponed to Monday, December seven, 2020. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. All right. We got the second there. Thank you, sir. Comments by members of Council on the Postponement of Council Bill 285, Council member Herndon. Bingham and President Talking Alone. Currently it was scheduled for September 28th. However, the applicant has asked for council to reschedule the public hearing to the date mentioned before Monday, December seven. Wonderful. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Roll call on postponing final consideration of Council Bill 285, please. Herndon. I. Hi. Cashman. I can eat. Hi, Ortega. I Cinnabon. Hi. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Sorry. Black. I see. Tobacco. I. Clark. I. Flynn. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 13 Eyes. 13 Eyes. Final consideration of Council Bill 285 with this public hearing has been postponed to Monday, December 7th. That concludes the items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember that this is a consent or a block vote and you will need to vote I. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call an item out for a separate vote. Council Member Flynn Will you please put the resolutions and proclamations for adoption and bills on final consideration for passage on the floor? Certainly, Madam President, I move that proclamations and resolutions be adopted and the bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a bloc for the following items. All series of 2020 952 811 825 857 858 887 891 175 823 826 827 841 843 846 859 875 894 728 729 seven 3731 732 733 734 735 741 742 743 838 839 853 864 865 866 867 868, eight, 69 eight, 78, 71 eight, 72 eight, 73 eight, 83 eight, 28 eight, 58, 85, eight, 95, eight, 12. And last but not least, 819. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. It has been moved. And can I get a second? Thank you, Madam Secretary. Roll call, please. We did have some items in there that were included that were already voted on, but they were already passed as well. So I saw that I was going to ask you how you wanted us to handle that, but I doubt you want us to go back through and read it again. I was only reading it was only reading what was before me. Thank you. Black. Hi. CdeBaca. I look back. I. Flynn. Hi. Brendan. Hi. Hi. Cashman. I can reach i. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres, I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced results. 13. 13. Eyes. The resolutions and proclamations have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass the pre recess announcement. Tonight, we have required public hearing on Council Bill 711, changing the zoning classification for 25, 35 and 2545 East Astbury Avenue in University Park.

Recommendation to request City Manager to investigate the feasibility of utilizing Long Beach Recovery Act funds to support upcoming significant cultural events in the City of Long Beach and report back to the City Council in 30 days.

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The motion is. Carried. Thank you. Item 26, please. Item 26 is a communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Zahra Council Member Turanga. Recommendation to investigate the feasibility of utilizing Long Beach Recovery Act funds to support upcoming significant cultural events in the city. Thank you, Councilmember Austin. Thank you. And I'm happy to bring this item forward after conversations with many, many groups in the city. Many, many who have did not and were not able to to have cultural celebrations as a result of COVID over the last two years. I think it's only right that we look at opportunities to to to help support some of these cultural events that really define our city. City is home to our city is home to a majority of the I'm sorry, a variety of ethnicities and nationalities, cultures that make Long Beach really one of the most diverse large cities in the nation. And the results? We're hosting many significant cultural events annually, like the Cambodian New Year celebration, Juneteenth. As of last year, the Long Beach Filipino Festival, DIA de los Muertos. And I'm sure there are others that that we can think of here. These important festivities, honor historic traditions, educate our residents, and are prime opportunities for local minority vendors to expand their outreach. The celebrations have continued during the pandemic hybrid and virtually. But now we are coming back together. And I think it's very, very important that we we have some stake in the game as a city. As the local restrictions lift. More events will be held in person. So within the last year's Recovery Act, the goals specific to economic inclusion and expanding opportunities for our city's historically disenfranchized communities. We actually put forth several million dollars in economic recovery inclusion efforts, and I believe the acceptable uses of these funds include creating economic opportunities for underrepresented businesses, conducting community outreach and uplifting diverse small communities, and really promoting business and opportunities for people to gather along our in our business course and support business and come together. And so for those reasons, I'm bringing this forward with us as the city manager and city team. You know, look at our Recovery Act dollars, look at our existing strategy. We prioritize and develop a fund and come back hopefully within the next 30 days. Is that reasonable time? I think we could set that as a goal. And if we need a little more time, we'll let you know. But we always shoot for 30 days. Where we are in the second day of spring. And so summer is will be upon us pretty quickly. And we want to be able to be in a position to support some of our community organizations that are doing large events. And so with that, I would ask for my colleagues support and thank Councilmember Saroyan Durango for joining in on this. Thank you, Councilwoman Saru. Yes. Thank you, Councilmember Austin, for bringing this item forward. I, I do appreciate the consideration of how these cultural events are very important to the work that we've been doing to creating the cultural centers. I think that they not only highlight the cultural center and the goals of it, but also how do we ensure there's economic development and recovery opportunities because it's not only doing them in the corridors of the where the community maybe these centers might be, but it's also in allowing vendors to be in the festival to make sure that they're given the opportunity to share their businesses to everybody around them as well. You know, I'm really sad that I had to cancel the our annual MLK Parade. The City and I and the MLK Junior Parade and Festival due to the surge in the COVID 19 and then also the Cambodian New Year celebration, I was going to do as well because of the uncertainty of the COVID variant. So I do hope that we're looking into better days so we can do things outdoors. And it's really, I think, also a way to not only recover economically, but lift our spirits in this in this time of recovery. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Ranga. Thank you. And I want to thank Councilmember also for bringing this forward. I think it's important to know that Long Beach is a very diverse and cultural city. We've been having cultural events for the last at least eight years every year, but we've been here for a long time. And I think that it's time that we support them in other ways as we move forward. I think that we need to look at the importance of cultural events well as a whole in in the city islamique, including the things that happened with the arts as well. So I'm very happy to support this item tonight. Thank you. Thank you for asking, Richardson. Thank you. I'm very happy to support this idea tonight as well. I'll tell you, you know, hosting events during the pandemic, there's additional costs, you know, testing, you know, barricades. When we did the Uptown Jazz Festival two years ago, we just went virtual. But we did an in-person this past year. And it was I'm talking about, you know, just additional things that normally wouldn't have come up. And I'll tell you when you know you know, when I think about the cancelation of the King parade, you know, there's if there were funds to say, hey, maybe there are things that we can do if this one were available, then maybe there were things that we could do to make adjustments or save some element of it or, you know, do something later on. So I think having flexibility to make sure that we don't overlook these incredibly important cultural assets and our flexibility with funding to be able to support these things that are incredibly important, I think is important to the whole community. You know, and I think about I think about, you know, concerts in the park in general have come a long way. I remember we didn't have any concerts in the park in North Long Beach till Steve Miller started Uptown Jazz Fest. It was back then. The title was The North Long Beach, Latin Jazz and Blues Way Too Long, the title Way Too Long. But the point was, we had a very diverse community that wasn't being served with art. You know, it was, you know, 92% people of color. You couldn't find Latin music, you couldn't find blues or R&B or jazz in their community. And now it's one of the most successful. Again, it's been citywide. So I think we made a commitment to, you know, equity in the arts and diversity in the arts. And I think we just have to acknowledge that when those things are absent, it has a greater impact. So I love this item. I think it's a great item. Thank you, Councilman Austin, all the signers for bringing it forward. And I look forward to supporting this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Zendejas. Thank you, Mayor. A huge thank you to Councilmember Austin and Sarah and New Dunga for signing on to this item as well. I really think that not only not being able to hold these these cultural events during these past two years was very detrimental to our community. And I was very, very excited to host DIA de los Muertos back in 2020. But that did not happen, obviously. So in 2021 I did. I was able to host them it and it was just a super big hit. And everybody till this day still comes up to me and telling me how amazing it was and how awesome it was to see community out there and how uplifting it was as well. I think that these events are not only really fun to attend, but they are a beautiful celebration of our multi cultural community here in the city that we live in. So I'm very happy to support this item. Is there any public comment on this item? We have Sonny Kinsey. Hello. Good evening. Um, just wanted to say full support of this item. I think this is a great moment with respect to the Tower of Babel that the city of Long Beach is. This is a very tribal place. And, you know, I think that there's enough city funding for every member of whatever tribe you are to get some type of funding so that we can all you know, I love Nowruz because I like the the little Persian treats, you know. And if the Persian people in Long Beach wanted to get together and get some Recovery Act funding and, you know, they had some vendors coming out, that would be great for me. I would like to come and support it. So I like when these opportunities come with respect to public funding, towards celebrating diverse cultures within the city. That being said, you know, I am a member of a tribe. I'm a proud member of my tribe. And what I've learned in this moment of COVID is that my tribe, specifically African-Americans in this city, outside of some of the events that was referenced, specifically the Juneteenth celebration that Mr. Cole Kemp did, we are most of mostly a community that our events are celebrated with under the auspices of the city. We've had very rare private events going on. And so as a result of that, I think that that's some of the COVID stipulations we were most hindered by specifically as my council representative, Mrs. Dr. Sara reference with the Kings Day Parade. And then, you know, that was canceled due to COVID. And then just a week prior it was a major festival in the downtown area. So 70,000 plus people are walking around. So, you know, that was a private event. And so I guess what I would like, Mr. Modica, if you could look into, is an opportunity with respect to this report and an empowering opportunity where a lot of the cultural events that the City of Long Beach kind of takes the shoulder of responsibility towards, if we could figure out a way to create, you know, relationships with maybe neighborhood associations, whatever it could be under a private entity that way, you know, if COVID 25 or whatever comes, you know, in the future in terms of stipulations, a private entity could take the responsibility of representing the cultures that are impacted when these kinds of moments happen. Thank you. I think that concludes public comment on this item. We have a motion in a second. Members, please go ahead and cast your votes. Kasman. Alston the motion is carried. Thank you. I think we have item number 27. Next item 27, Communication from Public Works recommendation to enter into an agreement with the Boeing Company to accept a one time cash payment of 2.7 million for the improvement of the Cherry Avenue and 405 intersection District five.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Table 30-1 of Chapter 21.30, Table 31-1 in Chapter 21.31, and by adding Subsection T to Section 21.31.020, and adding Division III to Chapter 21.31 by adding Sections 21.31.300, 21.31.310, 21.31.320, 21.31.325, 21.31.330, 21.31.340, 21.31.350, Table 31-8, and 21.31.360, relating to planned unit developments, read and adopted as read. (District 8)

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Washington second. Are they really? He in the last motion is to declare ordinance amending Chapter 21.30 and 21.31 read for the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for a final reading session. Okay, so there's a motion. Is there a second member who's going to cast your votes? Motion carried. Okay. Thank you. That's a series of motions. I just want to make one quick comment, and I know I think some of the folks have all left before the votes, but I know there's a lot of neighbors here still that live in this neighborhood and want to hear from me directly. I've walked that neighborhood before. I've been in that neighborhood. And I think you have a great neighborhood. And I just want you to know that the city will continue to try to work and invest in that neighborhood. We have limited resources. But to the developers of this new community, you also have a very big responsibility now in working with this neighborhood, as you all know, and providing the services of support and creating a community that really integrates with everyone. And I think that I know is the expectation of Councilmember Austin. I know he's been pushing you guys to do more and we're pushing you guys to try to to really make that a even stronger neighborhood and community. And that's all of our expectation on the council as well. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was said as well. But thank you. Thank you to it to to the neighbors. I'm going to go and take a one minute recess and then we will I'm sorry to take the last hour on the last one. So that's my apologies. But on the last one, we thought we had already had done that. We did. Yeah. I thought they did, didn't they? You recorded the last vote? Yeah, we did the last vote already. What do you want to clear the screen? If you can just hit. It's been recorded. Already. He only has. The last votes. Is the last vote? Yes. Yeah, it's recorded right there. You got it? Yeah. We're taking a minute. Recess. Thank you. Bye. Wow. They don't want to keep on the next. What it's going to be. That's why. Still on the last night of. Um. Call this meeting back to order. Madam Clerk, if I can do a roll call. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Councilwoman Price. Councilmember Cooper. Not here. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilman Andrews. Councilmember Odinga. Councilman Austin. Councilmember Richardson. Mayor Garcia. I'm here as well. Can I get a motion for a consent calendar, please? Motioned in a second for consent calendar. Any public comment on consent calendar? Can I please come forward? If you public coming from concert calendar you need to speak please if you have a comment.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4820 West Hayward Place in West Highland. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from U-SU-C to U-SU-C1 (allows for an accessory dwelling unit), located at 4820 West Hayward Place in Council District 1. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-13-20.

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I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 3913 EIS Council Bill 20 1127 has passed Council members Sandoval all you please put Council Bill 1128 on the floor for final passage. I move that council bill 20 1128 is placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and I think we got councilman herndon second in there. The required public hearing for council bill 20 dash 1128 is open. May we please have the staff report? Yes, Libby again and I'll be presenting the staff report. Four 4820 West Hayward Place. This is located in Council District one in the West Highland neighborhood. The property is located near the near the intersection of West Hayward Place and Wolf Street, north of West 29th Avenue. It's approximately 9450 square feet and is currently occupied by a single unit home. It's currently zoned urban single unit C and the applicant is proposing to rezone to a zone district that allows for an accessory dwelling unit U.S.C. one. As I stated previously, the existing zoning is urban single unit C, which allows for residential uses and some civic uses in the Urban House primary building form. The existing or the site is occupied by a single unit home surrounded by mostly other single unit uses with some two unit uses within scattered around the West Highland neighborhood. And then there's some more commercial uses located along West 29th Avenue. This shows the existing area, just the subject. Property is on the right hand side. There's another single unit home that's just to the west. And then one of the commercial structures along West 49th Avenue. The MAP amendment was complete in mid-August, mid-August, in a postcard notifying property owners within 200 feet of the site was sent out on August 15th. And then this went to planning board on September 30th, where it was unanimously approved on the consent agenda. And to date, we've received one public comment from a neighbor in support of the rezoning. The Denver zoning code has five review criteria, which I'll go over. The first criterion consistency with adopted plans. And there are three plans that are applicable to this site. The rezoning is consistent with several of the strategies and blueprint. Denver But I'll just go over these two. This MAP amendment will promote equity by creating a greater mix of housing options in every neighborhood, and it will lead to an environmentally resilient Denver by promoting infill development where infrastructure is already in place. The future neighborhood context and blueprint. Denver is urban. These areas are characterized by one and two unit residential areas, with some mixed use and multi-unit residential embedded throughout with regular block patterns and alley access. Blueprint identifies this property as a low residential place type. These place types are mostly single unit residential uses and accessory dwelling units are appropriate and can be compatibly compatibly integrated. I mean, West Hayward Place is a local street and these streets are mostly characterized by residential uses. The growth area strategy is all other areas of the city. This is where we anticipate 10% of employment growth and 20% of housing growth by 2040. The rezoning is also consistent with the land use and built form housing policy for to enable adus in all residential neighborhoods. And then in housing inclusive Denver, which is not adopted as a supplement to the comprehensive plan, but it was adopted by City Council. This rezoning is consistent with the attainable homeownership recommendation one promoting the development of accessory dwelling units. Staff also find that the requested zoning meets the next two criteria. The rezoning will result in uniformity of district regulations, and it will further the public health, safety and welfare by implementing adaptive plans and providing an additional housing unit that can be kept compatibly inter integrated into the surrounding neighborhood. There's also a justifying circumstance for this MAP amendment with the newly adopted guidance for use in all of residential neighborhoods, and that's found in that policy forum blueprint. Denver. Lastly, the proposed rezoning is consistent with the urban neighborhood context, the residential zoned districts, general purpose and the specific intent of the USC one zoned district. Staff finds all review criteria have been met and recommends approval of the SNAP Amendment. And that concludes my presentation. All right. Thank you, Libby. No written testimony has been received regarding Council Bill 1128. And we have two individuals signed up to speak this evening. Our first speaker is Jesse Paris. The meeting ended with the counsel suggesting Mr. Perry's not present for demo almost and allow Blackstar a moment for self. Defense has a magical moment for social change as well as the Unity Party of Colorado and Mile High. And I will be the next November in 2023. I'm in favor of this reporting. Tonight's. Love, if you will, for the council, men of the council, women of this district. And I have relationships with several people in the neighborhood. I wanted to know who this is going to be voted out to, because this is an area of town. It has been rapidly, if not the most gentrified in the county that never. So I would really like to know the answer to that question because we have a unhoused neighbor crisis. People are being swept like tracks on a daily basis. So I would prefer the venture to be somebody who lived experience. If we're really trying to tackle this crisis that we have called it's. So I thought I could please answer those questions. I was greatly appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Comrade Protect. Hello. Council members, employers, employees of city and county of Denver. I want to point out that you're not here, by the way, again. So so you are running business as usual, talking about rezoning five points, which is unfortunate because Five Points has a really amazing cultural history and you are planning on completely and totally just destroying it for more rich white people. Instead of coming for coming up with actual responses and solutions for the I think it's about 10,000 on house people. I'm sorry if I mispronounced Jess even mentioned it, but there are unhoused people in this zone. So. So why are we discussing rezoning and rebuilding of or building new property? Ten, 10% of the other 1 to 28 units. Why are we discussing that? Why are we acting like it's business as usual during the middle of a pandemic? Why are we discussing business as usual? Giving more rich white landlords money. Instead of shutting down to the working class, the people who serve you meals, who deliver your food. You stock your groceries. Who are putting themselves at risk daily. For what? You don't care. Not a single one of you care. Except maybe Candy. I like candy. She's cool. In hindsight. But, you know, like, look, nobody is here. Nobody is here. You are staying cozy in your warm homes. Eating all. The lovely food that we. Pay for. For what? Thousands are going to die in on the streets after being constantly brutalized by the Denver Police Department. And I want to go a little off topic. You might get upset, Madam President, but I don't give a fuck. $16 million. And please refrain. From partaking in body cam. And I. Quote. That the Denver police chief said that you would use those those tasers on people with autism. How can you be? Don't tell me how to speak, Madam President. I will personally be right. Sotero Thank you very. Please refrain from rousing speech. That concludes our speakers questions for members of Council on Council Bill 1128. I see no questions from members of Council on Council Bill 1128. All right. The public hearing for Council Bill 20 Dash 1128 is closed. I don't see any hands raised either on this one. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. Madam Secretary. Sorry, Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Sorry. I am. Black. I. Peter Baker. I. Clark. I. When? I. Herndon. I. Hi. Hi. Cashman. Hi. Can each. I. Ortega. I. Madam President. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. On the eve of a night. 11 Eyes Council Bill 20 Dash 1128 has passed. Councilmember Sandoval, would you please put council Bill 1138 on the floor for final passage?

Recommendation to receive and file information regarding restoration of the senior meal program at Cesar E. Chavez and Silverado Parks. (Districts 1,7)

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Kate. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Moving on to the next item. We're actually we had one other request we're going to do item 14. So. Item 14 is a report from Parks Recreation Submarine recommendation to receive and file information regarding restorations of the senior meal program at Cesar Chavez and Cerrado, Silverado Parks District one and seven. Okay, Councilman Gonzales. Yes, I'd like to see if there's a staff report. But while we're waiting for our staff member to get here, I just would like to first thank our senior advisory commission. And I know members of the Gray Panthers that are here as well that have expressed a lot of interest in bringing back the senior food program, both at Chavez and Silverado. I'm glad to hear that it is positively heading in that direction and it could be maybe staffed up very soon. So we'll hear more information very shortly as Marie comes down. And then I'll just sit here and talk and talk until she can come down. That's okay. But I also want to say thank you to Marie as well. She and I chatted. I know that she has worked with a senior advisory commission and I really appreciate your work as well. And here she is. Thank you, Marie. Good evening. My apologies. You know, trying to do a little business in the back. That's all right. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the City Council. On February 21st, the staff was asked to report back to the city. At that time, the city council and outlining costs related to restoring the meal program at the current state and the current state of the transportation services provided by Long Beach Transit to the two sites at Cesar Chavez and Silverado Park. At that time, the council requested that staff look at other options to fund these two sites and solutions for transportation issues. So this is our status report and an update. In the past few months, staff has researched options for providing senior meals at these two sites. First, reaching back out to HSA to see if they were in a better financial position to return services to these two sites. And unfortunately, their funding has not increased. And as reported previously, the total cost to restore meals at both of these sites by using the HSA program would be over $100,000. Staff then reached out to organizations that may be in the area already providing meals and to through other programs, and contacted multiple community organizations including Empowered for Life, Food Finders, Workforce Development, Aging and Community Services in LA and Women in Action reaching out to ascertain if any of these organizations had either the capacity to add additional sites or if they knew other programs that could be in existence. After multiple conversations, we're excited to report that Women in Action Reaching Out. A local nonprofit organization has offered to provide meals to our seniors at Cesar Chavez and Silverado Parks. The meals will be served Monday through Friday, beginning on Monday, April 24th, from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.. They will be served either hot or cold and come prepackaged to meet the USDA serving sizes and the organization will be requesting a suggested donation of $1 per meal. Although this will not be mandatory. Women in action. Reaching out has been serving various communities in Long Beach since 2012. They provide meals and snacks to seniors, teens and youth residing in the Carmelite housing area on a year round basis. In addition, they provide afterschool meals at a park in Compton. Meals are also provided to seniors who participate in activities at the Long Beach Expo Center, located in Bixby Knolls. Ms.. Mrs. King, the CEO of Women in Action, reaching out is a very passionate person about her services to the community and is dedicated to providing the best services ever and is very excited about serving our seniors at these two sites. Staff is currently working with the organization on the proper insurance, health permits and agreements, and we are excited to be starting that program next week. We will also continue to research and identify additional locations in these areas that may be providing senior meals, such as local churches and other services and other agencies in case there are other options available for our residents. Finally, we are also in conversation with Meals on Wheels Long Beach to explore the opportunity of enhancing the Meals program at these two sites. To also include meals to homebound seniors. With respect to transportation. In August of 2012, the Long Beach Transit discontinued their passport services to Chavez Park. It was replaced with Route 151, where standard fares apply. The passport service was, as you are aware, a free service. There were no major changes to Route 191 at the time, which stops in front of Silverado Park. The discontinuation of the passport service and the discontinuation of the two meal sites were within months of each other and likely one did not affect the other. Both agencies cited the discontinuation of service because of low participation. I have been in contact with Ken MacDonnell, the CEO of Long Beach Transit, and Mr. McDonald explained that the majority of the three passport services were discontinued several years ago, mainly due to the fact that a lot of their subsidy is based on the number of paid ridership. So the more free ridership. That they offered, they. Then would be hurt with reduced subsidy. So they only left one free passport service in place. That said, Mr. McDonald understands the issues and wants to be a part of the solution and he will be working with his team and ours to identify opportunities for discounted passes for our seniors to get to these locations, or possibly working together to locate community partners who are interested in funding free passes for our seniors. We hope to have some movement on this issue within the next month and be able to come back to the council to report on that. In addition, on March 23rd, 2017, Long Beach Transit also hosted a community meeting to discuss their systemwide transit analysis and reassessment initiative, which will take an in-depth look into Long Beach Transit's current transit operations, such as one time performance ridership, route efficiency, staffing, etc.. It will also set priorities that will carry Long Beach transit into the future. Two of our senior advisory commissioners in their roles as advocates for our seniors, attended the meeting and presented a proposal for the reinstatement of the passport program on a route to include Cesar Chavez Park. In addition, we have been researching other alternative transportation options for our seniors to utilize to get to these two sites. One option we found could be the immediate needs transportation program operated by L.A. Metro. Through this program, there is a possibility of receiving free bus tokens and passes and taxi vouchers to provide to our seniors who are participating in the Meals program. We have been informed that there is currently a waiting list for this program and we are submitting the necessary paperwork to be on that waiting list. We have also been working with the HSA regarding their Rider Relief Transportation Program, which also provides senior access to reduced cost monthly bus fares. A representative from this program will be visiting both meal sites next week to provide information to the seniors on how they can enroll in the program and receive coupons and vouchers for the discounts. Again, we will continue to look at the opportunities for transportation as we move forward, but we are very pleased that we will be able to reinstate the meals program at these two sites starting next week. That is the end of my report. Well, that was great. Thank you so much, Marie. I appreciate it. This was a very in-depth report. I'm glad. I'm very happy. That will be bringing back the meal program to both of these locations. Cesar Chavez Park. Jan Peyser, Community Center as well as Silverado. And I look forward to certainly passing this item here now, but also looking forward to seeing the report come back in a month. That will include additional information about transportation. And I know our senior advisory commission is here. I know they'll continue to work and bring better ideas and more ideas to that discussion. I know a few things that have been mentioned so far that I would just like for us to take into consideration. But I myself am also in communication with Ken McDonald. I've been in talks with you as well. I'm glad we're all on the same page here. In addition to looking at alternative transportation options, bringing back some routes, looking for either free bus passes or some discounted bus passes, I would also like us to kind of open up the question to Long Beach Transit as it really depends on them. You know, they have their own board, their own director, but really looking at also ways that we can add more more stops near build senior buildings. I think that some have been changed, have been moved around, and I think that just creates an additional barrier for them to get to and fro different areas. So I think that's just something for us to look at and then just creating more access in general for that. So again, thank you so very much. Thank you to everyone who's here and I look forward to hearing more. Thank you. Council member gearing up. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I commend the staff and in their research on getting the program back on line. I think that we still have a responsibility to our seniors that this program should be institutionalized within the city and not have to rely on philanthropic workers, organizations and their generosity to help us keep this program going. So I hope that in the future discussions, we can look at other ways to institutionalize it. So we're not having to go out and reach into the philanthropic community to sustain programs that we should be responsible for here. I also want to commend staff for their efforts in transportation. It's out of our control. However, I think that we need to also work with our partners in transportation, such as Long Beach Transit, to make transportation more affordable and more accommodating to our seniors so that they can get from point A to point B without having having it be a major effort and an all day endeavor for them to get to where they need to be. So I'm looking forward to next month's report. Hopefully it can be a very good one. But again, I want to see the city move forward with institutionalizing the food program for seniors. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Yes, I just want I really think Marie Knight for a thorough report and for my colleagues for pushing the conversation forward. We know that our senior population is a growing population and we have a senior center in my district and it's a great place to visit and it is a place where we do have access to a lot of different meal programs there. And so making sure that this is something that other districts in areas have is really important to me. And I really appreciate you circling back with public transit. I know it's one of the things that we're trying to work on as well. And so I support everything that you guys are doing and I would continue to support trying to institutionalize, you know, ensure that these programs are reoccurring with some city support. And also just really a big thank you to the nonprofits and the community groups out there that step up to do this work because you're not required to do that. So thank you so much. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I also like to just agree with my colleagues. I want to thank Marie Knight and Parks and Recreation and Marine Four for their work and their efforts to improve services, in address services for our seniors all across the city, and particularly in the areas of senior meals and transit access. It was it was mentioned that by Councilmember Gonzalez that she'd like to see more access points. I think there is opportunity, particularly in terms of engaging, engaging Long Beach transit. They do have no more resources now as a result of Measure M and and SB one. And so we should, should encourage them to increase, improves transit services and use those resources to improve transit services to our seniors. I also want to commend women in action reaching out. I know I made the recommendation that when this issue came before us, that we look at that organization, organization as doing some amazing work out of the Carmen Leto's community. If you go there on a daily basis, you can see a team of volunteers, women in action, reaching out, preparing hundreds of meals and feeding hundreds of seniors in North Long Beach and now in Compton. I believe now they'll be volunteering their services for seniors on the West Side into two park locations, which I think is awesome. And it shows the capacity and amazing potential to integrate our senior communities throughout the city of Long Beach. And so but I will agree with our Councilmember Urunga, in terms of the sustainability, I'd like to see that program be sustainable in an organization like Women in actually reaching out. I think, you know, there should be a codified agreement in a contract at some point in the future to to make sure that those services are are sustainable and that there are the seniors cannot can depend on them moving forward in terms of their quality of life. And yeah, I'm just proud that that that we're having an impact and able to to touch the lives of hundreds of more seniors throughout the city. And so good luck and look forward to it coming back. I'll support this. Okay. Thank you. There's a motion and a second, I think, with a public comment. Stepped away with that. Did we do public comment? No. Let's look. Set the way. I wasn't sure if that happened when I stepped away. So public comment, please come forward if you have public comment. I get a lot of time from guys tonight. I apologize if you get tired of hearing from me about anyway. Bill again from Council District three. Maureen, I want to thank you for bringing this attention for the meals program to these very important parks. There are some programs in Los Angeles County where the increase has needed and the demand has increased. In fact, there's now a waiting lists for some food programs in Los Angeles County. We don't want to hear this kind of thing. However, regarding transportation, I would like to see a collaboration between the City Hall, Language Transit and Uber and Lyft. Uber just released their financials. Last year, they had $6.5 billion in profits. I think they could afford a little reinvestment in our community, which they're participating in. And also, I'd like to say that last week at Cal State, Long Beach, I believe, Marie, you were there for the aging and reimagining aging. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend that event. I was in Los Angeles attending the first annual ever AARP first annual elder summit. Got a lot of great information. Metro was there. They're asking for our feedback. So I'd like to see and I know Mayor Garcia is on the Metro board now. So I'd like to see some kind of collaboration, if we can. Something that we can do there as well. We are more than glad to send to you via email to your office the presentation that was performed by Metro there on their long ago program for transportation. There was a lot of great knowledge there for seniors, so definitely I'd like to support this item. Marie, thank you for your support and I'll definitely be contacting you on other items on seniors. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Mary Alice. You? I'm the chairperson for the Senior Citizens Advisory Commission, and we have been working on this. Project for Meals. For. Seniors for one year. Exactly. So we have been very patient in waiting. It's taken a lot of organization and a lot of meetings. And so we are now finally coming to fruition. And I want to thank Marie and her staff for all the work that they did. And I also want to thank Lena Gonzalez for her patience and waiting. And so I'm happy to see that we're going to be able to have some nutrition for our seniors and hopefully. We can get Ken McDonald, the CEO. From Long Beach Transit, to hear our message in our voice and and do the proper things so that we can bring our seniors there. Thank you very much. Karen Reseda, resident of the first district and secretary for the Long Beach Gray Panthers. And thank you, Mary, for all your work in getting this program back. I am. These lunch programs are absolutely critical for low income senior population. A lot of them depend on these programs. It's often their only hot meal of the day. I know when I find myself going to many meetings, that's the only hot meal I get. I participate in the lunch program over at the Fourth Street Senior Center, and there's regularly over 100 people and usually 10 to 15 people that come in, get on the waitlist, and oftentimes they don't get served because there's not enough food, because the demand is so large. But even more critical in the food and the transportation is the socialization opportunities for many seniors. The senior center is the hub of their socialization experience. So thank you all for supporting this and thank you your anger, Mr. Erakat, for suggesting that it be institutionalized. It really does need to be used for the well-being of our seniors and our community and keeping them healthy and aging in homes and reducing our health care costs . I want to hitch a ride on her last statement. She said. The seniors are in homes. However. As your homeless count will bear when the record is finally posted on your website. It's taken in January, but it's not up yet. The homeless count. That a passenger, a large percentage of those people are homeless. So you have seniors who not only are not part of your social structure because they are homeless, many of them are scraping on their food stamp card, the general relief card. And they're not getting to those meals. In thing, seniors said service centers that you're now going to restore and because they're considered public outcry casts. Some of them might have to show up dirty. And because they know that if they showed up dirty, that they wouldn't be socially accepted. They're not going to make it. So as we're seeking to restore your meals. I want to remind us of a man who died on the side of the Bank of America building in District four. He was taken off the street a month before he died. But he sat there morning after morning. Some people would bring him food. But I wonder what would would have happened if he had been invited into the singer's center. Someone would have noticed, oh, he's homeless. So he instead of being taken off the street one month before he died, if he had been invited into the senior center for Meals, he might have been off the street earlier than one month before he died. We think, in terms of seniors who are in housing. But many of you seniors who are homeless, seniors who are homeless will not see even these meals. Now. I'm 56. We're all going to be singers one day. If some of us already are. In front of me and behind me. What is it going to take? To get the same news that you counted in January who are homeless. Into those centers where these meals are. What is it going to take us to do this? And when you go to sleep tonight, I hope that's on your mind. What? What can I do personally? Thank you, Mr. President. Would you like to speak on? Those of you who know me know that I rarely speak after public comment. I don't think it's right that we have the last word. But these comments tonight were so egregious that I have to respond. So I'm references a particular individual in the fourth District, Richard, was a success story. We got him off the street and into housing. So I just want to set the record straight there. Ask anyone in our health department. They'll tell you that this was a miracle, what we did. Also, just to set the record straight on the homeless count, I watched it for many, many years. I don't ever remember it being out before late April. So there's nothing new about that. Thank you. Thank you. This is Councilman Gonzalez. Yes. I just wanted to add one last thing, is that I think in when we brought this item forward some time ago, this was really done in honor of Ruth Ricker in terms of bringing the meal program back. And I know the senior advisory commission knows that, and I know that we're looking to possibly rename this after her. She was a fantastic person that really believed in bringing that back also for the socialization issue. But this will be a great memory for her. Thank you. Thank you very much. I see no more. We have no one more individual than the diocese. Okay, fine. We'll do a voice count. Please cast your vote. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. Motion carries. No, I'm fine. Thank you. Notamment. Yes.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending and restating Chapter 8.99, relating to just cause for termination of tenancies, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)

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The motion is carried to nine zero. Thank you. 21, please. Adam 21 two Report from City Attorney Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to just cause for termination of tenancies. Read and adopted as read city citywide. All right. Looking for a motion in the Councilman Allen's second furrow. Is any public comment on this? Are there any members of the public that would like to speak on this item? Please use the raise hand feature or dial star nine. See none. That concludes public comment. All right, let's have a roll call, please. Councilwoman Sun has. I. Councilwoman Allen. Councilwoman Pryce. I. Councilman. So. But now. I. Councilwoman. Mango. Councilwoman. Councilwoman Sara. I Council member Oranga. Hi. Councilman Austin. Hi. Vice Mayor Richardson. And the motion is carried nine zero.

Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from Catapult, a live-streamed concert for artists and creators in Long Beach.

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Actually, actually, you know what, Madam Court, let me do I have a request from Councilmember Pearce, and it is it is her last meeting. So we're going to we're going to take items 31 and 34. Next item 31 recommendation to receive and file presentation from Catapult. Councilor Pearce. Thank you so very much. This is an item that was brought over from the last meeting that we had. So Catapult is a new organization that does livestreaming concerts for artists and creators in the city of Long Beach. They are new, newly formed and particular focus on these difficult times with COVID and trying to give a platform and be able to support artists all the way around. And so if they are here, I believe you have a location. That's correct. Yeah, I have a presentation on foot. Unfortunately, I'm not able to share my screen so I don't have a PowerPoint, but I will go into a brief overview of what we're doing. First, I'd like to offer my thanks to the Council and to Mayor Garcia for allowing me to speak today. I know we're all really tired and we've talked a lot, but I'll keep this as brief as I can. So my name is Donovan Brown, and I really miss live music. I miss the feeling of being on stage, the feeling of connecting a roomful of strangers in that profoundly temporary experience we call a concert. I grew up on the border of Compton and North Long Beach. I'm a District one resident, and I'm proud to call the city my home. I've been a working musician here for over a decade and it's led me to some of the most transformative experiences of my life. I like playing live after five at the Legendary Breakers Hotel before it closed down or putting on a Pink Floyd tribute with the late, great Josh Fishell. If you remember him back in 2016 or more recently competing in Busker Fest for the first time. And we did win that my band when that sounds kind of cool so those those names and places might not mean anything to you but to me they remind me that Long Beach has a rich history shaped by our diversity and our creativity, and I'm fortunate to be a part of it. First off, I'd like to thank the Health and Human Services Department for making the difficult decisions in the interest of public safety that save lives but often negatively impact our local businesses. It's a difficult position to be in, and I do not envy you, but my heart goes out to all of you and all the medical workers that are keeping us safe. COVID 19 has undeniably devastated the US economy and with it the live music industry. The harsh reality is that 90% of music venues nationwide will shut their doors for good within the next two months without a government stimulus. And Long Beach is no exception. As you know, bars and music venues are among those designated lowest priority, these reopening phases. And most don't have any idea when they'll be able to reopen or for how long. So as COVID cases continue to spike, venues all over the country are faced with an uncertain future, and the touring industry is at a standstill. On December 27th, all music workers receiving unemployment insurance will get their last check for pandemic unemployment assistance. And without an extension over 12 million, 1099 workers will be unable to survive. Now, there's already a strong national push to get the save our stages and restart bills through Congress to get much needed funds to these dying venues. But with PARTIZAN politics impeding the progress, a bailout is unlikely, leaving musicians with between a rock and a hard place pretty much once since a million streams on Spotify nets you about 30 $200, and opportunities for publishing and placements are very limited. In the absence of a government bailout, artists have been forced to find innovative ways to monetize their art and in some cases, increase their brand values by selling merch, partnering with brands, hosting virtual concerts. Artists are finding ways to weather the pandemic, whether signed or independent. All artists will ultimately need to find a pandemic proof way to translate their live shows into engaging virtual content that they can monetize. The unfortunate reality is that most don't have the funds or resources to do that effectively. I started researching this about six months ago when I realized that I'd lost all my gigs and a half of my income to COVID 19. I realized that the industry was changing and that I had to change with it. Catapult is both the answer and the future. What we're providing is a subscription based streaming platform for the creators, curators and consumers of live music. Visually stunning, highly curated virtual concerts will be filmed at traditional and nontraditional venues in both indoor and outdoor spaces and then streamed on the Catapult platform. Let's say my band, Black Boys, wanted to play a kind of full concert. We would choose our subscription level based on our venue needs and our budget, and we'd register a date for one of our quarterly concerts. We set our own ticket prices and we would split the ticket and streaming revenue with the catapult platform 70% to us, 30% to the platform. We could get access to free resources and workshops on how to learn how to grow our fanbase. We get additional perks as we hit different metrics. For example, we get $100 in Google ad credits for reaching a thousand subscribers or for referring a friend. After all, our after all our costs are covered, that 30% of profit will be right back into the catapult platform, will expand to new venues, add more artists and crew to the roster at cool new features to the platform, and add community driven outreach programs to provide support to the underserved. Because we're not profit driven, but people driven. Each concert we host in the platform will include a donation link so the viewers can directly support the venues and the artists that they love at the same time. If a venue is nontraditional, like a park or a public space, a portion of the proceeds would go to a local charity or community organization in need of support. Music has always been the great connector. It's the universal language unites us in a way that no other medium can. And that's why we love it. And that's. Spirit. We are going to build this platform to make every Catapult concert as interactive as possible. Artists will perform live and their fans will be offered unique ways to engage with those shows in real time. When venues reopen will stream socially distanced concerts and eventually full blown festivals to music lovers all over the world when things reopen. So far, we've partnered with Shannon's Corner to bring Its Lonely at the Top, which is an immersive virtual showcase series to the heart of downtown Long Beach. We've also linked up with Rand Foster, who owns Fingerprints Record Shop. So we're launching a tiny desk style series focused on stripped down performances and deejay sets. And as you might guess, we'll be shooting at Fingerprints Record Shop. Our biggest production would be a monthly drive in concert with the. So I've been talking with my friend Craig Hutchison, the president of the Beehive, and he's helped me to get the parking lot at the Long Beach Convention Center to do drive in concerts. So we have three flagship events that we're ready to launch, and we have a talented team of engineers, curators, set designers, and some Grammy Award winning artists who have expressed interest in helping out this platform to bring stunning virtual concerts. The Olympics will showcase venues like Alex's Bar and Piazza, along with parks and public spaces like Highland Park and the Museum of Latin American Art. We're going to continue to activate spaces all over the city new location based matching system to connect qualified engineers, stylists, set designers, session musicians and more with nearby Catapult Productions. All prospective crew would need to do is upload their resume a list of gear that they own and the equipment they're familiar with. And we'll find productions that master skillset will be able to get the people that make the touring industry run back to work in their own communities. The cost of operating and maintaining a platform like Catapult are significant, but we're taking a measured approach to our rollout, and we've set incremental crowdfunding goals to reach each milestone as we continue to activate Long Beach landmarks and generate buzz around the platform to unveil new features to the platform and introduce our first featured artists. Now, we've already got a few of these organizations that pledge their support, and I'm asking each of your offices to do the same. Any financial contribution you can give would be a huge help, and we'll gladly accept the contributions. But the average cost shoot one catapult concert at our current scale is about $2,000, and that's with all the staff and artists working on a pro-rated basis. We're asking each of your offices to sponsor just one catapult concert using funds from your divided by nine budgets to help ensure that live music lives on in Long Beach. If you're able to contribute more, we're glad they appreciate it and your generosity will have a tremendous impact. I'd also humbly ask that each of your offices reach out to your constituents via email, sharing our message and our mission to the residents of Long Beach. We love live music. I have a newsletter drafted and we can send it out and we really do have an opportunity to come together and show the world that Long Beach is a place where we innovate, the place we build sustainably and we take care of our own. It's a place where we hold each other accountable. We value our differences, and we know that we're stronger together than we could ever be apart. I believe the catapult is the future of live music in the face of a global pandemic. This initiative can and will revitalize the music scene in Long Beach and usher in a new standard in commerce and community building. With your support, we can not only save our stages, we can do a lot of good for a lot of people. So let's make the most of this moment in time and give the people a reason to hope again. Thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to take them. Thank you, Councilor Pearce. I just wanted to say thank you so very much. I know that music is important to so many of us on this council and we've all supported different music events. There is a PowerPoint that we will email out to each of the council members. I'm sorry that that didn't get up. But I encourage all of you to reach out to them and think about them. I know. Council Member Richardson. You always do your uptown, so possibly there's some partnership there. I ask for everybody's support for this presentation. Thank you. Control rooms and a house. Thank you, Mayor. And I am just so grateful to Councilwoman Pearce for bringing this item forward. Mr. Brown, I am so excited to hear about your catapult and so excited to hopefully partner with you and support your efforts. Like one of my nieces says, who who is also an artist, little Mary. She says that medicine. I'm sorry. That music is the medicine to our mental health. And right now we need that kind of medicine more than ever before. And so I thank you for your creativity and for your passion to be able to support our artists who are most definitely suffering and struggling more than ever during this pandemic. I just want you to know that I am absolutely committed to any effort by this council that can help those who are struggling. And I'm glad that we're looking for innovative solutions to meet our needs right now. So thank you again. Council Pierce Thank you, Mr. Brown, for that wonderful, uplifting presentation at almost midnight. I needed that lift. Thank you very much again. And I'm so very supportive of this. Thank you so much. Does your any public comment on that item? Yes. Our first speakers j u you sent us. Hello. Yes. Please begin. Is that. Right? Hello and good evening. Council members and Mayor Garcia. My name is Jamie Santos and I am a. Resident of Council District eight and I would like to express my support for catapult. The already fragile. Ecosystem of live music and entertainment venues are in even more. Peril. The opportunities for venues and artists to pivot into a sustainable. Business model to endure the pandemic are few and far between. The Catapult team is focused, focusing in on an overlooked section of Long Beach growing up in Long Beach. Are growing up in an. Artistic city like Long Beach. There are many venues that showcase the amazing. Talent that Long Beach has raised. What catapults will provide is a way to. Keep live music going. By utilizing technology with Catapult. Focusing in on this specific. Aspect of Long Beach. The city will be able to focus on other aspects of rebuilding and healing after the COVID 19 crisis. We must do what we can to catapult. These venues and artists in a position to. Live and thrive post-pandemic. Thank you for your time and I yield my time. Think your next speaker is Danielle Brown. Danielle Brown. Good people. Yes, I'm here. Good evening. I would also like to fully endorse the catapult. I think it's just an innovative solution to a very difficult and challenging problem as we enter the 10th month of the pandemic. We are still not quite seeing an end and the impacts are untold. I am an educator here in Long Beach and I grew up here as well. I just know that an initiative like this will have untold benefits for the youth as well as for the artists right now. And I think that we desperately need some support and some solutions for them right now. And I artists are just one small overlooked or one large overlooked portion of the the essential makeup and fabric of our city. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment for the Senate. Roll call vote, please. District one. I district to. I. District three. District four, District five. District seven. District seven. Hi. District eight to get it. Yes. Taking. We recorded District seven, District eight. All right. District nine. By. Motion carries. Thank you. And item 34. Well.

Recommendation to declare ordinance finding and determining that a credit is due against the Transportation Improvement Fee applicable to the Riverwalk Residential Development Project; and authorizing the City Manager to execute an agreement regarding credit for transportation improvements made in connection with the Riverwalk Residential Development Project, read and adopted as read. (District 8)

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Item 31 Report from Development Services Recommendation to Declare Ordnance. Finding that a transportation improvement fee credit is due and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement providing for the Transportation Improvement Fee Credit Read and adapted as read. District eight A motion by Councilman Austin and I seconded Councilman Austin. Yes, this is a continuation from last week and I would urge your support. Thank you. Sir, any member of the public that wishes to address item 31. Please come forward. Provided the Riverwalk residential development can go through. This. This item makes perfect sense, I guess. But one of the reasons I came down here tonight. Fact. The driving reason. It's not because I want to and not because I know whether this development is going to pan out beautifully or be a bust. I don't think anybody knows that. But there is one thing that. Project approvals or any other action by the city is not supposed to do. And that is. Proceed in an illegal or at least totally illegitimate matter with respect to certifying an environmental impact report. Last week you certified an environmental impact report that materially falsified the situation and that has considerable impacts on the necessity or otherwise for mitigations. As one speaker then pointed out, an excuse such as the lack of standards for traffic crowding, residential streets, a lack of standards which you can very well understand, because it's presumed that that development along a residential street will not, in the ordinary experience, have any impact. That's worth writing a standard about that using such a phony excuse. Lack of standard. In order to. Disregard the issues that go into a proper environmental impact report. That. Simply is not contemplated by the California Environmental Quality Act. And I'm here because this is actionable. And if citizens feel that there is a cause for action, they are supposed to warn the other party if they have a possibility of warning them that it is actionable. This will be one of the several resolutions pertaining to the existence of the project that calls for your consideration as to whether you really wanted to certify and in an inadequate report when you could have turned around and you still could then ask for a few weeks whereby a correct report is produced. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Motion carries. Item 32 Report from Development Services Recommendation to declare ordinance. Finding that a Parks and Recreation Facilities Fee credit is due and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement providing for the park fee credit read and adopted as read.

AN ORDINANCE relating to the City Light Department; clarifying that residents living in the City Light Department owned housing in the Diablo and Newhalem communities are subject to the City Light Department’s rates under Chapter 21.49 and 21.56 of the Seattle Municipal Code; amending Section 21.56.030 of the Seattle Municipal Code; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

SeattleCityCouncil_08172020_CB 119857

The bill passes and the chair will sign it. Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf? Okay. Agenda item 15. Madam Clerk, this is still in my script, but I believe it might have been removed. Is that correct? I'm not at this point. Council president. Council president. Councilmember Peterson is prepared to move to refer this item. Great. Thank you so much. Well, the clerk please read item 15 into the. Agenda Item 15 Capital 119857 relating to the City Life Department clarifying that residents living in the city elect apartment owned housing in the Diablo and New Haven communities are subject to the City Department's rates under Chapter 21.49 and 21.56 of Economic Code and amended section 21.50 6.0, 38% of the code and ref site and confirming certain paragraph . Thank you, Madam Clerk. Again, I understand that this bill requires additional attention, and there is a proposal that it be referred to the Transportation and Utilities Committee. So going to hand it over to Councilmember Peterson to make your motion for the referral of this bill. Thank you. Council president, you have lots of executive departments trying to get legislation through. We just passed a lot of legislation. And so this one I think would benefit from brief discussion in committee. So I move that council bill 119857 be referred to the Transportation and Utilities Committee for further consideration. And thank you so much for that motion. Are there comments on the committee referral? Herein, none. Will the cleric please call the wall on the adoption of the committee referral draft. Could I get a second? Second? I second. My my script didn't call for a second, so I assumed that the city clerk did that accurately and that the motion did not require a second. Madam Clerk, can you please confirm that that is accurate? It can't have a second, but if it didn't have a second, then we move forward to call the vote. It would be just fine. There you go. So we. Are we. Are chugging along without that second, because it didn't seem to be necessary. I appreciate it. Okay. Well, the clerk, please call the roll and adoption of the committee referral. Strauss. Yes. Herbold. Yes. Suarez. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Morales. Yes. Petersen. Yes. President Gonzalez. Yes. Seven in favor and unopposed. The motion carries in. The bill is referred to the Transportation and Utilities Committee for further consideration. Thank you so much, colleagues. Agenda item 16 Will the clerk please read item 16 into the record?

Recommendation to request City Auditor to review the bid responses for the residential recycling collection services. The responses should be analyzed based on qualifications, cost, recycling revenue to the City, environmental benefits, compliance with the terms of the Request for Proposal (RFP), as well as any additional criteria the City Auditor deems appropriate; request City Auditor to report findings of the review directly to the City Council at the earliest possible date; and request that City staff provide the City Auditor with all documents, analysis, and emails related to procurement process for this RFP in an expedited manner.

LongBeachCC_03082016_16-0244

That would be my preference. But the item that's appearing on our screen right now, it's 20. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Okay. Great. So essentially, we're going to take up item. Item 27 and 20 at the same time that we'll be voting on item 27. And so the staff report from item 20 will here first essentially so that we hear staff proposals that that. Okay, Councilwoman. That's fine with me. I'm going to defer to you on that. Now, that's that's that sounds fine. So, staff, why don't you guys go and give your report as to what what you've done as far as this process? And then we'll I'll turn this over to Councilwoman Price and we'll do that motion and we're going to take a vote first on the on the motion in front of us to to move this on to an RFP. So. Mr.. City Manager Thank you, Mayor. Councilmembers. For the past year or so, we've been working on wrapping our recycling services through our Environmental Environmental Services Bureau. We brought on board the services of a nationwide consultant. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to Jason MacDonald, our purchasing manager, as well as Craig Beck, our interim public works director, to walk us through the RFP and recommendation. And thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Manager. Mayor, members of the city council. We have a quick PowerPoint to walk you through the presentation tonight. So basically, why do we have recycling here in Long Beach? Besides it being a good thing, we actually have a requirement under the California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 to do recycling that the city needs to do waste reduction, offer recycling in an environmental safe disposal manner. We started our recycling program here in Long Beach in 1993. We've been providing that since that time. Additionally, in 2012, AB 341 added mandatory recycling for commercial properties. The city provides generally recycling service to multifamily units that are ten units or less, and those that are larger will typically go to a private hauler. So currently the city contracts with the Waste Management, who services approximately 118,000 active accounts with curbside pickup. This contract ends at the end of June 630, 2016. And so we're before you here tonight to talk about a new contract for recycling services. Last year in 2015, roughly 27,000 tons of residential waste was collected. Residential recycling, excuse me. And of that many times we find that people put non recycling items in recycling bins. And so that has to be sorted and pulled out. And so we're seeing roughly a 19.5% residual material that then has to either go to the landfill. But in Long Beach, it goes to surf. So with recycling, there is some value to those recycling materials. And in our sharing agreement with waste management, that generated roughly $605,000 in. Last year. There's been some discussion about how all the materials are sorted through waste management. They currently collect the materials in Long Beach and they're sorted through facility potential industries in the city of Wilmington. And we're going to turn it over to Jason McDonald's, who's going to walk through that procurement process. Mr. Mayor, city council members, as the city manager indicated early last year, staff began the RFP process by consulting with HFA consultants. Their expertize and experience is broad and includes work among all of the eight largest cities in the state as well as many other agencies. In April of 2015, the RFP was issued and responses were due back to the city in July following an authorized request. Each proposer provided a revised proposal. Staff conducted interviews in November and following evaluation. A notice to award was posted in January. Which leads us to tonight. In the procurement process. Of these, we received four responses to the RFP. Last year, staff received and evaluated those for four proposals against the RFP criteria and H.F. engage supported that work through their analysis and standard forms. The core contract requirement included provide providing weekly curbside recycling collection for up to 123,000 accounts to operate clean burning, alternate fuel powered collection vehicles and which included a ten year return with no renewals. The unique proposal features offered by each proposer were included in the analysis of the matrix that was provided. At this point, the staff is recommending that the City Council consider award to waste management. The competitive price was offered from Waste Management with a first year savings of $387,000 from the current contract. Waste Management's proposal included unique proposal features. It is a represented company with labor. With Union labor. There is no transition plan required as waste management is the current provider. There is no disruption to service or to residents. Waste Management has a record of 22 years of quality prior service in Long Beach and Waste Management maintains the best safety record when compared to the industry and the other proposers. During the review and evaluation process, staff determined that there was an opportunity to reduce costs by pushing the term to ten years and subsequently asked vendors to provide updated pricing when the city issued the notice of intent to award. A protest was received from one of the proposers and that is not uncommon in a large procurement such as this, where there are a lot of a lot at stake. Republic contended that the staff had not accurately reflected their pricing and missed some of the enhanced features of their proposal. Staff took additional time to review the concerns of the protest, issued a memo to City Council and responded to the Republic with the updated findings. That memo indicated that even with Republic's proposed alternative lower price was used to analyze their proposal, it is still significantly higher than the recommended vendor. Staff also updated the attachment to include all enhanced bid features for all vendors. So in summary, this is a large contract with a significant term term as being recommended at ten years, but because it provides the best rate for the city's ratepayers. To ensure a proper recruitment. The city hired one of the top consulting firms in this field. There are multiple features to consider beyond price, which is the reason for utilizing the RFP process. After a full review have been provided to recommendations to the city. One Initiate a contract with Ed Co, who was ultimately the lowest proposer at $3.4 million in the first year contract, or to initiate a contract with the waste management for the best combination of price and features and the least impact to customers. Their first year price was $3.5 million. That concludes staff report and we're available for questions. Thank you. I'm going to turn this over to Councilwoman Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to staff for that thorough presentation. And what I have no doubt was a very thorough process by the staff in regards to this project and this process. In the words of Craig Beck, this is a large contract with a very specific and lengthy term. And therefore, I think it's important that the process that we go through for the selection of this city partner be one that we believe is a thorough process, is a comprehensive process, and is a process that a an objective second set of eyes can look at to. Weigh in on whether or not the process was fair and included all the numbers. I will tell you that I, along with several of my colleagues I know have met with. Three of the four vendors who bid for this contract and all three. Of the four vendors that we met with, all three of them indicated some aspect of the process or the numbers or the figures that were used that they felt was not done accurately, whether it was the accuracy of the numbers used or whether the final numbers were inclusive of the equipment that the RFP called for, or whether there was a process that was followed through the bid submission protocol that was consistent. It seemed to me that there were questions by all of the vendors, even though they may not be resulting in a protest that warranted a second review. So I have no doubt that city staff did excellent work. But in light of the recommendation that was just put up on the last slide from the consultant, it appears to me that there were at least two vendors who were recommended by that consultant. And based on conversations I've had with the folks who were involved in this process, I want to make sure that both of those vendors are qualified. Both of the numbers that were stated are accurate and that they involve the all of the different price points that were called for in the RFP and that there was really nothing about the process that was of concern. So in regards to item number 27, the specific request would be that the city auditor conduct an audit of the process. We are not require I am not requesting by way of this agenda item for a new process, a revised process. I just would like the city auditor to review the process and make sure that all the numbers that were reported, all the things that were called out in the RFP were included accurately throughout the entire process. And again, in my opinion, it's the process for me that's very important. I don't have a particular horse in this race. I've worked with all three of these companies, all their representatives. They're all great companies, wonderful partners to the city. I'm sure any one of them would do a fantastic job for the city. I want us to be confident in the process that was followed so that even if people don't agree with the recommendation of staff, in the end we can all stand firm and say that we agree with the process that was used. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. I just believe that this is a large contract. Decisions between seven years, ten years and the amount of money per year. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over time and a huge impact to our community. So I believe that the city auditor does excellent work. I appreciate the report she's used recently put out. I know this is a lot of additional work, so I'd love to hear from her and what the timeline would look like. But I think that an extra set of eyes is always a good thing. Council member Oranga. I too, would like to hear what the creator would have to say in terms of this, because, you know, although the recommendation at the bottom says that there is no. Where is it? That there is no budget impact on this item. There is. There's always a budget impact when you have staff reviewing something that other staff already did. I mean, we're duplicating this process to return it to a certain extent, and I'm not sure to what end are we doing this? I mean, if it's to evaluate the process and the process is good or it comes out positive the way it should be, then we've basically turned our wheels and I don't see any benefit from that other than the waste of the city. Auditors Time to review this, this, this, this, this project here. So I don't see the end game here. I mean, if the end game is to review the process, find a fault in it, and if there is and what is going to be the process after that, I mean, that that's my concern is that staff went through a process. They had an outside consultant review the the proposal, the outside consultant did the interviews, reviewed the figures, did everything that they were supposed to do. And I'm thinking as a nationally renowned consultant, I'm sure that their job is good. Otherwise, they wouldn't be here. But I'm just concerned that if we we open up a Pandora's box to a certain extent and we're going to review this huge contract, because that's the that's what I'm hearing, that it's too big for us to have just one set of eyes, that we need two sets of eyes. Then why don't we do that with all our contracts that are of this nature and huge and have the city auditor be in the process to begin with that right from the get go as opposed to after the fact. So I'm not going either way with this. What I what I am concerned about is the fact that it's a duplication of effort in this respect. And I'm not I'm not seeing the or understanding the endgame here. So you review the process. Fine. Then what? I'm just a little bit perturbed about that in the sense that it's a duplication of effort here. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Price, for bringing this forward. I think that you're sincere in thinking about the integrity of the process and the integrity of our governing body as well. It's always good to proceed with caution. And, you know, we're fortunate to have city auditor down. So when numbers are called into question, we do have that set of eyes, that additional set of eyes. And this is indeed an appropriate case to make sure that we make sure all the numbers are calculated the right way, the eyes are dotted and the T's across with this process. So thank you and I support this recommendation. Councilman Austin. Thank you. I just have a few clarification point questions. Thank you for bringing this forward. This is and it's turning to this process seems to be turning into a bit of a mess, no pun intended intended here. The the process in which Councilmember Price is talking about, I have a little I have a few questions regarding the scope on what what does study in the process really mean? If you could provide me some clarification on that, that would be be very, very helpful. Number one, you don't have to do it right away for city staff. I'd like to know when when was the last time we were awarded a recycle or went out for an RFP for a recycling contract? Mr. West, can someone answer that question? When was the last time we went out for recycling contract, and what was the impetus for opening up a RFP for this contract? Mr. McDonnells Looking at that right now. Councilmember. From what we understand, we've done the RFP once and that was for the initial vendor and we have not done an RFP since. This is the first RFP we've done for recycled services since 1993, I believe. KAHN And what was the impetus to open up the RFP? What created this process? I believe the extensions to the contracts are ending. As I mentioned, this current contract ends in June this year. And so we need to either do an RFP process or extend the current contract. Okay. And is there a and then this is, I guess, a question for for staff. Is there a precedent for us doing such an audit tour for our piece? Have we done this through the city auditor's office before? Would this be a first time? I'm I don't think we have a history of that. We're not sure of that. But of course, this is a big ticket item and the city council has purview over policy. So this is something the city council certainly has purview over to to review. Again, this, as Mr. Beck pointed out. This certainly is a very large RFP. Okay. I get that. And I am one who is I'd like to err on the side of prudence and caution as well. And then lastly, in this item, I do not see a time specific for the audit to come back. Is this an open ended audit or do we do we would we like to have this back within 30 days, 60 days matter others. Do you have any idea? Let's look. Why don't we have the the audit? I would highly recommend if this is the direction we go, that we do not rush the process or the auditor. So let's have her make some comments on what she thinks the timing will be. Thank you. If the Council desires. Our office to. Take an independent look at. This. We would most likely begin within 30 days, and we would most likely not knowing what we would find once we get in. We would like up to six months. To to come back. 4 to 6 months at the best. And by the way, 4 to 6 months is not a that's that's common in these types of things. If, you know, to ensure, as was mentioned. Um, a thorough and fair process was followed. We certainly wouldn't want to rush it, considering there has been a number of questions and concerns and protests and so forth surrounding this. This would be something that our office would take seriously and look at and make sure we spend the time to to review the process. And I'd be happy to go into a little bit more of what we'd plan to do, if you like. Councilman Roston and. I, in terms of what you plan to do with that, would be addressing the scope question. Yes, right, exactly. And the initial the original contract. Right now. That that's fully. Expired, the council agreed to allow it to go forth, but it is an expired contract. The city did hire a consultant to help with this process. So we would look at the consultant and what the the work of the consultant, the scope of work the consultant put together. We would look at the the whole RFP process. We would review the proposals. The pricing sheets. The calculations, verify accuracy. We would review communications, we would review any other. Relevant documents that we would deem appropriate throughout this process and look at any documentation available to ensure. An accurate and thorough and fair process. Thank you. I think that adequately answers my questions. And I would just say, you know, we've apparently had this contract in place for 25 years. Six months to study seems reasonable. So. Mr. Mayor, Councilman, what I do want to point out that the bids under review do expire in about April. So just just the current the current bids. Correct. Mr.. Mr.. Beck. Yes, Mayor. Members of the council, I think there's two things that need to be considered. So the current contract ends at the end of June this year. The auditor's office is looking at a six month audit process. We're going to need to come back to council and extend the current contract to ensure that we have recycling services available to our communities. That would be one item that we'd want to bring forward. And then additionally, depending on what recommendations come forward, it would be more than likely we'd have to go through a different process because the current vendor proposals are only good for 180 days, and that would conclude prior to the auditor's office being able to conclude her audit. Councilwoman Mongo. So I have a couple of questions. One, I didn't mean to give the impression that any one contract is too big for this council or our staff in any process. I would, however, state that having worked on several RFP and several audits and sole source a sole source contracts and the such, I think that there are key questions that have come up that are of concern specifically that only one of the four bids was a closed envelope bid, that there was discussion between city staff and vendors. I think those are issues that cause me concern. They might all be okay, but again, I was not into the process enough to know and understand that, nor was I briefed on those changes in the situation as they progressed. It is not only because of the size of the contract. I think that if the contract was much smaller and had those staffing types of issues, we should look at it. I think that there has been a review of our contracting process as a whole, as a city that we want to be prudent in advance. So I guess I bring another question to the table. Since you would have to bring back an extension to the current contract. And since we would need to know if. The current bids, if they were valid at all in the first place, would would be if the vendors would stand by those. Would it be appropriate to ask each of the vendors via a formal written notice to provide a response to whether or not they would let their bids stand for consideration and review? So instead of us losing out on April that they would bring those to a say June. I'm trying to figure out what eight or I'm sorry, 4 to 6 months plus 30 days would be June extension. So if you bid and you thought it would be which. Okay. So my colleague said it would be July, so. If we could get them to say we agree that should you commence services by whatever what that would look like? I don't know what the legalities on that. So I defer to someone and stuff. Yes, we could certainly that's appropriate. We could certainly ask the vendors in writing to stay with us while we do this process and get back to the Council on the responses immediately. So I think that that would provide some safety. I think that. I think that it's always good to look. It's hard to be the contract that gets looked at because, again, there's a starting point and we're not looking to say here, force all forward, all contracts, go to the city auditor, but more of a here are the things we did right here are the things we could have done better. It doesn't necessarily mean they were wrong, but it's a good internal process at any time. So I would ask that the maker of the motion and sometimes the secondary, I would accept that we include asking the bidders to extend the term of their bid and then come back to the council with a two from four with that information for us. In case I would expect I would accept that. But I would I hope that we're all on the same page and that we don't want to start a new process with new numbers, because that certainly wouldn't be fair to Waste Management or Ed Co, who got the recommendation from the consultants. So I would like us to not start a new process, but just evaluate the process we've already been through. So as long as we're all on the same page, that's accepted. Mr. West, is that clear? Is that possible? I think that's something we'd have to work with the auditor's office, but certainly we would work toward that end, of course. Let me just keep going through the list. Councilwoman, are you okay? I guess I would just add that if there was found to be gross malfeasance or any issues at that level, then of course we'd have to make a consideration. But should it have gone? Legally well, but could have gone better, which we all know. I mean, just take an average day on the street. You may have rolled a stop sign. You could have done it better, but maybe you didn't. Maybe you didn't. So looking at that, I think is a prudent approach. Councilman Andrews. Yes. Thank you very much. I want to thank our county, a woman, Mrs. Price, for bringing this item to the devices with the part that was already answered for me, and that was with our city auditor when, you know, she she seemed like she made it very clear that we're not going to rush this. And I don't. Whatever time it takes in order to get it done, I think that would be most prudent to me and to anyone else. And I want to thank you again, Mrs. Wise, for bringing this forward. Councilmember Supernova. I think I'm just trying to sort out Councilmember Mungo's. Proposal here. I just have. If there's a way we can make a vote tonight that it's contingent upon. The bid's not being reopened, I think is maybe a different way to phrase it. And I don't know how we as this body can. We certainly can't require that. I don't think my whole idea on signing on to this originally was to examine the process. Just as Councilmember Price stated, the price was right again. So I just just is opening up a whole new issue. And I we can say it here. I just don't know if our actions, our vote tonight can freeze these bids. It just doesn't make sense to me. But that's that's that's my issue. And I would hate to have Mr. Parking to have to sort this out on the fly right here tonight. But he's in conference right now with the mayor, so maybe we'll see. Councilman Price. Thank you. I will have to say, I agree with Councilman Super now that that's an additional aspect that I had not considered. I did communicate with the city manager before I submitted the item just so that he knew where my thought process was. And I didn't want staff to be surprised, but I didn't anticipate this. So I'm going to defer to the city attorney in terms of how we can limit that, because the whole point of it is and to answer Councilman Miranda's question, I agree with a lot of the concerns that he raised. And in response to what is the end game, I guess the end game would be for us as council members to be able to stand tall and in the face of an allegation that the process wasn't fair, that we can say, you know what, we had someone in office that we trust and rely on and depend on . Take a look at this. Potentially up to $70 million contract, which is really the biggest contract other than the civic center that this body has passed. To be able to say that we we have confidence in that process. And although one or two of the vendors may not agree with it, we have faith in the process and we can support staff's recommendation based on the faithful trust, but based on the process. A lot of these issues that have come up are really very unique to the industry. So what the RFP called for was specific items that are very unique to the industry. And I, for one, am not an expert in this industry. So when someone has an allegation that a particular number wasn't considered or a particular requirement that was called out in the RFP wasn't included in a bid, and therefore the bid was artificially lower than another bid. That is something that I should not be analyzing. I don't think that's fair to the vendors. I don't have that expertize. In response to Councilman Austin's question of me in terms of the scope of the process, I appreciate the city auditor giving us a preview of what she would go into or her office would go into. But I did jot down some notes just while my colleagues were talking. And I think at the very least, the scope of this review should be a review of the RFP process and the information that was requested to gather the figures that were submitted by each vendor to determine one, are they qualified? And two were the figures responsive to the RFP? A review of the proposal submitted the supplemental proposals that were submitted and the manner that those proposals were submitted and to determine whether that's consistent with our custom and practice. And finally, whether the ultimate or final conclusions that were evaluated by the consulting firm included accurate figures and numbers throughout the the various proposals that were submitted at the request of city staff. So that that's just I literally wrote this out while we were talking. So I don't know if any of my colleagues want to add to it, but I think that would be a good start of a scope. Thank you. Mr. City attorney. Yeah. Mr. City Attorney wants to weigh in. So, Amir. Charlie Mayor, members of the council, if I may, in my notes, I think the the auditor had mentioned that it could take up to six months. My math I'm not I'm it just puts me in September possibly October and to ask the and we certainly can ask the vendors the folks that had submitted the four entities that submitted proposals to stand by their bids, but we're going to ask them to extend that another year. I think that may be difficult for them to do or they may not be willing to do that. And I don't think the council has I think one of the council members mentioned we have the authority to require that of them. It would be a voluntary by them to do that while this process moves forward. So I think the option tonight would be if it's going to be an extended period of time, council staff would have to come back and go and negotiate with waste management to continue. The contract has expired. As the auditor pointed out, we're on a month to month contract with Waste Management through June to seek some sort of an additional extension from waste management, not only to do the time necessary that you're asking the auditor to do, but possibly another six months beyond that because of the transition period in the event the waste management wasn't selected. So you're really looking at possibly adding a year or more to this process. And it may be that at the end of that review, you're back at a whole new RFP, which may be additional time. So there by stopping where we are today, I think there's risks involved with the council decision. Clearly, this is you can go forward with what you'd like to do today, but those are some of the risks as I see them from sitting right here. We can't control what our vendors will do when we approach them and ask them to stand by their proposals for the additional possible year before we would make a decision. Councilman Mongo. So I do want to be clear that. We're not starting on this path thinking that people did things wrong. But more, as Councilman Price said, that we want to stand by the decision. We're not accusing staff of doing anything wrong. It is quite likely that everything was fine. And so the new six month consideration, I guess, is there a possibility of. I think this is a big decision. Is there a possibility of taking up this item later in the evening when we've all had a moment to simmer and think about the information that's been provided to us ? Or I'd be open to motioning to table it for a week. Okay. Oh, we're not meeting next week. Okay, so let's table for two weeks. Let's all think it over. I think the extension and the six months and a lot of things have come into play. I still would like to. I just think there's a lot to consider that's come up tonight. So I've got to make sure that that's a suggestion to the maker of the motion, because the. Making the motion is Councilman Price. So is that a substitute? Is that a friendly? Friendly. Well, I would like. I mean. I would like to vote on this tonight with the contingency that. The vendors are asked whether they will stand by their numbers. Stand by their their proposal throughout the process. And if the answer to that question is no, then we have a change in circumstance and we can bring it back and then decide what we want to do. But I think at this point, we're giving we're just tabling it for two weeks and giving staff no direction in regards to this process. To me, that doesn't mean I would like to vote on it with the assumption that the the four vendors are going to submit the same are going to commit to keeping the numbers through the through this process. So may I? I think I should have again, lots going on. And so I think within that two weeks we could potentially ask them and have a response of whether or not they are going to. Originally my intent was. Give me just an hour to digest what I've thought about and read through my notes while we go through other council items. But if we want to lay it over a week or two weeks, two weeks gives us the time for staff to ask them to stand by their. Decisions. Record bids. We could certainly do that and provide information to the council as soon as possible. Well, we have several colleagues that are queued up to speak. I'd like to hear what others have to say before deciding whether to accept that that that friendly. Because what I'm hearing as most of us want to see a an audit of the process completed. And so I don't see the downside of voting tonight to move forward with an audit, assuming that everyone is going to commit to keeping their numbers. But I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say. And just as a reminder, we also have have yet to do public comment, which we should do also as well. Councilmember Richardson. Just following this this discussion. I'm not clear if there is a way to just I don't I'm not hear from staff that it's not possible to move forward. I heard the city city attorney say that there are concerns with that approach. But I guess what I would like to hear from city staff on, is there a way to give give the city council, a way to give you direction? Do you have a recommendation? It sounds like there is interest in doing some sort of an audit. I don't know the whole, you know, extended life of the contract. Six months that I don't understand that. But you guys are more handy with it. Is there a way that you can get us a recommendation that we can move forward with tonight and not have to come back in two weeks and have this conversation again? Mayor Councilmembers I think it's clear that we do have direction, whichever way we go, that we immediately reach out to the vendors and see how long they'll hold these prices and then come back with that information to the council. Whether the council votes tonight will do that or whether they decide whether the council decides to hold off on the decision. But regardless, I think it's very clear for direction to the staff that we are going out to the four vendors and asking if they will hold their prices and come back to the council with that information . What I would like to know, and I'm okay with that, if it sounds like that's that's a good direction, then I'll support that. What what I'd like to know is whenever a contract comes up in the future and someone has the idea to send it to the city auditor, I'd like to just know that that is something that we can actually do and don't have to figure out what that looks like in the process. So I'm hoping that because I have never witnessed this in the time that I've worked here, I'd like to have more clarity on how this process will work moving forward. Thanks. Councilmember Ringa. As I indicated before, I really don't. See the purpose of not being able to vote tonight on a contract and then have the audit take place. I mean, normally correct me if I'm wrong. Normally when you have a process in place, a selection is made, a deal is done. Then you go back and you audit the process in terms of making sure that all the I's we're dotted, the T's were crossed, that the process with the process that was followed and it's not the purpose of the audit to change things is not it's not it's not that purpose. That's not what it's for. What it's for is just to ensure that it was fair that the. All the announcements were made, the RFP was was fairly distributed that the number of of vendors that applied were treated fairly, that they were given all the information that there was a bidders conference with each one of them, that they allbut dissipated, that they all understood what the process was. And apparently from the recommendation that was presented to us this evening that took place and it's all good. However, there's always going to be and there always has been. We had one item tonight that we removed from the agenda because it was a protest that that's going to happen. And that's okay. Because that's that's part of the process is to submit a a complaint, if you will, for lack of a better term. But the point is, is that if this audit is going to change anything, then we might as well just rebid it and do it again, because the numbers are going to be different. They're going to change. And if you're asking the vendors if they can hold to their current numbers. Then you're asking them to change to a certain extent, because then everything is going to it's going to be another another contract again. If you follow my my my logic here is because you're not you're you're telling them if you hold your numbers to the present time, six months, up to a year from now, then we're going to be good. But from a year from now, things are going to change. You're going to be different, prices are going to go up, the demand is going to be different, the prices will go up again. So, I mean, I don't really see the purpose of this discussion to hold off on this contract, turning it off in in in favor of having an audit of the process when that audit can basically change everything. So if that's the point, if that's the case, then let's just put a stop to this whole thing, review the process and then. Have a rebid because it's going to change again in a year. If you're looking at September, October two to finish this, it's going to change. We're going to have a new budget for the city and we're in a budget process now. What's the effect of that going to be in terms of our future with this contract? So, I mean, I really don't see where we're going with this in response to you. All you want to do is audit the process, not the contract. Then let's go ahead and do that. Let's. But vote for the four for the contract and then do the audit. And if the audit comes up with something, we know how to do it better next time. Of course, it'll be ten years from now, and I'm not going to be here. But but the point is, is that I really I really don't see any benefit from from this this this procedure that we're having right now. Councilmember Austin. Thank you. And I'll just be short and brief. I think I made my comments earlier, and I have to agree with much of what Councilmember Urunga has stated. I think this is this is a bit unprecedented in terms of requesting an audit prior to awarding a contract generally and from what I've experienced over the last several years . Processes are audited afterwards. And so I guess the question before us here today is, you know, do we do we vote on what staff is recommended, recommended? Are we questioning the the integrity of our staff, which I think sends a dangerous message and. Do we move forward with this audit post awarding the contract? I mean, I think that those are the questions before us. And again, I think this is this is where we may be headed down a dangerous path in terms of setting a precedent for for for future our peace. Councilman Price. You know what? I see the city auditor walking up and I know we haven't had public comment. I'm going to reserve my comments for now. I just want to be brief and say that I will put two staff members on this as quickly as I can. We have no idea what we will find when we get in there. So I wanted to give allow enough time for a worst case scenario. So we will do everything we can to speed this along. All of our audits, we allow city management or the department in which we're auditing time to respond to our findings of audits . So that's a three week process in itself. So if you have a month on the tail end and a month on the front end, that's two months, and then we'll get in and get out as quickly as we can. But again, we just don't know what we'll find once we get in. And just rest assured that. We'll stay focused. And only look at those things that are most relevant to the request by the Council. Councilman Price. I still want to hear from the public. I have to say, I don't I respect councilman iran a great deal. But what i'm hearing him say is despite. The comments from several colleagues saying that a review of the process would be prudent on a $70 million contract. What I'm hearing him say is even though some of you have questions regarding the process and the numbers, I think we should go ahead and enter into a ten year contract with a vendor with whom we are not confident in a process and then have that process reviewed. And if it comes back, we've learned some great lessons for the future. The bottom line is we're picking a partner for ten years, so I think we should feel confident in the process before we enter that contract because we can't then get out of the contract or into a ten year contract. So what we're trying to say is before we enter a ten year, $70 million contract, we should feel confident with the numbers. And if he does, then that's that's great. But I think the many of my colleagues I'm hearing say that they would benefit from a second set of eyes looking at it. That's really what an audit is. The end game of an audit is to bless a process either before or after the process is completed. The problem with blessing this process after the contract is entered into is that it's a contract between two parties that's going to last ten years and have a value of $70 million. So if there are lessons to be learned. Right, but that's a very costly lesson for us to enter into. So that's my thoughts on it. What I would like to do is, is is vote on this tonight. Ask council staff to go forward and and see if they'll commit to their prices. And if they don't, then I would expect that staff would come back to us and let us know that that the vendors did not commit to keeping their prices and allow us to reconsider. Because right now the options that I feel we have is vote on a ten year, $70 million contract, or ask the city auditor to review a process before we vote on the contract. So those are our two choices, and I'm comfortable. I would like to in fact, I would be recusing myself from a vote on who to give the contract to at this juncture, because I don't have faith in the process. So that's where I would be standing on it. But if the majority of my colleagues feel with, as Councilman Turanga does, that they're confident enough in the process to go forward with a vote tonight, then that's that's the decision. But I think that it's it's prudent to wait and have a review. Thank you. I mean, to get a public comment and then I will go back to the council. Please come forward for you. Identify yourself for the record. Very good. Hugh Clark, as he addressed the councilperson for third district, is to be commended for bringing that forward. And this is proof positive, again, that somebody in the 13th floor needs to be fired. The councilwoman put it in very excellent perspective. Although she may not agree with some of the things I say. This is the second largest contractor that we're entering into. Second only to the buffoonery here. In the rebuild. I can tell you this. Just from a business standpoint. I know. And it was would be unreasonable it would be reasonable to assume that some of the contractors won't hold to that price. They are not going to sit around and wait for that period of time, which is okay. There are plenty of people out there doing that. But what stinks to high heaven? And I'm sure that I'm surprised the M.D. warning signals didn't go off, that we had something this large. Get the buffoonery on out of the 13th floor is just absolutely absurd. You don't hold off and slip in at the last minute. Only in a corrupt paradine would you have that a contract. Of this magnitude. It's just more of it. One nice thing about it, it will be more information for the FBI to figure out just how many corrupt people we have here. I don't know who it is, but you just don't. When you have a contract this size, $73 million and you're rushed through. Without highlighting what the options are and what the downside is and the magnitude of it. That does not speak well for anybody. They provided that brought this forward. And I appreciate the fact that some of your agendas may be social and some of the skill levels are such that you don't get through to these little details. But from this individual's perspective and I think a lot of people share, there is absolutely no confidence in the buffoonery and the mental midgets on the 13th floor. Whether or not. You're in the any council members are in the pocket. Of some of these applying, I don't know, but that that will have the eventually flushed out. But I think it is unreasonable to expect all of the people to hold to that price for the period of time that it takes to do the job they should have been done in the first place. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Richard Suarez. Good evening. As you all know, I really don't have a dog in this fight. But it is alarming to me that a contract that is has now gone out to bid for over 20 years that this kind of debate is going on. I applaud the council. Woman Price I think that another set of eyes you owe to the community, I don't know, especially if there are reports from some of these vendors that they believe they feel that the process wasn't done adequately. Who knows? But to the extent that someone is concerned that the vendors would not wait another two or three weeks or two or three months over a $70 million contract, I think that that's just pure business. I don't know how many $70 million contracts are out there. And if I were a representative of one of these companies, I don't know that I I'd say no. Let's repeat the whole thing again. Our price has an expiration date at the end of the day. Waiting until the last minute to deal with a problem is something that I've that I've dealt with here with this city, with your staff, relative to the people. And now we're dealing with the consequences of waiting until the last minute. Just a few weeks ago, you approved a $900 million excuse me, a $900,000 a month Band-Aid because we didn't have adequate time to deal with issues. So I don't understand the question. I don't understand the concern. 23 years a vendor gets. The right to do business with the city and in no way, shape or form suggesting that that vendor isn't a contender. But if we can put some sunshine and some daylight into this thing, how is that wrong? Where do we go wrong? And doesn't the community rest better? If we've all done our due diligence. There has been a dereliction of duty here. To allow a contract to go unquestioned for 23 years is unacceptable. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name's Pat Mangum. I'm a city. Employee, 27 years, and I'm. Also a current member on the I Am negotiation. Team. Anyway, I was looking at Agenda 20 and what caught my eye. Was the annual consumer. Price. Index adjustment that goes. Along with this contract. For the term of ten years. What? Surprised me is sitting during negotiations. The city negotiator has offered. US employees. 0% for our first year pending contract. 0% for the second year. 1% for the third year. But on the other hand, they're offering. A consumer. Price index adjustment for each. Year of the. Ten year contract. Well, I was really surprised the city was willing to do this to me. It's fair. I have nothing against the business person. Or the vendor doing good business. With us and getting this. But in turn, I. Think it should be fair. For the city employees to get this. We're not asking for something ridiculous. Consumer Price Index adjustment. And I would hope that when our contract comes up. Before you and you see it that you take that into consideration too. When it comes to US city employees who have been here year after year after year doing good services for everything you see around here, helping and maintaining this place. Thank you. Thank you. Please come forward. Good evening, Mayor. Council members. City staff. My name is Trayvon Grant Representative with Republic Services to 531 East 67th Street 90805 300 over 300 proud employees here locally. And out of those 300, over 100 of them live in the city of Long Beach. For 36 years, I've been a resident within the city of Long Beach. And on the record, I've I've experienced a process that I believe to be as flawed. And, you know, I usually don't like to talk unless it's facts. And fortunately, we've been able to share quite a few facts with all of you. And I like to remind you of some of some of those tonight. For example, there are four different cost proposals that were submitted perceptually requesting for multiple bids can be perceived as price shopping in my or in my industry. That's considered unfair. In fact, we believe the only bid that has any integrity is the first bid, which was a sealed envelope or box that was hand-delivered to this building personally by me. Second Republic Services prices were misrepresented and that at the very beginning got us off. To a bad start. We wanted to make sure that everyone understood that the asterisk that was clearly highlighted inside of the. Proposals need it to be clarified, needed to be understood. Third, this is a recycling contract. So if it's a recycling contract, why aren't we paying attention to the recycling revenue? We offered over 40% more when it comes to recycling revenue. However, this was not taken into consideration. Proposal enhancements were completely, completely drawn up, completely different than what we agreed to. And the most important part and I think this is the biggest obligation that you all have as council members is as once we trust to make decisions when things don't go the appropriate way. There was a direct violation of the procurement process. We received an email directly from the Environmental Services Managers Department, which clearly was evaluation. It was it was a. It was not in accordance to what the RFQ process asks for. So is it fair? I don't know. Let the facts do the talking. But we're here to support the city auditor to evaluate this process. That's what we're here for. We're just asking for you guys to make a decision. Let us be fair. Fair is the word here. Fair. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker, please. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. Council members my name is Doug Corker and I'm the director of Public Sector Services for Waste Management here in Southern California. And we're here to ask you to vote no on item 27 and yes on the staff recommendation for item 20. I got to tell you, I don't mean any disrespect to anybody, but I don't see the logic in an auditor review. And and honestly, I'm more confused now than when I came in here, because I've heard a lot of discussion about reviewing the process, reviewing the process. But as I as I look at the language there and I read the motion, it's all about reviewing the bids. And it almost seems like a redo of everything that we just did. Let me tell you how it looks from our perspective. We just completed an almost one year comprehensive, thorough RFP process managed by H.F., a clear industry leader in recycling, a solid waste procurement whose process has basically been refined almost to the point that it's boilerplate. Every single proposer for this RFP has gone through scores of HSF and RFP processes. We all know the rules. There's no surprises. It's it is what it is. This tried and true process has led to a vetted, considered and valid staff recommendation. And what about that staff? That's your staff. They're hands down, one of the best in the business. They run outstanding programs consistently and they win awards over and over doing it. Simple fact is, they're reliable pros who always are looking out for the city's best interest. So we had essentially two sets of eyes reviewing everything a leading consultant supporting a first rate staff, following a tried and true process. So you can imagine our surprise when we when we saw the motion for the auditor review. Frankly, we think such an action is a very slippery slope, and it unnecessarily and unfairly undermines the process that we just spent the last year going through, and it threatens to undermine every RFP process for the city in the future. And basically the way I'm looking at it, the way we see it, it encourages anybody who's lost on a process or a bid process or anything else just to say, you know what, let's blow it up, let's take it to the council, they'll run it out to the auditor and everything will start over again. Adding insult to injury, we understand that the party that's making the most noise about staff's recommendation didn't even make it past the first round of the RFP. And rather than try to go back and say, Let's figure out how to do a better job next time, they're saying, let's blow it up for everybody. That's just wrong. Your staff's March 1st supplemental memo more than adequately addresses the issues raised. Mr. Mayor and Council. I have over 100 hardworking people who've been serving. They live in Long Beach and they've been serving the city in recycling services for many, many years. And they're wondering right now, are they have they earned the right to continue serving the city? We think they did. We'll ask you to please vote no in item 27. Vote yes on item 22 award. The contrary, sir, to waste management. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Is it on? Okay. My name is Erica. I'm a case manager for a homeless shelter in Long Beach. But I'm really just. I've been living in Long Beach for 15 years, so this is actually my first time coming here. And it's very exciting. And it's an honor meeting, all of you. As you can see, I'm wearing a waste management T-shirt. I've seen waste management for 15 years, and I do respect whatever decision you guys make as in the audit. But what I've seen in Waste Management this year is they've been actually they've been really good. And one of my favorite things was actually the Special Olympics, and I was able to volunteer through them. And I've. Been through the Long Beach Unified School. District and I've seen how they've come to schools and they've taught. So I've learned a lot from waste management. I support waste management and also whatever decision you guys make. Yeah, that's all I had to say. As a citizen of Long Beach. Thank you. Thank you. And the other public comment on this. Please come forward. Good evening, Honorable Mayor Garcia and esteemed council members of the city of Long Beach. My name is Jeff Snow. I am with Republic Services and I am a native of Long Beach Millikan High School CIF champions in 1979. Thank you. Fifth District Council Member. I've been personally and professionally involved in over 30 municipal RFP s throughout Southern California. This one has a number of irregularities that make me lack comfort in that. In the completed validity. The level of analysis that was shown this evening to me misses a lot of the key points. Recycling. This is a recycling contract and the sustainability or capacity to endure aspect of it. I haven't seen where that's come into play. I am formerly the president of Rainbow Environmental Services in Huntington Beach, California, now a proud member of the Republic Services family. Our environmental campus in Huntington Beach is owned and operated by our company, provides a good green collar jobs to people in our material recovery facilities, and we recycle over 58 different items. Compared to what Long Beach recycles currently that's a tripling or quadrupling of materials that we're keeping out of the disposal stream. And I think that this contract has a lot to do with the sustainability for the city of Long Beach. And we are proud to have helped Huntington Beach just down the road, achieve state of California leadership in diversion and recycling through our outreach programs, through our advanced MERV Technology. As far as this process goes, I have never been involved in a municipal RFP where the evaluation committee didn't come out and do site visits. We don't buy cars or buy homes without test driving them. We never had a site visit to evaluate the strengths of our technology, our workforce development and diversity, and our entire approach to sustainability for our community partners. In closing, I see many irregularities in this process and I encourage Council to consider an audit to. Help make help allow you to make the most informed decision and the best decision for your constituents, for this community and for the planet. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment, please come forward. If you're going to speak, please line up so we can make this quicker. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor. Members of Council Steve Southam, the President and. Chief executive officer of family owned and operated Atco. Were the largest family owned and operated company. Serving in the state of California. We also operate as Signal Hill Disposal. We're pleased to be here before you today. Obviously, looking at the proposal, as you see before you, we have the lowest. Overall. Value in. Terms of cost. The thing we would note to. You that is important is that our proposal included replacing 100% of the carts, and that's a rather. Significant liability. For the city. I think the cost proposals that you saw reflected replacing as. Needed carts from some of the others. There's 110,000. Carts out. There. So over $5 million of liability. And our proposal included. Replacing all of the carts, 100% of the carts, which we think offers significant value. And doesn't defer that liability. For future providers. In addition. Is a family owned and operated. Company. We're based here in Signal Hill. We have a brand new state of the art facility, both in terms of collection and processing. It's a vertically integrated proposal. And most importantly, we're here and available to answer any questions you might have. As always, it's the same group that's been here for the last 30 years. So, again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Seeing no other public comment means you get back to the council staff. Wanted to make a couple of comments, Mr. West, and then I'm turn over to Councilman Mongo. Yes, Mayor. I'd like to ask Jason McDonald to respond to some of the comments that were made. From the public and representatives. Thank you, Mayor. City Council members to address some of the concerns raised by Mr. Grant from Republic Services. Maybe starting, first of all, to make sure that we're all talking about the same proposal. In general, this is a proposal that was intended to be awarded at approximately 3.5 million a year for ten years, including in adding the cost of the CPI index. So that's somewhere closer to 35 million just for making sure we're in the same ballpark in the first claim by Mr. Grant that there is this is an allegation of price shopping. Under page 23 of the specifications in the RFP section 5.3, the city may contact the references provided in the proposal. Contact any proposer to clarify any response, contact any current users. Solicit information the city shall not be obligated to accept. The lowest price shall make an award in the best interests of the city of Long Beach. This, in fact, was not a bid. This was an RFP, a request for proposals. A bid would require us to maintain the lowest responsive, responsible bidder as the awardee. But in fact, city staff, through the evaluation, along with the consultant, made a determination that Waste Management's proposal was in the best interests of the ratepayers in the city of Long Beach. Mr. Grant's fourth claim the proposal enhancements were drawn up differently. The original matrix provided to the City Council included the differences between the enhancements among each proposer, not the similarities. Upon meeting with Republic Group that was corrected and all of the enhancements provided by every proposer was included on that matrix. Finally, with Mr. Grant's claim that the procurement process is was a violation of the process by direct communication. Again, same section of the RFP. The city may contact any proposal to clarify any response. Contact any current users of the service to solicit information from any available source. Additionally, in that context, I authorized that communication in the attempt to expedite and ensure that we were moving in a timely manner towards a ward. So that was my decision at that point. The purchasing manager I authorized the Bureau Manager of the Environmental Services Bureau. The last claim from Republic that there were no site visits. That is always the city's prerogative, and certainly city could have chosen but chose not to do so during that evaluation process. So just wanted to make sure that we have talked about a few of those items. Thank you. One last thing, Mr. Mayor. This has all been very quick tonight. So whatever happens, we've been discussing, I think we have some options that we can come back to within a very quick time, perhaps within two weeks, that might satisfy the needs of all the council and prepare that for the city council. It's something I don't think we should get into tonight because we need to study the issue a little bit. But there's definitely more options than just a yes or a no tonight that we can come back to give the council. An opportunity to look at this one more time as well. Councilman Mongo. I want to thank you for the feedback based on the public comment. I think that. First and foremost, as a council member, I try to do my homework. I met specifically with Pat West on this several weeks ago and discussed some of the items which in the two from fours that came out after that, which I've read all of them. I don't think that I got the. Full detail, as I did just now verbally, which I appreciate, and that is helpful. I do still feel that if we had another two weeks, I mean, I'd prefer a week, but obviously of council next week to just be able to meet with staff again and feel more confident. I think that would help a lot. And then at that time, no matter how confident we are or aren't. Because again, I've met with city staff on this and did not get the same answers. I didn't get I didn't have answers at that time. And I expected them to be in the two from force. And now here we are. And so I guess I would just be curious to know about the condition of my friendly. Gentleman Price to continue this to week so staff can come back with recommendations on how we can proceed. Yes, absolutely. Okay. So the motion on the floor is to continue the item for two weeks. That's the motion of the floor. Councilmember Ringa. Before you go, let me clarify, because we're actually taking up both 20 and 27 right now. So this is this is essentially continuing both items as a as a package discussion. Is that correct? Interested attorney? How would you prefer to do this? We need to take two separate actions, but you can obviously continue both. And if you're continuing 27, it would be up to you to consider how you want to handle 20. They could continue both. It's up to you. Let me keep going down the list and then we'll go back. Councilmember. Thank you, Mayor. Actually, I would I would be in favor of continuing both because I was going to make a substitute motion to let's deal with 21st. And then that way we could look at 27 as being the one to evaluate the to do the audit. And then we could go through if the vendors would be able to hold their prices for the for the term of the audit. And that way we could decide everything clear on the board and we're done. But if we're going to hold both items, I would certainly support that. And one thing I want to correct, I mean, it's. There's a presumption here that the process was flawed. It's a presumption regardless of how you feel about what you say. There's a presumption there when it comes to consumer prices that she's going to recuse herself, excuse me, from the vote because she didn't trust the process. There is a presumption that there's something wrong. Okay. I don't want that to be the message that I want that I want to say, because then what we're saying is that if we were to award the contract, let's say we're saying that that the vendor who gets it in this case, Waste Management, is got a contract under under so shady circumstances. And I wouldn't want them to feel that way. That would I wouldn't want our our city management to feel that way, that that their they made a recommendation of a of a vendor based on flawed information. I wouldn't want that. I don't want that. I want the thing to be right. I want it done right. And if it's the process that is in question here, then let's question that not not question the the the validity of the RFP that we're out there. And I'm glad for that clarification of our RFP versus a contract because it is different and it doesn't have to be the lowest value which is still out there in terms of, you know, who did the lowest bid and who it was awarded to. So in this instance, if the city if city management, the city manager is willing to revisit this and come back with other options and other recommendations as to how we can fix this debate tonight and give it two weeks, I would certainly support that. Okay. Is there. Just before we move forward, is there an understanding of what the friendly actually is and what the is this continuation of both items? Really was. As to item 27, because when they come back, it's not going to be about their recommendation that is outlined in item 20 there. When staff comes back, they're going to be talking to us about the recommendation as to item 27 only. That's my understanding is that staff is asking for time so that they can come back with alternatives on how we can get this matter to the city auditor and continue with the bidders that we've already received not to come back for a recommendation, a different recommendation or something like that in regards to who to award the contract to. But then we still would have item 20 to vote on tonight. Yeah, I think I think it's too different. So, Mr. City, joining you both? Yes, Mayor, members of the council, I think if I hear the council person from the third district correctly, if you continue item 27 and you would like to deal with item 20 in two weeks, I would take a separate action to continue that. And I think at that point it would of course be up to staff, but if they were going to bring back options, there's going to have to be council. They can have to come back any way to negotiate an extension with waste management, add more money to the contract to continue that for however long they believe it's necessary to meet the requirements of the Council for so. So there'll be additional items that would be placed on the agenda to that item. So I would do it separately as two separate items. In addition, Mayor Council members, we would like the opportunity to come back with a potential solution to this. And I agree with the Council on approach we wouldn't be coming back with here's a motion to make, but we could come back with an alternative procedure that could wrap this up for the city council. And it might not be something that just refers it to the auditor. It would just be an alternate procedure that the council could look at. Okay. So just to be clear, there's going to be. So we're going to two votes. One item 21. An item 27. Correct. Okay. Let me just get through the rest of the speaker's list and then we'll get back to the motions. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes. I just want to. I'm glad we have this discussion back and forth. This is a you know, definitely a a tough one for for all of us. But I think I'm I'm also good and supportive of kind of waiting and seeing what we get back from our city manager's office and then going forward from there. I think that's a really good step that we can do. It is a very large contract. And, you know, I think we're in a bind right now and in understanding this all and exactly what happened. So I'm I'm in support of that. So thank you. Councilor Richard Brenner. I'm on board also as an accommodation for staff and our city attorney and all of us. Thank you. Okay. There's we're going to take two votes. The first is to postpone, hold over for two weeks out of 27. Please cast your votes. Motion carries. Okay. We're going to go to item 20. If there's going to be, there'll be a motion to postpone item 20 believe that's the motion correct for two weeks. In a motion in a second. Okay. Members, please cast your votes on item 20.

A resolution approving a proposed Agreement between the City and County of Denver and Securitas Security Services USA, Inc. for security personnel services in City facilities, excluding Denver International Airport. Approves a contract with Securitas Security Services USA, Inc. for $25 million and for three years, with two one-year options to extend, for security personnel services in City facilities (GENRL-202161226-00). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 1-3-22. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-30-21. Pursuant to Council Rule 3.7, Councilmember Kniech called this item out at the 12-13-21 meeting for a one-week postponement to 12-20-21.

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and witnessing from an unbiased place what exactly is happening every day in these shelters. And so just wanted to put that out there and we'll be in communication. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screen. Council Member Can each go ahead with your comments on resolution one, four, four, four? Thank you. Council President Pro Tem. This is a contract for security services here in our city facilities and I think maybe up to 40 some facilities. So Human services, different buildings. And we have had some history with our service contracts in the city recently, as we saw at the airport where the janitorial staff went on strike, we actually had disruptions to the workplace. The disruptions included, you know, a work stoppage, two separate days. And, you know, in spite of the efforts of everyone at the airport to to provide backup disruptions due to labor unrest are bad for our city and they're bad for business. And so one of the first priorities I have when I look at our service contracts is to make sure, are we doing everything we can to avoid economic disruption? Are we doing everything we can to live up to our city's values in those contracts? Some things are within our control. To set terms for other things have to be determined between the workers and the employers outside the city's control. But the important thing always is that there is a commitment to do those negotiations and those discussions and that we as a city have assurance that there's not going to be disruption. We had a conversation in committee about the Securitas security contract a couple of weeks ago, and we received numerous reassurances that there would be good dialog with the workers and with their representatives, and that has just not occurred yet. I'm disappointed to hear that there is a lot of confusion among workers, and this happens when contracts turn over, right? There is a policy now that says you have a right to keep your job, but there are questions among those workers about the terms that they're going to be keeping those jobs under. And the best way to avoid the disruption that can occur with workers maybe getting cold feet, not being sure if they want to stay on, not being sure what's happening is to work in partnership. It is to sit at the table. It is to work together and to make sure that all the communication is as clear as it can be. To make sure that the parties understand what the commitments have been made and that those commitments are going to be kept and that the workers will have a seat at the table . I'm disappointed that those things have not occurred. And so with that, I am asking for this council to, you know, delay this for one week in the hopes that this company will sit down with the workers representatives and assure us in their next appearance before this council that we will not have disruptions because the conversations and the collaboration have not occurred. This is security contracting. It's not janitorial. It's much more complex to find workers to back up and to be in place. We just can't risk another round of disruption in one of our service contracts where it is avoidable. Where good conversations and good dialog can clarify communication, clarify intent, and wherever possible, get to as much certainty as possible before this council is asked to vote. So for those reasons, I hope that my colleagues will stay engaged in the week that intervenes here and that they will express their similar support for this dialog to continue. This does not require a vote tonight. This is a special motion that we created when we moved our contracts from two reading bills to one reading bill. And so I think it's an important tool. I don't use it often, but this is an example where I think more partnership and dialog is needed. I understand we're near the end of the year and this is an important contract and we always wish the administration brought these things a little quicker to us so we weren't quite under such a tight timeline. But I think the importance of avoiding disruptions that are foreseeable and preventable is important enough to make sure the parties understand the seriousness of getting to the table and talking. So with that, I think the Council President for accepting my motion tonight and invoking of this rule, and I look forward to hearing that some dialog and communication clarifications have been made so that we can feel good that this contract turnover will occur smoothly. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hines. I thank you. Council president. I want to thank Councilmember for her comments. I want the record to know that she is not alone. I agree and I'm sure others do too. Thank you. Council President. Thank you. Council Resolution 144, four. We'll be back before Council for consideration on Monday, December 20th. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screen. Councilmember Hines, go ahead with your comments on Resolution 1438.

Recommendation to adopt resolution authorizing City Manager to execute a contract with West Coast Arborists, Inc., of Anaheim, CA (not an MBE, WBE, SBE or Local), for a park tree inventory, on the same terms and conditions afforded to the City of Agoura Hills, for a total amount not to exceed $199,000, for a period of one-year, with the option to renew for one additional one-year period, at the discretion of the City Manager or his designee. (Citywide)

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Motion carries eight votes. 1616 is a recommendation of Parks, Recreation and the Financial Management Department, with a recommendation toward a contract with to award a contract to West Coast Arborist for an amount not to exceed $189,000. So moved to. Close the motion and a second I'm going to first get a public comment saying none. I'm as I get back behind the rail to customer ships keep it also Mr. Clarke, can you restart the podium? Keeps blinking off over there, Councilor Reshevsky. Thank you, Mr. Garcia. Mr. Chaplin, before you came here, Mr. Heston, we started. We initiated this tree inventory using the AI tree software, and we utilized Boy Scouts and a number of youth. Is there any way that we can reach back out to those groups and involve them? They actually somewhere in the city is the data from the initial inventory that they started. So is there a way we can reach back out to scouting troops? And I know this is a private contractor, but there's a lot of interest out there in youth about getting involved. Councilman, we certainly can try. I think part of the issue is the the contract calls for certified arborist to do this work. And, you know, it's the overall tree counts, the location of species. They also they're also going to look at the conditions of the trees and the maintenance needs. So really, we're really going to need people who can actually make that call. Out in the field. In addition to that, they're using technology that interfaces with the citizen system and our work order system. So I think we can probably find other projects for them, but this one is really important for us to utilize. The Certified Arborist. Well, I understand that I'm not asking for a replacement, but I would hope that we could reach out with these groups because they could maybe perhaps tag along because they the arborist did go with them last time and identified trees and so that they were able to do measurements and things. It would just be helpful that we could kind of grow our own team of community environmental arborist because there's an interest out there. We'll certainly look at it. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, great. See no other comment. Please cast your votes or the motion. I mean. Yes. Councilmember Johnson. Motion carries eight votes. Item 17. The report from the police department with the recommendation to receive and receive the application of state side crafts for an original ABC license at 42428 Atlantic Avenue and determined that the application serves the public convenience and necessity. And submit a public notice of protest to ABC.

A bill for an ordinance authorizing a supplemental appropriation from the General Contingency Fund to the Liability Claims Special Revenue Fund. (GOVERNMENT & SERVICES) Authorizes a supplemental appropriation in the amount of $3.25 million from the General Contingency Fund to the Liability Claims Special Revenue Fund to address settlement claims. This bill was approved for filing by Councilwoman Kniech.

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It has been moved in seconded. Any other comments from members of Council Councilman Ortega? Did you have any other comments or is that it? No, that's a councilman fight. Thank you, Mr. President. I had thought a long time because I wanted to make comments about the settlement, but the settlement is not truly before us today. That's going to be coming up next week in the form of a resolution. Whether money sits in the contingency fund according to this supplemental or whether it sits in a claims fund is still sitting until we've decided to spend it. And so the fact that there may not be comments coming does not mean that there is unanimity in feeling on the council. Thank you, Councilwoman Fox, any other comments by members of the council? Scene nine. Madam Secretary. Raquel Ortega. Abstain. Rob I. Sheppard, I. Susman, i. Brown I. Fights. No. Can each. Lehman. Lopez. Monteiro. I. Never. I. Mr. President. I come from the Susman. Your votes. I'm so sorry. Madam Secretary, please call the voting. Announce the results. Ten eyes one day, one abstention. Tonight one nays, one abstention. Capital 622 has been ordered published. Madam Secretary, could you please keep the next one? This council bill 560 by caught out by councilmembers Nevitt and Lopez. I'll start with Councilman Levitt to see why.

AN ORDINANCE authorizing Seattle Parks and Recreation to enter into an agreement with Seattle Preparatory School to replace the Montlake Playfield and continue an ongoing relationship in the Montlake community consistent with the Non-Government Agreement in Attachment 1 to this ordinance.

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Agenda Item six Council Bill 120342 An ordinance authorizing Seattle Parks and Recreation. To enter into an. Agreement with Seattle Puppetry School to replace the Montlake playfield. The committee recommends the bill pass. Thank you, Councilmember Lewis. Thank you. Madam President, this is an item that we had a fairly lengthy discussion on in committee regarding a deal to between Seattle Parks and Seattle Primary Academy to replace a turf field in the Montlake neighborhood of the city. This is an extension of an existing arrangement from the last time the turf field was replaced in collaboration with Seattle Prep. Under the terms of this agreement between Parks and Seattle Prep, as is outlined in a attachment to the legislation, the terms of agreements which in a matrix illustrates the different public benefits and the cost being assumed by Seattle Prep as part of this arrangement that Seattle Prep will assume the full cost of replacing this turf field in exchange for having priority access to the turf field from March 1st through June 15th annually during peak times for their sporting events and at other additional times as fits their schedule of athletic activities. In exchange further for that deal, and this is one of the more different terms from the previous decade of having this arrangement. Seattle Prep will provide a minimum of 50 public service annual public service hours per year, with the goal of helping to fill gaps in community offerings in the Montlake neighborhood and beyond, and facilitate, particularly programing to include the creation of lacrosse programs for middle school age children from lone families. Partnering with Montlake Community Center to provide tutoring services by Seattle Prep Students Assisting Northwest Child, a program dedicated to supporting people with disabilities and providing recreation opportunities for students. We had a fairly lengthy back and forth about the details of this of this deal and also the extent to which this is a more unique arrangement at this location and with this particular partner or whether it portends. Broader policy direction and decision by Seattle Parks and Recreation. I know Councilmember Morales has submitted some questions to Parks. I don't believe we've had a response for some of those inquiries yet, but I support getting a report back on those questions from the department as we go forward in pursuing these kinds of partnerships about the maintenance, replacement and activation of our public spaces. The Committee did ultimately report this bill out unanimously with an abstention from Councilmember Morales. Given that there there is no. Significant increase in concession from the city in this agreement relative to the previous shared use agreement. But there is an increased amount of benefit in Seattle providing 50 public service hours annually, which is the. From what I understand, from talking to parks and from the committee. The only new term relative to the last time the city entered into this agreement. So given that the committee does recommend passage of this and I don't have any other opening comments. Because we're lost. Can I ask you a question? When was the when was the other agreement? And I'm starting to remember this one. Was this after two states after 2016? I believe that the initial agreement council president was longer ago because this is at the time we are now replacing the turf field from its its 12 years of useful life. I think it was 2011. Okay. So I believe yeah, but another turf field that we did one of these concession agreements and a good job getting the public benefits piece in there because that's something that we worked on. So yes, you may be thinking council president about, I believe, a similar arrangement in the South Park neighborhood. Yes. Was done in the past decade that that is similar but with different parties. Right. Thank you. Are there any other comments from my colleagues before I ask Casper relevant. If you a council president and I thank you for the report. Councilmember Lewis, as Councilmember Lewis indicated, I did send some questions. I had I had a lot of questions in committee and sent some follow up questions. My questions are really rooted in the concerns that I hear from my constituents about the lack of access to neighborhood parks and to play fields for neighborhood children and the exclusive nature of the use of these in exchange, the exclusive use. Sort of. You know, peak after school hours for for students. So I did send some follow up questions to the Parks Department regarding the public benefit for use of our parks by private institutions. I haven't received those responses yet, but I have asked similar questions and have been asking for the last two years about these agreements that we have with private entities. Candidly, with the with the budget shortfall, the upcoming parks funding deliberations. I think it's important that we put a real intentional equity lens on our funding priorities. And I just feel at this point, without sufficient information on how this benefits diverse and low income communities, this is not something that I can support right now . So I will be voting. No today. If you customers want. Thank you, Dr. President. Whereas I will also be voting no on this contract in addition to the comments made by Councilmember Morales. I just wanted to add that our parks are a treasured public resource that should be available for all. This contract gives a private school exclusive use of the play field for a substantial part of the day, which unfortunately means that it will be unavailable during those hours for anyone else, such as students from Seattle Public Schools. New Astroturf on the play field is no doubt a real benefit. However, I do not think that outweighs losing public control of the space for so much of the day. So for that reason, and addition to the reasons already stated, I will. Be voting no. Thank you. Councilor Silent. Are there any other comments before I hand it off to Councilmember Lewis, too? Oh, yes, we're in Nelson. No. Okay. Councilmember Lewis, do you have any closing comments before we go to a vote? I'll stand by my initial remarks and cueing this up. Council president and we can move on to the vote. Okay. I'm going to support this as a former chair of parks and for six years in the MPD and talking to Councilmember Lewis. These these concession agreements are pretty straightforward. And we do require and I know for a fact, in the last six years, particularly the first six months that I chaired, that we bolstered up the huge public benefits piece. And, of course, the race, race and social justice initiative analysis is a big part of that. And there was some push back in the beginning, but eventually Parks and some of our other groups came to realize that. I think you saw this when we did the Woodland Park Zoo contract that we really needed to see what is the public benefit to allowing a private the private sector to use the public benefit? And even if it is a private school, these are still young folks in our city wanting to participate. And sometimes it's basically that's the only park that's there. So I'm going to go ahead and be supporting this because I understand the work that Councilmember Lewis had to do after doing it for six years to move these things forward. So with that, I'll be supporting that. But there any other comments before we move to a vote? All right. Not seeing any madam clip. You please call the role. Councilmember Nelson, I. Councilmember Peterson by Councilmember Salant No. Councilmember Lewis. Yes. Councilmember Morales No. Council President or us. I foreign favor to oppose you, Madam Clerk. The bill passes. The chair will sign it. And Madam Clinton's. Excuse me. Councilmember President. Council president was. I believe we may need five votes for a council bill. It's very possible that one did not pass at this particular point in time. Okay, so the. So what? Let's say we had two no's and. And some lessons and I have to check the charter. But I believe we need to find council members in favor of a council bill. And then I will also follow up with what to do after this. Okay. So what should we do? I'm concerned about putting it on the record that it failed. If we have to come back, if we're not sure on the actual rules. Can we? Is there a way that I can take this with Council Member Lewis's permission and move this over to next week till we have some confirmation on the particular procedural rules? I would rather do that than accept the vote as it is right now, because I did not know that. And I don't know if Council member Lewis did that. Can we do that? Yes. I mean, we can bring it back to the next council meeting without any further action. Councilor Lewis, is that okay with you? If we can move this over to June 28th? No objection from me. Councilmembers. Okay. So what we will do then is we will take item number six and till we get some clarification on the clerk's on how many votes we need to pass this or passes or fails, and we'll move this to June 28th, which is a Tuesday, and we'll bring it back then. And then, Madam Clerk, you can advise us and Mr. Casseroles can share with us any additional information about that. Yes. Thank you. Council President. Yes, thank you. All right. So after that, let's move on. On our agenda, items removed from the concert calendar. There were no items removed. The consent calendar, adoption of other resolutions. There are no other resolutions to be adopted under way. Other business. If there's no objection, Councilor referral is excused from today's council meeting. It's forward with that. And then right now we will go to let's see, I am not adjourning yet. We're going to go into executive session.

A resolution By the Council of the City and County of Denver, sitting ex officio as the Board of Directors of the RiNo Denver General Improvement District, approving a Work Plan, adopting a Budget and making appropriations for the 2022 Budget Year. Approves the 2022 Work Plan and Budget for the RiNo Denver General Improvement District in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-3-21.

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12 Eyes Council Resolution 21, dash 1270 has passed. The Council is now convened as the board of directors of the Reno Denver General Improvement District. Councilmember Flynn. Will you please put Resolution 20 1-1271 on the floor for adoption? Yes, Madam President, thank you. I move that Resolution 21, dash 1271, be adopted. Thank you. We have it moved by you. We need a second, please. All right, great. We've got it moved by Council Member Flynn and seconded by Councilmember Hines. The public hearing for Resolution 20 1-1271 is open. May we have the staff report and we have Michael Kerrigan here from the Department of Finance. Good evening, board members. Once again, Michael Kerrigan from the Department of Finance. I am before you tonight to give the staff report and request approval for the Rhino Denver General Improvement District 2022 Annual Work Plan and Budget. The district is located northwest of downtown and includes residentially and commercially assessed properties around the Brighton Boulevard corridor. Generally, the JDI is centered on Brighton Boulevard, stretching from I-70 on the north to 29th Street on the south and bounded east by the Union Pacific Railroad line and to the west by the Burlington Northern Railroad Line. The JD Sports infrastructure enhancements and maintenance in the Reno area, including streetscape maintenance to Brighton Boulevard. City Council approved the formation of the Rhino Denver Guide by Ordinance Number 309 Series 2015 and established City Council as the ex-officio board of Directors of District. The ordinance also creates a district advisory board comprised of property owners within the district. The ordinance specified that the advisory board should, subject to approval of the Board of directors, conduct and manage all affairs of the district as of as the authorized agent took the board of directors. The District Advisory Board has created the 2022 budget before you tonight. The Budget proposes overall expenditures and fund transfers of $1,562,086 and overall revenues of $1,000,609, 609 and $281 of these revenues. The district will generate approximately 1,433,681 through the levy of four mills on real property for general operating purposes. And it will generate approximately $175,000 from the imposition of a capital charge assessed on a lineal foot based basis on properties adjacent to Brighton Boulevard for repayment of debt used to fund the capital enhancements along Brighton Boulevard. City staff has reviewed the 2022 budget and work plan and recommends it for approval. Thank you. Thank you. We have three individuals signed up to speak this evening. Our first speaker is in person and the other two are online. And so we're going to start out with Tracy. Well, here in chambers. Good evening, counsel. My name's Tracy Whale, and I'm the executive director for the Rhino Art District, and I'm here to answer any questions you may have. So thank you. All right. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and move online. Our first speaker online is Tess Dougherty. Council. I. Can you hear me? Okay? Go ahead. Okay. So thank you. So, hi, my name's Chester from District nine. And I just I'm curious about the, the budget in the board of directors and how the process for, for the so called Reno art district, how it works because in the 23 River North Neighborhood Plan, it mentions, you know, a name change to the area to improve its attract ability for investors. It mentions you know there's a huge emphasis on on the art and not as much of a preservation on the local culture of the area. And I'm just curious about, you know, why an area that was historically black and Latino and historically, you know, neglected and not invested, you know, magically becomes becomes rhino and and has a name change. And I mean, the 23 River North Plan is pretty much a guide to gentrification in the city. And so I would just I'm just curious if there are indigenous people at the table and who's at the table and what their board of directors looks like? Because. Because. You know, there, it just feels like a lot of a little bit of an erasure. You know, the whole process of of Reno art district feels very much like an erasure of culture and of history and and of people because, you know, there's been a lot of displacement that's happened in that area. And it doesn't feel like everyone's been at the table or had an opportunity to remain in that area. It feels like the city of Denver is very much made it comfortable for wealthy white people to move in at the expense of black, brown and indigenous people. And that's a real shame. It's a real shame. And and I just wonder how the River North, how the rhino art district feels about that and what they're doing to to correct that harm a in a restorative and transformative way for the community. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker online is David Hagan. Hi. Good evening, counsel. I'm also a District nine, and I'd just like to, uh, to kind of just stick with the same stuff that tested said. Um, it seems to me that I'm curious to how much of that budget is. Going to go towards preservation of the people that have lived in that area, the preservation of the people. Five points in G as in what are we doing to keep them there and not just move them on and bring more, more gentrification in that area? What are we doing for affordable housing in that area? Is any of that money set up for affordable housing or. Who? Who does the market work for? What are we doing? For the people. What are we doing to keep the people there? I mean, it wasn't that long ago that Joes was was tried. They tried to push him out because of the unhoused folks buying forties at his liquor store or whatever. And he recently sold, I believe, but what's left of the original people. Do we care about them or are we going to move them over to another neighborhood until we decide to gentrify that neighborhood and build it arena or some other obstruction? It's just I just want to I just want to really highlight on the gentrification and make sure that we're not we're not forgetting about that. We've got to be doing something about that. Gentrification is colonization, and we should be better than that by this point in time. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers questions from members of Council. On Council Resolution 21, dash 1271. We've got a couple members in the queue. Councilmember Ortega, please go ahead. Thank you, Madam President. Let me put my hand down. So my question is for Michael Kerrigan. Michael. Can you tell me. How far off of Brighton the boundaries extend? I'm just curious if this includes the Salvation Army site, which is now owned by the city of Denver. Yes. Essentially, it it goes from a railroad track to railroad tracks. I'm not sure where the Salvation Army building is. If it's if it's immediate, the river at. 29th Avenue. That would be included within the district boundaries. It abuts the river. I believe 29th is the cross street. So it's. It's on the east side of the river, not the west side. Even the railroad tracks are on the west side of the river. So that would be that would be included in the district. Okay. So what how does that then apply when the city owns property? So I know we used to have the. But we'll have the park down there now. Where the police. What was the the place where they would auction bikes and vehicles off that were picked up and never claimed. But in this case, we we own that building now. So how is that handled differently from any of the other properties? So the the city truly owns it. The assessed value of that property would be zero. So that property would not be paying any of the four mills or the or the lineal foot charge into the district. Okay. Thank you for that. That's that's all I had for questions. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Council President. I guess this is either either of you could answer this. I'm sure this isn't in my district. And so I'm not as familiar with the demographics of the people who live in this area. But historically, was this. It's my understanding that it was a railyard and a bunch of warehouses. Did people live here historically or was this main mainly just a storage area until it became, um, you know, until into housing started to get built in this area. Do you want to introduce yourself for us? Well, the executive director for the Rhino Art District in the sixties, it was really mostly gentrified and turned into more of an. Industrial hub. Back then. There are still a few houses left, including mine, where I live. So that's kind of the makeup of the district. Does that answer your question? So you you mention in the sixties it was gentrified, so people used to live there and then they got they left for warehouses. Yeah, well, it's kind of always this workaday neighborhood, I think generally. But then it was, you know, they started building more warehouses for for industry. And, you know, there's always been an industrial corridor, primarily. But some of that happened in the sixties, too. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilperson. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. And not seen any other questions from members of council. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Resolution 20 1-1271. CNN. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Resolution 21. Dash 1 to 7 one. Ortega. I know. Black Eye. CdeBaca, I. Clark. All right. When I heard in hindsight, Cashman can reach Brian Sandoval, I swear. I. Torres, I. Madam President, I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce results. There are 13 I's. 13 I's Council Resolution 21, dash 1271 has passed. We want to thank Michael Carrigan and the other representatives from the organizations that were here and the members of the public. Council is now convened as Denver City Council. Councilmember Flynn, will you please put council bill 20 1-1219 on the floor to be ordered published.

Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing regarding an economic subsidy in connection with a Transient Occupancy Tax Sharing Agreement with American Life, Inc., pursuant to California Government Code Section 53083; Adopt Specifications No. RFP CM15-163 for the purchase and development opportunity at 100 East Ocean Boulevard, Assessor Parcel Number 7278-007-928 (Subject Property); Declare the City-owned Subject Property as surplus; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents necessary, including a Purchase and Sale Agreement and Transient Occupancy Tax Sharing Agreement, with American Life, Inc., a California corporation, or assignee, for the sale of the Subject Property in the amount of $7,000,000, for the development of a mixed-use hotel and business center; and Accept Categorical Exemption CE 16-070. (District 2)

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This is a hearing. It requires an oath report from Economic Property Development and Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record. Conclude the public hearing regarding an economic subsidy in connection with a transient occupancy tax sharing agreement with American Life. Adobe Specifications for the Purchase and Development Opportunity at 100 East Ocean Boulevard. Declare the city owned subject property a surplus. Authorize the city manager to execute all documents necessary, including a purchase and sales agreement and transient occupancy tax sharing agreement with American life for the sale of the subject property in the amount of $7 million for the development of a mixed use hotel and business center and accept categorical exemption. SI $16 070 district to. If you're providing testimony, please stand for this item so you and raise your right hand. You and each of you do solemnly state that the testimony you may give in the cause now and pending before this body shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. I'm not familiar. Okay. Thank you. So let's go and begin the hearing. I'm going to turn this over now to Vice President Gore. Did you want to start and then turn it over to staff? Reporter To the staff. Okay. So let me turn this over to Mr. West. Mr. Mayor, council members, this truly is an exciting night. We are through the dissolution of the redevelopment agency. We have some successor agency properties that we've been disposing of with some very great success. And this is perhaps one of the more prime pieces of property in the entire city of Long Beach at Pine and Ocean. It's really a critical piece, and we have the opportunity to see a great development here. I'm going to turn this over to the gentleman who's been working with this, and that's Mike Conaway, our director of Economic and Property Development. So, Mike, Mayor Garcia, members of the City Council, this item involves a former redevelopment agency parcel at the southeast corner of Ocean and Pine. The owners of the property demolished the Jurgens Trust Building in 1988 and the property has remained undeveloped since that time. The Redevelopment Agency acquired the property in 2011 after several failed attempts by private entities to develop the property on February 12th, 2012, redevelopment agencies were dissolved and the property has remained fallow. While the California Department of Finance approved the city's long range property management plan. The plan was approved in March 2015 and amended in June 2015. In July 2015, a request for proposals was released seeking development proposals for the property which requires public access to Jergens Tunnel. A redevelopment of Victory Park. A project labor agreement related to construction and will also include a card check agreement with the Local Hotel Workers Union , a panel including staff from Development Services and Economic and Property Development Departments and an outside real estate economic consultant met to review the three proposals. The panel unanimously selected the proposal submitted by American Life Inc. and Staff's Recommendation to City Council. The project proposed by American Life presents a progressive vision of mixed uses, dynamic use of a difficult physical space, integration of Victory Park, activation of Jergens Tunnel, and connectivity between the downtown, the Convention Center, Pike Outlets and Shoreline Village. City Council's action this evening will, among other things, select a developer who will then proceed through the standard entitlement process, including site plan, review clearance through secure and community outreach and education. American Life proposes to construct up to 427 hotel rooms, 19,000 square feet of free function space and meeting rooms, 8000 square feet of standalone restaurant space and 28,000 square feet of guest amenities, including a pool and sundeck. The project proposes up to 1701 temporary jobs and up to 351 permanent jobs. The project will provide further positive economic impact as a result of property tax, sales tax, business license fees and collateral impacts to the surrounding businesses and revitalization of a blighting influence from a vacant lot in our downtown. Lastly, is anticipated that additional hotel rooms may serve to increase the number and size of conventions, which may work to increase the average daily room rate for all hotels. Public access to the Jergens tunnel is proposed to be incorporated into the design. Activation of the tunnel will be discussed during the due diligence and entitlement phase of development, restoration and redevelopment of that portion of Victory Park, which fronts Ocean Boulevard is also part of the proposal. The proposed hotel is 18 stories from Seaside and 25 stories from Ocean Boulevard, including a rooftop viewing area. The proposed purchase price for the property is $7 million, $197 a square foot. This is not the highest price offered for the property through the RFP process. However, the project provides the highest investment value to the city, providing the greatest economic impact over the short term and the highest level of revenues over the long term. The developer has identified a gap in project economics and request that the city participate in closing this economic gap. The economic gap is the difference between the cost to develop and construct the site and the combination of the present value of the net operating income over a specified period of time, plus the value of the hotel at the end of that period. The gap analysis prepared by the developer is currently under review by Kaiser Marston, the city's real estate economic consultant. However, in order for the gap analysis to accurately identify the economic gap, the project needs to be sufficiently designed to determine the exact number of rooms to be developed and the related development costs . The developer's project proposes 427 rooms. However, since the developer has not yet submitted any plans and is not anticipated to do so for some months, the exact number of hotel rooms and therefore the exact level of city participation is not clear. Therefore, as staff seeks City Council approval to negotiate up to a 50% total sharing cap and up to a term of 20 years in order to participate in the reduction of the economic gap. As the project becomes more detailed through the entitlement process, the size of the economic gap will be more apparent and negotiations can then proceed . It is important to understand that the property currently generates no revenue for the city, so sharing new revenue seems to be a fiscally prudent choice. The development timeline assumes a 90 day due diligence period with an option to extend for an additional 90 days. A 12 month entitlement period and closing 30 days thereafter. The city will have a period which extends 30 days after the end of the due diligence period within which to approve or reject the hotel brand if it is not a four star brand. If the hotel brand is four stars, the developer can proceed without city approval because the site will be subject to an environmental impact report. Staff requests flexibility regarding the 12 month entitlement period as this timeframe may need to be extended. So with that, staff believes that the developers project is in the best interests of the city the downtown, the convention center, the park and the surrounding businesses. The project will eliminate a blighting influence on the downtown, generate $7 million in one time sale price, generate property sales and transient occupancy tax, create additional hotel capacity for larger and more conventions. Bring needed jobs to the local community, enhance the city's economic welfare, and bring significant investment into the city. So this concludes my report, and I'm available to answer your questions. Thank you. I'm going to now turn this over to Vice Mayor Lowenthal. And I know she's got some extended comments on this since I know the projects in the district and we'll go from there. So. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I know many of you, certainly all of my colleagues have. A. History with this property, an understanding of this property, not a history. But this particular site is extremely important to the city of Long Beach. It is the most prominent corner that is left as open, vacant space in the downtown and certainly in the second district. But it has a tremendous amount of relevance to the entire city of Long Beach. It is diagonal from Civic Center, which, as you know, we have worked for many, many, many years to make sure that there is a civic center that is reintroduced to the city of Long Beach in a manner that is worthy of its residents and its visitors. We are working on the Queen Mary and the developable site around the Queen Mary, and this project coming online at this time is timely, but also it's an opportune time so that downtown Long Beach and the entire city of Long Beach can have a development opportunity that really honors the process that we've been through . As Mr. Conway said, this site has been vacant since 1988. The city has done a tremendous job in trying to keep the site from being blighted, which I'm glad for. We've done everything from putting up faux murals or faux brass, and I look to Mr. Mr. West, who's brought many of those murals all throughout the city, to give us a sense of ownership so that folks know that we are working on this and there is something good to come. You may have noticed that there is the beautiful loop project that's there now, which I'm very proud of, and I want to thank the Dolby and other stakeholders that brought that forward, helped us bring that forward, and to say that this is a site that we have protected and guarded and wanted to make sure that we waited for a development opportunity that allows it to be somewhat of the jewel in the crown. Certainly Civic Center will be the jewel in the crown and the Queen Mary in her own right as well. But this corner needed to be significant. It needs to be significant. It is a very, very, very critical corner. But it's also very personally important to me, as all of you know, I am ending my term not too long from now, in just a couple of months. And I had committed as one of the many projects that I would take on this site, being really a site that allows the splendor of the downtown to be reflected in its development. It's a historic opportunity for the right kind of development. It's a signature property, as I mentioned, and it needs to honor 8 to 10 years of work that I personally have put into it my staff, the entire city's team, and this council, for which I am very thankful to communicate how important this site is. I know several of you may have heard me speak about the Jurgens tunnel and the importance of the Jurgens tunnel. It is really part of the history of the city of Long Beach. For those of you who know about the pike and the pike that used to be here with with the roller coaster and other opportunities that people came to visit Long Beach for and Long Beach residents visited the Jurgens tunnel was a pathway that a lot of people remembered. And many, many, many people are alive today that have memories of that Jurgens tunnel. It is a critical piece of our history. The Jurgens Trust was a historic building under the National Register, and as such, we believe the Jurgens Tunnel has a similar relevance to the history of this city. We are requiring that that tunnel be activated for lots of reasons. Many of you may remember the University by the Sea event that we had many, many years ago sponsored by the Second District in the city of Long Beach. And we held a session in the Jurgens tunnel, giving an opportunity for folks who hadn't been there since the pike was opened and folks who had never been there before to share one of long beaches jewels. And I'm looking forward to this jewel being activated and accessible by the public once again. That is one of the beauty. One of the beauties of being in community development and city development is that we can place assets that belong to the public back. To the public through public access, but really maintained and developed in a beautiful way through a partnership with the private sector. So I'm thankful for that opportunity. I'd like to. Be sure that any of us that look at that corner today and enjoy the loop today can look forward to what Mr. Conway has described as a beautiful hotel and he has outlined the requirements that we certainly have for the team. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to state the motion specifically. If I might read that out loud. Ah, my motion is to conclude the public hearing regarding an economic subsidy. Adopt specifications number RFP CRM 15-163 for the purchase and development opportunity at 100 East Ocean Boulevard and authorize the city manager or designee to execute any and all documents necessary, including a purchase and sale agreement and transient occupancy sharing agreement for the sale and development of the subject property for a mixed use hotel and business center with the following conditions one that the developer shall enter a card check agreement providing for the unionization of the hotel. Two that the total sharing agreement shall not exceed 50% of the total actually received by the city, not including the total generated under the Long Beach Tourism Business Improvement area for a period of not more than 20 years . Three. That the developer shall be required to enter a point of sale agreement for the construction phase of the development. For that, the entitlement and development timelines presented in the Council letter include reasonable flexibility and five that the developer used best efforts to secure a four star flag. For the hotel operations. And that's my emotion, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And there is a second by Councilman Austin. Did you have any comment right now, Councilman? Okay. Councilwoman Price. I just wanted to thank the vice mayor for her work on this. This is a really exciting project. I agree with her. Downtown has come such a long way. With her leadership, the leadership of Councilwoman Gonzalez and of course, the mayor. As mayor and as previously as a councilman for the first district. It's just it's it's blossoming at every corner. And this is just going to add to it and it's going to bring much needed changes to the area. And it's going to really close out the area to make it look finished. So I'm very much looking forward to it. I think that the motion that's made is very reasonable and I look forward to voting in favor of it. Thank you, Mr. City. Attorney. Thank you, Vice Mayor, just for clarification on your motion. I'm assuming that you're also making the motion to declare the city owned property surplus and accept the category exemption. C 1607 zero as in the staff report. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I also want to thank everyone for their leadership on this. I think that it's important to take pause and say how many thousands of jobs are going to be generated and what this looks like to the economic fabric of downtown Long Beach and for our city as a whole. Many of our residents, no matter where they live in the city, commute downtown to go to work. And these are going to be not only construction jobs, but once these buildings are built, these will be long term jobs where people can start as part time employees while they're still in college, learn on the job skills and then grow into long term, full time positions and careers. And so I'm just so excited to again see this council come together on a project that will include all of the different components that build a building and all the jobs that go into building a building, and then all the jobs that keep that building operating so that we can really do a great job for the Convention and Visitors Bureau as well, to recruit more individuals from all over the world to come and visit and spend their money right here in Long Beach. Thank you. Next, we have Councilmember Austin. Yes. I just wanted to add this weigh in and also lend my support, particularly for the jobs component. I know there will be many temporary jobs, but also several hundred long term jobs created as a result of this project. It's good to see our downtown come to life and the opportunities and the vision start to be really starting to be realized here and through the work of Vice Mayor Lowenthal and this entire council and particularly city staff. I'm looking forward to this hotel improving the convention and the hospitality and entertainment capacity that our city actually has. We'll be able to bring more large conventions to our city, which means more money and more economic development to our downtown and more jobs. And so I look forward to supporting. Thank you. Just make it maybe make a couple comments and then I'm going to turn this opener off the public comment. Yes. You know, sum up, Councilman Andrews. I was just waiting, Jackie. You just plugged in this hour about the. Go ahead. Yes. May I just want to thank Vice Mayor. Mr. Segal went off with this, you know, tremendous, you know, visionary, a big a wonderful, beautiful building at this time, because this has been Long Beach. That's something we've really been looking for, especially with that old building, the German trust building. It's been there for ages. But now we're going to get a chance to see Long Beach at its best. Thank you again, vice Mayor, for that vision you had. And Councilman Richardson. Thanks a lot. I think this is a good project. Sounds everything sounds fine. Hey, what's going to happen with the loop? Can I have it? We'll have to share it. All nine of us. You can't. Okay. There are at least nine. I got dibs. All right. Congratulations, Vice Mayor and I look forward to all the economic activity, the good quality jobs that can come out of this and the impact to our downtown. So this is tremendous. Congratulations. Thank you. Just just a few things. The first is I want to just to reemphasize, which I think is important, that the lot is that this lot has been on activated and empty for 30 years, almost 30 years now, and not creating jobs, not creating convention business, not creating development for for for tourism. And certainly has been a little bit of of an eyesore over the years. Those of us that have been here for a while can remember the many iterations of the lot and and how it looks to still today. So I want to I just want to just take a moment, one, to congratulate Vice Mayor Lowenthal. I think that she's been spearheading this project. I know for for the entire time she's been in office trying to get this lot developed. And I think what the end product is, we have a a striking hotel project. And if you talk to any of the convention folks, they'll share with you that this is going to be incredible for for convention business and for for the economy. As we know, our our convention tourism economy is incredibly important to the city. And this this this hotel will also connect to the convention center. And to have this kind of really spectacular building will be will be something. So we're look forward to it coming out of the ground. And I want to congratulate the vice mayor and her team on this and as well as our our city staff. You guys you guys have done a great job of putting this together. So congratulations. And with that, I'm going to turn this over to public comment. Please come forward. Hi. My name is warmed lisowski 150 The Promenade North. Where do I begin with the problems of this project? The way the process is done on the city side, Mike Conway's report takes all the developer's items on face value. I didn't see any feasibility studies from outside. I know they're being done right now. And the fact that you all are congratulating yourselves on unanimously approving this without the transit occupancy sharing agreement is not finalized. The purchase and sale agreement is not even in draft available. Report I'm the president of Citizens Against Downtown Long Beach Giveaways, an organization formed this year with the purpose of holding the city accountable for the problems in the sea. Successor to the RDA in the lead agency in the sale. With all due respect, Mayor and City Council, I'm here to put you on notice of litigation that was filed today at Stanley Moss Courthouse in the Los Angeles Superior Court. Right here. We plan on recording a pendency of notice at the Los Angeles County recorder's office in the next ten days. Our lawsuit seeks to block the permits and approvals of this pending vote regarding the development of the former Jurgens trust building, which I just found out tonight from Vice Mayor Lowenthal was a historically protected building. I don't know how you guys were able to tear it down if it was historically protected. The basis of the suit is the improper process of how the city selling property, especially the environment impact review waiver. Your Class one and Class eight waivers do not suit this project at all. Class one waiver says there's no development to be done. How could you use the class one waiver when you've got an empty lot? Class eight waiver is specifically for legislative items and is accepted for any construction process. So your one page exemption from Sequoia is not valid, and that's what we're suing you against. Among other causes of action, we plan on amending the complaint to also include taxpayers rights violations. I find it appalling that at the same time that council members are pandering to the city for their measures A and B to try to raise $328 million. You're giving away $25 million of occupancy tax that could be generated. A hotel is not feasible for that site, possibly some type of other smaller residential development. I don't it doesn't. How can you have an out-of-town developer come into Long Beach and have a -$27 million profit? That's a loss of $27 million. Who's going to develop a project. At a loss? It doesn't make any sense at all. Coming up with the value of the land. What's the residual value of the land? How are you getting a $7 million purchase price when this developer is going to lose $25 million? We, the people of Long Beach, do not believe that the developer is going to lose money. And the fact that you are unanimously voting yes, we have to disagree with that. I've never seen public comments sway this council before. I've lived in Long Beach for over 30 years. So we went ahead and filed that lawsuit in the Superior Court. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor. City Council. My name is Cheryl Perry. I reside at 351 Magnolia. I'm the current president of Long Beach Heritage. We are happy to see that there is potential for preservation and re utilization of the Jergens train tunnel. As Vice Mayor Lowenthal said, it's certainly a significant piece of Long Beach history. We would just like to be assured that that there will be included specific wording in the DDA or whatever the documents are with the developer regarding the utilization of and the public access to the tunnel. Because we didn't have apparently enough protection in 1988 and we lost the entire Jurgens trust building. We'd like to make sure that there are enough legal protections for the tunnel itself. Mr. Mayor and many council members, you've said that we need to think big and think outside the box to create a vibrant and invigorating downtown and re utilizing this tunnel could certainly be an important piece of that. We don't have to have all the details yet of how that can happen. We have a lot of creative and talented architects and engineers and builders in the city that can figure that out. But we just want to make sure that there's protection, that you do not relinquish the control of the tunnel. Be the leaders of this revitalization, this re utilization of it. Don't leave it to the developer to tell us what they're going to do with it. You are our leaders. You tell them what the city wants to happen there. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Next speaker. Good evening. My name is Derek Smith. I am the political director for Unite Here Local 11. We understand the importance of this hotel. We're not. That's not lost on us. But we also understand very well the value of what is being given away. And the point of the process that this tonight marks today. There has been no written assurance by the developer about which end use jobs are going to. Be quality. Jobs. The vice mayor has put. Forth a. A card check provision in her motion, which is good in concept. Conceptually, it's important. But it's limited because it doesn't provide any clarity about which jobs are going to be union jobs or the process by which workers will be able to decide whether they want a union or not. And those things are important. In instances like this, we suggest labor peace. A labor peace is appropriate in a situation where a city has a fiduciary interest in a property which you do. Labor peace is an agreement that ensures the financial success of a project because it mandates that the two parties that actually can ensure peace, labor, peace, a developer. And a union must. Work together and decide for themselves who's going to be covered and what the concept is and how it's going to happen. That's the agreement that needs to be in place for you to ensure that there. Is no labor dispute, which I imagine is what you want. So we are asking that you put that labor peace provision in place tonight while. You are granting all the rest of the. Entitlements and hopefully that if you do that, we can all happily support this project. Thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker, please. My name is Nadir Tushnet. I've lived in the third district for. It's almost 30 years. Not quite. And I have some concerns about the upcoming proposed hotel project, this new hotel development. I've been very proud of the labor standards in Long Beach for the most part. And this new hotel development should uphold the city standard for projects with community benefits, especially if we're going to negotiate a tax subsidy. So at this time, I urge that the City Council vote to approve this project only if a labor peace agreement is in place. And I have three more minutes. It's screwed up. It's okay. I'm done. Thank you. I think we're going to fix. Madam Clerk. I think we're going to fix the timer. Right. Okay. Okay. Next speaker. Thank you. Hi. My name is Jose Soto. I am a Hyatt centric public employee. I've been there for seven years since it opened as a year and then through measure, and we were able to do a card check and become unionized. I believe that this this is very important to us, not only the workers here, but the people who live here in Long Beach, because there's different companies out there who refuse to negotiate even once they're in control. So if you think that they're going to do the right thing, it actually takes months of litigation, months of lawyers for them to actually come and negotiate a fair contract with their employees. So the card check is something very important. And the community benefits also are something that that help. Because if we don't do this right the first time, like I said, it takes months and months of employees having to go to try and negotiate fair living wages, sustainable living wages, also assisted health care. And the workloads are something that that are something that benefits employees that you went through through community community benefits and being able to even just have a card check. Another thing I mentioned here is the voice that that you can offer to the employees that people work. There's going to be very big with the card check and with community benefits. A lot of times there's abuse with wage theft because there's no transparency. Contracts can can also include language of transparency about tip distribution and things like that, which lead to wage theft. Also, things that are good in that sense is that the workloads a lot of people think that the turnover in hotels is due to something very minimal, but it's actually leading to workloads being excessive. Companies are exploiting the workers and just being ambitious managers, ambitious people, short shifting people. And all these things can be labor disputes can be litigated earlier, you know, if you do it right the first time, we need benefits. We need community benefits to keep LPC standards high. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is James Banks. I am from the second district. And. Thank you, Vice Mayor Lowenthal, for all the work you've done. I am a member of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and Healthy Economy. I am also a member of United Auto Workers, Local 4123, and I am an employee of the international UAW. I think the the trade, the transit occupancy, tax sharing agreement that we see here, I think is a really bad idea. Basically, you're splitting that 5050 and that's giving away a lot of money and especially to give away that money for over 20 years. That's really depriving services from the citizens of Long Beach. Earlier, several hours ago, we saw the work that the public works people do. That's money that could easily be helping the public works. So there's no need to 5050 split that total money. That's about 25 million that we could be saving for our own coffers to help out with that. So I think that a subsidy is only good for the community when there's community benefits in place that are returning that for good jobs, stimulating the economy and having good labor working conditions. As a person that negotiates contracts for thousands of people, I can tell you that labor peace is a very valuable thing to have. And I hope that the labor peace agreement that we do see with this language for this resolution is really clear. And so the only way this project should be given a subsidy is that the developer commits to the community benefits. We're not giving that money back to them 5050. And so in conclusion, I ask the City Council to only approve moving forward with this project if a labor peace agreement is in place. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Alicia Quiroz. I used to work as a restaurant server here at one of the Hyatt's in Long Beach. And unless labor peace is given in this project, we oppose the project. I want to tell you what it's like to work as a server who doesn't have a union. Without the union, we're on our own and we are subject to enduring harassment without being able to speak up. If we speak up, our hours are cut. Our days are cut. If we are not the quietest, the most submissive, the prettiest of servers, we're not given enough hours. We can make ends meet. I had to work two server jobs to rent a one to rent one bedroom out of an apartment here in Long Beach. Like we did, there were two nonunion server jobs without a union. Women like myself, families remain poor. We remain without health insurance, without an opportunity to have the full time good careers that Councilwoman Mango mentioned. At these hotels, you know, we cannot afford a college for our for ourselves. My coworkers couldn't afford a college for their children while working nonunion, serving jobs. We don't have health insurance. We don't have sick days. And so these are the things that are money goes to pay for instead of a good education. Without a union, we have no opportunity to know if tomorrow we're even going to have a job or if we can afford our rent next month. Our hours are so up and down that we never know. We have to endure uninvited comments from guests, from managers every single day. So I encourage you to do the right thing and give the hundreds of future workers at this hotel a good job, a good future, and a good life. And do not support this project if there is no labor peace. Thank you. Thank you. Thank speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and fellow council members, staff and the public. My name is Tommy Falvey. I represent the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and we wholeheartedly support this project moving forward. We feel that bringing more economic benefits to the city and seeing more cranes up and in Long Beach is always a plus when you're talking about the multiplier of construction jobs and seeing many careers here in Long Beach to be expressed. I'm tired of seeing a lot of the the cranes in Los Angeles city of L.A. But you know what? I think Long Beach just is going to have more cranes than L.A. one of these days, more development. And in Long Beach is always a plus. And we we urge you to move this project forward. And thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker. Please. Hello, Mayor. Honorable councilmembers. My name is Jeremy Diaz. I want here on behalf of Los Angeles, Orange County Building Trades Construction Council, and we are also in strong support of this project. It's projects like these that let the future people of Long Beach work and it creates good careers and it creates good jobs not only now , but down the road as well. So, again, we support this project and. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And our final speaker. Hi. My name is Amy, but I am a full time worker at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach. Nine plus years almost. I am also a full time student and a single mother for those working for in the future hotel property. I want to say for the workers that will be working there, definitely a bottom line has to be given to the workers. A labor peace agreement needs to be in place for those future workers of residents living in Long Beach. For those seeking out jobs for that hotel. So hopefully we see that in the future. So bottom line, labor peace needs to be present. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Close public we we close public comment. Let me go back now to councilman Councilman Austin and vice mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have a question for Stephanie regarding some of what has been mentioned in public comment, particularly around the card check agreement and labor peace. I understand this motion actually does have a provision for car check agreement. Is that correct? Mr. City attorney. That is correct. And who was was there? Was there any was was there negotiation with with any labor groups to get that language in there? And what was the intent of putting a card check agreement in place? Councilmember Austin, there was discussion during the day today on how best to ensure that the hotel would be a union hotel, even though it is subject to measure. And and so in discussions internally, we thought the best approach to achieve that was through the card check agreement. And so that was included and discussed with the developer. And he has agreed to pursue that. And I guess to staff Mr. Conway or the city attorney. What is a card check agreement actually mean to you in terms of making it more inviting for a union hotel? Council Member Austin My understanding of the card check agreement is it provides an option for the employees of the hotel to decide whether or not they want to unionize. And I've been advised by the developer in this particular project that in his experience, a card check agreement generally almost 100% of the time results in a unionized hotel and comes with a restaurant. On top of that, the chosen hotel will enter into a card check neutrality agreement with the local 11 for direct employees of the hotel. So there's already a provision for this. The card check agreement to be with. That will be in the purchase agreement. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I may have a question later. Thank you. I'm going to let other councilmembers with Councilmember Supernova. Yeah. Thank you. First, I'd like to thank the vice mayor for recognizing there are still people alive who remember the Jergens tunnel. I think Councilmember Andrews and I would be among those. That group. Yeah, that's sorry. But to Sheryl Perry's point about the Jergens tunnel, from what I read in the description here, there's there's no mention of a Northern ingress or egress from that. Mr.. CONWAY So does that mean that it's just going to be open on the seaside way? As I mentioned, I am old enough to remember it. They did close the entrance on the north side of ocean. I think you could get to it on the south side of Ocean, also near Victory Park, which was the skylight for the tunnel. Any plans in place to have an opening at the other end? So it actually functions as a tunnel? That would be. And that's too far in the weeds right now. But I think that's something that the the folks who remember it would would. Want to see. Council members who are the our understanding currently and we will verify that is that the northern entrance to the tunnel has been blocked off by development and therefore is not accessible. But we will absolutely ensure that that's correct. If there is access from the northerly side, we will look to provide that as part of this agreement. Okay. Thank you. I think there's a lot of issues we need to visit at at a later date when the folks are here to answer those questions in terms of marketing and whatnot. So we'll defer that to later. But for now, I stand in support. Thank you. Thank you. By Samir Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to thank all the speakers, as well as council colleagues and council members. Super. And I apologize for that. Sometimes it feels like one long day and a decade can go by. But of course, it wasn't that long ago. I. Mr. Mayor, thank you also for your gracious comments. I think everyone has worked hard on this particular project in one way or another. And Councilmember Supernormal. I have asked our city team, not just today but for years, to make sure that that access to the northern side is revisited and considered, if at all possible. It is something that made that a very, very, very unique property. So I reiterated that request today to Mr. Conway and Mr. Modica, and hopefully the answer is a positive one, because I think that will also provide unique opportunities for the developer to consider if that actually is an option. And I would like to reiterate my gratitude for the staff for ensuring that measure and is clarified and then really sanctify through this agreement and know that the larger victory when it comes to working with city owned properties has been achieved. And for that, I'm very thankful and I thank everyone that's been involved in almost the last ten years in this process. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please go ahead and cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and take a one minute recess just to get a back up on the agenda. So we will return in one minute. Thank you. Okay. We're going to go ahead and call the meeting back to order. If we can do the roll, please. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Councilwoman Price, Councilmember. Super nice. Councilwoman Mongo. Councilman Andrews. Councilmember Muranga. Councilman Austin. Councilmember Richardson. Mayor Garcia. I'm here. Thank you. Item 13. Communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilmember Muranga and Councilmember Richardson recommendation to request a report from the city manager and police chief on gun violence in Long Beach within the past year.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for multiple properties including the area generally bounded on the north by Louisiana Avenue from South Dahlia Street to South Fairfax Avenue; on the east, including the properties on the east side of South Fairfax Street and South Filbert Way from Louisiana Avenue to Florida Avenue; on the south by Florida Avenue from South Filbert Way to South Dahlia Street; and on the west by South Dahlia Street from Florida Avenue to Louisiana Avenue, excluding the southwest parcel. Rezones the Krisana Park neighborhood from S-SU-D to S-SU-D CO-5 (preserving the distinctive mid-century modern architecture), adding the Krisana Park Conservation Overlay District in Council District 6. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 10-11-16.

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I police close voting, announce the results. Lebanese 11 Eyes Council Bill 906 passes now. Madam Secretary, can you put 907 on the floor? I think you're wanting. Yes, madam. You know, Councilwoman. Go ahead. Put them on the floor. I got you, Mr. President. I move. The Council. Will 907 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved in. Second. It comes for members of council. I don't think we have any comments. Madam Secretary, you recall. CASHMAN Hi. Lopez All right. New Ortega Assessment. Black Eye. Clark Espinosa. FLYNN Hi. Gilmore. Mr. President. I please close the voting and announce the results. 11 Ice. 11 ICE counts. About 907 has passed. Congratulations to the Arizona. All right. So now we are starting comfortable 1021 and I want to before we start this, I just want to make a couple comments. I apologize because at the last minute we had to switch and put the general improvement districts first.

Recommendation to adopt a Minute Order declaring a moratorium, against the establishment, placement, construction, expansion, or issuance of any permits, for the placement of unattended donation/recycling collection boxes or bins on any public or private lot in the City; and request City Attorney, in cooperation with the Department of Development Services, to prepare an interim (moratorium) ordinance pursuant to Chapter 21.50 of the Long Beach Municipal Code for notice and placement on the City Council agenda for hearing at its third meeting following adoption of this Minute Order.

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Motion passes. 23. Thank you. And next up, item 23, which I skipped, which is unfortunate because I think it's a great item. So let me go to have Kirk read item 23. Communication from Councilmember Super Now Councilwoman Price, Councilmember Durango recommendation to adopt a minute order declaring a moratorium against the establishment for the placement of unattended donations slash recycling collection boxes or bins on any public or private lot in the city. Thank you. And Councilmember Supernova. Thank you. This is largely a legal item. So I'm going to read four sentences to get the legal language correct. And the nice thing about this is we get to learn a new acronym tonight and that is an intended donation. Boxes are you beads. So I'll use that in my description here. During the past year, the city has received several inquiries from you bead vendors asserting that vendors have the absolute right to place your beads in various locations throughout the city because of recent federal case law changes. Currently, there's an inconsistency between the city's business license regulation and the zoning code that has created confusion about whether or not updates are permitted as a matter of write in the city or are in fact currently banned in the city. It's important that you beds be specifically addressed in the zoning code, as other cities have done recently. And because if left unregulated, these boxes become a blight and nuisance in the community because of the tendency of people to dump all manner of junk and other material in and around the boxes. And finally, adopting a moratorium will maintain the status quo until the city can fashion appropriate zoning regulations that will address nuisance concerns, comply with new federal case law, and will resolve current inconsistencies between the city's business license regulations and the zoning code. And if we could, I would like to go to public comment right away. We're honored to have Janet McCarthy, the president and CEO of Goodwill, in the audience. And thank you for your patience. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for your service. Truly, I am Janet McCarthy. I'm the president, CEO of Goodwill, serving the people of seven Los Angeles County. And I do appreciate the fact that you've placed this recommendation to adopt a minute order declaring a moratorium against the establishment placement, construction expansion or issuance of any permits for the placement of unattended donation recycling collection boxes or bins on any public or private lot in the city on your agenda. I personally and my board at Goodwill and all those that we serve wholeheartedly support the Council's adoption of a moratorium for the following reasons Goodwill SOLAK. That's our acronym for the long serving the people of some Los Angeles County. So that, you know, I will repeat that our mission is to help individuals in our community with barriers to employment, either get to work or get back to work. Our mission is funded by the sale of donations received by residents of the 24 cities and southern Los Angeles County of which we serve. And Long Beach happens to be one of those 24 cities. Given our ability to accomplish, our mission is dependent upon the revenue we generate through the donated goods and retail operations. It's a business model that requires professionals in operations, logistics, transportation, retail and recycling. It's also one that requires knowledge of and compliance with a host of city, county, state and national and environmental regulations. The proliferation of middle of the night unattended donation bins being dropped is a concern so great that it has rose to the attention of the state capital and took shape in legislation AB 918 and SB 450 also designed to combat the problem. Unattended donation bins pose several problems for our community. They are run for by for profit companies in nonprofit clothing. They often attempt to buy communities off by minor contributions that are very small fraction of the profits that they realize as corporations. The salvage business is a multibillion dollar industry that is publicly traded. Like any other commodity, these dollars permanently leave the community without sustaining it in any way in which goodwill has for over 100 years. Unattended bins are blight magnets, routinely riddled with graffiti and surrounded by refuge, refuse that is unusable and simply dumped there. In essence, they are mobile alleys. Personally, I am, uh, called upon often by our community because they think it's Goodwill's problem. They think that we're the ones that caused that. And quite honestly, I think we're quite great neighbors in the community of Long Beach and we do everything we do and can to keep all of our community clean. Many of these unattended bins are run by companies and or individuals that are excuse me, impossible to contact and are therefore unconcerned and unaccountable for the problems that they create for the communities they exist within. With limited contact and accountability. The problems unattended bins create leave residents with one destination for their concerns. And that is all of you and all of your staff. Thank you. I got to the time here in Boise. No, it's. Okay. I but by the way, I recommend that you hope have a moratorium on this thing. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for everything Goodwill does. Amazing organization. And we know Long Beach is a partner, obviously, and we are so thankful for the workforce development that happens on site and for the partnerships and just you're such a good partner in building this community, so just thank you. So I really appreciate you. Thank you. Absolutely. Councilmember Austin, actually, Councilman Price. I support this item. Thank you. Councilmember Austin. Thank you. I certainly would support this item. I think I brought something an ordinance about three years ago to ban these these. And unmanned you beds in the city. I'd like to get some some clarification from the city attorney as to what has changed. Held seven Austin members of the city council. It's a little bit complicated, but I did not realize you brought an item a few years ago. But what's happened is in the last two years across the country, these companies that want to put these boxes in communities have sued in federal court on a theory that these donation boxes are no different than a panhandler in the street, and they have an absolute constitutional right to locate pretty much wherever they want in a city. So there's a trend in those federal cases that did not exist two years ago that is currently there. And in addition, within the last year, the City Department of Planning and Department of Development Services and the city attorney's office has been contacted by individual companies that desire to put these and are asserting that they have a constitutional right to do it. And we've also been contacted by different lobbying companies that exist outside of Long Beach, actually in different states, making the same argument. So we started looking into the matter and saw that cities locally, some locally, like Torrance, for instance, which were threatened with litigation City of Oakland, which was actually sued in 2015 over these unattended donation boxes . Litigation was popping up. So in order to get ahead of the game, so to speak, we thought it was appropriate to suggest that a moratorium be put in place because our current zoning ordinance doesn't. We have what's called a specific a permissive zoning ordinance. So unless you are specifically allowed to do something, you're denied. So if you brought this matter forth three years ago, that would have been the case. It wasn't a use that was regulated. And in doing the research, we determined that there is currently an inconsistency between what is in Title five about and manned donation boxes and what is currently in Title 21. So that's the difference between then and now. So from what I can glean from that, it would be totally impermissible and unacceptable to put you in a median. Well, it depends. Research it. Thank you. The median advocates will be here next week. Thanks a lot. Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. You learn something new every day. I had no idea that there are for profit companies that were using this. So thank you guys for bringing this item up. I did have a question. Are there Long Beach nonprofits that that use these youth bodies? Do we know? Anybody. I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that this will not result in a total ban on you. The goal will be to put in place regulations that will meet constitutional requirements and will still allow them. But you will probably see such things. What other cities have done. They have spacing requirements. They can't be, you know, within 1000 feet of each other, for instance, specific requirements for how they look, how they're maintained, lighting things so that people can't drop articles at night after dark, for instance. So there's just junk around the boxes. So that's what we're looking to do. And requirements also around how often they pick them up and everything. Correct. Okay. Um, well, when I first took a look at this and the other item that kind of made my hair stand on ends, but I definitely support this and thank you guys for doing the legal work on this. Appreciate it. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes, thank you, Councilmember. Super not for bringing this forward. I, too, was a little unclear on this to begin with, but now it makes total sense. And just have a couple of quick questions. How many do we know off the top of our head? How many bins we have citywide? How many of these you. You would. So, Councilmember, we do have some of these citywide, but they're related to existing businesses. So, for example, if there is a drop off location that's related to goodwill or Salvation Army or someone like that, they're considered accessory to the main use and we can permit them in that regard. The unattended donation bins, we have been very clear that we do not have a permitting process for that. And so when we do come across them, we have taken code enforcement action against them. So I don't know the the the full extent of it, but it's the ongoing concern that we have about constitutional challenges that we'd like to move forward with tonight. Sure. That's great. It would just be good to know how many bins we have. I mean, I've seen them here and there, and I know that they can be a blight. And while we figure out the constitutional issues, if we can just get some information back as to where they're located and how many there are. I'm not sure I would be able to because they are technically unpermitted. I see. Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know. Do we go out and. We go out on a complaint. Basis? So that complaint information maybe would be sure to give us some sort of idea. I know that. Right. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Well, Councilman, you'll be happy to know that many of those complaints are probably mine, because I complain about these things all the time, always emailing staff and so very, very glad councilmember super and I brought this forward. I think these things unfortunately are our blight and they have very little to do with the services being provided and everything to do with graffiti and trash being not picked up around them and they're not maintained and then the resources don't go back into the community. Councilwoman Mongo. Yes. I want to thank Councilmember Super not for bringing forward this item. I think it's a really great partnership that we have with the Goodwill. Many people know that Goodwill does not only collect these items for their purpose and mission, but they also do a lot of work, development and a lot of other things in the community that the revenues from the donations go to. And so I think it's important that we select our partners wisely. And I think that I have seen where a bin can turn into a mess. And without the types of things that my colleagues have talked about, regular pickups, requirements adjacent to a facility where every morning it can be emptied and ensured that it's not at capacity. Also, some people are putting things into the bins and if they are contaminated with bedbugs or other types of things, it contaminates a whole lot of things that it's much better to have a person available like you have at a goodwill store or an AM vet's or any of those other options. So I appreciate the item and I'll be supporting it. Thank you. And Councilman Mungo wants to know if we can put the bins in the medians. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Mayor. Congressman, Super. And I truly, truly, you know, support this item. And I want to tell you, on the last count, I think it was about 40,000 or more. That was only in my district. So we're working on it. Yes. Thank you. We had public comment. I appreciate everyone. Please cast your vote.

Recommendation to Provide Direction to the City Attorney to Consent, Modify or Reject Law Firm Goldfarb Lipman’s Request to Waive Conflicts of Interest In Connection with Goldfarb’s Legal Representation of the City of Alameda and the Housing Authority of the City of Alameda. (City Attorney)

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Recommendation to provide direction to the city attorney to consent, modify or reject law firm, firm Ltd's request to waive conflicts of interest in connection with legal representation of the City of Alameda and Housing Authority of the city of Alameda. Thank you. And so we had a discussion of this. It was presented. But then the vice mayor had an emergency at work that pulled him away so he didn't get to take the vote. But, um, I believe we're ready for the vote now. So, do I have a motion to, uh, approve this recommendation? I move approval. Thank you. It's a move by the vice mayor to have a second councilmember de second seconded. May we have a roll call vote? Can I. Can I. Oh, I'm so sorry. Of course you can. You were here. Because I disappeared. I didn't, actually. I first. I would like to apologize to my colleagues for. For all the confusion of disappearing last time, and thank you for for your understanding. I just wanted to say that after having had a chance to speak with the city attorney and the city manager, etc., I'm comfortable with this, but I just want to thank you. Thank you for your understanding. Sorry. Okay. Cover, please. With Councilmember de sal. Nice. Next light. I. O.d. So vella. No mayor as a Ashcraft. I. That carries 3 to 2. Thank you. Okay. Um, city manager communication. Mr. Levit.

Recommendation to approve submittal of the recommended list of grant applications to potential funding agencies, including the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro); and Authorize City Manager to administer and execute all necessary documents to accept and expend all grant funds in connection therewith, to pursue additional grant funds for the projects listed as needed, and to take all other actions necessary to implement the use of such funds. (Citywide)

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Item 14. Item 14 Recommendation two to approve submittal of the list of grant applications to potential funding agencies and to accept and expend all grant funding in connection here with city wide. There's been a motion by Councilman Andrews, a second by Councilmember Durango. Mr. City Manager. Our public works director are a million. Honorable Vice Mayor and honorable council members. I have a PowerPoint. If you're interested in a 20 minute presentation, I'm more than willing to do so. Otherwise, I have handouts. Or I can do a very short synopsis for you. I think the handout and a short synopsis will be fabulous unless you have an interpretive dance you'd like to offer with that. But. In short. Brief synopsis. Honorable Council Members Metro provides an opportunity for local jurisdictions to apply for projects that improves transportation. Pedestrian activities, bicycle activities and so forth. So this is called cold call for projects. It happens approximately every two years or three years. And it is slated for this call for projects, is slated for moneys to be awarded in 2020 or 2021. So we're looking for a five year or six year period. We have identified eight projects. Two of these projects have been previously applied for, but we were not successful. Reason being is Metro uses very complicated system to grade the agencies. So we have taken those two projects that we have previously applied and we have improved upon them. So to increase our chances of winning. So there are eight projects. One category is regional surface transportation improvement. That includes the seventh Street connectivity. Basically, we're looking for enhancing the entire seventh Street corridor between the Shoemaker Bridge towards East, and that includes bicycle, pedestrian traffic, signal modernization, synchronization and so forth. In the same category is Artesia Complete Boulevard, and that's the same vision that Councilmember Rex Richardson had through the COG. So this is going to kind of kickstart this process. And if we're this is all contingent upon if we're selected and we are where the winners of these grants, we have three bicycle improvement projects, which is one is Walnut and 52nd Street. The other one is Atherton Bridge and Campus Connection. And finally, it's the L.A. River Gap Closure. Those are the three bicycle improvement projects that we're submitting. For our pedestrian improvements. We had a downtown pedestrian improvement project, which is in Council District one and two. We also have a signal synchronization and bus bus speed improvements. This is on seventh Street, Fourth and Broadway that. It's the entire corridor. And finally, we have one last category, which was transportation demand management, which is part can, right? So and in the few following pages you will see, we have shown the estimated project cost, estimated grant request and the match. A metro requires that we have a minimum 20% match. We have shown the funding sources and none of them are the general fund. We're using transportation funds to match these and also the 20% is minimum. We haven't made a strategic decision yet. If we want to increase that to two basically by points, by increasing our match will have a higher chance of winning. But this is something that we have to do at the staff level, but it's something that's under consideration. That's my report on this. You have a specific question. I can elaborate more. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to say thanks to all the staff that put together this proposal. And I know this is not the first time Artesia Boulevard has been on this proposal. I've seen I think this is maybe the fourth time I've seen RTG be applied for either Caltrans or MTA. But I think with the team that you've put together to really, really drive this, we've got a good shot this time. So I'm really excited and thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Gonzalez? Yes, I think you are. These are great projects. I'm very excited to see a few of them in the First District. And my question is geared towards the great seventh Street, the Connectivity Project. Now, how will that be married, I guess, with our park? I mean, is that I know that's in the works. Correct. So the guy Minor Park project, if you can envision or visualize, it's between Alamitos and Atlantic. So we are trying to mimic the same kind of traffic enhancement that is west of Atlantic, all the way to Shoemaker Bridge. This is again has to marry up with the future Shoemaker Bridge and looking at more of a complete street, maybe decoupling the traffic all the way to the Shoemaker Bridge. So those are all possibilities that will be studying. Great. Thank you. There's been a motion by Councilman Andrews and seconded by Councilmember Urunga. Is there any member of the public that wishes to address Council on item 14? Please come forward and state your name. Very good you cook as they dress. I have complete confidence that our director of public works as I do and the with the director of the our gas and oil department. And for the edification of the public or those who may have not followed council business that much. These type of grants are the lifeblood of the city. People think, well, gee, I pay my taxes, I should get that. The taxes don't even pay for all of our police and fire. So without grants, we're literally out of business, period. The one question I need to and I want to ask and what is to make sure? That we don't have a repetition of what we had when grant monies. From various different agencies, including those that get those transportation monies, including the people that put money in a bucket at a concert, including money from the state and the county transportation that went into political ads like this hymnal of hosannas coming out saluting extensively the mayors. Protege. Two weeks before the election. We need to fight. Sure. That the foot goes on the neck and that the city auditor stays right on top of this. With all due respect to the good director of public public works, the fact is somebody was asleep when five different departments were raided. And if this keeps up. Those agencies will put a foot on the neck and cut us off, period. No ifs, no answer. No, that's. That's even notwithstanding the fact that Garcia is going to jail, period. They will still, still be watching us as our bloom, as is, incidentally, the Bloomberg organization giving second thoughts. And I don't know the council all the council people understand who Bloomberg is, but if you get on that, they're a bad list. That's worse than getting on a moody's or any banks credit rating system and so forth. So be very, very careful that you don't try massaging the figures to suck money out into some of your pet political projects or candidates. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote. Motion carries eight zero.

Recommendation to consider naming the Center Theatre to be renamed the "Beverly O'Neill Theatre" in honor of her contributions to the City of Long Beach.

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Thank you. Item 13. Communication from Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Recommendation to approve a deviation from existing policy and procedures for naming of city owned land, buildings and facilities to allow the Center Theater to be renamed the Beverly O'Neill Theater in honor of her contributions to the city of Long Beach. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'd like to thank the International City Theater for suggesting that the Center Theater be named after former Mayor Beverly O'Neill for her lifelong dedication to the city of Long Beach. With us in the audience, we have several members of the act board, and they may not all be here at this time, but we were expecting Jim Pruitt, the act board vice president. Dr. Minnie Douglas, A.C.T. Board Vice President. Dr. Felton Williams Board Member. Steve Dodge Board Member. Julie Larkins Board Member. Karen Deci Ikt Artistic Director and Producer. Dennis Negros Icon Staff. Amanda Soto I City Staff. And Jan from Camerata Singers. As my colleagues know, Long Beach has an administrative policy that guides the naming of land, buildings and facilities affectionately called 8-7. It is customary for City Council to name parks and other city assets in the honor of individuals no longer with us, but the policy does not allow for exception does allow excuse me for exceptions in cases where council deems it appropriate on the basis of a significant contribution to the nation, state or city of Long Beach. Former Mayor O'Neill certainly fits in this category for all of us. That have benefited from her four years of dedication to education in Long Beach through Long Beach City College and Cal State Long Beach and her leadership as mayor during some of Long Beach, his most difficult years as the city and its economy, struggled with the departure of the Navy and aerospace jobs. As we continue to experience the benefits of her good work in support of nonprofits, arts, culture throughout the city during her lifetime, Beverly O'Neill has exuded a sense of optimism, competence and grace. I've always thought that she put Long Beach on the map at a time when many people did not know if we were Long Beach, California , or Long Beach, New York. And she did this in approaching challenges and inspired our city to believe in itself. And that's something that's palpable. Here is her ability to have inspired our city, to believe in ourselves. So we are indebted for her work as a public servant. Now, the timing of this item is such that if Council and the Housing and Neighborhoods Committee approved the name change, it can actually occur immediately, since there's construction currently taking place on the exterior of the center theater building. So with that, I'd like to make a motion to approve the changing of the Center Theater to Beverly O'Neill Theater and send the recommendation to the Housing and Neighborhoods Committee. There's been a motion and a second councilmember. Your. Thank you, Mayor. I'm proud and honored to second this motion. You said at all in your presentation that there's no question that the Beverly O'Neill has been an icon for Long Beach and it's well-deserved and earned. And I completely support this motion. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Lowenthal, for bringing this item forward. I consider Mayor O'Neal to be a mentor, and I am happy that we are honoring her work with the arts community and the city of Long Beach. Mayor O'Neal was instrumental in guiding the city after the Navy left Long Beach by focusing on the three T's tourism, trade and technology. Mayor O'Neal was a visionary leader, and she had shaped our economy today by making important investments in our airport, the port of Long Beach, our convention center, and numerous organizations that she touched during her 12 year tenure as mayor. I am honored to support the renaming of the theater in honor of Mayor O'Neal. She is beloved in our city, and I'm so proud to have her as a resident, to have her as a mentor and to be able to take this step. So I thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you. Councilman Andrews. Yes. Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor. I, too, would like to thank you for bringing this, you know, to the diocese. Beverly O'Neal was one of our city's greatest mayors, you know, to this day. She is still working for Long Beach. And I remember how she led Long Beach through the transformation from a Navy town to a tourist destination, a hub for international trade. She took on the challenge to let our city into a new direction. Mrs. O'Neal will always be the favorite of mine, and she always will be. Polly's Geographic. I'm in favor of this item. Thank you. Councilwoman Gonzales Yes, I am working with the ICC board members Karen and Jim and Dr. Williams. It's been a pleasure and I'm so very glad that we're here at City Council now talking about renaming this after Beverly O'Neil. And I look forward to many years with them, with you all and talking about the wonderful theater. Councilwoman Mongo I too, am here to support renaming the Center Theater for Beverly O'Neil. She has been a mentor and a leader for this city that we should all be very proud of. And in addition to being a holly jackrabbit, let's not remember that she's also a Long Beach City College Viking. Oh, sure. And so it starts. Councilman. Councilman Austin. Thank you very much. I want to also thank you, Vice Mayor Lowenthal, for bringing this forward. I want to thank the act board of directors for having the vision to honor such a I'm such a such a hero, hero in our community. Beverly O'Neal is is arguably the most one of the most respected elected officials ever to serve the city. She served with grace and honor, and she put Long Beach on a national map in a lot of ways. She's my favorite mayor because she appointed me to a commission that got my my my public service career going here in the city of Long Beach. And so I thought support this 100%. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Richardson. I also rise in support of this. And I want to acknowledge Vice Mayor Lowenthal for for understanding that our code doesn't allow doesn't stop us from, you know, recognizing people have done who have done really special things in our community. And I think this is very appropriate to do so. So so thank you so much for for really exercising the right that the city council has to do that. Thank you. There's been a motion and a second. Is there any member of the public that wish to come forward and address council on this item? I'm Karen Deci, artistic director and producer of International City Theater. And I appreciate this vice mayor and city council for. This opportunity. And to speak on this subject. Beverly O'Neill has devoted her life to public service, as many of you have stated, and is appreciated for many things on many levels. Her appreciation and support of arts and education, her understanding of what it does for our community, our children and our future are truly noteworthy, especially as it applies to renaming the theater. Theater is art, and theater is about education. Theater supports a more educated and a more harmonious society. As you know, International City Theater's home is at the Center Theater. The board of directors and I hope you will support this change. The center theater name has no significance to the facility or the community. Renaming it the Beverly O'Neill Theater is appropriate and is fitting recognition for a very deserving woman. It is a wonderful way to say thank you to someone. Who has loved and. Cared for this city and its residents for so long. I want to thank you for supporting this on behalf of the board and myself. Thank you so much. Thank you, Karen. Seeing no furthers speakers members, please cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you.

A proclamation in solidarity to stand against bullying in Denver Public Schools, organizations, and the community at large. A proclamation acknowledging the City's position on taking a stand against bullying.

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Thank you. But we do have two proclamations this evening, and I would like to call on Councilwoman Kennish to read the first one. Councilwoman. Thank you. Madam President, I am pleased to introduce proclamation number 14, Dash 96 in solidarity to stand against bullying in Denver, public schools, organizations and the community at large. Whereas bullying is the most common form of violent act in our society and can have tremendous negative impacts on victims. Bullying is generally recognized as repeated abusive, offensive, malicious, intimidating and or insulting behaviors, or the abuse of power directed at an individual or a group. And. Whereas, as a result of increased bullying attacks on local refugee youth and adults and continuing threats to get high school students in Denver, the Getty Commission in 2011 began a policy review with other commissioners to address the growing societal problem. And. WHEREAS, in 2012, Denver Commissioners proposed that the Human Rights and Community Partnerships Advisory Board develop a citywide commission statement against bullying to encourage the city and community leaders to take action against these behaviors. And. Whereas, under the leadership of HRC Advisory Board co-chairs Jane Francis, Shazia and John Kelly, a committee of Advisory Board members was convened representing the Denver Women's Commission. Jill Beatty Commission. American Indian Commission. Latino Commission. African American Commission. Commission on Aging. Commission for People with Disabilities and the Denver Asian Pacific American Commission. The committee researched and drafted a position statement against bullying that integrated and reflect the existing City and Commission priorities to respect and value people from all walks of life and to mirror the city's vision that everyone matters. Whereas, on June 26, 2013, the Agency of HRC P and its Commission delegates under the Mayor from the Denver Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Commission, African-American Commission, Latino Commission, Women's Commission, Asian Pacific American Commission, Commission on Aging, American Indian Commission. Commission for People with Disabilities and Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships Commission and the Denver Immigrant and Refugee Commission voted to approve the position statement against bullying to represent a collaborative effort to partner against bullying and to promote educational awareness and intervention for the prevention of bullying in our schools and in our Denver communities. And. Whereas, all commissions have been encouraged to incorporate the anti-bullying statement and intent into their 2014 goals, the position statement has helped to encourage Denver Public Schools representatives to include anti-bullying and harassment policies in their parent student handbook and at the Agency of HRC and Commissions collaborate to develop a communication strategy that includes a training component or a public service announcement on Denver's Channel eight to encourage city residents to take a stand against bullying, now therefore be proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver that the Denver City Council honors and supports the work of the agency and the commissions to foster environments of safety free from bullying, and to advocate for people with no protection against intimidating and harassing environments. And Section two that the Clerk of the city and county of Denver Charlotte test and affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation, and that copies be transmitted to the mayor, to the agency of H.R. p to all the aphra named commissions, as well as to the Denver Public Schools. With that, madam, I move the adoption of this proclamation. I was just going to ask you about that. Okay. It's been moved and it has been seconded. Comments from Council Councilwoman Kennish. Thank you. Madam President, this proclamation today. Bullying in general. It's not really about a singular incident where someone makes someone else feel bad that occurs. And we've all committed such acts. But this is about repeated actions that really make someone intimidated with the goal of mistreating them. And I think that the definition is helpful in thinking about where this activity has been occurring in our community. In a 2010 report, it showed that it's not limited to a particular race. In fact, students of all races and backgrounds have been bullied. Denver Public Schools today was in committee and reported that they're proud of the fact that those reported incidents in Denver are lower than the state and national average, but they still impacts the lives of too many of our students. Approximately one in five students in Colorado experiences bullying, and that includes cyber bullying. Idea of sending messages that are harassing or offensive to. Folks posting offensive things about them. And I think that what's really important to understand about this issue is that it's not just about making people feel bad. It has horrific effects on academic performance. Kids miss school because of bullying. They have a lower grade point average is when they're bullied, they may experience physical violence. And the most sobering of all of the statistics, there are more than twice as likely to commit suicide, a student who has been bullied than a student who hasn't. Those are extraordinary impacts that require the attention of this council and of our entire community. In addition, we know that this has been particularly suffered not exclusively, but our job. Students report a much higher rate of harassment and bullying, as many as 70% of them reporting that they have felt unsafe at school. So imagine trying to learn at school why you feel unsafe, maybe because of your actual sexual orientation or maybe because of your perceived sexual orientation. Maybe you're a straight-A student, but you are perceived because you don't follow some gender norm to be different and so therefore you are targeted. I want to end, though, by taking the focus not just on the students that we care about and the impacts to them, but also to the adults. What we know is that bullying isn't limited to youth. It's important with youth because behaviors that are developed and because we have a role to protect them as adults, right. We have a little more influence over them. But even in the reaches of the NFL, we have seen the impacts that bullying can have. And so this is something that whether it's a workplace or a school, we all have an obligation. And so I want to leave folks with two directives. One is don't tolerate it if it's your child. You need to set a line in the sand and make sure they know it's not acceptable. If it's a worker, coworker, or someone in a workplace, you've got to speak up and say something. We need to really speak up and hold bullies accountable. But secondly, if you're someone who's experiencing this, our mayor has participated in a really empowering campaign called It Gets Better. And I think that probably you could interview a few of the council members up here. And it's probably true that the geeks do sometimes inherit the earth or if not the earth, perhaps the city council. It gets better. Hang in there. You are not alone. Reach out and tell someone and you're not alone. So with that, I think I appreciate the time that all of the commissioners have spent. They will get a minute to accept. But we have representatives of all of those commissions here today, including Deborah Wilson, who is both a staff member to the city council and a leader in this community working on this issue. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman CORNISH. Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. First of all, I want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward on behalf of the HRC commissions. I do want to ask, just to clarify, has DPS not in fact adopted a formal policy on this issue? Their report today, Madam President. Yes, currently said council on. Their report today was that they had taken numerous efforts. They had put it into their student handbook. They had done a community meeting with parents that was led by the superintendent. So I think we could defer future questions to our next meeting with the school board members. But they reported today in committee numerous steps that they had taken. I think that's a good suggestion now that we're trying to get on at least a quarterly basis in meeting with the school board members and the superintendent. I know this is an issue that was brought to my office's attention about a year and a half ago, and we did make some follow up calls to DPS asking that they address this issue and have some very clearly adopted policies so that when certain behaviors were occurring in the schools, they would take swift and immediate action to try to prevent these kinds of things from happening. The other thing I think is really important for parents who are not aware, there is an organization called the Second Wind Fund that does work in all of our public schools, not just in Denver County, but actually throughout the front range. And as of the last conversations I had with them, they have 100% success rate in working with young people who have been identified as somebody that might be thinking about committing suicide. They immediately step in. They provide counseling, whether a student has the ability to pay or not. And they have been successful in preventing any young people from committing suicide. The problem is they don't always get to hear about all those potential cases. So I think continuing to draw attention to this issue. Is absolutely important. And by bringing this forward tonight and continuing to have conversations with Denver public schools about ensuring that they do have clearly adopted policy becomes an important part of this bigger picture conversation. So and I'd like to have my name added to the proclamation. Thank you. Certainly. Councilman Ortega. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to thank Councilwoman Kim each for bringing this proclamation forward. We all know the the environment that bullies thrive in. We all know the impact on folks who are bullied. We tend to think of this as just a Denver public schools or a schoolyard fight kind of thing, when in fact this happens all over the place. And that puts us, all of us in a in a very special position, those of those of us who are around kids, who are around young people, but also those of us who work on our everyday lives and our own offices and our own environments. It's incumbent upon us to destroy that culture, right? We have to act in a way that is is dignified and respectful. Even if we get along, even if we don't get along at the end of the day after a hot debate, there should be a handshake. Right. And so that is from primarily I've seen it. That is way more effective. It begins at home and begins in how you deal with family members during a conflict. And I think those are the kind of traits. Those are the kind of activities. Those are the kind of behaviors. We got to we got to be mindful of. Right, because there's little eyes watching us all the time. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Madam President. And I want to thank Councilman Kenneth for for bringing this important proclamation forward. I guess the first thing, I just want to make sure my name is added to this list of supporters. You know, I think this is critical and I think it's important and incumbent upon, first of all, us up here as council folks, but all those folks who are listening as well to to not only say that bullying is important, but to make sure that we're form a relationship with some of these kids who are in Denver public schools. And, you know, I know in my district, one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that we're speaking to every school and getting in contact with some of these community groups who are working with these young folks to make sure that this is not an issue. And, you know, even if you know, if you have kids at home, you know, my son is six and he's in the first grade and he's been having actually a rough time with a couple of kids at school. And it is so sad. I mean, I think Councilman Kenneth articulately just put out all the issues that these kids deal with. But to see how a young kids spirit can be broken just because of constant bullying and people being mean, you know, over and over again. So I just think this is this is critical and it's great that we're doing a proclamation, but we need to take to action. And I hope that this will be on the agenda when we talk to DPS, because they're at the forefront of this issue and they need to be leading the way. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilwoman. Thank you. Madam President, I also wanted to thank my colleague, Councilwoman Kennish, for this important proclamation. I think as you grow up and you talk to other people, you'll find that being bullied has strengthened us. But that doesn't mean that it's a good way to to grow up. I was bullied every day walking to school when I was little. And, you know, I was able to to thrive. But I've also found that some of the adults that demonstrated bullying behavior as young kids have sometimes grown up to be bullies. And so that's not a good world for any of us to grow up in. My hope is that in folks that are listening to this proclamation tonight, that if there are if there are opportunities for children and families to learn better communication for children and families to learn better conflict and problem solving, that would really, really be good. I just want to say that schoolyard bullying is is a very negative thing and it's something that kids learn really early. I think the teachers do their best to try to intervene, but I think that there is a level of training that needs to go with that as well to support our. Teachers and principals in the school. But schoolyard bullying can grow as people mature. And as if schoolyard bullies are allowed to to thrive in that behavior, they can all it can also increase and escalate problems in the in the schoolyard. So I just want to thank you again. And if there are any organizations out there that can that we can put in our newsletter and be able to get out the information about conflict resolution and all of those other kind of things. It's another skill that as growing and thriving kids, it's something that we all should know. And even when kids come home and they say, you know, I'm being mistreated here and there, that even for them to be able to say I'm being bullied and I don't like it, can you help me is a really, really big step . So thank you again, Councilman Kennish and I support your proclamation. Thank you, Councilwoman Monteiro. I'd just like to add a few words to I'm one of those geeks that Councilwoman Kennish referred to, and I. I regale my fellow council people with geekiness every day. There's a lot of literature in social psych that says that behavior can come before attitude. And that's why we should never let anybody mistreat another person or never let anyone mistreat you. Because if they mistreat you, they will begin to dislike you. Because we often, when we make decisions about whether we like somebody or not, we think about how have we treated them. And if we have treated them badly, it must be because I don't like them. And if I'm young and I'm following a crowd and I'm mistreating somebody, I'm not quite sure I will say, Oh, it's because I don't like him or people like him. And it's a phenomenon in our culture that we that behavior can come before attitude. Conversely, if you want somebody like you, ask them to do a favor for you, just a small one. And then they'll ask themselves, Why did I do a favor for them? It must be because I like them. So there is a lot of literature out there that says that allowing the mistreatment can cause the attitude. And so it's really important for us to get a handle on this and make it so that it doesn't happen. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennish, for your proclamation. I think we're ready for roll call. Can each. Hi. Hi. Lopez Hi. Montero Hi. Nevitt Hi. Ortega I. Sheppard I thought i. Herndon, i. Madam President. I. Mr. Secretary, please close the voting. Announce the results. 11 eyes, no, nays 11. As the proclamation is adopted. Councilwoman Kennish, is there somebody you'd like to bring up to the podium? Yes, I'd like to ask John Kelly. And John, can you please identify your affiliations? Yes. Thank you very much. And I sincerely appreciate your support. Bullying is a problem across the board and affects a lot of communities, which we've seen in the proclamation. A lot of commissions have been behind this unanimously. I want the commissions have already been named, but I have a number of those people here in solidarity with us tonight, and I'd like them to stand and remain standing. The executive director of H.R., C.P. Derek Alberto, the deputy director, Jamie Torres there. They're the current chair of HRC, Maria Lopez, vice chair, Jennifer Williams, Jane Frances Fairuza as well run. I hope I got that right. Curtis Garrett, Deborah Bartlett and Olga Garcia. Dana Right. Couch right in part. Jeffrey Hoyle. Chris Connor. Sean Davis. Don Crosswhite. Eddie Cohen, Michelle Murphy from the Colorado High School Athletic Association. And John Henry, president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter, American Veterans for Equal Rights. This is a sample of the community that you're supporting with this proclamation. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And then, Madam President, Mary. I'm sorry, Jane Francis wanted to just say a word as well. Yes, Jane, welcome. To the podium. Thank you. Council member Commish. I am very excited to be here. Actually, this is the first time I'm meeting all of you in this kind of event. I will say that last year was very epic for the commissioners. We came together to have a bold statement against bullying. And apparently it has really got to this point that all of us are here looking at to. I am extremely excited. And I want to say thank you to all the commissioners that put their own time to make this a great success. Thank you once again. And I hope you all support us as we go ahead to implement the recommendations that followed. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Francis. Is there anybody else? That's all. Thank you, Mike. I thank all of you for coming here and taking. It's a pleasure to have had you here. Now we will move on to our second proclamation. And Councilwoman Robb was going to read this proclamation, but she's very much under the weather this evening.

AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending Title 28, Article IV of the Revised Municipal Code of the City and County of Denver regarding the prohibition of discriminatory practices in purchase and rental housing transactions on the basis of source of income. Prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of housing based on buyer’s or renter’s source of income. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-18-18. Amended 7-30-18 to exempt people who rent out a single unit from the prohibitions in the bill.

DenverCityCouncil_07302018_18-0788

Lebanese. Comfortable. 686 has passed. Moving right along. Councilman Espinosa, will you please put Council Bill 788 on the floor? I move that council bill 718 788 be ordered published. It has been moved. I need a second. It has been moved and seconded before we open the one hour courtesy public hearing. I do want to offer an amendment that would exempt people who rent out a single unit from the Prohibition Deauville. Council will have an opportunity to ask questions, offer comments and vote on this amendment after the public has had the chance to speak on the amendment and after the public hearing is closed, with the hope that if there are comments on the amendment, that the public is allowed to speak on that before the hearing is closed. So with that, I will move that Council Bill 788 be amended in the following particulars on page six, line 24, after where insert a person owns and makes available for renting, sub, renting, leasing or subleasing only a single unit or where that is the amendment. It has been moved and seconded the amendment. In the in the current drafted bill there is an exemption for a duplex. If you live in a duplex and you rent a single unit on the other side of that duplex. This amendment would extend that exemption beyond just an attached dwelling to if you live in one unit and you rent a second unit, that would also be exempted. This came up for me at a neighborhood meeting in one of my communities that has a lot of long term residents who often have inherited a home from a parent who also lives in that neighborhood. Just have one property that they're renting. They're not really landlords. They have a full time job. They have a family there. They don't have the resources to hire a professional property manager. They're not extremely sophisticated at property management and struggling to manage that property. And so it's extending that instead of saying it has to be attached in a duplex, it is wherever that one unit is at that it would be treated as exempt, but only that one unit. So that is the amendment, if anyone would like to add that to their comments as we go through the hearing on what you think about the amendment, and we will be voting on the amendment after the hearing. So the public hearing for Constable 78 is open. May we have the overview, Councilwoman? Thank you, Mr. President. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. And I think the public for your patients and it's hard being the second or third hearing. So the origins of this bill is, as most of you know, came from community and also a discussion at the Housing and Homelessness workgroup. I want to thank Polly Kyle and my staff who did a lot of the research. There are two simple propositions before us tonight. The first is ensuring that families have access to housing they can afford. We can't just build our way out of that challenge. And so this is a way to expand access to existing units. So that's the first proposition this bill was designed to meet. The second is you should not be turned away from buying or renting a home that you can afford just because of how you pay for it. So we've had a lot of discussion in the process leading up to tonight's hearing about renters. We've previously presented data on folks with disability being turned away from renting, folks with vouchers being turned away. We've also had individuals who have shared stories, either through surveys or with our office, about being turned away because of child support income or because of student loans. On the ownership side, the best practice elsewhere is that these housing ordinances apply to for sale and renter. We did some learning through the process about the for sale side and really this is about turning folks away from even competing for housing based on how they're planning to pay for the house. How does it work? It's first of all, income has to be verifiable. It's not just based on the word of someone that they receive a certain source of income. They have to be able to show verification. Landlords have the right and the power to verify the income to ensure that it's sufficient. That is their decision on what sufficiency is, and then they need to have legitimate business purposes for their decisions. So, for example, if you're in a rental situation, if you take an application on a first come, first serve basis and you rent to the first qualified applicant, nothing in this ordinance requires you to rent a particular unit to a particular tenant. It just means that you have to use legitimate business reasons for making those decisions. You can't base the decision solely on the source of income that someone is presenting on the ownership side. If you are selling your house, same thing. If you take the highest bidder with the fastest closing date, that's a legitimate business reason. Nothing requires you to sell your house to a particular buyer. So what can't you do? We can't advertise. Which happens right now in Craigslist today. I promise if you go on Craigslist, you're going to find an ad for a house that says no one with VA should apply. You're going to see an ad for an apartment that says no vouchers accepted, no more discriminatory advertising. Second of all, you can't prevent someone from applying and competing for housing. And third, you can't deny them solely on the basis of their income. There is a complaint procedure in the bill. It's a bit faster and more focused on administrative revenues remedies. The goal here is that you can appeal to the court house, but this isn't a race to the courthouse. This is about a very common sense administrative investigation. And the goal here is to prevent discrimination before it occurs. So the bill is going to be effective January 1st, and that is intended to allow time to do education, to do prevention, and make sure that we help everyone come into compliance. So there has been quite a bit of discussion leading up to tonight's hearing about administrative questions. A lot of those have focused on the voucher program. Just for public transparency, we've been asked and we've committed to sitting down with any administrators of voucher programs to talk about whether we as a city have tools that we can offer to help. If our peak performance folks, for example, or maybe our technology folks, might have solutions that might help with the administration, you know, federal rules or federal rules. But if there's administrative things we can help with, so we'll be sitting down with any programs willing to meet to to see if we can help with any administrative barriers. Secondly, we've had a lot of discussion and questions about additional protection where there may be damages to a unit that exceed beyond a security deposit. So we were asked and we did Holly, again in my office, did some really extensive research. It just wrapped up on Friday. We just got the kind of memo finished today. And I just want to share with folks, since this is new information, since committee, there are more than a dozen funds that exist to help kind of provide backup protection. They serve slightly different populations. Some of them are just for individuals who may be homeless. Others might cover a broader range of voucher holders. Those that we could get data for at the city level had very few claims. I know we've heard a lot of comments about the risk level here, but the cities we got data from had 0 to 5 claims per year. That was the most there was a. A program that had some higher claims, but it covered an entire state. So so the programs that existed are not heavily used, but they may be very important for the individuals who are using them. So several of the programs such as Seattle were disbanded because they were not used enough. So, so, so not all the programs are still in existence that we researched. I personally and I know others on this council remain open to the proposition that if the fund may be useful and important for individuals, we should keep talking about it. Just as a point of process and legal authority. The Council, under the current city attorneys interpretation, does not have the authority to initiate a spending bill from this dais. So we do not have before us any amendments. We can't amend the bill to do that tonight, but the conversation can continue. So I know there were a lot of questions about that, so I thought it'd be helpful just to discuss that before we take public comment. With that, I look forward to hearing from the public. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right. We have a one hour courtesy hearing, and we do have 22 individuals to sign up to speak. This evening's of. Everyone takes their full time. We will run out of time. So I would ask if you can get your point across and leave some time on the clock. It would be much appreciated to help us get through everybody, I'm going to call the first five speakers up. If you could make your way to the front bench to be ready to jump in and I do apologize if I mispronounce your name. As soon as I call your name, step up to the podium and your time will start. The first five speakers are Thomas Bell, Shelley, Thomas Rocco, Gemma Germano, Gianna Patterson and Maria Furio. Thomas Bell. You are first up and go for it. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to the Denver City Council for taking this issue up with our country facing an affordable housing crisis. And Colorado being. One of the most. Sorry, could you just state your name officially? Of course. My name is Thomas Bell and I live at 2139 South Fork Street in Denver, Colorado, in Councilman Clark's district. And I just want to say that as a single father of two young daughters and a nontraditional college student myself who relies on student aid for my income, I was actually really surprised when I learned about this issue last year, and I was even more surprised to learn that the states and municipalities who have passed this legislation did so mostly about four decades ago. So I'm glad to see Denver finally catching up as we are facing an affordable housing crisis throughout the country. And with our economy being the best economy in the country, people like myself who have grown up in this city are finding it increasingly hard to find access to affordable housing. And I know, Councilman Clark, I sat in your office several months ago with the former director of Hope, Eric Sullivan, and he told us that a solution like source of income, the prevention of discrimination against source of income isn't really viable right now because the prices are so high that the vouchers and things like that don't even cover that. I reject that thinking as a reason for not passing this legislation. I think if we're able to help even a handful of residents of the city and county, then we should do that. So thank you very much for taking this issue up and I strongly encourage you all to support it and not pass the amendment. Thank you. Next up, Shelley Thomas. Hello. My name is Shelly Thomas. I live in Lafayette. I invest in Denver. I have nine rental houses here. This is what life is like as a landlady. You get a letter from Denver Sewer and they say, we've put a camera down the sewer line and there's a problem, the transition from your sewer line to our sewer line, and you have 30 days to fix it. That bill was $4,120 last year. My sister and I own a property together. We put a brand new roof on it. We went ahead and trimmed the tree. This cost a lot of money, but we don't want to be slumlords. We want to be good landlords. And we have small houses 720 square feet, two bedroom, most of them some three bedroom. And then the hailstorm came through and we got to put a brand new roof on again just a month after we put the brand new roof on, that's a 1500 dollars deductible from my insurance. I had 1500 dollars deductible on a multiple of my properties, and that's how they're moving to 1500. So that's a lot of money when all of a sudden you had to put on nine new roofs and you have siding damage, etc. And then this year the windstorm goes through last week and on this tree that we trimmed so that it would be a healthy tree, a branch fell off and hit the roof of the house so we can have another 1500 dollar deductible on our insurance. It's always something someone called a couple of weeks ago and said The sewage is backing up in my house. I can only hope that we can clear the sewer line, 67 year old sewer line. That's why the house is affordable. It's not new. So it only had to spend $10,000 to fix the sewer line. And so you say, you know, this is just one more layer of bureaucracy. Let's go ahead and have me hope to goodness that I don't have five tenants would be tenants apply for one of my houses and I have to say no to four of them. And one of the four that I say no to has a voucher and says, Well, I'm going to go complain. And then I can go to the process of trying to go ahead and say, no, they didn't have the best credit, and if I win or lose, I still waste a lot more time. I'm 52. I'd like to retire in 13 years, but if I can't run my own business and choose my own tenants with all the financial liabilities I already have much less worried about a $5,000 fine for violating your rules. Then I can sell my properties. I can invest in stocks and bonds. I don't have to have affordable rental housing in the city of Denver. So an unintended consequence of making me be a partner with the city of Denver is that I might decide to say, Well, thanks, but no thanks. And when I fix up those houses and sell them, they're not going to go to investor, they're going to go to homeowner occupant, and that affordable housing unit will be off the market. So it's making the situation better for people. You will make it worse. Some of the houses, I think I'll just tear them down and I will build a nice new $800,000 house and I can go ahead and sell that for more money this time. So I'm sorry, but your time is up. Thank you very much, Rocco Germano. Councilman Clark, you did very well with the Italian surname. My name is Rocco Germano, and I'm representing the National Association of Residential Property Managers. It's a trade association where professionals get together with ethics and the know how of doing property management. We we depend on our owners to tell us whether or not they'll accept vouchers. And with the robust market that we have, it makes a pretty sticky situation. I've been through two depressions here in the Denver area. I've been a realtor for 35 years, and affordable housing is nothing new. My dad was born 100 years ago in what was called North Denver or Little Italy. They had the same problem. They were immigrants over here. It was hard to find housing. So it's not that we're, you know, the bad guys in here. In fact, we're here to to say we want to work with the ordinance. And perhaps one of the amendments that was proposed, we very much feel that that's that's more of a linchpin in making the voucher system work. You got to protect the owners as well. And if they have a bad experience, someone exceeds the limit of what their deposit is. They're not really inclined to take vouchers. And I think that's one of the problems. They would be more inclined to take vouchers if we had the city contribute, say, double that amount, because look at it this way. If you double that amount and if they leave the property without any repairs, no money spent on behalf of the city. So, I mean, I'm here to to say the positive things that we can do to alleviate the affordable housing situation. We're here to partner with the community, and that's what we base our our business on. So do take that into consideration. I think that was a wise idea. I go throughout the country twice a year to conventions and I talk to realtors from all over the United States. And there are other solutions other than just, you know, business as usual. I think this is a very innovative idea. And if there is one thing you can take from from my remarks, let's let's explore that. That amendment, double the deposit. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Tianna Patterson. Hi. My name is Tiana Patterson. I am the state and local policy director for Enterprise Community Partners, and I'm in support of 788 because it would benefit all income levels. I think I've visited many of your offices and told you my story of experiencing source of income discrimination. But for those that I haven't, when I was in law school, I had funds that would cover my housing and I ran around two apartments offering to pay six months at a time, pay my rent six months at a time. I went along with my school schedule and I was turned away and I ended up having to get my mom when I was 26 years old to sign to cosign an apartment for me. But what I did, what I haven't shared is that I was in a state of absolute panic for three weeks. That's how long it took me to get an apartment that would accept six month payments and accept a cosigner. And it was just I couldn't understand how I went through taking the LSAT, getting good grades, moving to a new city, not knowing anybody, and then realizing that everything else was lined up in my life except for where I was going to live and study and sleep and eat. And that was about a month before school started. So it wasn't a great way to start off what is arguably one of the most stressful graduate schools to go to, to choose to go to in your life. And there was no option of graduate student housing for law students either. So I think this is just really important to remember that we're talking about thousands of people not restricting it to one income group and not thinking about this only in stereotypes or risks. But sometimes someone had a literal pile of money that they were willing to give you and you turn them away. And so I just think this ordinance is common sense. And I think that to, you know, to put my policy hat back on and leave law school behind for a second. And I, I support this amendment and I support the exception, Councilman Clark, that you've entered that you put forward. And I'd also like to mention that the Neighborhood Development Collaborative property owners, landlords and developers also is in support of this ordinance as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Maria Fiorito. And I'm going to call the next five up if you could come to the front bench. Charles MESSICK, Charter Chair, Robert Jim Llorens, John Lucero and Eric Fevola. Go ahead. Microphone's yours. Hi. My name is Maria as Ines Fiorillo. I represent Apartment Concepts Unlimited at 100 Fillmore Street, Denver, Colorado. 80206i am a Denver native. I am a landlord. I would love to accept vouchers, but the problem is the program is very burdensome and it's very tangled and. It's very difficult to. Get through. I hear you talk about that. You want to add more administrative support and try and understand better what's needed on an administrative level. And I appreciate that very much because without this law I would like to accept vouchers, but it doesn't sound like we're quite there yet. I feel like I personally have reached out to Denver Housing who hopes I touch them? Who administers the housing program, the HUD program, and volunteered my time to help work with them to come up with ways that make it easier for landlords to work through the program. I've not been able to get a response back to that. I chose being a landlord as a career. I knew I was going to be in real estate somewhere. My father was in real estate. I chose it because I think it's very important. I feel like I have a really important job. I provide shelter and I provide housing to people. This is a human need. This is one of the basic human needs. And I work really, really hard. To make sure that I do that. Tiana, I would have accepted you. We have a program in our company that if you can prepay six months rent in the deposit, you don't have to show source of income. You still have to meet the other criteria. We work really hard to come up with ways to get people in homes that are going to be great residents and reward them for being great residents. But honestly, we can't renew leases on the voucher program. It takes months to renew a lease. It takes an amazing amount of time just to get someone in the door, to get through the inspection process, to get your. If you make one mistake on the paperwork, they send it back and you start all over. They will not pay you. They will not respond to you. It is really, really hard and it's exhausting because you're already working a lot of hours to get your job done. It's a 24 seven job if someone doesn't have heat in the middle of the night. I worry about that. That bothers me. Every time people pay their rent, they bring in a work order. We have to adhere to everything and take care of them. We want to make sure we can pay our property taxes and we want to make sure that we provide safe, comfortable housing as well. So I guess I'm just asking if maybe you could wait until you're ready. To. Pass this. And I'd be happy to volunteer my time to work with you in any way to to do that. But I just feel like we we need a little more time to put it together so that everyone has the tools to succeed. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Charles MESSICK. Hello. My name is Charles MESSICK. I'm a regional manager for boutique and warehouse apartments. I manage apartments throughout Denver. I also throughout Colorado. I'd like to thank you for looking into this issue. I'm not really a proponent of the program, but I'm not a detractor either. I am someone with vast experience working with voucher systems. I have managed thousands of units across the United States and still manage properties with vouchers in Denver today. The question that comes up is why do we need an initiative to force landlords to accept vouchers for sources of income? The reason I'm hearing is that there's not enough communities that participate in the program and that people cannot qualify for places to live. And the reasons landlords do not want to participate is because participation requires the owner of the property to suffer from increased administrative burden, increased bad debt expense, increased vacancy and decrease and control of the lease terms. If the owner had the ability to offset these additional expenses, then people of the program would be a more desirable customer. The apartment associations are already taking some steps and working with people in order to try and solve some of these administrative problems. And we are actively working with housing to reduce the administrative burden by streamlining the process. But what we're asking is the city's participation in making this process more attractive for the owners who want to participate. This initiative basically offers the stick, but we also need the carrot. Please consider a couple of things. A 1300 dollars administrative fee is something that we've suggested to be collectible by the landlord to help offset these administrative expenses, perhaps a renewal, a ministry administrative fee, and a fine to offset uncollectable damages after after move out. A limit to the number of units in a building would directly correlate to this particular thing. Right now you have a duplex where one side is owned, but if you have a ten unit building and one person is not in the building, that's a 10% vacancy. And currently the city of Denver has a 96% occupancy level are 4% vacancy. So maybe a 25 unit building or more has to do this. But people with less would not have to suffer from this as much. And then finally, the ability to do variable lease terms on vouchers right now. Voucher programs are for 12 months only and they have to end at the end of the month. And that is not really good business practice for landlords nowadays. They like to do variable lease terms where a person can have their lease end in the summer when they're not moving in. It's now or something to that effect. I think all of these types of things would help actually make it a more desirable program. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, chair Robert. My name is Shah Robert and I live at. 2714 East 13th Avenue and Councilman News District. I'm the Family Economic Security Program. Manager at the Colorado Center. On Law and Policy. CCP does research. Education and advocacy on behalf of low income Coloradans. 30 years ago, landlords could legally refuse to rent to families with children, and most. Did, resulting in fewer than one third. Of apartments being available for families with children. It made things very difficult for struggling. Parents of young kids by greatly limiting the available. Housing stock. I was director of the Denver. Women's Commission at the time in 1988. Congress made such discrimination illegal, and it was a very big deal. Congress recognized that families needed access to the same rental opportunities in order to raise children in a stable setting. Stable housing is associated with better. Health and better educational attainment for children. For every 100 families living at 30% of the army, which is roughly 25,000. A year for a family. Of three. There are only 26 available units. If affordable is. 30% of their income. Three fourths of these. Low income families are paying more than half their income on. Rent. This crowds out their ability to pay for other basic needs like transportation. Childcare and food. And currently, only about one in four eligible Coloradoans, who live below. 30% of Amy. Receives a housing subsidy which allows them to pay. A third of their income for rent. Subsidies are so hard to come by. The DHS holds a lottery only two days per year to distribute housing choice vouchers. For those who win one of these housing choice vouchers, they have only 60. Days to find a landlord willing. To accept it or they lose it in a. Tight housing market. Finding a landlord. Who accepts housing choice vouchers. Can be difficult. This bill can make it easier and help families attain economic stability that are that's critical for a family to achieve their full potential. I ask for your support. Thank you. Next up, Jim Lorenzen. Hi, I'm Jim Lorenzo, and I'm president, owner of Cornerstone Apartments, and I also live at 310 Jersey Street. Cornerstone is the largest apartment management company in Denver. Please know we do not care where the money comes from. To pay the rent, we process over $55,000 each month in section eight payments. The source of income is not the problem. Here are the concerns that my apartment owners have. Our normal application process takes less than 24 hours once and new applicant is approved. We can move them into an apartment the next day and they can start paying rent immediately. It takes 30 to 45 days to get a Section eight resident approved and moved in through DHS. This means for my owner is going to lose at least one month's rent to participate in the Section eight program. We manage a 40 unit apartment building with Section eight residents in the Highlands neighborhood. It costs $5,372 per unit per year to manage and operate this building. In comparison for our market rate apartments, we average $4,012 per year top rate. On average, it costs more than $1,350 per year to manage a Section eight apartment. I also serve on the board of the Archdiocese Housing Inc, which provides low income housing across the state. He operates their low income buildings at an even higher cost per unit than Cornerstone. And I guarantee you that the 4100 and excuse me, $4,012 per unit per year that we incur in operating costs, that DHEA and chaff cannot come even close to operating their properties. If we experienced damage in the apartment that exceeds the amount of the security deposit, we can hold a market rate resident responsible. With a Section eight resident, we have no recourse. My question is how can the city in good conscience require an apartment omer owner to participate in a government program that costs a month's rent at the beginning of the process, adds more than 1350 dollars during the course of a one year lease. And then in the event that the resident causes excess damage to the apartment, they have absolutely no recourse. This is not a source of income issue for apartment owners. This is a cost issue for us. And this audit ordinance needs further study before it can be passed. And I would appreciate your support on that. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, John Lazaro. Thanks. Councilman John Lazaro, 2195 Decatur Street. I'm testifying tonight on behalf of the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, is the largest local realtor association in the state with over 7000 members. We appreciate Councilwoman the commission's work to promote fair housing and for her willingness to reach out to us. When she made the decision to have the bill apply to for sale as well as rental property. Realtors have a long commitment to fair housing. Having worked at the national and local levels and every amendment to the law at the federal and local levels. For more than 100 years, realtors have subscribed to strict code of ethics. This code includes a commitment to provide equal professional services regardless of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin. And as of 2009, sexual orientation and in 2014, we adopted gender identity. Realtors are proud to lead the way toward greater equality and housing opportunities. And earlier this year, we urge Congress to adopt fair housing protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. When my parents purchased their first home in 1956, they could not buy in the neighborhood they desire to live in, even though they could afford to. Their experience inspired me to be a fair housing advocate. My entire career as a fair housing instructor at the Denver Board of Realtors and served as president of the Colorado Community Housing Resource Board, which was a nonprofit and fair housing watchdog for HUD, including protection regardless of source of income in fair housing is important, especially in this competitive and more expensive market. Please note that in some circumstances, some properties do not qualify for certain types of financing, such as FHA or VA. As such, many sellers agents include in their listing notes that these properties are not eligible for either of those programs. This is not income discrimination, but information that's included to assist the buyer and the buyer's agent in homebuying process. We were initially concerned that the ordinance would prevent a seller who was presented with multiple offers from taking the offer that was in their best interest. Specifically, they wouldn't be able to take a higher cash offer or traditionally financed offer over FHA or VA. However, after extensive conversations with Councilman McKinney and the city attorney's office through Councilwoman Kinney's it, we determined that nothing in this ordinance prevents the seller from taking the offer that's in their best interest. Because of this fact, the Denver Metro Association of Realtors is in support of the bill this evening. Members do have concerns, as you'll hear a few more about the landlords side of the ordinance. So we respectfully request that the city carefully monitor and report back on the number of sources of income discrimination complaints that are received on the rental and also for the resale site. Again, thank you for your time and commitment to promoting fair housing. We too are committed to this notion of want to encourage your support of this ordinance. Thank you. Next up, we have Eric Zavala and I'm going to call the next five up, Marianne Thompson, Chelsea Thomas, David Roybal, Chris Lopez and are connected. Hello. My name is Eric Sevilla and I live in Lewisville, Colorado. I have a few rentals in the Denver area and I would just like to point out that. After I leave here tonight, I'm going to be making some calls to tenants that are applying for a house that we manage and as sole proprietors and hardworking individuals . This is an important aspect for us. I know that there's I'm not in support of the bill, by the way, but I understand and I appreciate the concept and the attempt to try to bridge this gap. But in no sense is there any discrimination against people individually as far as good people being able to rent properties. This is about a level playing field of having to be forced to do business with the city of Denver and have a third party on a lease, which is now the city of Denver. Because not only are you signing a lease with this tenant that you're meeting and greeting and having a future relationship with for the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months. We now have a silent partner that's being forced on us, which is a rental authority that's going to have to come in, do inspections on the property, which is, in my opinion, a violation of privacy issue. The $5,000 fine that is proposed here is a fairly astronomical charge and. The and many of the landlords that are out here, I know that there's just probably this assumption that it's all these big conglomerations and big corporations that are running these apartment buildings. But there are a lot of us individuals that stay up and work until ten, 12:00 at night just to make ends meet and provide good housing and take great pride in doing that for people. And it's not about. Discriminating against to where people get the income from. This is about the level playing field of the extra work that we have to do. If we have to start taking vouchers, if we're forced to, because we're accepting this responsibility of scheduling extra inspections, losing last time, I doubt somebody is going to be able to be around for me to call on some kind of a government staff at 9:00 tonight when I have questions about how to get this done. There's a difference in how small businesses operate versus government entities. And with all due respect to you, volunteering and doing what you do to promote this great place that we live in in Denver, I object to the way that this is currently written. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Mary Ann Thompson. Hi. My name is Mariana Thompson. I represent Denver. Homeless out loud. First and foremost, I want to thank Robin Carnation each and every one of you for bringing this needed subject to to the table. I experience homelessness from 2012 to 2016. Now, I had a voucher and I was discriminate Section eight voucher and I was discriminated. I did not know about fair housing at the time because I had no one to help me through the ropes. I do not know that. Oh, someone could just turn me down because. Well, I think that this one bedroom would fit more of a couple. But that's not what you said when you turned around and you had your advertisement to same thing with AP old age pension. I ended up with breast cancer. I was in transitional housing, so I ended up being forced on. To make a long story short. Folks, money is money, right? Whether it's turnip, whether it's A&E, whether it's OJP, whether it's SSDI, whether it's Social Security. There are people. Right now on the street. With A&E pending SSDI. It takes almost four years or more for them to get their SSDI. Most of them because of mental illness that I have volunteered with. So we have. People on the street. I get it that we don't have enough housing. I get that. I do get that. At the same time, what I don't feel that anyone should be turned away for housing based on the source of income. Just like Robin said, if it's legal and it's verifiable, what's. I mean? I rent it many times privately. The same. Same thing goes. You. You have to bring in your paycheck stubs. They verify your income. What's the difference between that and a a A&E or AP? Anyways, I just want to say that we are discriminating. Just like years ago, people did not. Have a roof over their house or could not live in a neighborhood because of the color of their skin or their gender or whatever. Let's make this a let's pass this and make this another way that more people can have a house and have keys. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chelsea Thomas. Good evening and thank you, council members. I've heard a lot of different perspectives tonight from some small investors and also larger corporations. I own two and five, six rental houses and I live in Villa Park along with them in Lopez's district. Speaking at this to you guys, from a very small perspective, I find the the current wording very worrisome. I own a share of multiple houses, six total. But even if one of those if I rent it out and I get multiple applicants and I accept the best tenant for the property. My main concern is what if one of those people that I sadly had to turn away decides that I discriminate against them based on their source of income when that wasn't really the issue at all? What are my recourses as a small landlord with very little financial resources and any kind of large backing? Who's going to stand on my side from the city's perspective, or is it going to be the city trying to defend the person that they think was discriminated against instead? I think that there are some unseen consequences here. Small investors like myself who work for myself and for my family. We take a lot of pride in what we do. We really care about our houses and we really care about the people who live in them. We have some great tenants who actually moved from one house to another because they just like working with us. Sturgess I think it's a really complex problem and I'm glad that you guys are trying to work on it, but I think that it does require further study. We're really not there yet. There are huge questions and I've heard some of them voiced, I'm not going to repeat them, but I appreciate all the research that you've done , Councilwoman. I still think that there's more work that needs to be done, especially with smaller landlords who have some different perspectives, perhaps than the larger corporations, even looking at the larger entities. I will say that just this weekend, my sister, who owns one of the houses with me, my younger sister, she said, hey, do you want to buy my share of the house out from me? Because I don't want to deal with this. I'm scared of what's really going to mean in the long run, and I'm not sure if I can handle it. I can't handle the pressure and the stress. And I, I basically said to her, well, if it's really going to be that stressful, maybe we'll sell the house completely and buy a house in another city and county where we don't have to worry about it. So, again, talking to this unseen consequences, decreased housing supply, I think maybe people have mentioned. If this is a cost that the landlords have to take on, it's going to also mean increased rents. And because we're going to offset that some way, it's not just about us making money, it's about us offsetting the costs that we incur. So please, please, thank you for your time. But I think this is this requires a little bit more thought and maybe even some more input from some of the people that you've heard here tonight. Definitely willing to work with you if you need somebody for that. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, David Roybal. I don't see here anymore. Chris Lopez. All right. Are us connected? We'll be connected. Yeah. Hi. My name is Brittany Catalina. I'm a resident of Denver and I'm an owner of Be Connected, which is a startup business that focuses on the gaps. Focuses on the gaps between the public and private sectors that affects people's ability to get into housing. We do this specifically through education and streamlining services. I hear a lot about the HUD processes, the reasons why owners can't work with voucher holders. And one of the things that our business is doing is specifically working on those gaps. A background does come in from HUD. Also, I have lived experience. I grew up in project based housing too, so that's where my passion within housing comes from. So anyone who wants to talk about some of those issues that are affecting owners ability to take some of those voucher holders, our business is very much decreasing those number of days and we're starting to track that so we can combat some of the things that are coming through. But anyhow, one of the gaps to service that our business has looked at and feels like is a huge issue and barrier to people. Getting into housing is a source of income. This disproportionately affects people with disabilities, elderly students, working class sectors, veterans and other verified incomes. In 2016, the Center on Budget and Policy and Priorities did a study on Colorado, specifically looking at the Section eight renters, not the supportive housing vouchers that we see, not the state vouchers. What you see so specifically with Section eight, renters are closely to 30,000. Section eight renters. Specifically. These renters where 30, 34% elderly, 25% adults living with disability, 7% of adults living with children and 5% of adults with disability who also had children. In addition to our state providing. Just over 15,000. Units within project based housing. Specifically bring these up because I feel like one sector is putting a lot of effort in. We're spending a lot of money into housing. We bring it up. We cannot build out of this issue. We have to challenge it. Currently, we are 172,000 sorry, 23% of Colorado's renters are 30% am. I am below. Currently we are 127,000 units short. We cannot expect us to build our way out of this. Instead, we need to educate ourselves and challenge the current issues that are happening within housing. I believe that it has to come both from a public and private sectors, and we can't just continue to build. We have to provide avenues for access. And one of the ways is very much bringing up who are these renters? It's marginalized renters. It's your students. It's not just S.E. We also work with marginalized renters. We work all the way up to 60%. Ami, every day we're getting questions. We're tracking that so we can start to challenge some of the biases and things that are coming up and provide some studies. So thank you. And we are in support of 788. Thank you. Next up is Suzanne Thomas and then I'll invite Aubrey Household, Kim Hilton, Robert Fischer and Debbie Wilson to the front bench. And Suzanne Thomas, you're up. Hello. I'm Suzanne Thomas. I live at 32 six West Eighth Avenue and Paul Lopez, this neighborhood, Villa Park. And I'm here to say that it seems like you're trying to solve a problem with the wrong approach. The problem is with vouchers, they're difficult to use. They cost a lot of money to the landlord. You say to somebody, you have to take them. I make $45,000 a year cash flow, offer 15 rental houses. I do not own them free and clear. My youngest mortgage is two years old, is going to be 28 years. I'll be 80 years old when it's paid off. The other one, the oldest one, is 12 years in. I'll be 70 years old when it's paid off. That's when my cash flow will increase. In the meantime, you're asking me to take a voucher that I may not get rent for six weeks. On a project it's renting for 1400 dollars. That's almost $3,000, up to $3,000 I could not get. If I multiply that by two or three houses a year, you're taking away a great portion of my income. And you said, well, that's just what it costs to do business in Denver. So what if I choose not to do business in Denver? Does this help the problem of housing or does it make it worse? Now, part of the reason I don't have a huge income is because I do have affordable houses. One house I purchased, I've got a gentleman who 75 years old, he's lived there 30 years. I gave him a lifetime lease for $350 a month. And yes, I take students with student loans, but I do not want to be in a situation where I'm facing $5,000 fine. I don't want to be a situation where I'm working with the government as my partner. I don't want the additional administrative hassle. I already work late at night painting houses, making them cute for people. It's not going to do tomorrow night because I'm here tonight at this meeting and I want to say you need to solve the real problem and you say that we can't build enough. And that may be true. But encouraging landlords like me to leave the city of Denver or to build big houses that are not eligible for the programs is not going to help. I do recommend that when you look at the to use zoning, I talked to one lady at a meeting at a library and they said we don't want to allow landlords to build a use behind their houses because too many of them would do it, would get too many rental units, it would annoy the neighbors. And I understand totally why you wouldn't want to do that in most of the neighborhoods in the city of Denver. And I don't know if Paul would agree or not, but Villa Lopez, I mean, Villa Park, we've got a lot of houses that are 600 square feet, two bedroom houses on 6000 square foot lots. And I think you might want to approach this in the sense that if as a landlord, I was allowed to build a second small rental, I'd rather do that than have one giant expensive house. But if I build that second small rental, even if you allow it and say, no, I have to take vouchers and maybe I get the rent and maybe I don't. Maybe I just build a big house and sell it or rent it instead. And that doesn't help the problem. It makes it worse. And that's what other people have mentioned tonight. We are small business owners. We're not rich. We don't have a lot of cash flow. And this exemption for one house, I appreciate that. But for me, that won't do any good. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Ari has told. Good evening, councilmembers. My name is Aubrey Household, and I'm the advocacy manager at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, and I'm also a Denver resident. And I'm here in strong support of this ordinance. Tonight at CCH, we house about 3000 families each night, and that is through our own properties, as well as through our partnerships with landlords , through the community. We work with hundreds of landlords to get some of these tenants in who have these nontraditional sources of income like vouchers. And there might be some fear there. And so what we've actually had to do is create a position at the coalition called Housing Navigator, and this person has had to work specifically what these landlords to build relationships, kind of dismiss some of that fear that's there and some of those stereotypes that exist and get some of our clients in. And our landlords have had really great experiences. They keep coming back doing this year after year. And one of the things that we haven't talked about tonight, and that is some a high point for a lot of our landlords, is that in many of the vouchers that we work with, aside from Section eight, we work with about a dozen. And many of those have wraparound services that help keep people housed successfully. And so if there is an issue, there is somebody there that is able to help remedy that right away. So that's something that keeps people coming back. I also want to mention that we conducted a survey in January of Colorado residents, primarily in the Denver metro area, and we asked about source of income discrimination. And what we found was that of tenants who said that they had been discrete or that they had been rejected for rental housing. 47% said it was because of their source of income. So we've heard from some really well-meaning landlords tonight, but this is a huge problem and we can't ignore it all across Denver. And this body has recognized the seriousness of the housing crisis. Denver has done a lot to invest in some tools to address it and get people into housing, tear down some of those barriers that we have. And this bill just ensures that we're able to fully utilize these tools and those aren't going to waste. And I just want to mention that we are in support of the amendment and to exempt just one unit, but we don't want that to go any further. But one unit we think is fine and we're also in support of the fine for landlords who may incur more damage. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Kim Hilton. Hi, everyone. I'll make this quick. I know it's been a very long night, so I'm just going to read. And if I don't look at you. Guys, I apologize. I know we're all getting tired. My name is Kim Helton. I am the CEO of Ego Summit Property Management were based in Centennial, Colorado. We manage over 700 single family homes in the Denver area. We have discussed why we are here today with our owners and found the majority. Say they will sell their homes to avoid. The fines if forced to take vouchers without major improvements to the current current. Voucher programs already in place. If sold. These developers would likely. Gobble up these family friendly. Homes at sale and convert. Them to high priced. Condos for the. Upwardly mobile professional. Some improvements. Examples that are needed are quicker payments at start up to avoid lost income for months. After new move. In quicker responses from. Caseworkers when problems arise. Protect the owner if the resident damages the home, have more penalties to the resident. Who is on the voucher and cover. The loss. Beyond deposit, enforce and improve the policies you have. Hire more staff. Train the staff to be consistent under one procedure, straighten. Strengthen your infrastructure. This has nothing to do with the person or how they get the money. It has to do with the programs in place that do not protect. The owners at all. When problems arise. This would be a loss to Denver and to our company. We would charge an additional 20% per annum for the extra staff compliance and inspections pricing would then. Be based on Denver and non Denver. Properties. We are putting the cart before the. Horse without first looking at. All of the problems. You might then find the owners are not the sole cause of what you consider discrimination claims. We need to keep. This voluntary and. We can address these concerns fully without. Rush. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Robert Fisher. Good evening, council members. My name is Robert Fisher and I'm an advocate with the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition. I'm here to support council bills. Seven, eight, eight. I think this bill would be good for Denver, Colorado, and it also would ensure that persons with a source of income, limited resources, income would not be a barrier and accessible and accessing affordable housing. Denver has experienced a rapid growth in population. Rents are rising and neighborhoods are without an adequate supply of affordable housing. A 2017 report by the Urban Institute called Denver and the state of low and middle income housing states that rental cost burdens for low and middle income families are 46 to 82% of their total incomes. This report also states that the new housing units being built in Denver are for residents of low to moderate incomes or those of 50 to 120%, and by those who are 50% to below 30%. I am I there's no affordable housing for them. I think this bill would help them a whole lot. This population is being displaced and becoming homeless. More than half of the displaced people are 55 and older. Many are families. This bill will prohibit the discriminatory practices on the basis of income and give all those who choose to live in Denver. Denver a chance to participate in all aspects of life, including affordable housing. I am 60 years old. I have multiple disabilities. I've been displaced and I live in my car because I'm below 30%. Am I? I would love to have a place, but you know what? It doesn't seem to be possible in Denver. I am on an anti placement policy network and I'm working alongside Councilwoman Robin Keech and Councilman Brooks. Denver is about one of ten cities selected to participate in a network of advancing strategies that will halt the forces that are pushing low income people, marginalized people and people of color out of the cities. At the same time, this network is creating the conditions for our cities and communities to thrive by developing new and innovative ideas by path. Sorry, Mr. Fisher, but your time is all up. Thank you very much. Yeah. Next up, Debbie Wilson. And I'll invite our last two speakers Andrea, Shira Boga, Fleur and Andrew Hamrick up to the frontbench. Go ahead. Good evening. Members of the council. My name is Debbie Wilson. I'm with the law firm of Springer and Braden Wilson and Pontius and I live at 3193 West 36th Avenue in north west Denver. And I'm here because I heard about this source of income proposal. And I am very much an advocate for affordable housing. I represent many thousands of landlords and tens of thousands of doors in the Denver area. I reached out to my clients and just said, Hey, what do you think about this source of income legislation? And I was deluged with dozens of phone calls and emails from my clients going and mostly my smaller clients. I have to be clear in a panic saying city council is not going to really consider this or think about passing a mandate, forcing us to take vouchers. And they, you know, went off into a litany of horror stories. But I think one of the things that well, I just want to say this right away, all the speakers have made excellent points, but I have a lovely client who takes cash vouchers, stashes dealing with the VA, with our soldiers and sailors that come back with mental health issues, disabilities. And he has become because he wants to help those that group an expert at navigating the complexity of HUD and the Veterans Administration and BASH And he takes the vouchers and he has kind of a boarding house and has all these wonderful people in there and some services to help with mental health issues . And if you pass this ordinance, it will destroy that program, because then he would have to take anybody with any kind of source of income, and he would be prohibited from saying, I want to focus on this group and help our soldiers and sailors. So sometimes the unintended consequences of some well-meaning legislation has some real devastating effects. I have clients that deal with CCH and they love them. I mean, the programs she just spoke, they have some good people at the program and they will take the vouchers, but they won't take DHEA and DHEA. The THEA programs and HUD are complex. DHEA does wonderful work. And Mike, many of my clients deal with them, but my smaller clients, you know, they have maybe ten units or less, really struggle to understand the complexities of HUD, of the program dealing with the front end costs. We've already had some people testify that, you know, you unlike conventional housing, you don't have to take your your unit off the market while you're screening and going through the leasing process. But with Section eight, you have to and you're often taking it off the market for a month before you get approval. And the inspector out there and that's the realities of this program guessing, just saying $1,000 a month is a rent. That's $1,000 out of pocket and that person may not even pass. The approval process. And you're out that money. And so the smaller landlords go, wait a minute, I, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But your time is all over. Thank you very much. Thank you very. Much. Next up, Andrea. Chair above the floor. Hi. My name is Andrew. As you do, what I've learned has really good, good job. I'm the lead housing organizer for 9 to 5 Colorado. I was living yesterday in Councilwoman Black's district, and I was moved to Councilman Espinosa's district. So congratulations. And so we're a grassroots member based organization that works on policies to lift up women inside and outside of the workplace. In the for the past few years, we've been working on housing. Specifically, we did a survey between 2015 and 2016 of almost 10,000 tenants to identify the biggest barriers. We didn't specifically ask tenants about being turned away for source of income, but we did collect anecdotal stories of of people being turned away. And not just for vouchers. Just a reminder, this is not just about vouchers. People are being turned away for a lot of different types of income. One of our members who's not able to be here today, Nicole, as a housekeeper, told me this, I have Section eight and cannot find a place that accepts that. I also have experience with both my child care support and student loans being denied as usable income. Me and my kids were practically homeless. Homeless because I was a single mom finishing my degree and wasn't working, so nobody would accept my income. I had a credit score of 803. My student loans and grants would have qualified me along with the child support, and I had a willing cosigner. I was turned away left and right. I was consumed with looking for a place. Aside from the many application fees, it was a nightmare. Currently in Colorado there are no limit. We have very few rights and so if we're talking about leveling the playing field, we should really think about actually creating more rights for tenants. And we ranked 43rd in terms of how tenant friendly our policies are. On a recent study on a website called Rent Cafe, and this is not this would not mandate people to accept anybody with a voucher. If people don't have the right credit score, if they have a background, if they don't make enough money, it's you. Landlords would still be able to turn those people away. It just gives people a chance. And I mean, right now, the decision really is, are we going to do more to prevent homelessness and pushing people further into poverty, into situations where they're unstable, don't have jobs, or are we going to help those folks and perhaps put a burden on landlords that may or may not happen depending on if if vouchers even are come about in their in their units. So I really think I encourage you all to think and prioritize our homeless population and folks looking for housing right now. Thank you. Thank you. Last up, Andrew Hamrick. All right, that concludes our speakers. Are there questions from members of Council Councilman Cashman? Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not sure who to direct this to. I'll ask my colleague, Councilwoman Connie Chung. If you don't have it, we can ask someone else. How many vouchers are there? That would be part of this program. So there are just under 6000 housing choice vouchers that are issued by Denver Housing Authority in Denver County and more than 5000 of them, in spite of the stories we're hearing tonight, are housed in Denver. So 12%, about 700 or so, are unable to find housing in Denver and have to go to other counties. They can report their their voucher. As I mentioned, there were probably a dozen other programs. Some of them are very small. We administer a couple of them through our partners or the city funds a couple of them through partners. So there's not I don't have I was unable to find a total number of all the voucher, specifically when you add those other programs in. But the housing choice voucher program is the largest. Thank you. My other question to Mr. Guerrero, would you mind stepping up to the mic? We hear a lot about the problems with dealing with with DHS and getting paid. And it takes too long for people to be able to move in. Can you address that, please? Yes. Good evening, everybody. Good to be with you at this late hour. And obviously, I always enjoy talking about the our voucher program or any of our programs at the Housing Authority. I'm Ismael Guerrero, the executive director of the Denver Housing Authority. And just a couple of points since I have the mike, too, to share about the program. I think, as Councilwoman Kennish mentioned, we are the largest housing authority in the region. We actually administer about 6700 vouchers, currently only leasing up about 6000 because of the current funding shortage from HUD. So we don't have the funding to be fully leased. We are second largest voucher administrator in the state. The Colorado Division of Housing actually administers more. But in Denver, we have the vast majority of the vouchers for over the last ten years, the housing authority has been ranked as a high performing program. Our Housing Choice Voucher in the Sea Map program, the Section eight Management Assessed Assessment Program through HUD, has ranked our program as a high performer, meaning we're in compliance, meeting all our deadlines and monitoring reports. So at a national level, we are a high performer in that region, in that area, and also on an annual basis, we work from anywhere between 2520 800 landlords, private landlords in the city of Denver who choose to participate in the program. So we have a large number of landlords, private landlords that we work with on an annual basis. I think we are always open and looking for ways to improve our operations, the efficiency of our program and to ensure that we provide good client service to our residents as well as good service to our our landlords who are one of our only or precious relationships that we manage and value in the city. Among the things that we have done as part of our continuous improvement program. Just to in response, some of the concerns you heard today, we have been working on a way to streamline our initial this process and currently we can do from initial issuing of a voucher to lease up as quickly as two weeks. We've improved the way our our inspectors go out. They have 24 hours to schedule an inspection. When they go out there, they bring their they lease with them so the lease can be signed and executed once the inspection is completed. There are always, you know, challenges and initial lease up or initial setup if it's a new landlord or a new tenant. But we're doing very well at that. A two week process that we are committed to. Not every lease up goes out smoothly. Unfortunately, there are extenuating circumstances and that's why, as we were hearing the feedback today, we'll be looking for ways to continue to improve that. Some other things that we've done is to ensure that most of our I think all of our landlords at this point are on auto deposit. So we cut checks weekly and we can process checks and deposit payments on a weekly basis to landlords as they get set up. And then we've also been focusing with our tenants institute of what's called the Goldstar program. So that's one where our tenants, before they are issued their voucher, have the opportunity to go through an orientation program and really how to be good tenants, what the expectations are from landlords, what it means to rent a property if they haven't previously, and how to ensure that they can maintain their tenancy once they do lease up . And so those are just three examples of things that we're doing. But as I mentioned, we're always open to additional improvements that we can make in our processes. I believe that you are. Why does it take two weeks to get someone moved in? Why does it take that? Why does it take two weeks? So that that goes from the time that a tenant. So, again, this is unfortunately and as you heard, it is a program that comes with some administrative oversight and administrative requirements. It is. Many of the program requirements are HUD regulation. So we don't have a lot of options there. Among the probably the biggest delay in that process, the two key steps are the housing quality inspection that has to be scheduled and the unit has to be inspected, pass inspection as part of the process. And who inspects. That? The Housing Authority? Our staff. Yep. And again, we've instituted a policy of 24 hours from the time we're notified that a tenant's ready to move. Has selected a unit to when we make contact with the property owner. Then it's a question of scheduling availability till we can get in there. A second step is the reasonable rent calculation that we have to do to ensure that that unit that the rent that's being requested is reasonable given comps in the area. So those are sometimes two additional steps that would otherwise have to be followed. Sure. On an ongoing basis, once a client moves in. How long does it take to generate the monthly rent. We pay on a monthly basis? It's automated, so once they're in the system and set up, the checks are deposited into the landlord's account on a regular basis. Thank you, Mr. Guerrero. Thank you, Mr.. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. I think your microphone. Can initiate some of the speakers this evening said that this law would require them to take people who had Section eight vouchers. Can you please clarify that? Yeah, it would require. Them to consider them where they had adequate income. So the vouchers typically have a fair market rent value estimate. Of what kind of rent? Think of it sometimes it's called a hunting license, I think. You can go look for an apartment with a 1100 dollars rent, or you can go look for an apartment for either a 1300 dollar rent or whatever it is you're authorized for. And so if you you have to consider those individuals, you wouldn't be able to put an ad up on Craigslist that said no vouchers need apply. But, you know, if you had a $2,000 apartment in, the person only had authorization for 1100 dollars. Obviously, they would not be eligible for that unit. You could tell them that you would, you know, whatever the conversation would be. But so it's about being considered. It's about a chance to compete. It's not about a requirement that you have to take any particular tenant. Okay. So just wanted to clarify that. And then I know that several people are concerned about fines. And, you know, everyone we heard from tonight is a small business person that owns a small some rental homes or small apartment buildings or something. And I've heard from people in my district in that same situation. And so can you explain how those fines would work? Because personally, I also would be very terrified of a $5,000 fine. So can you please. Thank you. In fact, it's a very narrow fine if you you guys, I think, have the ordinance in front of you. But it is only applicable where one of two conditions is met. The first is that the individual was refused housing and there's no replacement unit available. Right. So if there's you know, if you have a, you know, multiple units and you refuse them a unit, you went through a process, you were found to have refused the unit. And you're willing then at the end to offer them another unit, then that's it. There would be no penalty or where there's an order to stop discriminating. Right. So maybe there's been multiple cases of discrimination, the or the advertising. Again, it comes up the department issues an order and says you may no longer turn people away who call you and say, you know, hey, I've got this thing. Can you can you take me? No, no, I don't take that source of income. You have an order that says, stop doing that and you violate the order. Those are the only two circumstances where the fine applies. So if you have a first time instance where this occurs, there is no penalty unless you're unable to make the person you know, give them access to the unit. And again, that's at the conclusion of a process whereby there's been both a department investigation as well as the potential the landlord has the right to choose a hearing officer and be heard. The one other thing, if I can sneak it in real quick because it hasn't come up previously, is that the ordinance allows the individual who's involved in a complaint to withdraw the complaint at any time. That's intentional in order to encourage the potential for mediation of results. Right. So the goal here is that there's a lot of pathways, very narrow circumstances where a fine applies. And it's really where you've disregarded in order. And who does who? Who would one complain to? What agency is this? So this is an amendment that we're running tonight to the to the Denver Anti-Discrimination Ordinance, sometimes known as data. And it is administered by the Human Rights and Community Partnerships. So they have an individual who is in charge of taking complaints. Has been doing it quite a while. And they all already take complaints against for all the other types of discrimination that are in our ordinance. So they have some experience. We will get them more training during this lag time before there is an affected data so that they can see this particular training for this particular method. Okay. Thank you. And I have just one more question. Okay. So Mr. Lorenzen was here earlier, but I think he left and I had a letter from him, as I'm sure we all did in our mailboxes. But he referred to a normal application process takes 24 hours. So this is probably for you, Mr. Grant. He says once a new applicant is approved, they can move into the apartment the next day and pay rent. It takes 30 to 45 days to get a Section eight resident approved and moved in. But you just got through telling us it takes two weeks. So this is not the standard. And then I believe Debbie Wilson referred to if someone has applied. That you have to take it off the market. Is that correct? So two points there. One, I think, to Mr. Lorenzo's earlier comment, certainly in today's housing market, where in our city the high cost of housing and the low supply, I know and you know, we have experienced that when a unit becomes available, there are easily ten applicants the same day, you know, knocking down the door, trying to get that unit because there's such a short supply. So certainly understand that today units are being rented very quickly to, you know, same day people are coming with their check because they need the unit, as I mentioned earlier answer to do an initial lease up with us. It does take we've got a process that we can do it in two weeks if everything goes, you know, as as planned. And we can get the inspections scheduled quickly. In particular, the the the the off market question, I'm not sure the pilot exactly there it is certainly once a unit has been a tenant, has identified a unit that they want to lease and the landlord has accepted that tenant for that unit. That's when we received the notice for tenant. Thereafter, rental requests for tenant occupancy. And that's what kicks us, kicks off our process. So it may be that during that two weeks to even the first month, while we're getting the unit inspected and the initial payment process, that unit does have to be held for that tenant because the commitment has been made by the landlord that that's that that unit will be available for them. So that's after the landlord has already accepted that tenant. Yes. Okay. So back to you, Councilwoman Canete. If. If if the landlord wanted, if it was available, as Mr. London's paragraph says, it's available that day when two people apply and one person can start paying rent the next day, and one person is applying with vouchers. But it's going to take two weeks. Can the landlord accept the tenant who can start paying rent the next day? This is where I have to be honest, where decisions based on specific facts as a legislative branch, I cannot comment. Right? So what I can tell you is that the investigator in this case would look at all those facts and evaluate whether there was a legitimate business reason for the decision or whether the decision was discriminatory. And so that's the training they'll get. That's the training that all of the other states and cities that do this will provide. We're going to, you know, do some cross training and all that stuff. But I think that, you know, I just can't theorize as to what an investigator or hearing officer would rule in a particular case . Okay. Cause that's pretty, pretty fact specific. I'm sorry. Got it. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman, new. Council is just following up on that question of you have two equal or three equal candidates. They all have in common the Section eight, you have verified income and they're all qualified from the income level. The landlord can choose whoever they want, right? Yeah. I think that it may be helpful to use an example, let's say with gender, for example, you know, if you have three folks who apply and two our men and one is women, it's not illegal to rent to a guy. It's not you don't have to rent to a woman. What you can't do is turn the woman away because she's a woman. Right. And so that analogy, I think, is the best way to kind of then go back to the income thing if they're using legitimate business reasons. Right. They don't have to rent to the voucher holder, but they have to be making it for legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons. So this is about guaranteed opportunity. It's not about guaranteed outcomes. Right. Okay. So the listener does have the freedom to choose on a legitimate business premises. Candidates have a longer employment status. They've been in employment as long as they could be a legitimate reason for that. This person's better. Okay, just an example. Let's just go to we've had a lot of small homes being used as examples tonight. So that situation there where you have multiple candidates, we're in that same situation. Right. So that small business owner with a single family home they're renting really has a great advantage in that situation. They're not they shouldn't feel at a disadvantage. Right. Because they have multiple and for legitimate business reasons, they can choose whoever they like, whether it's Section eight or not. Right. Yes. I mean, as I understand your question, the ordinance, the same answer applies by. Manager. Small but smaller, large, I think the same answer. So you have a large where you have multiple units that are vacant. Okay. And then you then you have, you know, four units that are vacant, three candidates, one Section eight. Then that Section eight candidate will really be able to get the one of those units right. There wouldn't be a strong business reason to not allow that person. Right. Again, I'm not I'm not going to make legal conclusions for for a department that's going to administer it. But it sure sounds like it'd be tough facts if you if you said, nope, I don't have a unit and there was a vacant unit, that would be a tough act to overcome in an investigation. Was real clear. So if you've got multiple candidates you the landlords really know the disadvantage that the seemed like to me. So, Ishmael, let me ask you a question around this, this whole issue of getting approval. Okay. So you say a resident gives the landlord 30 or 60 days notice and you have a candidate that comes in . Could you do a pre-approval before that rental unit is vacant so that landlord will not lose any money? You understand what I'm saying? Yes. Can you can you say if the landlord says yes, I'll read to you, but I've got to get approved and get it all, all taken care of and ready to get payment. As soon as that the person leaves and you're housed here. Is that is that possible? So the. It's trying to think through our process. I think the important thing to know is our families who have vouchers are effectively pre-approved in terms of eligibility, income, background. You know, we do a basic criminal background check before they're issued a voucher, so they're effectively eligible for the for the program. What I'm talking about is the inspection and the comparable right area that sounds like that's going to take the most time. But if you've got enough time to do it before that apartment becomes vacant, then landlords not going to lose any money. Right. And I think the only there is hesitating is just thinking through procedurally or operationally how that would work. And the challenge could be doing the inspection of a unit while it's still occupied before the prior tenant has has moved out. It's certainly something that we would be open to exploring. And I think as councilwoman offered earlier, you know, working with with other agencies with that kind of process improvements to see any and every way that we can shorten that timeline to pre approvals to ensure that the that the landlords are not losing any as they say a vacancy lost because of the time it takes for the tenant to be able to move in. And if a place is inspected and does it have to be inspected again and again for every new person in U.S. aid that has to lease? Are you going through the same process for every one that there's the leasing that you did, whether you inspected it six months ago or not? So there are currently we have to inspect every unit on initial Lisa. HUD has allowed us. Now there's some streamlining happening within the HUD housing choice voucher program. One is biannual inspection, so we don't have to inspect the unit every year. We can go to a two year every two years before it has to be inspected again. And then on larger properties are on when way our project basing vouchers or committing a number of vouchers to a property, we can do a sample inspection. And that's primarily on new construction, however. So the HUD rules are shifting a little bit to be more streamlined. And that's why I hesitate a little bit, because I know there's some statutes that have been changed, but HUD has not issued the regs, the regs and how that's going to be implemented. Like you could do. Some of that pre-approval will be a lot easier because you're not you know, you're not putting out any money until actually the person takes hold of them. Yeah, exactly. And we are also encouraging some of our tenants who are issued new vouchers to lease in place, meaning if they already are in a rental unit, to consider working with the landlord to lease that same unit rather than look for a new unit, just certainly because of how tight that current housing market is. Okay. Thank you. One last question, Councilman Kennish. I was really surprised to hear that the other cities or the the actual usage is so low. And actually, you said Seattle discontinues further one of the reasons what happened. What what are the reasons for that? Well. I think one of the facts that wasn't shared very clearly tonight is that every landlord is allowed to and still encouraged to use a security deposit. And so it's the best way to protect themselves from damage. And so if landlords follow that best practice and they have damage to their unit, that is the first place you go to get reimbursed. These funds in other cities only kick in then after. So if you have damage that exceeds the security deposit, that's when you would go to these funds. And I think the short story is that there aren't that many cases where the damage exceeds otherwise. Landlords would have done claims in these in these programs. And and so, you know, I think it doesn't mean it never occurs, doesn't it? But it just means that for whatever reason, either the security deposit is covering folks. The other thing that got shared tonight that I'm a little I just want to correct the record. There was a statement made that there's no recourse if you have, you know, an issue with the voucher holder. And I just want to share the fact that nationally and I don't know if numbers are different nationally, a third of voucher holders are working, which means that they have wages in addition to their voucher. And among so a third are working. Who are the rest? While the majority of the rest are seniors and disabled folks, most of whom qualify for SSI. You know, some of these other there was our sources of income in addition to the voucher. So if you do have a situation where you have damage or something, you can go after, you know, go to a collections agency or go to a garnishing of of income sources. There are some other recourses available. So I don't have data on how many landlords in these other cities are using those other methods. But but there's only a small percentage of voucher holders who are who are probably are homeless residents who may have zero income. Most the vast majority have another source of income. Along with their voucher. So there is some other income to go after if you have an issue with the tenant. Not saying it's easy to collect, but it's also not easy to collect from folks who cause damage, who don't have vouchers. So we'll just just make sure I understand I didn't quite understand. Your answer to the first question was because they actually didn't have people that were using the program whatsoever. No. They were just people who were using the program that that were denied. Yeah. Let me just give you a few examples. So there were 90 households eligible and three claims made in Portland, Oregon. There's just there were 299 households eligible for another program in Portland and 333 claims were made. That's over the course, by the way, of seven years. So these numbers are over multiple years, over different funds. So in Norfolk, Virginia, they had 12 claims over five years, six claims over four years. So so I'm just, you know, so they had households in these programs. Okay. I'm just. Going. To say because you're talking about claims, right? I was just talking about the actual people who actually were accepted and rented apartments. Hundreds and hundreds of people getting apartments. Okay. Less between zero and five landlords a year making claims against the fund. So that's just a different story. You have a lot of utilization, but really a few claims for problems, right? That's that that is with the data we were able to collect. Thank you very much, David. Sure. Thank you. Councilman new Councilman Lopez. Thank you so much. I think my question was was answered with when I when I came the age, when I made sure just how many of those calls do we get about with folks who have that delayed payment? And how frequent is it? How often? Is this systemic? And if it is, I mean, what are we doing to address and fix that problem? I don't have exact data for you, Councilman. I can tell you, as I said, we have we have, you know, over 2000 landlords we work with who choose to be part of the program annually. We we do annual surveys of our landlords to make sure we understand where the the issues are and, you know, try to find continuous ways to make improvements to our program. It's never perfect. And and we've historically had a high utilization rate of our vouchers, meaning, you know, 98 to 100% of our vouchers found landlords to lease to them. I think obviously the last decade or so, with the high cost of housing and the rents accelerating astronomically, what's happened more and I think really the focus of this ordinance is about families having choices, more choices than they currently have in a tight market. But I'd be happy to look into that data and get back to some of those specific numbers. And I want you to repeat that. 98% utilization. Historical. Yeah. So in 1998, percent of the vouchers we issued were able to find actually 100% in more normal housing market. We're able to find a landlord to lease to them. Do we know what that is now? We're currently at about 90%, both because of the the higher rents we're having the pay per voucher. As you can imagine, the news out of D.C. continues to be pretty grim in terms of the funding levels. So our budget for the voucher program has been decreasing as have been our admin administrative fees. So we're only able to utilize currently about 90% of the vouchers that we would otherwise be able to. And it's I mean, my question is more towards and. I would I would do. Absolutely appreciate that. Mr. Rivera. My question, I think, ma'am, kind of was because how many times are we getting reports that folks who are participating in the program aren't being able to get a response from DHS or anything when it comes to that income that should have been coming back in, that that cashing in, that voucher, making sure that their bottom line is taken care of as a landlord. The last thing we want is as we I mean, move something like this forward and essentially, you know, go after discrimination, be able to take take that out of their right. The last thing we want to be doing is stumbling across our own feet. Yeah, absolutely. And that's I understood your question. And as I said, I don't have the data for you. I can speak anecdotally that it's not it's not a high percentage of the calls that we get. Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Councilman Lopez, Councilman Espinosa. Ismael. Rather than just sort of doing pre inspection when it's sort of hard to access and whatnot. Couldn't we just have a a gap program, a sort of pre HUD program where, you know, if you're going to do an inspection, if you can do a 24 hour turnaround inspection, the inspector will know whether that unit can be brought up to HUD standards and whatnot, so that maybe we could actually do a a move in that meets our city requirements. Until that, you know, with some time I mean, to cover that time before while the unit gets brought up to HUD standards and then and had the voucher go into effect. Could we do something like that? And it's something we'd be certainly willing to explore. Okay. Because I think then even during that time, you could sort of make sure that that that tenant goes through your Gold Star program, you know, so you're sort of sort of a win win. They're getting in quick. The landlord Lord doesn't have a vacant unit. They're getting trained on how to be a good tenant and their guaranteed source of income will be valid. So then I have a question for Robin. Was there any in if it came through email, I apologize. Was there any addressing my concern that I articulated in committee with regard to the language in here that it's directed towards application for rental housing? But we had there was a concern about VA loans on purchases. I'm not sure I understand your question. When this was first discussed in the Housing and Homelessness workgroup, we did only have it applying to rental housing because we couldn't kind of come up with this scenario or any facts. We had survey data and other data that we are having problems on the rental side. When we put the draft bill out for public not public comment but yeah, public review. We put out a public review draft. Then we started to get some calls from some realtors and some folks who'd had the experience with the for sale side being told, you know, you can't even compete for this house, we won't even talk to you. And so that's what prompted us to go back and make the ordinance. The rest of this ordinance, remember, is about all forms of discrimination, and it applies to all housing, rental and for sale. So we thought, okay, well, that's why every state and city has the supply to both. So we went back to that default. It now does cover for sale in rental. So does that answer your question? So we're not concerned that we feel that this language covers discrimination against a loan source. Yeah, there is a chapter in here that is specific. Let me just find it real quickly. It's the housing section here. Transactions in real estate, property exhibiting, listing, advertising, negotiating, agreeing or transferring, whether by sale, lease sublease. So the this is all language we're not amending. This is all language that's already in the ordinance. So if you read, you know, what we're doing along with the clauses that are already in there, it is our view that that that is covered. It also later on in that I guess this is page five. One, two, three, four, five, page five. You know, to refuse to lend money, you know, to make available for purchase acquisition. So so I think it does. I will just add, though, to to some folks who say, well, hey, I've got a property that's not eligible for VA loan or FHA has some condo complexes, for example, that they refused to buy. The ordinance has a specific exemption that says if there is any applicable federal, state or city law or regulation that makes the source of income not legal, you don't obviously have to take it. So that's in our bill to make sure that we're not trying to put folks in a double bind. So that situation that was the concern wasn't a discrimination problem. It was a program problem. Right. Or else we would have just cited this existing code and said, actually, you need to follow up on this. Right. Because the veteran veterans I don't know if military status, I'd have to look back at the ordinance and see if military status it might be a protected class. But the VA loan as a source of money was not covered by the current ordinance. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then lastly, Ms.. Patterson, can I ask you a question? Since you were the first person I ever spoke about, this ordinance in your work started this whole thing for me. I just would like to know why you support the amendment. The the one. Time I saw. Something because it's I did a lot of best practice research, as you know. And this exemption is in line with what we've seen other states in the city's doing much, too. Councilwoman, can you just point. So one of my concerns and I would maybe you can tell me what your research says about it, is that the lament that is prompting one unit owners is essentially the same sort sort of lament that you get from people that own multiple units. So why would that make a difference, especially if some of these single units are in affordable areas? I was actually I was going to take you out to see Councilman Clark, but I was actually swayed by his counsel, his experiences in his district. Yeah. Okay. So then this is to you, Councilwoman Clark. So the experience that you articulated in your district was something akin to a constituent who had a somebody a relative pass away and their property then turning over and becoming a rental for their next of kin or whatever. And, and that being a, you know, they may not have the means to to maintain. That is a I mean, I don't know. My concern is, is that, you know, you could have a situation that complies with the law where you have a duplex, where one side is occupied by a resident, I mean owner and the adjacent unit is occupied by their tenant. And that would be a situation that would be exempt. Where but then if the owner dies and the two units then become willed to somebody, to a family member and no one moves in to that unit, the two units would be Eliot mean would be not exempt because they're now both under one owner and in but if but if both halves so you have a duplex where two units the rental but if both houses are owned by separate renters that's again okay. Two to 2 to 2. Can I jump in? Yes. I think I think that what it comes down to for me and for hearing from my residents in the Valverde neighborhood, is that when you when you have one. And so it will take it out of that specific example. But when you have one house that you're renting, you're not really a sophisticated landlord. You're not going in paying a property manager. You're not, you know, reviewing multiple leases. And and in that world, there are a lot of different instances that could lead to you having that one property that don't make you a sophisticated landlord or somebody who has a lot of money to spend on a property management firm, somebody who can navigate a system that is more paperwork than just putting something to market and renting it. And, you know, yes, you could have someone who passes away in a duplex and now you inherit a duplex. You could have somebody who lived in a nine plex and passed away and gives you the whole nine plex, but you are automatically then dealing with multiple leases. And so for me, that threshold of having a property that you're renting versus having multiple leases that I do think that's different. You do step into a role where this is more than just a property that you're renting and you're dealing with more of that. So that seemed an appropriate threshold. So then explain to me what the difference is, right? If you're if somebody passes away and leaves you one property versus ten properties, why is that any different for you on what your obligation is to renting it out? Because again, I think you can manage one property without being a sophisticated landlord with a professional property management company. I think if you've inherited a ten plex, you can't. And that does take a level of sophistication that then makes navigating a system through vouchers doable without that extra burden of of because you can say, hey, I have ten different units. I have a diversity of income. I have I have to manage multiple leases. And so I can take on managing a level of sophistication that I can't when it's just, you know, my one lease, one place. I also think that the bill as written says that if it's a duplex and you live in half of it, that that one rental unit that you're renting because it is connected to your house is exempt. But if you were to own the house right next door to you because that's where your mother lived and they are not physically connected, then it draws a distinct distinction there that is not logical. And so if we're going to exempt, you know, a duplex to say you have one rental unit, but it happens to be connected. But if that house is right next door and it is not a physically connected, then you're not exempt. I think that's also kind of trues up with the existing exemption that is in the ordinance for the duplex. So I like it better if we just for all practical purposes, we ignore the scenario that was presented, which is that, yes, you can have an unsophisticated owner that actually owns two properties, their home and another property. But the idea that somebody would would leave you a property and then you are now burdened. You know, you're you're making the distinction that somehow you have to you know, if you get multiple properties, you have to then become sophisticated or you're you're somehow different than if you were just given one piece of property. And and I don't see that. I mean, I think you're you're almost unfairly treating the person that gets multiple properties will to them as opposed to a single unit. And and so I think personally, if we if we'd had if this had come up before tonight, I think what we maybe want to do is do an exemption for, you know, 12 months after, you know, somebody was deceased or something like that. So that property owner could get sophisticated on being a landlord if they're going to choose to be a landlord versus just unload the property. I think you're getting hyper focused on one example. I do think there's a difference between saying, hey, I'm going to run one ice cream shop and I'm going to run an entire franchise of ice cream shops. If we if we there is a different level. And I do think that there are a lot of people, whether it is an inheritance or they are trying to do what some of the small landowners in here are doing. I do think there's a difference between taking that step and maybe it's the house you used to live in and you decide to keep it when you move in instead of selling it to build wealth. I do think there is a different level of what you're prepared to take on when you have one of them than when you have multiple. When you have multiple, you do step into a different space that you're operating a bigger business than if you are one. But I won't pick it. I think, you know, we may just need to agree to disagree on this, but I apologize for that one specific example tripping up. But I do want my colleagues to recognize that if you're if you're in a if you're in a position to own two properties, that chances are you're you're sorry. I'm being reminded that we are in question. So do you have any more questions or you can add your comments when we get to the comment period. But if you have any more questions for me, then let's do that now. Are we going to have separate comments on the amendment versus the fine? Yes. Great. Yep. Okay, so y'all good for now. Yeah. Councilman Flynn. And thank you for the reminder. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to follow up first on what Councilman Lopez was getting out with Councilwoman Kennedy. Something that hadn't occurred to me, but in the inclusion of for sale property, I'm just wondering how who would be the party doing the to discrimination. Because the one time I sold a house when I moved out here 37 years ago, my realtor, my representative just brought me the money offer. I have nothing to do with evaluating who their lender was or whatever. So is the lender potentially the person who could be charged or complained about for discrimination or how does how would that work with for sale versus rental? So pardon the lawyerly answer, but the ordinance talks about persons. And so we have the city attorney's office clarify who's a person and a person in our city code could be a corporation association. So there's a broad array. So I think it would be up to the way that the complaint process is written is that, you know, that you ask the person to identify any persons who were involved and then it would be up to the department to determine who who did it. So. So maybe the realtor never told them that the owner that they told someone on the phone, don't bother putting in an offer versus, you know, the the owner. So that would be up to the department to investigate. And the ordinance is, you know, the way that person is interpreted should cover regardless of whether it's an individual or a company or, you know, whatever the entity is. Okay. That seems very murky to me, as opposed to the clear cut, you know, the leasing agent doing it as I can't imagine the seller of a property getting that deep into the details of where the buyer is going to get their their money from. So I don't know realtors if any of them are still here. John has left. Yeah, but I will say I will say this. There were we found no documented complaints involving for sale in our research. So it appears that most of the complaints show up on the rental side. So there's not a lot of case law. There weren't a lot of controversies. There weren't a lot of media coverage. We just couldn't find much. So I don't know that it occurs very often. Okay. That might be why it's murky to me. Mr. Guerrero, maybe you could also I buzzed in after you started talking about some numbers, and you said that typically in in prior times, you are 100% of voucher holders would be able to find accommodations. And now maybe 98%. Is that what you were saying? No, I'm sorry if the numbers were confusing and I just go back five years ago when rents were a little lower, our HUD funding was a little higher. We were able to lease up 100% of the vouchers that we administered, about 6700 vouchers currently in the last year we were in what's called a shortfall situation, meaning our budget authority was ran out before we could lease up all the vouchers we had available. So we're currently utilizing 90, about 90% of the vouchers we have available. And that was the second question I have. The 90% figure you quoted was it wasn't that 10% of voucher holders couldn't find accommodations that you could not fund 10% of of the total vouchers that. That's correct. Thank you. What was the 98 number then? I think you said 98%. Yeah. Historically, we've run that 98 to 100% utilization. Okay, that's all. Do you know how. Many 6700 voucher holders are now housed? About 6000 in the city and 700 in the suburbs. Is that what. You said about. No, I think Councilwoman Kennish had the right numbers. We have about a little under 6000 current households leased under 6000. Just under 6000 in numbers fluctuates. We're in a lease up mode right now and about 12% or so, 10 to 12% are currently leasing outside the city of Denver. Of those approximate 6000. Okay. What was the 6700 them, as I just said. 6700 is yeah. I figured about ten years ago. Currently with HUD, the Housing Authority has 6700 vouchers that we administer. However, our ability to lease those up is subject to our budget authority. All right, I get it. Okay. How many voucher holders are unable to find accommodation? Of the do they expire at a certain point? Like, do they have so six months that. We've had to put time. So his per HUD and and in our own internal policies we put limits on once you are issued a voucher, how much time you have to find a unit. And we've gone we're currently at 60 days. So once you are issued the voucher, we want you out there looking and trying to find a unit that's available immediately. And I. I'm sorry. And I understand. And the the the success rate of those families who are finding units to lease up. Say that again. I'm sorry. Of the of the once the family's issued a voucher. I don't have the data for you and the percentage that are able to find a unit in that 60 day period. And the percentage that are not. Oh, okay. That'd be really important to have, because, again, I'll. Be happy to get you that. Help to judge. How how big is the problem that we're trying to solve here? Mm hmm. Ah. 100% of people who get vouchers, finding units. And if they are, why are we doing this? Yeah, as I said, I think at times we have had I think it's as much a question of choice in terms of which units and in what neighborhoods they're able to find those units. Right. By, you know, currently it's landlords who are choosing to participate in the program, which means that certain area, certain neighborhoods may have more exclusions or not be accessible to families where you are. And we have and this is part of our challenge with the funding is we've raised our rental, our fair market rents so that our vouchers are competitive. As competitive as can be in the in. This market is higher. Cost market. Yes. Right. And I do understand the choice expanding the the available choices. But if 100% are nevertheless finding accommodation, I would like to you say you don't have that figure offhand, but would you be able to get that before final next week? Absolutely. I'd appreciate that. All right. Thank you. That's always present. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I have two questions. The first one is, while since you're there, let me just ask you, what is the average length of time that it takes someone to get approved for a voucher? Not once. Once they've once they've come through your doors. But there are people who have tried year after year after year to get approved, to be on the list, to then finally get a voucher. And then once they get one. This is part of the challenge they're dealing with, right? Yes. So do you have any of that? Well. I can tell you that. So we do. We open up our registration for the housing choice voucher on an annual basis. We've averaged or have seen numbers as high as 25,000 families apply or register for the lottery in recent years. I think this last year we had just under 22,000 households submit their interest card in a 48 hour period. Are they limited to just Denver residents? That is open to any. It's an online registration, so anybody is eligible to apply. You do have to apply. Anybody is eligible to apply. And it's at an annual basis. Certainly the past several years we might issue 500. And in a good year, maybe a thousand vouchers to that to the families who've applied. Okay. So the demand far exceeds the accessibility? Yeah, without a doubt. Mm hmm. I want to follow up with a question to my colleagues. So I'm done with you for now. Thank you, Councilwoman Kinney. Have you explored any sources that potentially might be available for the fund in the data you shared on other cities was very enlightening to see that it's really a safeguard for the landlords, but most of them are more than likely utilizing the deposits for addressing the damages to their units, and particularly when they exceed the value of the deposit. That's where a fund would be very helpful. So can you just speak to any potential sources in Denver that might be available or maybe even foundations, national resources, whatever? Yeah, we had not gotten very far. I will say that I did ask OED to look into sometimes they have you know, I don't want to say weird, but, you know, odd little funds that have restricted uses that might just kind of be waiting for the right thing that fits the niche. And so I did ask them to look at their smaller funds to see if any of those might be a fit for this. Obviously, there's the housing fund if it's deemed to be eligible. I had not yet gotten to the point of asking the city attorney to analyze it for eligibility, but my guess is it would probably be eligible. And then there's the general fund, so. So we hadn't gone down that road, but. So that would be a next step, assuming this would pass tonight to then look at what kind of resources might be available to create a fund so that. You know, I think we'd probably see a similar situation where the vast majority of the people would be, you know, respectable, taking care of the property, happy to just be in housing. But there are those just like any other renters, not limited to low income folks or somebody on a restricted income that tend to not take care of somebody else's property when they rent it. And I've heard, as I shared in committee, some horror stories about people who rent their home out as short term rentals, who have had their properties destroyed by folks who rent it out just for, you know, a weekend or a couple of nights. So anyway, that would be a next step. Yeah, I think we would have to engage with the administration because we'd be doing this, you know, heading into budget season and understanding so that that, you know, if that's the will of this body, we will happily continue that conversation and see what the options are. I would say this, though, I think part of the reason Seattle discontinued their fund is because they had money sitting there unused and felt like it was better to put it where it would be used. So I think any fund we would have should be very modest because the data just doesn't support a large quantity of funds being set aside. We I didn't mention it specifically. I'll give you all this memo that we just finished today. But you know, the metro area, MDH II, Metro Denver Homeless Initiative and the Metro Mayors funded a fund specifically for veteran vouchers. It also was underutilized. They are redeploying the funds because they didn't feel like it was appropriate to leave them sitting there unused. So if we do do anything, I think it should be very modest because you don't want to take funds that could be doing something to directly house someone today and set them aside. So so I think that that's my only thought is this is if we do this, it needs to be probably pretty modest because the data just hasn't shown this large demand. Okay. I just want to express an interest in in this particular piece, because I think it is important to have something in place for those extenuating circumstances where damages might far exceed the cost of a deposit. So thank you. Those were my only questions. All right, Councilwoman Black, your backup. Thank you. I was going to ask the same questions as Councilman Flynn asked, but just to verify, you are going to get back to us and let us know about the 10% that aren't finding places if they are, because people are not accepting vouchers or accepting applications from people. Without us. I'll be able to offer my assignment as I took it was to get back with the number of families who are issued a voucher, but they're not able to find a unit to lease. We don't have we don't get information about why they were not able to if how many applications they may have submitted, we'd have to actually go out and talk to those families individually. And so we don't have that data available, just a percentage that are not able to lease up in the time period that they have. Okay. Well, as we move forward, I think that would be really important information to have if if this does pass. Mm hmm. I think that we need to get that kind of feedback from people. And I know you have a study, but. Yeah. I was hoping to get more information about that, but anyway, thank you. All right, you all done? All right. Seeing no other questions, though. The public hearing for Council Bill 788 is closed. We're going to start with comments on the amendment or then vote on the amendment and then we'll move on to the bill, either as amended or without the amendment. Based on that, Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to be abstaining on the amendment tonight, although the the rules for conflict of interest are fairly narrow. I believe that any appearance of impropriety. And so this this amendment could benefit my my personal family. And I don't feel like it's appropriate for me to take a position that might be perceived as a conflict of interest. And so I'm not opposed to it, but I just don't feel like it would be appropriate. So I'm going to be abstaining tonight. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennedy. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. And Councilman Espinosa, you may be surprised to hear that. I'm going to ask the same questions that you were asking about. And I talked to Councilman Clark about this earlier today. I don't know where you draw the line, where someone you've called someone owning one ice cream shop or someone owning a franchise. These people who are sitting here at 10 a.m., I don't think they own franchises of ice cream shops. They own a couple places. Think your name, Suzanne. She says she makes $45,000 a year and is painting and making her business. Yeah, right. Right. At any rate, I don't think I don't know where you draw the line between. As Councilman Espinosa said, it's it's. You don't have to comply if you have one other place. But what if you have to? What if? What if I've got somebody in my district who owns a garden court? The original garden carts from the fifties that have, I don't know, five or six little apartments around the garden. And they live there. Why would they have to comply and somebody wouldn't? And if the point is we want to avoid discrimination, then then nobody should be exempted from it. So I'm having a really hard time with the line that is drawn. Is that a question or comment that you want me to respond to? I mean. To me. Yeah, I would just say again, I think that there are other cities who have done this. They have drawn a line and it's not an easy line to draw. And maybe there is a better place to draw that line where other cities have. I think one is as low as you can draw that line and there are other cities that have drawn it higher. There was no proposal on the table except for the bill already has built in an exemption for one if you're in a duplex. And so for me, for us to draw the line on one, but only if it happens to be connected to where you live in, was not the appropriate place. I took the next half step to say it is one across the board. So I guess I would argue that if you're torn on that, then we should probably be considering an amendment to take out the exemption on the duplex as well, because then that is a line that is less logical than one across the board. But any other questions? All right, Councilman Espinosa. And just to reiterate that, I just if we're saying that this process is onerous and difficult for anybody, why is it okay that I mean, why why create an exemption? And yeah, you know, it's either good for everybody or it's not good for anybody. And and and so if it is a struggle and you're saying essentially acknowledging that by virtue of the amendment, then maybe we need to fix those problems. And I think we only create a give us some sort of cushion by alleviating the mean by by by not imposing the problem on everybody. And so I think you're probably if you if you if you go ahead, remove it from the duplex, but then maybe you're going to you're going to get in a situation where the city needs to step up to the plate on any real legitimate problems that persist in and exist. So I just I don't I don't I'm just I struggle with that, you know, sort of acknowledgment that this is a difficult thing for one person with one property, but it's not a difficult thing for one person with multiple properties. It's a weird distinction to me. So for that, with that, I won't be supporting the amendment. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Flynn. I think, Mr. President, I will support your amendment and I see the logic behind it. And for small operators, in fact, I would I would have supported it if it had exempted and say several or up to a half dozen for small operators, particularly in an environment where we just heard that every 100% of the vouchers that are out there are being utilized. There is a big difference between small operators who have a unit or two or a half a dozen or a handful and cornerstone management and some of the entities that do wide scale property management, there's a huge difference in their ability to handle the paperwork and their ability to carry the losses for up to a month and a half before they get their first check is magnified greatly over some of the folks we heard who manage one to or six units. So I think it's very appropriate, particularly since the since the the bill was authored with an exemption for a single unit that happens to be a duplex. It makes perfect sense to say that at least one unit that is separate should be exempt as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. The only comment I wanted to make is just to reiterate that vouchers are a small part of what this bill is about. Right. And it's about student loans, and it's about the. Veterans benefits. It's about so many other different sources of income. So I will be supporting the amendment as I agree with that. It's a reasonable half step. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman Cashman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I really like the bill. I think the the the I wanted to thank Councilwoman Committee folks. Just to remind you, were just doing comments on the amendment so we can vote on the amendment and then we'll move to the comments on the bill. Write the amendment that what? I'm sorry. Threw me off, ma'am. I don't think the amendment does much, much damage. It's hard to draw that line, however. I'm not. Worried about the one unit that somebody is renting as an impact to the whole. I think there's a lot more out there where it's actually company policy and it's a lot. I mean, those are folks that control a lot more units and just one. So for me, I mean, it's it's something I can live with. I don't think it's it's necessary. However, if it if it does achieve a level of compromise, if it does identify, hopefully, the folks that you're intending to alleviate in the building, great. But I. Support it from now. All right. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. It's interesting to me that by exempting anybody, we are assuming that it is a difficult process to use some kind of voucher. And I do appreciate the thought that we're not talking just about vouchers. We're talking about VA and other things. So making an exemption means we assume this is going to be a difficult. Job for anybody who is renting somebody, something but we haven't heard yet from at least the H.A. is how difficult is it? Now I'm going to support it too, because I'm assuming it is difficult, but if we find out that it's not difficult and that perhaps people aren't being turned away for their source of income, then I also would be asking, you know, why are we doing this in the first place? That being said, I would suspect that if we here if we learn some more data. From Mr. Guerrero that we could make other amendments by next week to include maybe four or five of the places that you rent instead of one or none. I suppose there's opportunity for amendment next time too. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. All right. Seeing no other questions or comments on the amendment. And that's a reminder. We're voting on the amendment on the bill as a whole. Madam Secretary, can we do roll call on the amendment? Black, I. ESPINOSA Yeah. Flynn I. Gillmor I. Cashman I can each abstain. Lopez. I knew. Ortega. Sussman Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting, announce the results. I just want to make sure all the numbers are here. Nine, ten, 11. Nine eyes when they went. Abstention. Nine eyes one day on abstention. Council Bill 788 has been amended. Jasmine Espinosa We now need a motion to order published as amended. I move that council bill 17 mean council vote 18 0788 be ordered published as amended. It has been moved and seconded. Now comments on the bill as amended. Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to everyone who testified whether you were in support or opposed. You've been here a long time and you've offered your heartfelt words and they are appreciated. I want to again thank my staff member, Polley, who did all the research, the community folks who brought this to our attention. I want to thank the apartment association and the realtors. I reached out to both of them when I started working on this to make sure that you all had a chance to be heard and you really took it seriously and engaged date for being here. My colleagues on the Housing and Homelessness workgroup were small but mighty, and this really grew out of a conversation about what more could we work on? And also the Administration and Office of Economic Development and Human Rights Community Partnerships. The mayor's office spent time helping us think through some of the pieces. So and also I just want to do a shout out to my state representative, Leslie Herrod, who kind of brought this bill to the attention of the state with her work. So we I think that a couple of things that really grounded me in taking on this bill. The first is that there is no one single silver bullet to any housing challenge that the city faces. And so if you accept that as a reality, the way that you have to do this work is you have to take each opportunity to grow your impact. And so today a number of us were with the Globeville area, Sentia community, doing their first investment for a community land trust that will probably result in dozens of homes, dozens or dozens. But a small number eviction fund that all of us contributed to is going to help a few hundred people. The new units that the city is building and preserving are helping thousands of people. And so you have to start adding up each of these things together. And then you look at this bill and you think there are additional households being helped. And so cumulatively is how we have to count our work on housing. You can't count any one, bill, and say, here's what we've done. You have to cumulatively count. And so that's what this is about. It is also about the idea that there are barriers that we can lower and there are barriers we've talked about most of the night for individuals. Right. We've talked a lot about renters. So I'll focus there and I think about, you know, the the testimony tonight that this isn't just about low income renters. You know, women who experience divorce might experience a change in their income. And child support is what allows them to be able to afford housing with the number of bedrooms they need for their kids. And they may not be low income, but they need then come to qualify for the housing. And that's so this can touch people at all incomes. And it's not just about lowering barriers for individuals, though. One of the things that we know is that communities end up with a more diverse housing base when people have mobility. I'm in a number of conversations with Councilwoman Ortega, and the question comes up from communities are we really building an integrated city where folks with different incomes live throughout the city, or do we just put affordable housing in one neighborhood and we put it in that neighborhood over and over again? Well, if we're serious about that answer, if we're serious about saying that people should be able to live in a variety of neighborhoods in our city, maybe near the school they want to go to or near the job that they work at. This is one of those ways, and the research shows that this creates more mobility for families. And what is mobility provide? Right. I just want to draw the fuller picture because we've done these outlines tonight. But the fuller picture is the mobility provides access to maybe a better education, maybe to the better school, maybe less transportation time . So rather than that, 12% of voucher holders, 12% of voucher holders. Who are. Living in another county, maybe they're away from their child care providers, maybe they're away from their elderly parents. Maybe they're spending that time on our highways creating traffic. But all of these types of impacts that we all start to get affected by, right? So this isn't just about the individual who gets that choice and the individual who gets that mobility, but it's about the community that they're part of and it's about the ways that our community works more functionally when people can live where they need to. So that's the story we're writing tonight, the story about additional impact, the story about opportunity, and the story about saying that people of all incomes should have opportunities to live in a variety of neighborhoods in our city. So tonight's only our first reading. But it. Is an important milestone. And so I am so pleased with the engagement folks have had. I, I do want to caution I hear that we're going to have more debate about this threshold. And I will say this. We had a lot of public process leading up to tonight, and the idea of an exception was not floated at committee. It was not floated in some of the workgroups where it might have had more chance. If folks are planning to continue that conversation, I would ask you to reach out to Enterprise and the coalition and some of the folks who spoke here tonight and expressed concern about widening that door. I think that, you know, they deserve that engagement. And I would caution against raising the threshold higher. And so I believe one is is not unreasonable. But I do believe that starting to grow that door then creates a situation where people who do have a profession of managing homes and have the ability to study the rules. For me, the one person exception is someone who's maybe less likely to know about it because they don't do very many leases. They're less likely to maybe know that the law exists. If you do this as a living, then then your ability to learn about the rules and follow them is greater. So it's about your capacity? Not for me. It's not about the vouchers. It's about knowing what the rules are. And I think that that capacity, if you're doing this as a profession, you really need to know. So so I would caution against that. In the week that comes, I would encourage folks to to talk to those who express concerns about it today. And I want to thank those of you who have expressed your support so far and encourage a yes vote on this bill tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman each. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I am in support of this bill. There is absolutely a need. There are so many people in Denver who need a home and no one should be discriminated against for any reason. My biggest concern, as I think I've heard expressed tonight, is the burden on property owners like the people who are here tonight. I understand that there have been other opportunities for people to speak up. This is the first time that I've heard a lot of these stories and I really feel for you all. So. As I said earlier, I have a real mental challenge with where you draw the line. And so I would like to talk about that more, but. Councilwoman Kennish, I'd like to know that if we pass this, that we can gather data for a year and see how it goes and see, you know, work with DHS. We heard from people that they've had issues with payments and timing, and we're getting different information. And I would really like to see in a year if we could have a task force with stakeholders like the people who have been sitting here for 5 hours, as well as tenants, and just look at it and see if we solved the problem, if we caused a problem for these small business owners. So I would really like to talk to you about having some kind of commitment doing that. And my final comment is, I agree, we need mixed neighborhoods. My district has a lot of apartments that accept vouchers, and we have a lot of nice amenities in my district also. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Black, Councilman Flynn. Thanks, Mr.. President. I want to thank Councilwoman Kennedy and the task force and the community that that drew this up, because I support the inclusion of these nontraditional financial resources in the calculation of a person's ability to pay rent, even though they're not really income per se, necessarily, but because it's right, if you have the ability to pay the rent, that's what matters. But this bill addresses only half of the equation. For me, it's not balanced against the risks that are being shifted to the property owners. It gets us only halfway there. Many localities have adopted source of income anti-discrimination laws. Not all, but many have balanced the added risks that it shifts onto private property owners, many of whom are small operators with only a few units. By establishing a risk mitigation fund, Seattle may be defunding its program, but the state of Washington's legislature created a statewide risk mitigation fund two years ago that covers all the cities in the state, including Seattle. Such a fund. Doesn't diminish your legislation, Councilwoman, I believe. In fact, I believe it complements it and helps it be more effective and makes it work better. It helps get units back on the market faster and it helps increase voluntary compliance. And I would encourage. I appreciate that you're continuing to engage and to consider that. And over the next week, I will reach out to some of the stakeholders that you mentioned. It provides it does provide a recourse for landlords whose property suffers excessive damages, but whose former tenants paid substantially through vouchers or child support payments or student loans or financial resources from which landlords have no recourse for recovering those damages and that little real income from which to pay damages. This isn't good for those individual property owners, even if only a few. Even if only five claims were made in in Portland for those five individuals, that could be devastating. That could be their lifetime retirement investment. If it were a single unit or if it were just a few units that they own and that they're managing. And so I think that fund, it's good for turning around vacant, affordable rental units to the next tenant because damages can be repaired sooner. Any tenant, any tenant can cause excessive damage to a property. This isn't about alternate sources of income. Any tenant can cause damage to property. I see one of them. Our landlady's nodding her head. In fact, I could probably point to homeowners who aren't taking care of their property very well, as a matter of fact. So this isn't about the source of income. It's about the ability of the property owner to to get whole and turn that property around and get it back on the market quickly. So who causes the excessive damage isn't the point. It's the fact that tenants, most tenants who have W-2, wage income landlords have some pretty good recourse through a court judgment and perhaps garnishment. But this bill places the risk of potential substantial financial loss on the property owner, while leaving the owner with a diminished ability to recover those damages. Without a fund, a landlord cannot recover damages from a person's child support. Or a housing voucher or a student loan. Data from the cities that have these funds show they're not frequently used as the councilwoman read. I think that's a very good thing. I think that bodes well for us establishing a fund with a very small amount. But for those, as I said, for those few who do suffer those extensive damages, it could be it can be life altering and very, very bad. I had a constituent in my office last week who heard about this, and he had a $20,000 repair bill after a tenant. I see more nodding of heads, a $20,000 repair bill from a tenant who had left significant damage to systems in the House for a small operator of a handful of rentals. A fund, even if it's limited and capped, can be a lifesaver for that person, especially if it's that person's retirement, if that's their nest egg for retirement. But even more, a risk mitigation fund can ensure that rental units return to the market faster, be available to new tenants sooner than if a landlord is stuck with drawn out costs and repairs in a city with an affordable housing shortage like Denver. This would help us. Thank you to the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless for expressing openness to a risk mitigation fund. If that were in here, I could support this. Mandating landlords to participate in what has historically been a voluntary program. But not offsetting the added risk is an imbalanced approach that I cannot support tonight. I do respect, Councilwoman, your continuing consideration of a fund to balance this program and I support the includes the inclusion of vouchers and other nontraditional financial resources. We might not be able to initiate an appropriation on our own tonight or next week, although I would dispute that. And we have we've exchanged some emails on this, if you haven't if you couldn't tell by now over what council powers are. But we can create the program and funded in the 2019 budget, since this ordinance is an effective until January 1st. If this bill were amended to create a risk mitigation program, I would vote yes. But because of what I see as an imbalance transfer of risk without it tonight I have to vote no and hope that maybe we can address this next week on final. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I grew up in my my whole life here in Denver, and I was a renter for a very long time. My family were renters for a very, very, very long time. I always. People ask me, how many times have you moved in your lifetime? It's in the throes. I used to. I lived all over my district, rented all over from one duplex to the other. And the hard part was sometimes I never really understood why. Because both of my parents were working. All it took was for my dad to have an accent sometimes. Sometimes even as a city councilman just a few years ago. This is just buying a home. All I had to be was Mexican. And going all around our neighborhood and being told no. And of course, I wasn't throwing my name out there and saying, well, I'm the city councilman. I'll do something, you know, nothing like that. It's just the fact that. No discriminatory practices. And if that's just that, that's somebody who. Can pay the rent. There's only sin is just my last name. Imagine if you had that coupled with. Of how you think about folks in this city, the working class in this city, and especially people of color. We're on the ropes. They're on the ropes in our own city. And for folks who are struggling to find it, to be able to find a place they have a place to get a voucher to be in this program is a feat in of itself. The be so fortunate to actually get in the program, be able to use a voucher to actually find a place. Is a feeding of itself and then to be turned away just because of the source of income. That's heartbreaking. And nobody in here is accusing anybody of all you all in grouping anybody together. It's the practice that should not. I mean, it's the practice that, uh, that this language and that this question in front of us that this bill is prohibiting. It's the practice of discrimination. Plain and simple. If you don't discriminate, you don't have an issue. If there are I mean, if there is a legal question, as long as it is a legitimate reason. As is as with the language as it. If you're acting in good faith as a landlord or and there's a legitimate reason and you're going by with the rules and the laws going to now reflect what's in other cities, then you should have nothing to worry about. I supported the amendment because I get that. I get the logic there. I could understand it. There's a little bit of a balance. But at the end of the day, we wanted to go with this language and I agree with this language. I support this bill going after discriminatory housing practices. It's just not right. And there are some bad apples out there that ruin it for the bunch. But at the end of the day, discrimination should be prohibited in this kind of manner. It's hard enough trying to survive in Denver. It's even worse when somebody is closing the door on union. Just because. They don't like the way you're paying. Or what you're paying with. So thank you for the for taking this up, Councilwoman Kenny. I'm glad that Denver is going to join the ranks of other cities that are that are visionary with this. And, you know, to afford to live in a lot of our U.S. cities is becoming a challenge. Denver's not alone in that. But we can do something about it. So thank you. I appreciate that. Count some Canadian folks in the community at this point, these folks that showed up tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Espinosa. The and the problem with 100% of the vouchers being used is it's a drive until you qualify. Scenario and and thousands of those vouchers are being Denver vouchers are being used outside of Denver. And so it's not enough to say, oh, they're all getting used when they're not they're not being used by Denver residents. They were here. But now they can't they can't live here. The. The problem. The real problem I have with the and this is a good problem to have because I represent Northwest Denver, which is the area that has been rampant displacement and gentrification. And, you know, this is the poster child for that problem in Denver before it got to Reno. And five points to the degree that it is now is that I have huge sections of my district where an ADU is allowed as a use by right and they're not getting wildly built. There's not just this huge boom boom of 80 use getting built in those areas where they're allowed. But I do get constant requests to add edu ability in areas where they're not allowed because those are the areas that are most desirable and the highest property values. And the argument that is always made is it will increase affordability. You know, let us do this because we can solve Denver's affordability, affordable housing problem by by letting us take high value real estate and put some small units on it. There's some logic there, but at the same time, it's like anything else. The market goes where the market goes, and if it's a very high desirability area, it will still command the same dollars per square foot, which will be high. There will be fewer of them. And and they'll be smashed into areas that are desirable. And those other areas where it's already allowed that are not as marketable will continue to languish. And that's okay. That's market is what the market is. But now what we did by basically saying one owner, one unit is we've now created a real nice comfortable carve out that that you can actually build that. ADU That's supposed to address affordability, but you can discriminate on income on it. And that is. Why? It doesn't make any sense to me. I get somebody doesn't have sort of the wherewithal or the practical, you know, the understanding of it. And maybe it's a burden if we're saying it's a burden. But there are whole sections of the city where it where the people have stars and short term rentals and stuff like that. Counter to what our rules are. And because it's largely profitable, even with higher taxes and they have the means to figure it out. And we just lumped everybody in and that's fine if we're building wealth. And that was our that's our sure that's our goal. But this isn't affordability. You know, this is about, you know, nondiscrimination are towards fixed I mean, towards certified income sources that are. That are I mean, it's an affordability there's a strong affordability component here that we just we just we just discriminated against based on the number of units that you own. And so that's I mean, that was that prior prior thing. But it is it is part of my frustration with this going so far, but not going all the way. And but I did want to talk about the fact that people you know, the complaint here was that this is going to drive up costs and costs will be passed on to the homeowners, I mean, the renters and whatnot. Well, this body has made has done a lot of things to boost the desirability of the city, the livability of the city, all of which drive up rents. And owners don't line up in here and say, hey, stop improving the city or we'll have to raise rents and capitalize on that increase in value. You know, I will argue that in my time in office, we have seen a far more substantial increase in property and rental prices because of the things the city is doing right. Then this bit of legislation is going to do for for existing property owners. And the problem is, is you are right getting this right, too, and getting it more right if we had made it applicable to everybody. Also improved this city as a whole. It's a problem. Part of the reason why Portland is harder and Seattle is more expensive is there getting it right for a lot of people? And so it is going to be a fund later on and that's going to help drive prices up. And it is a big problem because they all can play against each other. But guess what? You, the property owners, multiple units are still going to be the big winners. You can cover your costs. You can cover your expenses if you incur them this way. You have the ability and the latitude to do that. Or you can, you know, exit. You know, you can figure out your exit strategy. It's not a it's not a terrible time to sell right now. And so, I mean, it is a terrible time because your values are going up. So I wouldn't do that. But, you know, it's so I just I'm I will be supporting this measure, but I am not you can tell I'm not happy because we have real housing. Real multi, multi bedroom family size housing problems in northwest Denver. And we are losing families like they're going out of style up there. And the only way we can replace them is seemingly to subsidize heavily projects. And that is coming out of your pockets as well from your income taxes and your property taxes now. And those are very expensive units to build as opposed to just housing people with subsidy or other certified incomes in existing units and using. And that's a sustainable model that's in tons of embodied energy in those in those properties. And this is a more aggressive approach to this bill and a stronger push for a fund are the better way to do this. And I thought we were near perfect on the bill before it was amended. And this is the situation. We replaced the near perfect with the good, and I don't quite get why we would have done that, but we did that nonetheless is still better than where we're at today. So I will be supporting it. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilman. No. Thank you, Mr. President. I'll be supporting the bill tonight. And I think it's all again, like you said, it's all about the recognizing all sources of income to make housing available. And as much discussion as we've had about homelessness, we know that housing is number one. It's always housing first. And if we can help people get off the street to fight homelessness, to give them a break is well worth it. Just to listen to the stories that are just heartbreaking of folks who finally get off the street and find a house housing, whether St Francis Inn or any or any other kind of like Colorado College for the Homeless or anyone is just they're just so proud to be have housing off the street is it's a great great thing we're doing I think one thing we did, you know, we got a real light shone on the Denver Housing Authority. So you've got a great opportunity here to to produce some data. You sort of set a standard in two weeks tonight. And so, you know, it'd be a great to Councilwoman Black hit the nail right on the head and to do some reports, provide some data, do some evaluation of how the process works so that making it as efficient as possible. The other thing I found disturbing, too, is, is the 6000 and the 6700 vouchers, you know, it's all you know, just because there's no funding for 700, I just worry about giving false hope to people who get approved. And then there's no money there for housing. And I know it's not your fault, it's just the HUD funding issue. But I just worry about that. And I also say I don't think enough attention is given to the story about the 22,000 that apply for vouchers that no one can even crack the surface. So I think that's something that's troublesome to me, but at least I'm supporting tonight. Well, I think this bill will help a little bit. And and I. Appreciate Councilwoman Kinney's work on this bill. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman. New Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I certainly support this bill with or without the amendment that was passed with or without any kind of a fund. And I'm open to considering the funds that have been discussed, but I'm troubled the more I think about it. We have one of the most difficult businesses to succeed in is the restaurant business. And we have hundreds and hundreds of people have put their their life savings on the line for restaurants. And don't say I'm leaving because it's too tough. Dry cleaners, boutiques, auto repair businesses all put their life on the line to make their contribution to our city. So I'm going to continue to, as I said, consider the arguments that I'll hear from my colleagues about the wisdom or lack of it for a fund. If I was a landlord, if that was my chosen line of work, I'd be thrilled if someone mitigated my rest, my risk. But like I say, I mean, look, find me a small business around Denver. Please find me a small business around Denver that wouldn't say the same thing. Please mitigate my risk. I don't know who who has who gets those funds. So why should we put. Tax money. And I'm asking that question, and I'll be glad to hear from any of you as the week goes on. We can't take it now, but please contact me and let me know that, because it's troubling me right now. I was fine with the concept. I spoke with the councilwoman about it through the week, but as I'm sitting here thinking, I'll also need to justify to those other businesses around the city why we're not mitigating their risk because they make an equal contribution to our life experience in Denver. And I know affordable housing is important, but grocery stores sell food and restaurants sell food, etc. etc.. Made my point. I'll be supporting this bill. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Clark. I'm happy to support this bill, too. And I want to really thank. Councilwoman Canete for taking the leadership. On it. But then also the the three women that came and talked to me from Enterprise, Colorado. Coalition for the Homeless and 9 to 5. You sharing your stories and your passion and advocacy. Thank you so much for the work on. This and I look forward to following the data and really understanding a little bit more what a reserve. Fund would look like. And B, I share Councilman. Cashman's concerns about, you know, if this. Is your chosen business, if this is your chosen. Source of income, there are certain risks that go along with it. And, you know, we talked a lot about vouchers, but really at the end of the day, I. Want to look at this from a. Very high level and Colorado is an out at will employment state employment is not guaranteed. And so a lot of the sources of income that we've listed in this bill are more stable, more guaranteed. Than an hourly wage job. And so I'm happy that I'm going to be able to support this. And we heard a lot of individual stories, but I think of the. Thousands of folks and especially families with. Children who. Have these sources. Of income and have been turned away, voucher or not, and have been discriminated against. And so, you know, at the end of the day, I'm happy to support it. I would not be in support of increasing additional units that would be exempt. I understand the one off unit, but. Anything above that, I would be concerned that. We're we're hurting the very folks that we're trying to protect by guaranteeing that they won't. Be discriminated. Against for the different sources. Of income. Thank you, President Clark. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore, Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I also want to say thank you to Councilwoman Canete and members of the Housing and Homeless Committee and all the organizations and individuals that engaged in this conversation. I think all of that input has helped shape what we have before us tonight. And I just want to add that I, I do support us having a fund. I would not call it a risk mitigation fund as much as it being a, you know, a I don't I don't agree that we should have a fund that should be available to every landlord to participate in the program. But if we have someone whose property has been destroyed in excess of their deposit, then that's what the fund should be for and we should have a cap on that. So that's what I would love for us to explore by having some, some resources available for those extenuating circumstances. Because I think the vast majority of people who are desperate for housing will do everything they can to take care of it and be happy to have a roof over their head. You all know, I serve on the board of a nonprofit housing development organization, and I see both sides of this coin. You know, the challenges of being a landlord, but also meeting the demand of people who are low income that really need housing and struggle to find it. And we provide housing for people that have vouchers as well as others, because we serve a mix of income levels. And so I understand and sympathize with the the challenges and the impact of of being a landlord, which is why I think having a housing fund to assist in those situations that I just explained would be really important. I also think that the counseling that's being provided by DHS for folks that come in that are looking for housing, the nonprofit I sit on does homeownership counseling, you know, for people that want to purchase a home. And oftentimes these are folks that come in as renters that also want to be homeowners. And wherever we can provide that counseling, I think that's extremely helpful. I think the counseling on the side of the landlords is equally as important to ensure that as somebody wanting to come into the program to understand what the procedural steps are to make it easier is extremely important to make it smooth for everybody, because we want this to be a seamless operation for both the people seeking housing as well as the landlords willing to participate in this program. So I will be supporting this tonight, and I think the amendment was a good one. I would not support it going beyond that either. So thank. You. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Espinosa, the hours late, these people have stuck with us. You're back up. After having expressed how you're voting, I would implore you to be a speedy as possible. But you're your backup. I just want to let people know that I am going to the stupidly. I don't know the answer to this question, but I will be following up with city attorneys and whatnot to find out if if you own each separate property under separate LLCs, is that separate owners or not? I just don't know. So I just want you to know that going to ask that question things. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. I just want to really think, Councilwoman, for your leadership on this, the Housing and Homelessness Working Group, for all of the work, all of the people in this room, both for and against, who've been a part of this process and taking time out of your lives to sit with here with us for over 5 hours tonight. This is what makes our process work. Thank you for being committed to it. Thank you, Councilwoman. I'm very excited to support this tonight. And with that, Madam Secretary Rogoff. Can each I. Lopez. All right. New Ortega assessment. Black Eye. Espinosa. Flynn now Gilmore. I. Cashman. I. Mr. President. I. I'm a secretary. Please close the voting and announce the results. Ten Eyes One Day. Ten Eyes one day. Councilor Bill 788 has been ordered published as amended. Final consideration will be Monday, August 6th. On Monday, August six, 2018. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 688, designating 2900 South University Boulevard, the Walshaw Park Cottage, as a structure for preservation, saying no other business before this body.

Approves the creation of a Special Revenue Fund serving as a revolving loan fund for the specific purpose of creating new affordable housing for the workforce rental population in Denver. (FINANCE & SERVICES) The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 8-12-14.

DenverCityCouncil_08252014_14-0620

Thank you. I move that council bill 620 series of 2014 be ordered published. It has been moved and seconded. Comments from members of Council Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. This is an ordinance that creates a special revenue fund, which is an affordable housing revenue fund. If one were evaluating this ordinance only on the design of the special revenue fund it creates. It's thoughtfully constructed to combine numerous sources of money toward an affordable housing goal. The Office of Economic Development delivered what the mayor intended. However, funds don't exist in a vacuum. This one presents several problems and issues, and I like to talk about what I see as those problems and issues. First was a massive disappointment to me. The intention stated by OED, the Office of Economic Development in committee to seek more general fund money to seed it contradicts what I have been assured by the administration during the last budget cycle. You know, when a person goes to great lengths to compromise, you really expect that compromise to be upheld. What was postured as one time funding in the 2014 budget now has morphed into a way to potentially siphon off millions each year short in key basic city functions. A second issue is just I want people to understand this is not the only effort that we are doing about affordable housing. Many other funding sources exist just to name a few. There's housing for persons with AIDS, home funds, community development block grant money, inclusionary housing funds, still private activity bonds, Denver's Road Home, and the Denver Housing Authority, which actually does perhaps the best job. It's not as if the city isn't making headway. The third thing, though, and perhaps is most important, especially given the conversation of some of my colleagues tonight, is the conversation about affordable housing. Now, when I hear terms like the unanimity of all these task force, I can guarantee you, based on what I'm going to say, that a number of the mainstream people from my district were not a part of that discussion. This fund is based on the premise that our citizens feel it's the city's responsibility to supply taxpayer subsidized housing for workforce housing. That's a higher income level than any of the other sources allow. And because of the social engineering aspect that the city likes to put in place, we can expect to see subsidized housing built on more expensive land. Driving up construction costs. One of the reasons taxpayers around the metro area, including Denver voters, funded fast tracks, was to give access to work places for more affordable metro areas. Billions of dollars have already been invested with more to come. But city officials want Denver workers to be able to live in Denver. That's one of the key premises of this. This is not just about housing, about shelter. There's another agenda afloat. I wanted to assess what my constituents think about the city's role in affordable housing. So on this your citizens survey, I asked this question. Housing prices are rising, inventory is low, and wages remain stagnant, making Denver increasingly unaffordable for many people who work in Denver businesses. Now, I think most of you would agree that's a very fair statement. Is it the city, the city's club? Is it the city government's responsibility to see that housing is affordable for people who work in the city? The survey just went out, so I have only a week's worth of responses, but that already equates to 1287 individuals . Only 21% said yes. It's not a scientific survey, but it clearly shows the trends and an internal thinking of the majority of people in my district. And I know from having done these surveys in the past, how to expect those numbers to move when the remainder come in. I also asked if the city should provide developers financial incentives to build affordable workforce housing. Now, that's exactly what this fund does. 30% said yes. To understand that, I mean, 70% said no. Moreover, some of the people in my some of the people who live in my district earn less than the people intended to be subsidized by this fund. Remember, it's workforce housing. It's not very low income housing. Which brings me to where I started. Using general fund moneys means they are subsidizing people who earn more than they earn. And money will be taken away from city services they thought they were paying for. I cannot support this. Thank you, Councilwoman. Thoughts, Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to invite our new housing director, if I may, to ask him to describe the families that will be served by this fund so we can get that clarified before I make a comment. Thank you. Just go ahead and introduce yourself for the record. I sure will. My name is Rick Padilla. I'm the new morphing into the recently hired housing director, and we are further into the job than it was last week when I was called up. So I will do my best to answer your question. Describe those folks. So thank you and good evening, council members. And thank you, Councilwoman Kenney. For folks we're talking about in a 40 to 60% area, median income we're talking about, I think it was mentioned earlier, we were talking about lab technicians and nursing assistant making approximately 29,000 a year, a construction worker making approximately $31,000 a year , a vet technician making approximately $31,000 a year. Those are the folks we're actually talking about, security guard, senior citizens, the folks that make the a large percentage of our of our households in Denver, folks who want to remain to live in Denver, people that want to move into Denver. And then when one question the comment was made that we're making headway on the need for housing. And I was just wondering, is that what the data shows? Are we is the knee are we catching up to the need for housing in terms of how many housing units we need to serve families like these or who earn less? As we all know, you know, I'm a Denver neighborhood native. I was born and raised here. We all know that Denver's a landlocked city. We have a couple of large developments when there where there has been production on a limited basis. But most of the housing that we see going in is infill housing. The the condominiums are 4 to 6 units. It's not really meeting the needs of production where, as you stated earlier, we have a shrinking inventory in this city as well as across the country. So from a production standpoint, we're not seeing new construction come up to meet the needs of these households. Thank you. And if I may, Mr. President, a comment. So I you know, I was listening to my colleague who I respect and differ from on this issue, cite the number of people who said they were willing to pay for housing. I've seen recent surveys that asked people their willingness to pay for roads, and I think only slightly more, maybe 30 or 40% willing to pay for roads. Yet we as a city stay in the road building business because it is our job as a public sector to serve public needs. I do believe that there is not just a benefit to these households when we build this housing at this level, but there is a benefit to our economy. A recent survey from the Denver Regional Council of Governments of major employers across the country, found that Denver's housing prices were reaching the level where they were giving relocation pause . Because when you relocate from Cincinnati to Denver, your employees don't want half the house that they had or half the apartment or to commute for an hour because their salary is the same. But the housing costs twice as much. And so it is a threat to our ability to recruit new employers. Right. This is it's not a charitable issue solely. I do think that it is a humane thing to do to try to keep people in homes rather than homeless. But it is an economic strategy as well to attract employers who hire those workers. I'll go back to transportation is one example. When workers travel from large distances, they lose productivity, they lose time. And yes, the transit system is wonderful. There is precisely one transit stop that's, you know, funded in Adams County right now. Many of our workers travel from that area. They don't have a fast transit option. Even when fast tracks is fully built out, it doesn't reach every community. And so what you have then is people who drive cost more for transportation, even environmental impacts. And then lastly, I will say something about my opinion of the growth of Denver, people coming to Denver. I mean, every time you see a new battery, 621 or industry, one of these new great business incubators and they're relocating high tech smart jobs, folks are choosing to come to the city because they like the diversity of the city. It is something we sell. We sell the mixture of incomes, the mix of people, the mix of racial backgrounds. And so I believe that it is really key to our economy that we invest in this housing. It is not just for the human benefits, although there are many. And so I would say that I very much appreciate this fund as a well-designed structure, and I really do think it's an important first step. And I will hopefully continue the conversation about funding it in the future. But it is very much a city's role and we are a city and a county and we're one of only eight cities that doesn't have a fund like this that we fund with our own dollars. So our competitors are doing it where it counts. We're responsible for all the human services costs. So I just can't accept and there is no evidence to support that this is not a city responsibility. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Kinney. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. Councilwoman Canete, you took the words right out of my mouth, except for the one analogy I wanted to use. Was it? It all depends. And the example I want to put out there and just you can visualize it. It all depends what you believe. Our values are in the city. Some people believe when they look in the mirror as a city. When we look in the mirror, we see Manhattan or Coronado or Beverly Hills or even Martha's Vineyard. And you look in the mirror when you look out and look what Denver is, it's Denver. It's none of the above. It is Denver. And it's always been of a very distinct city, an incredible county. We've taken a lot of pride, especially nowadays. And you see this. I even see old Raiders fans wearing t shirts with Colorado flags all over them because it's cool now. We have a very strong sense of locality. We put a lot of pride. Those of us who are from here, we put that little native sticker on our car and it's much more than just putting that sticker on your car that says Native and saying, Oh, I'm a proud Coloradan. Well, we also have very strong values that are locally grown as well, too. And making sure you have access to affordable housing and making sure you have a good job and able to raise your family. That's those values. That's all folks are asking about. And, you know, I do agree with one thing with you, councilman. Fights wages are stagnant and that is a problem. But that's another discussion that we have to have. Housing. There's a housing crisis in terms of affordability, affordability, affordability, affordability, sorry. And there is a crisis when it comes to wages, a crisis when it comes to folks who are working, spending 12, 13, 14 hours a day in two jobs. They don't have health care and they don't have a decent wage. And you pair those two together and you mix that up. You do not have a city that reflects the values that it was built on. It's not the Denver I remember. And so we have to correct that. And, you know, if if I'm wrong, then those folks who vote for these things won't be back. But if I do remember correctly, some of these policies have been here since the eighties. You seen a little bit of tinkering. So. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Lopez, specifically. You can go ahead and take your seat unless someone else calls you up. Thank you, sir. Councilman. Never. Thank you, Mr. President. As is so often the case, Councilwoman Fatima, I read the details in the same way, but come to radically different conclusions. We both look at city expenditures with a gimlet eye, but where she sees wasteful social engineering, I see a really smart investment. And it's worth remembering here that this isn't just a fund to put general fund money into affordable housing. This is a fund whose purpose is to close the gap for 4% low income housing tax credit deals. So the 9% low income housing tax credit deals are incredibly competitive. All that goes like hotcakes. But 4% low income housing tax credits go wanting projects don't even get built because they can't pencil with just the 4% low income housing tax credit. So this fund is designed to close that gap so that the. 4% low. Income housing tax credit projects can actually get built. So what this is, is using a. Little bit of our money to leverage a whole lot of somebody else's money. And that, it strikes me, is exactly what a smart city does. Figure out how to spend other people's money in making our city a better place. So for that reason, I'll be supporting them. Thank you, Councilman. Are there any other comments from members of council saying. No, Madam Secretary. Rocco? Councilman. Oh, councilman here. I'm sorry. Go right ahead. Thank you. I just couldn't click fast enough. I just. I just wanted to make a comment about the idea of social engineering and the negative impacts that it's had in my council district nine. What I've learned over the years is that. Is that whether it was the intention or the an intention. In my opinion, the way that the land at one point of Denver's history was divided and zoned created a big gap in terms of inequity. And and so when I think about the concept of social engineering, I would say that many of the low income neighborhoods in Denver didn't fare so well. And that with the zoning code update, as I said when we went through that, we really zoned a lot of the the parcels in in this city to try to create some equity around the land. Now we're talking about you're saying why are we talking about this? Well, here a simple way that I want to say it is that this revolving affordable this revolving affordable housing loan, in my opinion, will help to hopefully minimize the gap between people living, wanting to get out of poverty and having a job and having the the ability as these units are being built or if they already exist, but not in my council district yet, just they have the ability to have a more equitable life. And by that I mean if, for example, I'm Brighton Boulevard, our hope is to create more workforce housing so that the people that can't really afford to live in some places in downtown Denver for were many of them may have service types of careers. They can actually live very close to downtown and be able to walk if they'd like to, or also the ability to create communities where workforce housing can be part of the tax base and also to create schools and create all of those things in a community where we can see the diversity that Councilman Kinney just talked about. So I would say that social engineering is a very, very strong word in my opinion. And I don't agree that this particular revolving, affordable housing fund creates that kind of community. In my opinion, it helps to minimize the gap that we're all talking about that we have seen created in in the city of Denver. And so I just want to say that for me, in the time that I've served, it's always been about the land and who owns it, who can afford it. And we're just simply trying to have more opportunity for funding to be able to look at workforce housing. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Monteiro, Councilwoman Fox. Yes, Mr. President, I wanted to clarify my perception of what I mean by social engineering, and it's why I voted against the Burke's amendment that he brought for the inclusionary housing. The to me, if you're talking about affordable housing, you want a structure around as many people as you can. You want your money to go farther. And when you try to be sure that you are building it in every economic level throughout the city, you are not going to get as much housing if you are building it downtown or elsewhere. That would be of a high income nature because the land costs are so high. I believe we have a responsibility if we are using the taxpayer dollar to get the most we can. And if what with the issue is housing, then build the most housing you can. And it is not on the land that is the highest real estate in Denver. That is my perspective on that, obviously. I mean, I was just being interviewed earlier today about my impressions between the legislature and here. And one of the biggest things is there there was there were a number of people of different philosophies. And so you could have it wasn't just me against the row here. You had other people who could bring in their experiences and their perspective, and you had a good philosophical discussion about the very basis of policy making. That is what I miss here. I mean, just having some kind of real discussion, not one against many, but many of as far as what. Is our role. Well, how do we get the most taxpayer dollar? Is the benefit that you see from putting affordable housing into extremely high real estate areas. Do you really get the investment out of it that you want from other ways? I mean, there are some philosophical issues that need to be discussed in policymaking bodies that simply don't get addressed at the depth that they should in this body and hasn't since I've been on here. But it was in the legislature, and that's what I see as a big difference and a big lacking. I really want that kind of discussion. The people deserve it. Now, regardless of how you come down and, you know, city council, it's it's no question as to how they're going to come down. But that discussion is one that still should be be happening. So people really have to think about the results of what decisions they make. And so thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to express that frustration, because I consider the very basis of all the policies and decisions we make, not ones that can be decided on assumptive closes, as you would say, if you were in the sales business where you go and you assume the person's got to buy. Now let's talk about the price. You really need to talk about the fundamental basics as well, because those are the elements and the building blocks of public policy. Thank you, Councilwoman. Upon seen no other comments and I'll pause for a second. Madam Secretary, roll call. Five or so in each. I. Lehman i. Lopez Montero. I. Nevett. I. Ortega. I. Rob. Shepherd. Sussman, Brooks. I. Brown. Hi. Mr. President. I count Councilman Lopez. Woman Madam Secretary, please quote the value and now the results. 12 eyes one. Day. Well, one day. 620 has been ordered, published. And, Madam Secretary, can you tee up the last one, which was on final consideration 598 called out by Councilwoman Fox. Councilwoman Fox, what would you like for us to do with this?

Petition for a Special Law re: An Act Relative to Reorganization of the Boston School Committee.

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Thank you, Councilman. Here. Thank you, Constitution. Any other final final question. Final thoughts at 0199 will remain in in committee. Mr. Clerk, please read docket 0187, please. 0187 Petition for a special law enacted relative to reorganization of the Boston School Committee. Thank. Thank you, Mr. Clarke. The Chair recognizes Councilor Arroyo, Chair of the Committee on Government Operations Counsel Arroyo. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Committee on Government Operations held the hearing on Monday, April 11th, on docket number 0187 petition for a special law regarding an act relative to recognize h b organization of the Boston School Committee, which was sponsored by myself and counselor Julian here. I'd like to thank my council colleagues for attending Counselor Brady and Counselor Louis Jahn. Counselor Flynn, Counselor Murphy, Counsel of Clarity and Counselor Zero. This home rule petition would establish a transition from a fully appointed school committee to a fully elected school committee in the city of Boston as it's currently written. The legislation takes in takes a phased in approach to that transition, doing it over time so that not the all the elections are not at the scene at all. Those seats are not filled by election. At the same time, in the future they would be on the ballot the same time, but it phases in that approach. This hearing was an opportunity for counselors to refresh our memories of the hearing held last year and for new councilors to hear from residents and advocates and share their thoughts. At the hearing, the committee heard from parents, teachers and students at Boston Public Schools who voiced their concerns about the current state of the appointed school committee. Committee also heard from several advocates who outlined the history of Boston's decision to establish an appointed school committee highlighting the deep inequities this created. There was also a conversation about national models of school committees where they've been either hybrid or appointed and or elected. There was further discussion on the proposed phased in approach and process, as well as how this would play out with the current superintendent search and potential state receivership activity. That good initial conversation. I'm going to recommend that this docket remain in committee for a series of working sessions, the first of which will be tomorrow. And it'd be great for counselors if you do attend to come sort of with your ideas for what this could look like or what it should look like. The goal here is to have multiple working sessions, the first one to sort of collect from councilors what they would like this to look like ideally, and then to work to find a collaborative sort of way to get this done in a way that helps everybody see what they want to see out of this as much as possible. So that's tomorrow and I look forward to seeing folks there. Thank you. Thank you. Counsel Rail. Would any other council like to speak on this matter that she recognizes? Councilman here. Councilman, here. You have the floor. Thank you to my co-sponsor, Councilman Arroyo. I want to thank all the amazing advocates who helped us get here to this historic point, the U.S.A. Coalition, the Boston Educational Equity Coalition, former elected school committee members, students, teachers and families and so many others. You all help to ensure that this hearing was not only productive, but it also centered community expertize. As I said during the hearing. We received a mandate from the people to return to an elected school committee in the city of Boston. And there will be times in the future just to discuss specifically how that would work. But this hearing was meant for us to focus on the why. And I think our panelists and members did do that perfectly in terms of identifying what our why is. So I just want to thank Counselor Arroyo for his leadership and the entire crew that worked alongside our office, hosting a series of community conversations and native languages. It's important for people to understand what's at stake. So our office, alongside Consuelo Arroyo and the Coalition, hosted a series of community conversations and thank you to Casa Luzon for co-hosting with us, the Haitian Creole. We did one in Spanish only, and we're looking to do one in Chinese Mandarin in the near future. And the goal really is, is to help ensure that people understand what's at stake and to inform our thinking. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you, councilman. Here what any other council would like to speak on this matter at this time? Thank you. Do you want the one? I wanted to highlight that I am in favor of an elected school committee. And I think it's important for residents to have a voice in the future of the Boston schools. I am concerned about the timing of this. And I've mentioned this at the hearing, the working session. So I guess my question maybe to counsel Royal. One of the things I highlighted is what impact this would have on the search for the superintendent. Of the Boston Public School System. I know we've discussed this at length. But are we able to? Get a sense of what this what the search committee thinks of this this proposal at this time, if it has any effect at all on how we select who was selecting as a superintendent, I just am curious about that. So if you have any comments. Not to put you on the spot. Council Royal. But just wanted to ask you that question. Happy to answer that. I have not spoken with the search committee on the superintendent search. I recognize sort of the fact that we are in the beginning of a new mayor's term, even though this process is about 30 years in the works and is something that has happened even or started under the previous administration or maybe two administrations ago, depending on how you keep track of it. So I would just say that part of my consideration in the way that the doctor was originally written is the fact that this is phased in so that we don't immediately just take everybody who's on the school committee and say out with all of you and move forward in that way. It phases in the elected approach so that you're not looking at a fully elected school committee until 2026, and it's working in stages to get to there. So you get some of the new elected seats every municipal election up until the 2025 municipal election. Obviously, all of these things can be discussed in a working session and sort of ironed out with folks. But the idea here was how do we do this in a responsible way? You know, voters haven't voted for a school committee in 30 years. So you have to get the education that that's actually the thing on the ballot. Then you have to have all of these sort of races planned out in terms of making sure that all of the the actual infrastructural things are ready to go. And so all of those things, I think we should take into account all those things I think we should talk about in a working session to directly answer whether or not I've been told that makes any difference in the current superintendent search. I have not been told that it does, but I also have not spoken to the search committee, so I couldn't speak to that one way or the other. Thank you, Counsel Royall, and thank you for your leadership on this issue and for an informative hearing. 0187 will remain in committee. Mr. Clerk, please read docket 0259. So I can number 0259 An ordinance amending City of Boston Code Ordinance Chapter 15, Section ten and establishing the Boston Fair Chance Act.

A bill for an ordinance approving the 4201 East Arkansas Urban Redevelopment Plan and the creation of the 4201 East Arkansas Urban Redevelopment Area and the 4201 East Arkansas Sales and Property Tax Increment Areas. Approves the 4201 East Arkansas Urban Redevelopment Plan authorizing the creation of an Urban Redevelopment Area and sales and property tax increment areas in Council District 6. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-12-19.

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Let's try it again. From Financing Governance 1245 The bill for an ordinance approving the 4201 East Arkansas Urban Redevelopment Plan and the creation of the 4201 East Arkansas Urban Redevelopment Area and the 4201 East Arkansas sales and property tax increment areas. Bill 1246. He bill for an ordinance approving approving a proposed cooperation agreement between the city and county of Denver. And 4201 East Arkansas urban redevelopment area to establish, among other matters, the parameters for tax increment financing and incremental sales and property taxes. From Safety, housing, education and homelessness. Bill 12 1189 A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed seventh Amendment and restate restated inter-governmental agreement to provide fire protection between the city and county of Denver and the city of Sheridan. Thank you, Madam Secretary. We do have a late filing council in black. We will need a motion to suspend the rules of council to allow for the introduction of a late filing.

Recommendation to respectfully request City Council approval of the 2017 State Legislative Agenda as recommended by the State Legislation Committee.

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What about 18? 18? Sorry, I skipped over that. 18. Key Item 18 is a communication from Councilman Alston, Chair of the State Legislation Committee, recommendation to request approval of the 2017 state legislative agenda as recommended by the State Legislation Committee. That's right. Yes. Well, the item is before you, I'd like to get a staff report from Diana Tang or Mr. City Manager. Mayor, members of the city council. The State Legislative Committee did meet on January 10th, 2017 and received and filed all of staff's recommended changes for the agenda for this year. Staff's changes were predominantly organizational in nature. Last year, the. Federal Legislative Committee chose to reorganize the agenda so that it would perhaps be. A little bit more accessible and easier. To read for the public. And so we made those same changes to the state agenda. We also added language to say that we would support legislation, policies and grants in addition to simply state legislative proposals. The committee at the time also asked staff to add in three new items. The first was related to minimum wage. There was a discussion related to the restaurant industry and discrepancies between tipped workers and untapped workers. So we went and did some research and came up with language to. Support legislation that minimizes wage disparities between. Tipped and untapped workers in the restaurant industry without impacting existing scheduled. Minimum wage increases. The committee also. Asked us to add in language related to. Grant funding for local governments as related to law enforcement and marijuana growers that may, may pop up in the city as a result of new state laws. And so funding to local governments to eradicate illegal growth of marijuana plants has been added to the agenda. The committee also asked us to add an item to support additional funding to local governments to support housing, animals and. Animal care shelters beyond three days. And so that change has been made as well. And so those are the only three changes. The committee requested. Beyond Staff's. Recommended changes which are in. The item before you. With that, I'm available to answer questions. Thank you, Miss Tang, for your very, very complete and brief report. I also want to recognize other members of the State Ledge Committee and thank council members Gonzalez and Mongo four for their work in helping to frame this agenda. I know there are a lot of other moving pieces going on in Sacramento right now. I think our state legenda is is one that is, I think, pretty comprehensive in really, really, I think embodies the the the the the the vibe and the the direction of our city council. And so I would ask for your approval. But before I do that, I'd just also like to just compliment Diana Tang for her tremendous work as our government relations director in Sacramento, but also her work in just keeping the council informed about changes going on in Sacramento, which we have a big one happening just this week. One of the our state legends over the last three years has been to push for a statewide fix. Our Highways and Roads campaign, which will, I'm happy to announce, should be voted on tomorrow by the state legislature, SB one and AB one. This council has supported those bills in concept over the last three years, and it will yield a tremendous amount of new resources to our city for infrastructure repairs to the tune of about $11 million a year. Is that correct? That is correct, yes. And so congratulations, city council, for your efforts in that regard. And so with that, I would ask for your your support and in adopting the state legenda. Thank you. Thank you very much and any public comment on this. Before I turn to Councilman Gonzalez, not Councilman Gonzalez. Great work, Diana, and thank you, Councilmember Austin and Councilmember Mongo, for your work on this as well. Okay, Councilman Mongo. Thanks to my colleagues for their collaboration. And then I just wanted to. Earlier today at EDF, we kind of started talking about some of the sales tax implications and some of the things that have changed. I know that I've mentioned it to Diana. Since our hour five 4:00 meeting. But specifically, I think that it's. Time that we start looking into legislation related to how the sales tax has changed its movement with the sale of solar. And so it used to be that. If you sell solar and you're a contractor where you sell. It, etc., but now. That they're selling it out of Costcos and Home Depots and the such. That transition has happened and we're going to have some more leakage in those areas if we don't address it. So I don't I'm not sure where we want to go on that, but I. Just want to throw it out there. So the next time we have. An item that the community and our staff could look into that for us and give us a little bit more background. Thank you. But great working with everyone. Team proud to be a new member of a state. Let's. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. Just want to say good work to the committee and to Diana and $11 million for STS. Nothing wrong with that. Thank you. And congratulations to the whole committee. Count on us and a great job of winning the state, the state committee. And that vote tomorrow is very important to us. We've all been very involved. And if that happens, is, as we all expect it to, to go through that will be some immediate major highway construction money for us, for the city. So that'll be additional support. So thank you for that. There's a second. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes. Councilmember Mongo. Bush and Kerry's.

Recommendation to adopt resolution declaring The Long Beach Community Investment Company owned property located at 4151 East Fountain Street (APN 7253-026-029) as "exempt surplus land" as defined in Government Code Section 54221(f)(1)(A) and/or 54221(f)(1)(F), and authorize City Manager, or designee, to take any actions and execute any documents necessary to ensure compliance with the Surplus Land Act and State regulations relating thereto. (District 3)

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Item 28 Report from Development Services Recommendation to adopt a resolution declaring the Long Beach Community Investment Company owned property located at 4151 East Fountain Street as exempt surplus land District three. Mr. Mayor, can I motion for that? Unfortunately, I have one device that's out of battery, so I can't text you on the Q. Yes, there is. Can I get a second, please? I get. Councilman Superman's raising his hand. Okay, great. Okay. Councilman Supernatural is the second. Is there anything that stat needs to add to this? Yes. I would like staff to just briefly talk about the limitations of the use of this particular parcel. And I realize that we're going to be we're only voting tonight to declare surplus land. But assuming that declaration happens this evening, if staff can talk about the limitations of the use of this particular plot of land. Thank you, Councilmember. This is Oscar Orsi. Just wanted to let you know that the city acquired this property with housing successor funds. I see that. That those funds are earmarked for the development of affordable housing. We have other programs and other funds that that fund other things like shelters and other types of programs. But the color of the money for these funds to acquire this property was made with a strict understanding that we would recycle the property and develop affordable housing. As you indicated, Councilmember, this allows us to exempt us from the Surplus Land Act and allows us to offer that property to those that are interested in developing the site for affordable housing purposes only. Okay. And I realize we're not voting on any particular projects tonight or anything like that. But I assume, just as we would with any development project, there will be an opportunity for community outreach and discussions before any proposals are accepted. That is correct. Councilmember We will follow our customer process at offering this property to those companies and groups that are interested and again, developing the site for affordable housing. And will this be by way of an RFP process once it's once it's ready for that that next phase? Yes. We typically offer the property for those that are interested. Megan Sorenson can provide you greater details. Okay. I think I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. Is your concern, reassurance that you have anything or. No, I'm fine. I just stand in support. Okay, great. There is a motion and a second then any public comment on this? If any members of the public would like to speak on this item, please use the raise hand feature or press star nine. Dave Shuker. Your time again, sir. Good evening. Thank you. I support this motion as well to thank council members who brought it forward, as well as the questions that were asked just now. Clearly, we heard earlier this evening that we need more affordable housing construction as well as siting. And I look forward to hearing how not only the RFP will roll out, but what the possibilities space for. This potential project would be in terms of a Title 22 and some of our green building codes. More generally, the issue of where and how to site land. For what purposes? Especially if it's land that has to be remediated. If it's land that's polluted. That's something that the city needs to get ahead of. Thank you. Thank you for that comment, Madam Carper. That concludes public comment. Okay. Thank you. Well, then we will go ahead and take a vote on this. Real copies. District one. District two. All right. District three. I. District four. All right. District five. District six II District seven. By District eight. By District nine. Yes. Motion is carried.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all documents necessary for a Proposed Lease, with an Option to Purchase, by and between the City of Long Beach and Centro C.H.A, Inc., a California 501(c)(3) corporation, for City-owned property located at 1850-1862 Atlantic Avenue for youth workforce development, civic leadership, inclusive entrepreneurship training, and community services. (District 6)

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Thank you. Next item. Item 24. Yes, please. Item 24 is a report from economic development. Recommendation to execute a proposed least buy in between the city of Long Beach and Central CHA for city owned property located at 1850 through 1862. Atlantic Avenue District six. Of emotion in a second. Yes. Clark, could you please read the item? We have four speakers there. Sign up for item 24 would Sydney can fee. Jessica can tin can Tina, Ernest Castillo and Christine de la Brea. Would you please come up to the podium, please? Oh, sorry. I don't want to be too shiny of you, son. I can say. Uh, son, I came from sixth district resident. My my vice, uh, my councilman, the vice mayor. He suggested that I straighten up when I come up so that people can see, you know, the the physical image of, you know, people who drink water the street. I am in complete support of this partnership, of this property going from the city of Long Beach to central China. I think they are a positive fixture in the community from the time that I've known them, from the original office on L.A. to where they've moved now until now with Boulevard. I've seen them do amazing work with helping ease a lot of the tension between the African-American and Latino community within the sixth District, which can be seen even in so far as recently with some of the disturbances we had last year. Polly. Polly. Hi. They do a lot of development work with a lot of the children in the community, and they provide a lot of the moms in the area with available space to, you know. Whereas it's not a lot, especially right there on Long Beach and in the 16th, I believe. So I'm just as a resident in the area, I just want to say I come out in support of central China. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, city council members. My name is Vanessa Castillo, and I'm here representing on behalf of State Senator Lena Gonzalez to express our support for the proposed lease agreement between the city of Long Beach and Central Asia. As you know, Central Asia is a leading nonprofit organization in the city for workforce development, equity and inclusion, and we have worked closely with them since then. Gonzalez To serve on the Long Beach City Council. Gonzalez is excited that the city identified a facility that will allow Central Shore to continue the great work they do for our community and to recognize the value that Central Asia brings to Long Beach. We want to thank you again for your efforts to support this wonderful organization. And I hope we could count on your approval on this item. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Honorable councilmembers. My name is Chris in the lab. I'm the operations director for Interval House. We work with the homeless population and in Long Beach and we have centers for victims of domestic violence. We have been serving the city of Long Beach for the past 40 years. I'm here tonight to add to the Stickley support, the lease between the city of Long Beach and Central Charm, who will be working with youth workforce development, city leadership, inclusive and staff ownership, training and community services. We are central in such a high respect for the outstanding work that they do in the community. And it would be our greatest honor to continue to refer our client to Santa Rosa and to continue collaborating with them. We believe that this new facility really would be giving a life changing opportunity to many youth and many people in Long Beach. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Happy New Year. I'm Jessica Quintana, executive director of Central Cha, also a long time resident of the city of Long Beach for over 54 years. I have the great opportunity not only to work and serve my city, but also to be a resident here for the city. I just want to thank city staff, our board of directors who are here in the audience today and our honorary community advisors for their leadership on this initiative. It's been a long time meeting talking. I know the two gentlemen over there, John Kiser and Sergio, our meters. I want to thank them so much for their support and efforts. You know, it's it's. A challenge and it's it's not easy. Most of, you know, on that side of the dais, the organization, you know, has been a trusted nonprofit organization, one of the largest Latino serving organizations providing workforce development and job training services. And also providing legal. Services for the city. We are a DOJ, Department of Justice, Immigration Legal Service Providers. So we are. One of the largest providers. Of legal services and economic. Development providers in the city. And what we do is we really try to address poverty. Poverty, as we know, is one of the core issues and one of the symptoms as to why we have violence and low education and, you know, lack of economic opportunities. And so, you know, I just want to thank all of our supporters, all of our funders, you know, all of our advisors who are here today who has really supported. Us to be able to provide. That service in our community and that gap. We are definitely excited about this initiative in this partnership. There's a lot of work to do as you as you know. There's significant improvements that need to happen to add to the property, you know. At least, you know, a million to even get there and in up. To 3 million to get us operating. So we're we're committed. We're dedicated. We're we look forward to our continued partnership with the city and with the Economic Development Department. And we're not going anywhere. So if you know us, we've been on this. Journey for a while and we move five times. Several times, and it's never because we couldn't pay a rent. So that's never been the issue. It's been because of development services. Property got sold, you know, housing got built. And then the last time that we moved was because of redevelopment. And so that put us on a transition. And so we're looking forward to. Find a permanent housing for Central CHA so we can continue to help save the lives of our children. And families in the city. As we know, that's most important to our councilmembers, we hope. And so we thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Councilwoman. And then there's. Yes. I just wanted to see how supportive I am of this item. Central China has been a great help to so many. And Jessica say, right, when you say, you know that the center has helped save lives, I really do see that. And I am really looking forward to central China getting its own permanent home, which is very deserving. So I'm very supportive of this item. Thank you very much. Council member Yolanda. Thank you. Thank you. Very proud to set this motion. I've known Jessica in Central Asia for many, many years, and it's been sort of a process for them in the struggle. They've gone from one location to another like an orphan child, and now they're on a path to find some permanent residence. And so I'm glad to see that it's here. It's long overdue. And over the years now, Jessica, I can tell you one thing. It's now it seems Turtle Jose is the the premiere. Hispanic serving organization here in Long Beach. And I congratulate you for that, because if there's nothing that says more about Central Cha and your leadership is tenacity. Perseverance and a willingness to serve. And I'm very proud that we're going to be able to work with you and that you're going to work with the city to get a permanent home for Central Chuck. It's way long over. Do the congratulations. Thank you, Councilman Urunga. Finally. Finally, I just. Jessica. It's been a long time coming. It's like you said, you have moved from pillar to post. Everywhere you look, wherever you land, you find a way to be successful. And this is you finally have found yourself a home. And before I'd like to make that motion, you know, I like to move forward, like saying that I'd like a motion to amend this item to reflect that the city would be responsible for the property tax as long as the city retains ownership of this building. And I hope I can get a second on this motion. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that, you know, is there any public comment? He's no longer. The city owns the property. Yes. Is anybody? Come on. This idea. You've already done the public comment, Mr. Mayor. Then Mr. Councilwoman. Yes. Yes. I just had a this was the first I heard of it. So I'm just curious what the property taxes are estimated to be for this property. Could I get that, please? Oh yeah, council members. So at this point, because it's a government owned. Property there, there hasn't been a property tax assessed. So that's at zero right now. And as long as we are going through the period of due diligence, there's obviously an early termination period where the city will retain full possession and operation of the site. There will be no property tax. That sounds good. However, I would like to add, Mayor, just for clarification, there is a revenue and tax code section that while the city leases the property, the tenant may be responsible possessing any interest tax that the city can't cannot pay. So there, there there may be we can work out if there were property taxes do. But on the possessor interest tax, it may be the obligation of the tenant. I mean, I think that's the one. Would you please speak on that? This is a concern is that when you speak, you know. Yes. That's the one I think you long as you have ownership of it. Yes. Okay. So I just it was the first that I had heard of that. I've obviously we've worked together for many years, and I don't think that the city does enough for our non-profits. I just want to make sure that we are all clear on on how much that is and looking at opportunities to support other non-profits as we go down the road. But I support this item and support that change. If staff could give us a two from four on what those expected costs will be over the next 510 years. I'd be great. Thank you. It's progress. That's right. Yes, right. Okay. Councilwoman Mongo. And Councilman the dance. Did you go? Oh, okay. I guess I'm confused. Possessive. Your interest is determined by the auditor comptroller and the Treasury tax collector and the county assessor. And so I. I don't know that I'm comfortable asking our city staff, but if you'd like me to connect you with the person that does that, there's actually a division of the assessor that I can connect you with and they can give you those estimates. But the estimates are based on several factors that are kind of outside the city's control. So you have my cell phone number. Call me tomorrow and I'm happy to. We weren't aware of that. So because that's the interest. Tax rate that somebody who's leasing the properties still get taxed on leasing a property. Correct. Okay. So we didn't. Wait, let me connect you with the assessor's office, and they can explain the specifics that you would need to know. So we're looking to get a note from the assessor's office and not from the city department in the name of Cent, their charge for those taxes. Is that what we're. Expecting to get? I'm not sure what you expecting to get, but I can definitely connect you with the people that can help you figure bargains. Could you some clarification on this, please? Yeah. Yeah. I believe the the draft lease has the language in it that talks about the tenants responsibility for the possession interest tax, which is required under the revenue and tax code to be in there when we're leasing property, city owned property. And then but I'm not sure at what time you would exercise your option or how this is going to work. But the possessor interest tax is the responsibility of the tenant at this time. I hear what the vice mayor is is recommending is that we somehow switch that liability to the city. Until. I think we'd have to have further negotiations on maybe the value of that is some sort of a rent credit or something. But I don't think you can they can't just pay the possessor interest tax on behalf of the tenant benefits. Yeah. Yeah. So we're, we would definitely have to have more information about that, I think. My understanding it's where it's the way it's structured. So I think there is opportunity to negotiate on that. And so maybe it's part of our community benefits. But my understanding is. It's the way it's structured. So, so. So what motion you will that give them time to get more information and we could. Okay. So is that okay with you? Absolutely. Well, with that, could I please call for the vote? Council member, Piers. Washing cars. Thank you. All right. Yes. Thank you, vice mayor. Thank you. City council. Members.

A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 1630 South Acoma Street in Overland. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 1630 South Acoma Street from I-A, UO-2 to I-MX-5 in Council District 7. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 1-23-18.

DenverCityCouncil_03052018_18-0043

, and express concerns about issues facing the city and your community. It's a great way to meet neighbors and learn for yourself how well the city is working and what may affect you and your neighborhood. So join the mayor at the next cabinet in the community meeting and share what's on your mind. 6 minutes on the presentation monitor on the wall you will see your time counting down. Speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to the Council as a whole and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilman Cashman, will you please put Council Bill? 43 on the floor. Yes, Mr. President. I move the council bill 18 0043 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Constable 43 is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening. I'm Sarah White with Community Planning and Development here to present the staff report for the rezoning request at 1630 South Acoma Street. The request is to rezone from IAU oh two to IMX five. We are in Council District seven. In the Overland neighborhood. The subject property is in the block immediately west of Broadway, fronting Acoma Street between Iowa Avenue and Mexico Avenue. The property is just under 25,000 square feet in total. There is a single storey commercial building there. Currently the applicant Urban Peak is requesting the rezoning to allow a redevelopment that would allow them to expand their shelter use, which is currently on site, as well as adding residential uses and some other administrative uses. And the current zoning of AIA does not allow any new residential uses to be established on the site, which is the reason for the rezoning request. And so again, the rezoning is from IAU oh two, which is the Billboard overlay to Annex five, which is our industrial mixed use five storey district. The surrounding zoning. The property to the north is zoned oh two to the west we have IP are to which is our heavier industrial district to the east along the Broadway corridor we have our urban main street three story districts and to the south is APD. That was written specifically for the storage facility that is on the site there. The surrounding uses are a pretty mixed context. So to the West, as you would expect, there is a mix of industrial uses as well as some vacant lots and parking as well as some office mixed in there, particularly immediately across a comma from the site and then along Broadway, as you would expect, we have the mix of commercial uses. These are some photos to get a sense of the general context. The top photo is an image of the subject property. The middle photo there is the office building that is to the west, across Acoma Street and to the south is the bottom is the view of the building to the southwest across Acoma Street. And then some more views. The top photo here is the view of the site essentially from what would be Broadway. So between the site and Broadway is a car sales lot. And then the picture on the bottom is a view looking northeast from Acoma and Mexico at that storage facility that is located directly south of the subject property. The process so far. This matter went to planning board on January 3rd and was voted unanimously, unanimously to recommend approval and then went to the L.A. Transportation Committee on January 23rd. The public outreach, all of the appropriate notification and posting has been done. There was a letter of support that was submitted with the application from the Overland Park registered neighborhood organization. During the process, we also received a letter of opposition from the Platte Park Peoples Association on the basis primarily of height. And then we received 25 letters of support throughout the process from property owners and Denver residents, as well as two letters of opposition opposition from nearby property owners, again, primarily on the basis of height. So looking at our five review criteria to evaluate our rezoning. The first is consistency with adopted plans. As usual, we have our two city wide plans, comprehensive plan 2000 and Blueprint, Denver. And then we have two older neighborhood plans, the Overland Park Neighborhood Plan and the Shattuck District Plan. The request is generally consistent with several strategies outlined in Plan 2000, primarily related to encouraging mixed use development near transit and infill development that is in place where services and transportation exist. Different. Denver classifies the site as a mixed use, which considers a sizable employment base as well as housing. It is generally a higher intensity than you would find in other residential areas. It is an area of stability which generally means being consistent with the surrounding character, but also allowing for reinvestment. And across the coma to the west, you see the blue. It is across a coma from an industrial designation. The surrounding streets. So Acoma itself is a non-designated locale. But just up to the north a little bit is Iowa Avenue, which is a residential collector which intended to provide a balance between mobility and land access and would be the primary street that you would access the site from , as well as Broadway being designated as an enhanced transit corridor. So this is an area that blueprint Denver is acknowledging has a higher level of transit and should continue to be that way. The Overland Park neighborhood plan is from 1993 and as such of our older plans, we don't have specific area recommendations. There is general language about transitioning from industrial uses to residential uses. So we're not transitioning here from industrial to residential, but we are in an area of transition from industrial to commercial. And there's also recommendations related to commercial industrial businesses investing in and beautifying their sites. So generally the request to Annex five would allow redevelopment of the site and is generally consistent with the Overland Park plan. Again, the Shattuck District plan is a little bit older plan. It's from 2003. And again, we don't have specific recommendations to the property, but there is a vision for the neighborhood to be where people live and work, where housing is affordable, where there are sufficient employment opportunities, where wages are sufficient and public revenues are being produced, where there are households and numbers sufficient to enhance the climate for businesses on Broadway, and where there is a mix of businesses, goods and services available to the neighborhood and where the quality of life is generally good . So again, really envisioning a mixed use place and supporting the businesses that are already there. And again, the request to Annex five to allow redevelopment of the site would be consistent with this plan. The request would result in the uniform application of the IMX five zone district, and it would further the public health, safety and welfare both through the implementation of adopted plans, but also through the allowance of a community serving business to continue and expand their use. Serving the low income and youth of the community. The identified justifying circumstance is that the lander, its surrounding environs has changed or is changing to such a degree that it's in the public interest to encourage a redevelopment. The justifying circumstances identified here is the development along the Broadway corridor as well as the nearby transit stops. So although not within the transit buffer, we are about halfway between the I-25 and Broadway rail station and the Evans Station. And then consistency with neighborhood context, own district purpose and intent. So obviously we have a request for five stories here and we don't have any plan guidance specifically on height. So we need to look to the surrounding context to determine what an appropriate height to apply would be. So there isn't anything really above three stories in the immediate area. However, the idea and iby zoning that surrounds the property is an air base zone district. So the height that you can build is primarily based on the size of your personnel and the floor plate size that you use. So looking at the parcels, particularly some of the large ones and the one directly across a comma from the property site could potentially build up to eight stories under the current zoning if they were to use smaller floor plates. So we do find that the IMX five is an appropriate zone district to transition from the three stories of Broadway to the industrial area to the west, and further to the tracks. So given that all five criteria have been met, Steph does recommend approval. I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have ten individuals signed up to speak this evening. I'm going to call the first five speakers. I apologize in advance if I mispronounce your name. If you could make your way up to this front bench the first five, that will help speed us up as we go through. So the first five are Christina Carlsen, Chad Holsinger, David Jennings, Michael Burman. And Kristen Banfield. And Krishna Carlsen, you are up first. Good evening. My name is Christina Carlson, and I am a lifelong Denver resident and the CEO at Urban Peak. We're here tonight to ask your support for the proposed rezoning of our property at 1630 South Acoma Street. Tonight, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about us, but I'm going to start with you all the way . We start our meetings where we refocus and we revisit our mission, vision, belief and commitment statement. So I'm going to share those with you tonight. Our vision at Urban Peek is that all Colorado youth have safe housing, supportive relationships and the opportunity for self-sufficiency and success. Our mission is to ignite the potential and youth to exit homelessness and create self-determined, fulfilled lives. We believe in the transformational power of acceptance, in the responsible stewardship of our resources that with compassion, guidance and support, positive change and healing can happen. That ending youth homelessness changes trajectories, saves lives and creates lasting community impact. We are committed to problem solving, shared accountability, and a relentless focus on achieving real, sustainable and measurable results for the youth we serve to being a national model of innovation and best practices through intentional focus on continuous improvement and growth and creating and providing a culture of safety, responsibility and respect. At Urban Peak. We are the only nonprofit organization in Denver that provides a full progression of services for young people ages 15 through 24. Who are homeless. We operate the only shelter in this area for young people aged 15 through 20. Our goal in the work we do is to help youth overcome real life challenges and become self-sufficient adults with safe and stable housing. We provide essential services including but not limited to street outreach, a drop in services at our drop in center case management, stabilization. Shelter. Education, employment, workforce development, programing and supportive housing. Today. We're here to talk to you because we are pursuing a project that will enhance the services we currently provide at 1630 Acoma Street. South Acoma Street. We want to add up to 60 units of affordable housing for the young people we work with. This rezoning is an important step for urban peek to rebuild the extensive shelter into a more comprehensive support center for youth who are experiencing homelessness. And the addition of this supportive housing at this location is critical to increase the successful outcomes for the youth we serve. There are a lot of other people are going to speak. So I'll just say that I'll be here to answer more questions. Thank you, Chad Holsinger. Thank you, Councilman Brown, and members of the City Council. My name is Chet Holsinger. I live at 4103 West 30th in Denver. Longtime resident of the city. And I'm excited to speak to you a little bit about Urban Peak's proposal. I'm an architect, a chopper X architecture, and our practice focuses a lot on affordable housing. We've done a lot of work lately with folks experiencing homelessness, and I think what's really exciting about this project is that it creates a continuum of services between what's offered at the shelter all the way through housing and stabilizing folks lives through housing. My role is to speak a little bit about the zoning rules and what the impact of particularly the complaints about height are. The proposed property is currently. A zone by NFR, as Sarah pointed out, and I think it's important to recognize that in the area a 2.0 floor area ratio is not regulated as with respect to height. So buildings can be proposed by right in this case up to eight floors. Basically due to a view claim that's elsewhere in the code. So I think it's incorrect to say that height is inconsistent. The proposed height of IMAX five is inconsistent with the zoning that's allowed in the area. And I would expect that given the fact that, as Sarah pointed out also, that the property is on an enhanced transit corridor in the form of Broadway and kind of nestled between two station area plans, though it doesn't the stationary plans don't reach this particular site as two blocks away from the Broadway plan, and it's five blocks from the Evans plan. It's pretty clear that it is anticipated that density in the form of height would occur along Santa Fe and into the Platte River. So we believe that this proposed density is wholly consistent. With what's expected in the neighborhood. Additionally, the building directly to the west is a very large, already assembled parcel and there's three or four of them within a couple of blocks that would support easily six. Two eight story buildings with floor plates of 32,000 feet or more. So it's our belief that the proposed rezoning is appropriate. It serves a need in the community, and I, too, will be available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, David Jennings. Thank you so much, Council. My name is David Jennings, and as a small business owner or current board member of a room and a former client who was helped by a peek when I was a teenager, I asked for your support for him. Piece proposed rezoning at our property at 1630 South Acoma Street. Recently by having dinner with some friends. They were talking about their high school girls, busy schedule of AP homework, sports and activities. Volunteering and preparing for college. At this point, I couldn't help but reflect about what my life was like at their age. I grew up with a single mom. I was one of six kids. And he used to say life wasn't so stable. I left home at the age of 14. At the age of 15. A few years ago for my own healing, I requested my child welfare records. There were over 500 pages documenting neglect and abuse from the time I was 14 months old. And so I left my home at 15. I bounced around from friends, homes, sleeping on in parks and living on the streets. I was lucky to receive a self-referral bed at a shelter for abused, neglected children. Unfortunately, this was only a temporary solution. After that, it was back to bouncing around again. I was fortunate enough to hear about a place called Urban Peak. Maybe fortunate wasn't the right word to use to describe how our impact changed my life. A safe place to stay. Meals to eat. A place to shower and wash. My clothes was the beginning of my new life. As a direct result of consistent guidance, counseling, job training and job placement from the fantastic staff at Urban Peak, I was able to earn my first apartment. Having a place to call my own. Was the first time in many years that I felt stable. Also, this gave me hope for a better future. If it wasn't for urban Pekin and in particular their staffing guidance for me in through their housing program. I wouldn't be here today. I hope that you will approve the rezoning application so that urban peace can help more youth in this situation I was in over 17 years ago. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Thank you. Next up, Michael Berman. Thank you. Michael Berman. I'm a park resident. I live at 1630 South Washington Street. Just some very brief comments. Primarily, I'm up here because the three may submit a letter of opposition, but then I don't think they sent a representative to speak. So perhaps I represent our neighborhood and I want to make it very clear I'm very much in support of Urban Peake. It's simply opposed to the five storey building, whether that's rezoning or not. Just having a five storey building in that cadre is what I'm opposed to. I just think it sets a precedent for development in that area high density development, high rise development that Black Park residents don't want. I also think it's important to recognize the park is more impacted by this site than Overland Park is. Most Overland Park residents live on the other side of Santa Fe, whereas this site is directly adjacent to Platt Park residents. So anyway, that's the reason I'm here, just to register my opposition. Thank you very much. Thank you, Christine Benefield. And if the next five could come up, we had clear the bench for the next five BOE, BRAC Chairman Sekou Clayton Gonzalez, Charles Knight and Ben Schumacher. Thank you, Councilman Clark, and members of City Council. My name is Kirstin Benefield, longtime Denver resident and currently living in District ten. Before I begin, I would like to recognize and appreciate our Urban Peake Board of Directors, staff, supporters and donors. I'd like you to please stand up for a second. Thank you. They are all here tonight in support of our rezoning. Ask and more importantly, show up for our youth every day. As a Denver resident mother and the board chair of Urban Peak, I asked for your support for our proposed rezoning of the property on 1630 South Acoma Street. We are already very grateful to be part of this neighborhood and we want to make it better. The property where our shelter is located is currently zoned in a district that does not permit residential uses. We plan to enhance our current services roughly a 40 bed temporary shelter for young adults 15 to 21 by building a more modern space, adding up to 60 affordable housing units, and moving our administration offices to this site. Providing additional oversight for programs and services. Urban Peak is the best prevention model we have for ending chronic homelessness. We don't want our homeless youth to become homeless adults. The supportive services and transitional housing Urban Peake provides gives our youth a chance to develop skills, find safe and stable permanent housing, and be a part of a thriving, inclusive city. We have all come to love. Last year, I was given the honor to serve on the inaugural Colorado Governor's Fellowship, and I was privileged to see our government in action. One of my favorite definitions of public service is helping the greater population and making a difference by giving people a voice. We are here tonight to give our youth, our homeless youth, a voice they haven't been able to find yet. I urge you to approve this rezoning. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Rick. I'm part of me. Hi, my name is Bo Breck. I live at 421 South Gaylord Street. I work for a company named LCP Development and I'm here to represent the ownership entity, LCP AM, RFP, Broadway LLC. We are the owners and developers of the project. Exactly one block east of the subject property here. It's 1616 Plat Park. 40 residential condo units over 7500 feet of retail space. So our ownership group is very supportive of the Urban Peak's organization and their mission. However, we did submit a letter to community planning and development registering our formal opposition to the rezoning application. And I'm here this evening to reiterate to council the grounds for and reasoning behind our opposition. So. You know, we believe the proposed rezoning to five storeys is inappropriate in the neighborhood context and would be more appropriate at three stories. And the basis for our opposition is that we did not believe that the rezoning application complied with the general review criteria, and we also do not believe that the justifying circumstances listed in the application were entirely accurate in terms of consistency with the neighborhood context and zoned district definitions. So talking about some of those pieces, the review criteria listed in the application includes the Evans Station Area Plan and the 25 and Broadway station area plans as the guiding documents. This property does not fall within either station area, so the Evans Station plan says that the plan will be used, quote, The plan will be used to guide decisions regarding appropriate public and private investment within a half mile of Evans Light Rail Station. And likewise, the 25 and Broadway plan defines core station area. And this Broadway site, this property is point eight walking miles north of the Evans station and outside of a mile radius from both the I-25 and Broadway station, as well as Louisiana and Pearl Station. So we we don't think that those were necessarily guiding documents that they should be pointing to in terms of their review criteria and complying with. Second, the application or the rezoning letter makes multiple references to transit oriented development and the widely accepted definition of transportation development. TODD As we know, it is development within a half mile of transit centers. And again, this property is outside of that radius at the point eight walking miles from the nearest station, which is Evans Station. Regarding justifying circumstance. The letter, the rezoning application claims that the applicant's new facility will be consistent with its current surroundings and anticipated development along the South Broadway corridor in terms of uses and density. We do not believe that five storeys is contextually appropriate in this location. While we agree that. I'm sorry, Mr. Breck, your 3 minutes. Are up. Oh, shoot. Thank you. Next up, Chairman, say scoop. Oh, yes. Good evening. My name is Chairman Sekou. I represent the Black Star Action Movement for self-defense. Whose primary focus is on poor, working, poor, homeless and senior citizens. We unanimously support. This ordinance change. And. We want to be crystal clear about this thing. Very seldom, and it's been more than less than I actually took pride in this body and the work that it does in consideration. I really do. And that's a dangerous place for me to be because I'm actually starting to like you guys a little bit. You know, and when you do things like this. And consider these kind of things. It gives. Of folks who are doing the work. Like the urban people. You know what I'm saying? Opportunity to intensify and increase the excellence of the services that they provide. Because you're right. I have just participated in three suicide intervention of homeless people behind the question of housing, picking them up out of ditches and finding them emergency housing in the homes of individual citizens who are willing to open up their doors to strangers and say, Hey, man, come in for a minute, defrost. All right, I'm going to feed you and then we're going to work to put some services around you. So. These this also absolutely necessary. Because I don't do it. You do? I don't. I don't. I can do is get them to a safe place in hopes that I can find you. And I'm glad you're here because I need your help. I mean, for real. Because I'm not clinical at all. I'm not. I'm not. I just. Do rescue missions and do the best I can with it to save lives. See, this is about saving lives. If you don't want no growing homeless people, you've got to catch them now. And give them a vested interest in being a part of the city so that like this young man would want to go. No one had been. Yeah. Evidence, success. All right. And we need more stories of folks who can come up out of those programs and actually become productive members of society right now. Yeah, those are the things that's in this. You know what I'm saying? That people may not like that. And guess what? That is hard to do. Everybody will be down for this. But most people are. And so as practitioners of democracy. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Your 3 minutes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Clayton Gonzales. Hello. My name is Clayton Gonzales. I'm the director of programs that are on peak. And today I am asking for your supports in Urban Peak's proposed. Rezoning. Of our property at 630 South Acoma. You've heard from our CEO, our architects, our board chair. You've heard from a board member who has lived experience in our services. You've heard from those that support us, those that oppose. I think I just need to take a moment and try to say a few more things about our services of what makes this such a strong ask. Our shelter. We provide services night to night. So we are there for stabilization, but we're so much more. I've had the pleasure of giving some of you tours of some of our locations, and if you walk through our doors, you'll find youth who one have been provided a safe place to be to. They have been given resources. If you go into a shelter every day, you'll find 8 to 1012 youth in our shelter trying to gain job skills, trying to perhaps get their G.E.D. or get back in school. But the main prize that we're really trying to work for here is, I mean, the greatest gift that we can give to these youth from Urban Peake, from our community, is that we're giving them a place to be off the streets that's greater than shelter. Our outreach team. We frequents Platte Park. We frequent the Decker library when we're not reaching out to every other part of the city where homeless youth reside. Ben Kinghorn, who's our shelter supervisor right behind me. He stays in close contact with Decker library staff and often receives phone calls with concern about a particular youth. And he will be there within minutes to try to help in the situation, even if it's not one of our kids. I think. We have we have a responsibility to our community, to, one, be good neighbors by providing the service. And the single greatest thing we can do for the youth is get them off the streets. And so that's why I just want to ask for your support. Lastly, I think you've heard about some success stories here. I think. One of the best one of the. Well, the greatest accomplishments I think I can claim in my work at her peak is one, just being a relationship with all these kids we work with. But when you get to be with a young person who gets to walk into an apartment to have their own bed for the very first time in their life. That that makes this all worth it. So my last please, please support us in this change. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Charles Knight. Hi there. Thank you. My name is Charlie Knight. I live at 1620 South Pearl Street, and I own two rental properties in Platte Park on South Pearl and South Grant. I'm here to support the application to rezone this property to accommodate the proposed residential use. There's four main reasons that I support it. One, this is an important transit oriented development location. I understand it may not be technically within the transit plans for the two stations, but last time I checked, bus service is also transit and this is a major bus thoroughfare. And I've walked outside many times and it's an easy walk from both Evans Station as well as to the Broadway Station Project and to our our retailer on Pearl. So it's a perfect location for transit oriented development, too. The zoning is consistent with adopted plans and intent. Blueprint Denver, we heard earlier, envisions a mix of industrial, commercial, civic and residential uses for the area. The current use of primary industrial is not the highest and best use. It's primarily marijuana grow facilities and we could use a few fewer of those and more housing and retail and mixed in. And we think urban I think Urban Peak's proposed mix of housing, social services and office space in a five story structure is consistent with this vision. Three The proposed zoning is consistent with the neighborhood context, although awarded to the East a three story commercial along Broadway. As we heard earlier, other sites in the immediate area can currently be developed up to eight stories, including this large slide across the street, which could house a huge building of 230,000 square feet. So this is really more about use than it is about height. The proposed five story zoning is much more esthetically appealing than what's currently possible. And because this lot slopes down to the west, it's going to feel like a four story building from Broadway. And going from three stories to four stories doesn't seem like much of a give given the opportunity to develop some residential there. Fourth, it's the right thing to do. Supportive housing in the site is critical in addressing the affordable housing challenges that face our city and make this rezoning a matter of citywide concern. Urban Peak's proposal to collect kid housing in the shelter with administrative and operations on one site will result in more effective outcomes and an improved relationship with Platte Park. And finally, as you know, we need more housing in Denver and allowing for this opportunity residential on this site. And ultimately, I hope expanding the entire area from Evans to Broadway is going to be critical. Thank you very much. Thank you. And our last speaker, Ben Schumacher. Thank you. My name is Ben Shoemaker. I live at 1250 South Logan Life. I have a resident. I've known Councilman Cashman. Probably most of my life. I grew up in and around the South Pearl Street area. My my parents still live and own a home in East Wash Park, but they owned a business on South Pearl Street. So I have been there for over 30 years, off and on. When my wife and I are, then my girlfriend decided to buy a house. It was one of the neighborhoods that most attracted our attention. And we love it there. And I'm here tonight to speak absolutely. In support of Urban Peake. I will tell you, I am also a member of the Park Peoples Association Board. I firmly believe we made a mistake. And I feel like we did not do a very good job of ensuring that we were representing our broader membership. And rather we took a board vote and a little and a CFD vote, which is our Committee for a Responsible Development, but we never put it before our membership. And that left a sour taste in my mouth. And I have raised that multiple times with my fellow board members and and nobody really seemed in favor of changing that. So I felt it was my duty to come and tell you that. I don't believe that our letter of opposition is necessarily representative of our neighborhood. I will tell you that I strongly believe in the mission of urban peak. I believe in transit oriented development. I am a I'm a bike commuter. I am a transit user. My wife and I have one car, even though we have two young children, a six year old and a three year old. Like, we need to be able to provide housing in areas that has good transit and connectivity options. And this is an excellent opportunity for that. As Charlie said. The the Evans station is maybe a half mile away, maybe a little bit beyond. But it's it's a technicality. Broadway is also very nearby. The zero runs all the time. So these are all great opportunities. These are kids who probably don't, you know, almost certainly don't have cars. Right. So they're going to find other ways to get around. There's great bike lanes down Platte River. This is actually very close to there's bike lanes that take you, you know, straight down to Logan to or not Logan technically, but whatever. Logan to Washington and Clarkston. And you can get all over the city on bike and bus, whatever. We should be supporting these youth. We should be supporting this organization. And I believe that this is not out of context. I believe that a five story building is where we should be going in this area. Thank you. Thank you very much. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions from members of council? All right. Sarah, would you mind coming up? Just quickly. Oh, here they come. I'll wait. Councilwoman Kenny. That's okay, Mr.. Put the ball on the dryer. Mr. Pro-Tem, it is your district indeed. So I would defer to the questions. Could you? Thank you, Councilwoman. Could you? It wasn't in the presentation. I apologize if you said it, but it was. I looked back and it wasn't on the slide planning board. What was the vote? It was unanimous. Recommendation was unanimous. And then where this is located there you mentioned there are two transit plans that don't quite touch it. And then there's an underlying overland neighborhood plan. Yes. And how old is that Overland? I think the Overland was 93 and the Shattuck District plan is 23. Okay. And then from my looking at the the stationary plan, so correct me if I'm wrong, they they go from usually a recommendation of three on Broadway, five the next block over up to eight, ten, something like that as you approach the rail line? That's correct. On both. Sides. Okay. Thank you. And then could I have somebody from Urban Peak come up and Christina, I apologize. Your name did not come through in my system, and I apologize for that. Could you just walk us through I know you have talked a lot about, you know, supportive housing and stuff, but can you draw, you know, paint us a picture of the plan, you know, five stories. What are you doing as you walk up through these stories? Sure. So the current lot has our shelter on it. And our hope is to take the building down and put it back together, as we say, and that the first floor would have the shelter, which would consist of a 40 bed shelter that could go up in numbers to 50 and our current licensing based on inclement weather and then also have space for minors as well because there's some licensing nuances and all of that. And then on the second story, have all of our supportive services around case management, education and employment. We've been talking about an art studio. We'll have our administrative offices there. And one of the ways we've described it is bringing more adults on campus to really provide more services and to have the ability to provide wraparound services all day so that the way it looks right now is that folks can leave the building and then that would mean they could stay. And then the third, fourth and fifth floors or apartments. And would those apartments be serving the the youth from the shelter? How do you envision that that housing working? Well, that'll depend a little bit on the funding mechanisms and the tax credits and stuff, but ideally it's a continuum and that we would move people through. The whole. Process from shelter into some transitional pods, into. Housing. And are there other shelters serving this population in our city? No. Not for minors? No. Just. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Those are my questions right now, Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Mr. President. You started the conversation about the bus travel, but I just wanted to kind of clarify the record. So, Sarah, if you can just step up real quickly, what are the bus headways on Broadway? How frequently do you know? I don't know that off the top of my head. I do know that the zero does run run pretty frequently. And with the the designation in blueprint of an enhanced transit corridor, we do consider this to be appropriate to be called Tod, I think. Okay. Yeah, I was I was going to cheat a little bit where members of the transit planning group and this is a high frequency quarter, which I think it's 15 minute headways at the worst and it's probably ten minute headways probably at rush hour. And so Clayton Gonzalez could jump for just a second. I was just going to ask about just again, to clarify the record because we had speakers in for it, but let's just get it clarified. How do the youth who are working and who come and go from your shelter tend to come and go? How do they get to and from? You know, I would say the bus the bus on Broadway, the zero is primary. They also walk quite frequently to the Broadway station and Evans station, and we provide bus tickets. So they they use either or. Okay, great. Thanks. And then so I just want to get the transportation together. So, Sarah, I'm going to bring you back up for a change of topic. I want to just get at this. I think it's been touched on, but I don't I don't think we want to slow us down. So I'm looking at the picture in your slide show, if you can put it up and the reasoning around the site. And I was reading the staff report. And it's tricky because you've got a mix of old zoning and new zoning, and our new zoning has these handy numbers in it, but our old zoning doesn't. So can you just clarify for the properties that have and I b according to staff report, a number of those could go to eight stories or more depending on how they developed. Can you just point those out to us, please? Using your cursor, I think the little arrow we should be able. Does it show up on there? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, all of these really along the west side here are the I and I b have a factor of 2.0. So if. Air is. Floor area ratio, so that means that you can develop essentially twice the amount of floor area of the lot size. So if you have a 5000 square foot lot, you can develop 10,000 square feet worth of floor area regardless of how it's configured or height or that sort of thing. So we have the potential to go up to eight and then you have the three on the other side is what you were describing. Can you just show us that visually real quick? Yeah. So a along Broadway to the north on both sides and on the east, that is our MSA three. We do have starting just to the south of this pudi on Broadway. It does go up to you at most five here. Okay. And then I just wanted to ask in terms of the the record we're establishing here, a couple of folks mentioned the area sorry, the station areas and that this is not in it. But can you just clarify for me just let's eliminate the transit piece altogether. In other areas of the city, do we regularly transition between three and eight with the five in between? Is that something that occurs in other areas of the city, main streets, for example, or other areas that don't have? I would say that's good planning policy. I can't think of anything specifically. But generally, when we talk about transitions in height, it does go generally three, five, eight, 12, 20. There's nothing inconsistent about this, even absent the fact that it's not in the train. Tods However, we've established that it is in the bus rapid transit. Tod. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, could you walk me through the analysis that occurs at CPD when you look at these applications and you look at the uniformity of district regulations because. The way it's explained here seems a little bit at odds with how I've understood it, which is that it's uniform here as elsewhere. But here, when I read the staff report, basically you're saying that it's, you know, it'll result in the uniform application of the zone district standards. I mean, that's that's a tautology. Of course it does. When we put a zone district in there, you follow those regulations. So, yes, it is. True that it is a little bit of a strange criteria. I mean, the language that's in the staff report is pretty consistent with how we evaluate it. In past staff reports, the best way to describe it is there is nothing different about this IMX five request than other IMX five zoning in the city. So for example, there are no waivers or conditions. That's what I'm getting at. So that's it's not specific to this site. The uniformity of district regulations is not specific to this site. Do you know what the conditions are on the PD to the south? I don't I do know that it's pretty specifically written for that that storage facility. And then in terms, you know, some of our older beauties are very specific and they were written for existing buildings to allow or to build very specific buildings that that is very specifically related to what's on the ground there. And then right south of there, you have along Broadway, you have aa5 story zone. Correct. So half a block away. Yes. Is a five story you know, five story buildings aren't yet, though? I don't believe so. Not within this immediate proximity. And then again, just a little bit south of there is eight story. Yes. As you move closer to the real stations. Okay. Thank you. That's almost president. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. Clayton. Christina During construction, you said you're taking the building down. Where will the kids go during construction? So that'll depend on when the building and when that transition happens. But there have been a number of these projects that happen, and Volunteers of America has provided some space for the Dolores project and there have been other situations like that. We've had some early conversations about that and we'll be very dependent on time, but that's a big piece of our planning. And as far as the the space you have now, Clayton was kind enough to take me for a tour a few months ago. And then in the new facility, just the the basic shelter level will be the same amount of space per kid or how will that work? Well, I think the way we think about it is that the whole. Floor. Will have some of that same services, but in different layouts. And so there are requirements for licensing about how much space people get. But it'll be a similar footprint that will expand a. Little bit. Based on it, because there's a fair amount of open space and parking around. It. Okay. And yeah, just wondering, as you envision it, since we're talking about clients that will most probably not be driving cars. What's what's what are thoughts about parking on the on for this project? So there will be parking that's underneath the plan has been underground parking that will be available for. All the folks that work and live there and stuff like that. Sure. I think that's what I'm got. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Seeing no other questions. The public hearing for Accountable 43 is closed. Comments by members of council. And I'll take the first shot since this is in my district. First of all, I want to thank everybody for coming down here, sitting in the hard seats, participating in the public process, adding your voice to it . I think that that is such an important thing and you have way more important things to do and be out and you chose to be here. And I appreciate that, especially for me. This is in a community where I live. And so to see people who are not just constituents but who are neighbors and who are friends taking time out of their life to come down here and speak up, even when we don't all agree, is a really important part of the process. You know, I also want to thank Urban Peake for everything that you do for our community. It's a it's an amazing resource and just an incredible organization. I think that a lot of the conversation in opposition came around the height issue, and I'll just use this as a moment to say we need more resources for the folks at CPD, that we can get more of our neighborhood plans done. And we're not looking at neighborhood plans from 1993, and we're not working with communities like Platte Park who don't have have never had a neighborhood plan. They've never had the opportunity to sit down with planners to talk about what is our plan for our community. And there is a lot of stress happening right now. You have the former Gates site that is blowing up with huge use by right buildings. You have Pearl Street, which was a quaint trolley corridor. We're literally there for buildings that have been demolished on Pearl Street in the last year and a half. And that's causing a lot of stress because we've never had a community conversation about what we want. And now all of a sudden, here's another ask for another big building that's coming in to the neighborhood. And I think it's so critical that we get those resources. And I love that we've moved from a 70 year plan to a 15 year plan. We've got to get a lot better than that because 15 years from now, there won't be anything left on Pearl Street and parts of Platte Park if we don't come up with a plan. I, I think that a lot of the opposition centered around this height idea, and I think that it is really hard when you're looking at the site and you see a lot of one story buildings to talk about. How is this in context to have a five story building? But that's not what we're tasked with looking at. We're looking at what is the current use by right on those properties and the nearest plans that we have and the best plans that we have. And I think that this does meet the legal criteria for a rezoning. And while it is not part of the our deliberation or our legal criteria, what ultimately gets built there, we're looking at these criteria and does it meet it. And I think it's been demonstrated that it did. I think Planning Board had a great conversation about the letter from Plat Park and appreciating the effort to talk to those criteria. But that again, you can't look at what's existing. You have to look at what could be under the use by. Right. And they and they tackled that well but I think that I lost my train of thought. But the in addition to it, that's where I was in addition to it meeting the criteria. And while this doesn't play into it, I think that this is a critical thing for our city to have an organization that serves this clientele. And I think that it's a little bit terrifying to know that there's only one, you know, and that we should have lots of resources for. I mean, you want to talk about the most vulnerable people in our community and you want to talk about the success stories. I can't think of an organization that is closer to serving the needs that we have in a growing city that is so expensive and more expensive today than it was yesterday to find a way. And and so, again, what doesn't meet the criteria, I think that here's an opportunity to have an organization that is lucky enough to own the land and not be forced out as development is coming to this part of our city. And to build permanent supportive housing and affordable housing and to be targeted at this corridor is something that is critically needed. And so thank you for stepping up and for looking at this and looking at what did meet the criteria and coming in and proposing it in front of us. So with all that being said and getting a little rambly here, I will say I will be supporting this tonight and I hope my colleagues will as well. Councilman Espinosa Bramley on zoning. That's my job. You know. I didn't say that rambling. Well, the I'll be supporting this as well and I like the the president pro Tim's initial comments. I'm going to deviate just because it is in context. We have we have citywide plans. We have stationary plans. We have a small area, neighborhood plan, small area plans. I think in this whole Denver process, I think we need to add immediate area plans. And why I say that is because by the time we get done with the Neighborhood Plan Initiative, we will be three quarters of the way through our 20 year plan that we're working out. Update that we're working on right now. And those those neighborhoods that are leading that charge will also be 15 years. You know, they'll have a plan that is closer to being expired and irrelevant than they will be to anything that they have that is current. And so there are things that that are that are consistent with our adopted plans, but that are radically different than existing conditions. And that I wish we had a tool for conversation not just on that parcel, but you're going to have public meetings anyway. Talk about that area and how things how this might actually inform the things going forward rather than have these little one offs. And so it's just I wanted to say that because it was something that just popped into my head the way things do, this idea of this immediate area plan. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President, I. It's funny how life works sometimes. I see the folks who are sitting here in our pews here in the council chambers with a an idea that's way long overdue to address an issue that is not going away any time soon. And I think that's. You know, and listening to the criteria and having this, you know, the application in front of us, it makes sense. I mean, it makes absolute sense. The population that urban peak serves is a special population because there are young people. And they absolutely deserve everything that this city can do to back them up for the future, to prepare them for the future. So many of them do not have the luxury of having parents teaching them how to dress for a job interview. Or to pay rent. Or dare I say, being able to go to school and get your diploma. And the staff over at Urban Peak every single day does the jobs that so many kids deserve to have and so many people, so many kids and so many children in our and our city have. Well, let me just say, there's so many. People in our community don't realize that they. Have and they take for granted every single day. Irene. I know this intimately because in 2002 I was an employment counselor over at Urban Peak. I worked every single day with a growing caseload. And it was probably one of the hardest jobs I ever had. Now hard because of the caseload, but hard because it was just every day I struggled to go home. I went home. And these youngsters. Had these beds in a shelter. And we you know, what we do with what we what we could with that building. But it just was never enough. Never enough and not enough space. And we would have our G.E.D. classes we had at the cafeteria. You know, we had a small little desks where our youngsters would come and hang out and figure out how we inundate places like Coors Field with all of our kids. With jobs in the summer with the biggest issue space over there. We had a rent out space across the way on Iowa. Just so we can have our team meetings. And talk about the different cases and different kids. I. I can't think of a more unjustified rezoning in this area for something like this. This is a very easy yes for me. I know with that space with the but this the possibilities that exist. Imagine what Urban Peake has done and its in its history and its existence. Imagine. Up to now. Imagine what they can do from here on out. Right. And so this rezoning allows that it it allows them to expand, to grow and to serve the kids. Absolutely needs somebody to have their back every single day in a safe place to be and a place that feels like. Paul. So I'm very happy to see you all here. I'm very happy to support this rezoning, Mr. President. And I'm kind of jealous because I thought a long time ago, especially in 2010, I should have redistricted this precinct in my district. But the problem is, is it has to be contiguous and that just is not going to fly. So, anyway, I'm super supportive of this. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Lopez and I will entertain no hostile takeover of my district. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. 1980 889. Urban peak started am I am I right in that. Yeah I hate the throw and I remember the olden days at sure. But in my career as a journalist, I remember when Urban Peak opened its doors a few blocks from my office, and I remember hearing that it was the only shelter in the front range of the state at that point that specifically served homeless youth. And I was stunned. I was just stunned and so grateful that that business had moved into our area and have watched it over the years through your predecessors and other staff things and so on. And it was always the one thing that remained consistent is you were lifting kids off the street, out of out of the cold. I mean, this is as far as. Emotionally, morally and an extremely easy, easy lift. But we're charged with certain criteria to to approve these rezonings. And I don't minimize the concerns over height. I never do. But I'm comfortable that the existing zoning with the floor area ratio options. Provides that option for height along that corridor. But the one thing of all the criteria that struck me this time is the pub serving the public health and safety. And I'm going to do something I don't know that I've ever done and I'm going to quote brother, say, coup, that if you don't want homeless adults, you got to do something about homeless kids. Right. And that is exactly I mean, when city council met a couple of months ago, now looking at our priorities for the next year, how affordable housing and homelessness was top of the list. And this deals with both. This deals with both for our at risk. One of the communities that really is not equipped to take care of itself without a great big leg up. So I'm thrilled with this project. I think it has the opportunity to not just transform the organization, but to transform our community. So. I'm extremely happy to support this. And the last thing I wanted to throw in, you know, I've also worked with the Overland neighborhood again, but in my time before council and through their trials and tribulations about the Shattuck site and all that stuff. And I've known a lot of people in that community over the years. And I'm just guessing and this is just, you know, not an official position, but I'm guessing they'd be real happy to approve this. So that's what I've got. Thanks, Mr.. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. The Overland neighbors did vote on this and it was unanimous at that meeting. Councilman Neal. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm proud to support this rezoning. Also, you know, we look at the homeless population in Denver. In the last count, about 5000 homeless on the street. One of the when you talk to the police or the homeless services, the one of the largest increases in our youth, in our homeless population. And so I'm so proud of the work that Urban Peak's doing to address the youth. And and I especially, like Councilman Cashman mentioned this, but I look at the youth, so here's a group of disadvantage that we can probably make a real difference with. We can catch them young and help them prosper and grow and council them and and help them become productive citizens that have a quality of life. So I just really think you're doing a wonderful job and I and I look forward to seeing you continue your services. Thank you. So much. Thank you, Councilman. New Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. Of course, the issue of the use of this building isn't the issue before us this evening is the zoning that's before us. And on that count, I see that the case has been well made. Councilman Clarke also mentioned this, but the the the rise from three stories to five stories to eight stories is something that we see quite often in the city. The fact of having residential near transit oriented development makes a lot of sense. The density makes a lot of sense for that. I know that it might not be close to the stations, but it's close to Broadway, which is a very large transit corridor for us. And so the case for the zoning is well made. I think the the fact of its use just gives it a little bit more value to us. And you think about three stories and five stories and think about what's going to be used. If it were only going to be three stories, we would lose two thirds of the opportunity to provide homeless with transitional housing or or affordable housing. So even the zoning issue of 3 to 5 stories has a special meaning for all of us. So I will be supporting this as well. Thank you, Councilwoman. Seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye Espinosa, i Flynn. I Gilmore, i. Herndon, i. Cashman. I can eat i. Lopez I knew. Sussman Yeah. Hi. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close voting and note the results. 11 Eyes. 11 Eyes. Comfortable. 8.0043 has passed and seen no other business before this party. This meeting is adjourned.

A bill for an ordinance approving and accepting the park building plan for the Rosedale Maintenance Facility in Rosedale Park pursuant to the provisions of Sections 39-210 and 39-211 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code. Approves the park building plan for the Rosedale Maintenance Facility in Rosedale Park in Council District 6. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 6-8-21.

DenverCityCouncil_06282021_21-0649

I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 11 911 I's Council Bill 20 1-0516 has passed as amended. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for that second public hearing. And now we're on to our third. Councilmember Hines, would you please put Council Bill 649 on the floor for final passage? EU Council President. I move that Council vote 20 10649 be placed upon final consideration and you pass back it. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. The required public hearing for Council Bill 649 is open. May we please have the staff report? And I see we have Mike Pritchard here. Go ahead, please. Yes. Thank you very much. Thrilled to be here today. Sorry. This always happens to me. I'll just. Starting to scream screen. That's the problem. No worries. Yes, but my name is Michael Bouchard and I am with Denver Parks and Recreation, Planning, Design and Construction. And we are pleased to bring before you tonight the park building plan approval request for a new office building at the existing maintenance site in Rosedale Park. So just as a quick refresher, we are required for structures over 3000 square feet to bring a formal park building plan request before council, when we are proposing to do a new structure or a renovated structure for that matter. And so this one occurs at an existing maintenance facility that we have located in Rosedale Park, which is in District six of Denver. Actually a lot of luck. And for us as Denver Parks and Recreation, it's really an equity issue, making sure that our staff have adequate resources, adequate facilities, adequate restrooms, ADA accessibility, really wanting to provide to our maintenance staff the same level of resources and facilities that the staff at the Webb have and some of our other office sites around the city. So really an equity issue for us wanting to do right by our field staff so they can continue the great work that they do taking care of our parks. This is the existing maintenance site at Rosedale, located across the street from Rosedale Park proper. And as you can see, it did, but it's a community garden located just to the south of it. And then Rosedale Park proper to the south. And so it sits already in a pocket. It's set back from the street, away from any residential uses. And so our intent here is to enhance this site, provide the office space required, as well as some additional side improvements that you'll see here shortly. So Project Background is a new office building to support Parks Maintenance staff funded in part by 2017, Elevate Denver Bond as well as part of legacy finance. And there's much, much more information that we'd be happy to share. A link to our website. If you want more detail, you can see an elevation here. This is the view from the street. I would add one of the things that this project does is actually, we think helps to clean up visually the views into the maintenance sites. Maintenance sites are not necessarily the prettiest things to look at. There's frequently lots of vehicles, lots of materials, lots of stuff going on. One of the things that this project does is actually situates this new office building along the street frontage establishes that that elevation along the street, and it essentially screens a lot of that back of house use from people who are walking or just driving down Logan Street. The added benefit of this is that it also increases security. We have a lot of issues with security in our maintenance sites, lots of people breaking in because they can see right through the fence and say, hey, I want to go take that truck or that piece of machinery. So by establishing the street presence, we essentially screen a lot of that back of house and reduce the security issues we have and really just create a better scenario both for our elevated and staff and the operations there, but as well as park users and residents driving by. This is a view from inside. So part of the proposal is that we actually create a courtyard inside the facility and create some outdoor spaces for our staff to go out and have lunch. You can see some picnic tables here, some areas where they can just go out and frankly enjoy the parks that they spent so much time maintaining. Michael, I'm going to ask you to pause for a second. I think you're slides are off from what you're telling us. And so we're seeing an exterior view of the maintenance office, not the interior. Is that correct? You let me break. I'll come back to that. Thank you. This is an exterior view, but from the interior of the site. And the point here is just that, you know, yes, we're creating an office facility for our maintenance staff and a functional facility for operations. But we're also creating places for people. You know, these are these are these are human beings and making the place where they can go and eat lunch. So this picnic table here is is that kind of space. I'll talk a little bit more about the site layout in a minute. We have done some community outreach. We presented to the R.A. back in March. We've had extensive discussions with the adjacent community garden and are actually going to do some good neighbor improvements for them. Help keep. Mike. I think we lost your audio. Unless it's my connection. You might need to turn your camera off, Mike, so you get better bandwidth for your audio. I think he's gone. Yeah. All right. We'll go ahead and see if we have another. Parts rep that we can bring up into the presentation here. Hey, Steve, do you want to go ahead and take it over? I'm not as knowledgeable about the project. Mike is on. That Mike back. So, Mike, we're going to ask you to go ahead and not have your camera on so that we can give the full bandwidth to your audio. But you do have to unmute. One of those days. I'm just glad to be back. You can see the site plan here, as I mentioned, and the building sits along the street screens, views from the adjacent park and the roadway. It says water quality because of the new paving. We're actually renovating the existing historic structure back to its original use as vehicle storage and really just making a, you know, frankly, a 21st century maintenance facility for our staff out there. This is the approval timeline. We were at Luti on June 8th. First reading last. I'm sorry, Mary council the 15th first reading last week final reading a public hearing tonight and that closes the formal presentation from us. Happy to take questions. Answer anything that you guys might like to know about our proposal. All right. Great. Thank you so much for the staff report. And we'll go ahead and ask you to take down the screen sharing here. And council has not received any written testimony on Council Bill 649, and we do not have any individuals signed up to speak this evening. And so I would welcome any questions that we might have from members of Council on this one. All right. Not seen any questions by members of council. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 649. Council Member Hines Thank you. Council President We just in the last week had the opportunity to go by the maintenance building. I think I have to use air quotes around it at sinking gardens. And if this maintenance building is anything like that one, we need to we we need to we need to fund more maintenance on our maintenance buildings. That's all I was going to say. Thank you, council president. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Hines, and should have called on you first, Councilmember Cashman, since it's in your council district but didn't see your hand raised. So. Go ahead, sir. Yeah, that's just fine. Thank you. Council president. Yeah. I just want to thank the Parks Department for coming up with a unique design that preserves the views from Harvard Gulch Park to the East. It does a nice job of closing in the yard, as Mike said, but I especially appreciate the roof angles go a long way to preserving the sunlight in the community garden to the south, which is a beloved part of that community, as we all know, or our residents love the community gardens. And this design, I think, respects that historic presence. So I think it's a be a nice addition to Rosedale Park and I certainly look forward to approving this. Very good. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. And I'm not seeing any other hands raised. I'm happy to support this one this evening as well. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 649, please. Cashman by. Can each. I. Sawyer. I. All right. I. Black. I. Peter Barca, I. But. I. When I. Granted. I. Time I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. 11 911 I's Council Bill 20 1-0649 has passed our pre adjournment announcement on Monday, July 26. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 21, Dash 0526 changing the zoning classification for 4012404040 46 and 4058 North Fork Street in Globeville.

A bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code. Approves a Denver Zoning Code text amendment to implement the recommendations of the Expanding Housing Affordability project to encourage provision of additional affordable housing beyond mandatory requirements, transition multiple existing incentive systems in various overlays, encourage on-site compliance with affordable housing requirements through other incentives, and correct minor errors and omissions from other recently adopted zoning code text amendments. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 4-26-22.

DenverCityCouncil_06062022_22-0424

11 eyes council bill 22, Dash 412 has passed. We're going to move on to our second hearing of the evening. Thank you, Libby, for the staff report and those community members who testified on the previous hearing. Council member state of. Please go ahead with your comments. Thank you, Madam President. It's my intent to offer two amendments tonight. One of them will be an amendment to Council Bill 22 for 25 to remove that 38th and Blake Station area incentive overlay rezoning IMX eight to IMX five and not change any of the other zoning classifications. The other one will be an amendment to Council Bill 22 for 26, which aims to treat edu builders as we're treating those adding on to their homes. The current draft of this bill exempts 80 use from paying the linkage fee, but charges anyone building more than 400 square feet. The linkage fee. Many adus being built are larger than many of the homes in neighborhoods like sponsor and are selling as a part of million dollar homes, exponentially increasing the value of these homes. We need to recognize it's much more expensive to build an avenue than it is to build on to a small home. And so we don't want to unnecessarily privilege adu builders while penalizing those who are trying to make more living space on small homes. This is about equity and treating both builders the same. And so just want to make everyone aware of these amendments so that during tonight's hearing council as well as the public may speak to them on record. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca. Would you please put Council Bill 22 dash for two four on the floor for final passage? Yes, I move that council bill 22 dash for 24 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. All right. Thank you. We have it moved and seconded the combined public hearing for council bills. 20 2-4, two for 22, dash four, two, five and 22. Dash 426 is open. Speakers may offer comments on any one or all three items, as well as the two intended amendments after the conclusion of the public hearing. Council will vote separately on each item, but first I would please have the staff report. Are we going to have a staff report this evening? All right. I look the wrong way. Very good. Good evening. My name is Laura Aldridge, the executive director of Community Planning and development. To our council. Members. Thank you for having me here tonight. And to those of you who have signed up to speak, who are watching here in chambers or from home. Thank you for being with us and being engaged in your government. I'm extremely honored and excited to be here tonight as we conclude more than a year of public discussion and consideration for Denver's proposed expanding housing affordability ordinance. We could not have done it without a strong partner in our housing stability department and strong partners in Councilwoman. Robin. Kimmich and Amanda Sandoval, both of whom have helped shape this ordinance every step of the way. As members of the advisory committee, I strongly believe that the ordinance up for consideration. Tonight is extremely well researched, well defined and will benefit Denver residents for years to come. Our city. Planners. Will discuss three items this evening, which together make up the expanding housing affordability policy. One, an amendment to the Denver Revised Municipal Code, which, if approved, will establish the parameters for including greater affordability in new residential developments. Two An amendment to the Denver zoning code which, if approved, will establish zoning incentives to help offset the costs of providing more housing and more affordability in Denver overall. And three. A rezoning of the area around 38th and Blake RTD Station, which. Will bring the pilot approach. Currently in effect. Here into the new citywide system. These three items have been designed to. Work. Cohesively with each other. To implement the adopted plans. Better meet Denver's housing needs and ultimately ensure that new housing, new homes are built, more affordable homes are built, too. I look forward to the progress we will make on housing with new policies like this here tonight. Thank you for your time. And I now turn it over to Britta. Fischer with the Department of Housing Stability. Good evening. Again. Council members and to our public, I am Brenda Fisher, the chief housing officer for the city and county of Denver and the executive director of the Department of Housing Stability. And I, too, am excited and honored to be here this evening, to be at this point in the process where we can bring you a proposal for expanding housing affordability that has been. Heavily informed by the. Community, by best practice research. And our housing needs are pressing housing needs. And that is such a critical component to supporting and complementing our existing affordable strategies, as this is one of many tools that we are deploying to meet the wide range of housing needs in the city of Denver. We've set aside the first few minutes of our presentation today to talk about Denver's broader housing approach and where the Expanding Housing Affordability Project fits in to complement existing programs and meet housing needs. This policy was designed to work with and not replace our existing services, programs and investments into affordable housing and anti displacement and other new ones yet to come. Like our affordable housing prioritization policy. Expanding housing affordability is a critical piece of the puzzle, helping create more affordability for people of many income levels. And I think it recognizes affordable housing as vital community infrastructure. The expanding housing affordability policy will help us serve a broad range of incomes, as you'll see in our presentation. This policy focuses on providing affordable housing for those making 60% of the area median income or less, which is about $56,000 annually for a two person household in Denver, while serving a broader range of incomes to better meet our growing housing needs. So thank you for your support in moving this important policy forward as we work to build a healthy house and connected Denver. I will now turn the presentation over to Brad Wanek Hosts, Director of Catalytic Partnerships, and on Elise Hoke, Principal City Planner with the Community Planning and development for CBD. That Brad. Good evening, city council. Thank you, Laura and Britta, for making these remarks. I'm gonna do my best to pull up the presentation here. Everyone. Up anyway. Good evening again. My name is Brad Whiting. Staff with housing stability. I'm joined with my colleague from CPD, Annaliese Hogue, here to talk about the expanding housing affordability efforts. As Bridget, this alluded to and as you guys all well know, addressing housing needs in this city requires multiple tools and approaches. And this is really fits squarely into our kind of housing opportunity, corner of our of our long range music plan around creating more options of affordability throughout the city. It's been also mentioned, and I won't reiterate line by line, but this is designed to be very much complementary to the existing tools and programs that my department in the city has to address. The wide range of growing housing needs, ranging from homelessness all the way up to homebuyer support and everything in between. A few examples on here of some of the things that we are currently working on or launching include our goal to preserve 50 affordable homes, the privatization policy, a special revenue fund with other departments to mitigate displacement from from large city investments and infrastructure. A huge pipeline of affordable housing already underway, and also a locally funded voucher program, which we're very excited about. As Laura mentioned, the whole idea of this new policy proposal is that as new housing is built around the city, new affordable housing is created to and new development contributes of all types towards towards the solutions that we have. This can be done in a combination of two really primary policy tools. We'll be discussing a mandatory housing program, along with an update to our linkage fee policy already in place. These spending housing affordability policies again complement our existing programs and are really designed to serve a broad range of incomes. What's what's kind of unique and different and new? What we're excited about with these particular policies is the ability for us to increase the supply of of housing overall throughout the city and especially affordable housing without the use of of limited subsidy dollars, creating more and better mixed income housing opportunities throughout the city. And as far as the linkage fee goes, making sure that we maintain at current levels a critical local funding source that we use across the spectrum of need to make housing investments. Here's a simplified version of the range of incomes, individuals and households and families that are served through these programs. You'll see in kind of the dark blue lines, the linkage fee and the mandatory housing fee in lieu the dollars that are prioritized in our strategic plan for investment in the households we seek to support. You'll see a note there that our funding priority is very much at the low end of the economic spectrum, really those serving 50% and below and with a concentration or of a commitment, a prioritization for those even below 30% of BMI, our mandatory housing production tools does drive more of where we think the market can help support creation of housing, which is then that kind of 51 to 80% AMI range. But it's important to note that even those units often do and can and will reach further down the income spectrum of need when combined with tools like housing choice vouchers, including the local vouchers that my department is working to create. You already heard the overview from from more about what we're what's in front of you tonight, the three different items. So we won't belabor these points. I think it's important to remind you and I think Laura said one year in reality, it's well over two years that a version of this has been going on under way under the leadership of Aronowitz. And CPD started out as an affordable housing incentive zoning incentive research project back in 2020. And then February of last year, when we learned that the state legislature was considering a bill to enable a tool like a mandatory or inclusionary housing ordinance to be in place. We shifted tact and really kind of created the program that it is today. And kind of the three major phases that we've gone through was really spending a lot of the early time identifying and documenting and satisfying our housing needs. Taking a look at the lessons we've learned through our prior programs and researching heavily other cities around the country who have similar programs. We released that report back in February of 2021, spent the summer of last year really diving deeply into financial feasibility analysis and starting to shape the policies based on what we felt like the market could support in terms of an affordable housing requirement and or increased linkage fees. Published that policy proposal back in October and then over the winter really started to dove into the actual policymaking itself, releasing a public review of the changes to the DNC and the zoning code in February of 2020 this year, and then made one last round of revisions based on that feedback in March. And what you have in front of you today is the result and the culmination of this kind of two plus years of effort and analysis. Importantly, throughout this process, we've. We've. Made a sincere effort to ensure that there was bailout on this whole process, that we talked to a variety of organizations, individuals, constituent groups, and made sure that we were clear about what we were trying to accomplish and really did our best to listen and interpret and incorporate all of the feedback that we were able to receive from a variety of groups. We don't need to go line by line, but suffice to say that over the course of the process, we met with over 267 different organizations as well as a variety of individuals throughout this process and are very proud of, of, of that element of this process. We feel like we've we've done as good a job as we can have, really making sure that anybody that has a voice was able to share it so quickly into the proposal overview at a high level, right, that the kind of guiding principles for this project are really to balance a variety of different inputs, current and future housing needs. Again, analysis of other pure city programs, both from our state as well as throughout the country. We have a variety of other programs and incentive tools that we as a city have implemented, and we have a lot of lessons learned from those programs that we believe we've incorporated well into this process. Again, financial feasibility has been a huge component of this. We know that if we if we push too far, if we ask for too much, the market won't be able to deliver it and we won't get the outcomes that we really need to really fester among our housing spectrum. And then again, stakeholder feedback. All of this again made possible in alignment with the requirements of the State Bill that did enable this, which also requires cities to have a variety of other tools and and resources available to support the creation of housing in order to be able to pass such a policy. And so we feel like we're in great shape there. So quickly, at a high level, all new development, with a few exceptions, will contribute to creating more affordable housing on the left and the right of the slide, you'll see small residential developments of 1 to 9 units, as well as nonresidential developments. We'll continue to pay the linkage fee on a per square foot basis, albeit at a stepped up and increased rate over the next four years, which we'll get into. And then multifamily developments of ten units or more moving forward instead of paying a linkage fee, will now be expected and required to include a percentage of its units as income in rent or for sale price restricted. And also enabling some alternative compliances there in again, another requirement of the state bill and incorporating some zoning and financial incentives in there as well, because that is the outcome that we're most seeking to create as part of these policy processes. So I'll cover the linkage fee quickly and I'm going to turn it over to on a lease to cover the mandatory affordable housing program. Again, the linkage fee for those who are new is a is a fee assessed on all new developments based on the induced job demand and therefore housing demand of the uses therein and legally justified via a study that we undertook back in 2016 as a city. And we were simply through this process updating it to today's financial feasibility analysis, ensuring that the fees were charging are kind of part and parcel and appropriate for the for the ongoing need the city sees. So again, this applies to all residents developments of 1 to 9 units as well as all nonresidential uses. However, it does not apply to renovations or finishes of existing developments to small additions of four and a square feet or more to existing single and two unit homes does not apply to accessory dwelling units. It doesn't apply to areas with pre existing housing agreements such as the Green Valley Ranch, and it does not apply to restricted affordable housing developments which which we know continue to be a critical part of our strategy. And it doesn't make sense to charge fees to the very developments who are seeking to solve the issues we are seeking to solve. And finally, it does not apply to educational uses. So quickly, here's a snapshot of the proposed linkage fees based on the variety of different unit types. We don't go line by line, but I think it's important to note that these don't switch overnight should you take action in favor of supporting these policies? The first increase will be effective in July of this year, and then it'll increase in an incremental step over the next three years on a schedule until July 1 to 2025, at which point we reach kind of the what we agreed upon and analyzed to be kind of the appropriately feasible fees associated for these different developments and thereafter will increase based on inflation starting in 2026, just as it does today. So with that, I will invite on a lease up to speak for mandatory affordable housing. Thank you, members of council and also the principal city planner with community planning and development. Mandatory Affordable Housing is a new program that, as Brad said, has been enabled to us by state law. And it allows us to really ensure that as we're creating new housing in the city of Denver, new affordable housing is being built by creating mixed income housing, not just in some segments of the city, but across the city citywide, as well as a secondary priority of increasing funding citywide through the fee in lieu contributions. As a reminder, this applies to new developments creating ten or more units, and it does have exceptions of if I have an existing apartment building and I'm just putting in new countertops, it doesn't apply in those instances. State law does not allow it affordable housing projects. It does not require them to mandate, but it allows them to benefit from the incentives being provided as we're as well as areas with preexisting housing agreements or affordable housing projects. The state bill requires that we provide them one or more compliance options to building affordable units on site. The program in the policy is really designed to target housing needs where we know it's the greatest, which is at 60% AMI on the rental side and slightly higher on the ownership side. Therefore, the policy has been designed to encourage applicants to build affordable units on site more. Walk through what each of those look like. We also have the payment of value and while that fee and lose an option, it is not a desirable option from a financial perspective as it is a considerably high fee and that is calibrated by development type and market area to ensure that it is appropriately kind of leveraged on occasion. Those fee and lieu dollars will go back into the preservation and creation of affordable housing with the focus at lower incomes. We also do have ability to enter into negotiated alternatives in ways in which we can accommodate creative solutions at better and further. Our affordable housing needs in certain neighborhoods may be family friendly housing. Dedication of land for an affordable housing or supportive service. We want to allow for those creative solutions to occur, as well as in instances of large developments of either ten acres or more, or those leveraging city financial programs such as TIFF or metro districts . Those processes require a community engagement process and to kind of show how the affordable housing plan is being proven out in response to community needs. So we're going to focus a little bit, though, on the build on site requirements as this is really kind of the front of the policy and what we're aiming to achieve through it . The the program is set up in which it gives applicants two different compliance options. It also targets rentals and ownerships at slightly different income levels based off of housing needs and in our higher cost areas of the city, which include downtown and Cherry Creek. It also requires a higher contribution of affordable units in total. An important piece of this program is incentives, and incentives are really designed to promote the creation of affordable housing while increasing the overall supply of housing, overall and affordable housing. Therefore, the incentives have been structured into two different segments, the first of which are the baseline incentives, all of which are buy right. Therefore, for projects that are building the affordable units on site, which is really the outcome that we've designed and want to achieve. They have access to three incentives. The first is a permit fee reduction for affordable unit up to 50% of the commercial construction permit fee. They also, if they're doing a mixed income or excuse me, a mixed use building and they have a commercial ground floor use, they are exempt from paying the linkage for use as a financial incentive, as well as an alternative parking ratio, which reduces their standard parking requirement down by 0.5. As you'll note, applicants who select or elect to pay the fee in lieu do not have access to any of those incentives. However, affordable housing projects are not required to comply but can access those incentives as well. We also have this secondary bucket of enhanced incentives and these to our buy right. There are some additional caveats, the most important piece being that they are providing a higher level of affordability, meaning more affordable units on site over the entirety of the building. That includes height incentives, parking exemptions and particular areas which I'll speak to on the next slide, as well as in certain instances, the affordable housing review team, which is predominantly been focused towards fully affordable housing projects, but giving staffing and capacity in the future. We anticipate that these projects can also benefit from a more streamlined concierge review. As made mentioned on the prior slide. I'm not going to go through these are really for reference but to access those enhanced incentives. As you can see, it's a higher percentage of affordable units overall that are required to be met to access those incentives . The parking reductions and exemptions have been certainly something of topic through the planning board and the various liberty meetings. So I did just want to clarify those. In our existing zoning code, as it exists today, we have an alternative parking ratio of point one parking spaces for affordable units that are income restricted up to 60% area median income. What we are proposing here is to bring forth a new reduction which is in that baseline incentive. So any project that is building affordable units on site, regardless of where they are located in the city, can take advantage of a slightly lower parking ratio for all of the units that are being part of that mixed income development. The new exemption is only available in that enhanced incentive bucket, so that means they have to be providing a greater level of affordability. What is available is in that red color here on the map today. So today, if this were to pass projects that are within a quarter mile of a fixed rail transit station and are also a mixed use or a commercial zone district can take advantage of that parking exemption. Once again, this is a minimum. They can always park above it in future iterations. And the amendment that passed out of those corridors that are grayed out or high and medium capacity transit corridors identified through Denver moves. These corridors will not come online as an area to access parking exemptions until the city makes those capital investments. You know, Colfax will be the first one, but that's still quite a few years out. So what we're really trying to do is align our regulations with the reality of the infrastructure that can support multimodal transportation and greater affordability. I'm going to now just give a quick overview as it pertains to the 30 and Blake area, as we are kind of hitting on all three regulatory pieces in this combined public hearing. 38 Then Blake area does have a variety of existing zoning, as you can see, kind of outlined in white here. The area under consideration tonight. The existing zoning consists of urban center mixed use and industrial mixed use. Some districts with heights ranging from three stories to 12 stories as well as currently has an incentive overlay which is proposed to be removed and replaced by a citywide system. The D of seven, which is a design overlay which is proposed to be retained. So computers going on its own. And then there are also some existing overlays of billboard and adult use. Those are not being touched through this part of the proposed rezoning right now. So today I'm the 38th and Blake incentive overlay allows for additional height in exchange for affordable housing fees, affordable housing or community uses. The maximum heights range in this area from 5 to 16 storeys, but we kind of see that 12 storeys being most common. What we've seen to date is that many projects do not provide affordable units because it's an incentive, it is not a requirement, and they're able to build within the base height, meaning there's no real incentive to build at higher heights and leverage that affordability. The projects that are taking advantage of the current pilot program are providing about 2 to 5%, depending upon what their development project type is, and they're serving a higher army level of 80% than what is being proposed in the future. The proposal here before you that combines a map tax syndromes amendment would allow for all projects in the 38 the Blake area, regardless of whether they're building within their base or height zone district to provide affordable housing units on site. When we've done the analysis of modeling, what we can see is that this will create 2 to 4 times more affordable units in the area, and it will also be reaching substantially lower income levels than what we currently have today, as well as it is a way of ensuring consistency of citywide regulations as it pertains to affordable housing. And we're not just keeping this older pilot program on the books. So to achieve this, how we're kind of doing it, it's a little bit nuanced, but we are removing the current incentive overlay. We are making revisions to the base height in some locations. As you can see, it's a change in the areas that kind of have that hatched green area. The red, there's no change to the base heights being proposed and the maximum heights are remaining the same. So there's no increase in overall development being proposed through this. So just a question that we commonly get. Why are we adjusting base heights in the current incentive overlay? Some of those base and incentive heights are at greater deltas than what's being proposed through the citywide. And so to ensure that we maintain the overall development capacity that is called for in our citywide and area specific adaptive plans , we are making adjustments to those base heights so we can be consistent and implemented. So now we get into the. Normal aspects of our texts, amendment and rezoning criteria. I first start with just an overview of the public process. Broad earlier spoke to the overall process of this project, but the public kind of legal process is outlined here with the required noticing and information, starting with the initial application, informational mailing, planning board, luti, so on and so forth. Getting us here to today. Additionally to that legislative process, just want to give a quick overview. These items were unanimous, immensely recommended for approval by Denver Planning Board in April. They also did make a secondary motion encouraging City Council to evaluate further expansion of the parking exemption, which did move through Ludy. Also Ludy heard all three pieces, all of which did have recommendations of approval to be moved here today, as well as two successful amendments, one of which was to expand the enhanced incentive parking exemption to a quarter mile of BRT corridors in the future that are going to have capital city investments as well as in the past amendment to maintain the CPI increase for those projects that are grandfathered in today. So as we get into the review criteria for combining them for the text, in the moment we have consistency with the plans, uniformity of restrictions, something about furthering the public health, safety and welfare for purposes of consistency with adopted plans. In your view. Denver Comprehensive Plan and Blueprint Denver as well as all the various plans specific to the 30th and Lexington area. As many of these were thoroughly detailed in the staff report, I'm going to go over them pretty quickly as I know we have a lot of speakers signed up, but we can always go back and refer to those as needed. So the first one being the Comprehensive Plan 2014. While there are a variety of various plan recommendations outlined in the staff report, I think the first kind of most important one here is under that equitable, affordable and inclusive goal to create a greater mix of housing options in every neighborhood for all individuals and families. We are also speaking to using land use regulations, meaning our zoning code, mainly to enable and encourage for private development or the market of affordable, missing middle and mixed income housing, especially where close to transit. Many of these incentives are focused there, and since it wants me to move along and just keep it going. Blueprint Denver is our land use and transportation plan, which also provides more goals and recommendations that are implemented through this than what is up here on the screen in further detail. But a couple strategy that I just really want to hit on is incentivizing affordable housing through zoning and especially in our regional centers. 38 and Blake is a regional center, are community centers, community corridors. And those areas adjacent to transit gives examples of what those look like, much of which is articulated here, as well as implementing additional parking reductions and projects that are providing income restricted affordable units. Another easy checkmark that we are implementing through this map and text amendment as well as other incentives for affordable housing that go beyond zoning, that get into permit fee reductions, process and other aspects. And it's important that we continue to acknowledge there are further barriers to affordable housing and we continue to advance those. Blueprint In Denver, the majority of this area is the urban center context. And what this rezoning or is it will continue to implement the urban center context as well as acknowledge that this is a regional community center. These are areas that are really directed through our adopted plans to accommodate more than 50% of housing and jobs growth in the area by maintaining these maximum building heights and development capacity and continuing to maintain and implement our area's adopted plans, as well as the acknowledgment of the station corridors, some of the specific plan recommendations that are specific to 38 and Blake. Further details are found in the appendix and in the staff report most recently was 38 and Blake stationary a plan amendment which really came out of an acknowledgment that this area could accommodate more growth, more housing. In exchange for that, we needed to create things that benefited the community, namely affordable housing. So it spoke to promoting taller building heights in these to the area that provides community benefits. This is now substantially increasing from from what was put on the books in 2017, the affordable housing contribution. Lastly, this texture map amendment furthers uniformity of district regulations by maintaining standards within the Denver Zoning Code and further implements public health, safety and welfare. With that, staff recommends approval of the Math and text amendment as well as approval of the DMCA amendments. With that, my presentation completes. You and Brad and Britta and Laura for the presentation this evening. We have 55 individuals signed up to speak and I'm going to go to the first few speakers that are participating virtually , and we'll alternate virtually for and against and then we'll return in person and alternate for and against in chambers here, and then we'll go back to virtual. And so I wanted to let folks know that and we're going to go ahead and start online with our first speaker, Ian Frosh. Hello. My name is Ian Fresh. I live in the posh Park West neighborhood. I have some concerns about this policy in its current form. I'm kind of worried it's going to backfire. I'm worried that it's going to reduce the housing supply overall, leading to higher costs overall because it's making it more expensive for developers to build housing . And the market rate units basically subsidize the lower income units. But that so so those market rate units might need to be higher than market rate, but that might not be feasible. So developers might just not build and we might just get nothing. I do like the parking requirement reduction by a half space per unit, but I'm not convinced there are enough incentives to not discourage developers from building housing in Denver. And really, I think these incentives should already be legal in all developments to encourage more abundant and cheaper housing like the higher heights and parking reductions. The parking requirement exemption near a quarter mile from. From train stations. It wasn't clear to me. I think that needs to be expanded to apply to high frequency clients that exist right now rather than in the future. So I think it sounded like it was only in the future. Bus Rapid Transit Lines and I live near Broadway station and I take the bus a lot more than the light rail because it's more convenient for us. It actually goes to more of the places it needs to go, and the light rail is basically kind of useless for getting around the city because it's mainly along the highway and through industrial areas. So I'd really prefer that exemption to apply to bus lines as well. And I also would really like the city to just legalize with more housing citywide, legalize more density mixed, use higher heights and completely get rid of parking requirements so that we're not prioritizing housing for cars over housing for people. The limits that we have right now are what got into this got us into this housing crisis. The limits cause this and fixing these artificial limits would help reduce the market rate, also making it so fewer subsidies are needed to produce low income affordable housing when the market rate is lower. So I really would like city wide zoning reform and I am concerned that this policy would just discourage developers from developing and we get less housing. Thank you. Think, thinking, thinking. Our next speaker is Lucia Brown. Hello. My name is Lucia Brown and I live in the Baker neighborhood, and my support for expanding housing affordability is tepid at best. The main reason I support it is because the reduction of parking minimums around the transit corridors, although this could go much farther as the previous speaker just mentioned. What I'd like to see is all parking minimums and maximums eliminated for all kinds of developments, not just affordable. But I'll settle for this as a start. And also the burden of helping to pay for affordable housing should be spread across the city, not just on new developments. But again, this is a first step. And ultimately I would like to see Denver legalize. All kinds of housing everywhere. And that means getting rid of single unit zoning throughout the city. And hopefully the new council will have the political will to get this done. Thanks so much. Think thinking. Julien Camara. Yes. Good evening. Members of the City Council. My name is Julian Camera. I'm a Denver resident. It's no secret that Denver has one of the largest gaps in the country between medium income and income needed to live affordability. So to live comfortably, the people of Denver have been calling for affordable housing because we're in a housing crisis and there's no end in sight. But I'm here to talk about the affordability requirement that was placed at 50% AMI. And it sounds like it's actually at 60%. Am I? But. That's missing the whole purpose of expanding affordability. The people who will benefit from this initiative are mostly those in low salary positions getting paid. 36,000. 42,000, $50,000 and more. And these are folks typically with stable employment, and that includes health insurance, a retirement plan, PTO, all the benefits that come with the salary. So these are the folks that are considered to. Be in need of affordable housing. Where does that leave them? Individuals and families who make half that while receiving less benefits and resources. I met a 20 year old the other day who's living in their car and they wouldn't qualify for an affordable unit unit under this initiative. So this bill could be an opportunity to start Denver on a new power pathway. Housing affordability is the true intention. Specifically for those who need it the most, but it needs to actually do that. And we cannot need to continue to allow the poorest people be disregarded as if they don't matter because the number of people being disregarded is growing and our city cannot sustain itself on development and profit interests. We have to take care of our people. Everyone from all different walks of life in Denver agree that housing is a crisis and they're not happy with what's going on. And we're really counting on our elected officials to make it right. So I ask that you lower the designation. Of 50% of AMI or 60%. And adopt the recommendations of local community advocates. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ethan Hemming. Good evening. It's wonderful to be here with you remotely. I appreciate the chance to express our support for oh 4 to 4. I'm the CEO of Warren Village and a proud resident of Denver. Warren Village has been around for 50 years. We provide affordable housing for single parents and their children. We do transformative, supportive services for these families. We provide early learning in two locations. In a word, we create opportunity. And that's why I'm here to testify in support of oh 4 to 4, because what we believe it will do for our latest development, our work that we're bringing forward in southwest Denver at the corner of Alameda and Pecos, hopefully in two years, we believe this initiative would allow us to take advantage of a height bonus and to go up one more story and one of our buildings on our affordable housing campus. And what that means, truly the foundation for what we do is affordable housing. And what that would do is take this development that is currently slated to be 74 units, much, much needed, 74 units. But if we could take advantage of this, we would have 89. So that's 15 families, that's 15 children, 15 moms, 15 lives that we think we could have a greater impact on. So I cannot express it any greater way than to talk about those 15 families tonight. And I just appreciate the chance to support this. Denver needs that. We are excited to be here to support it. And we truly, truly hope that it will pass. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and transition back in chambers. I'm going to call the five individuals that we have in chambers. Victoria Barriga will be our first speaker, followed by POZ Athena, Mary Coddington, Kenny Owens and Samuel Valeriano. And so, Victoria, we'll start with you. Sorry. It's okay. Okay. My name is Victoria Barriga. I live in affordable housing on Lowry, which is that 80%. Amma, am I sorry? What I'm here to talk about is. Is. Is this proposal on the we. And the linkage fees and the affordable rents. The problem with this bill is that it only affects people from 60% to 80% to 100%, which I don't understand why 100% is even in it. It it's like I said, I'm in affordable housing at 80% and and I don't make that much money. But people who are making less than 30%, less than 50%, they can't get housing. We have our ourselves we have a family member who has to live in our house with us. We it's an affordable I mean, it's ADA. Compliant for me because I need my walker to get around everywhere in the house and having that third. Person in the house makes it a lot harder. But he's unable to keep the apartment he had because of the rent increases. And he works full time, 40 hours plus a month, and he still cannot pay the rents that people are being charged here in Denver. And it's just absolutely insane. When I was renting apartments back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, you could find reasonably priced. Apartments. That made sense for the amount of income that a person made. I am on my income right now. I could not afford any of these rents. If I had to go rent somewhere, I'd be in. I've been a big piece of trouble. So it's good that that that the council is. Looking at trying to provide affordable housing. But I think. It's been said before that paying linkage fees does not address the very big problem that is happening right now in our city businesses and people are all upset about people being on the street. A way to get people off the street is to provide them with housing that they can afford so they can get into housing. And we we need to be really supporting people who are making 30% or less of that. Am I because those are the people that we're seeing that businesses are getting upset about, that residents are getting upset about, and it's not their fault. It's like it's not their fault. We have had cuts in in in the in the housing from federal since the same times. I mean, it's been going less and less and less and less. And I'm sorry, but these developers are saying that it's too expensive to develop. I'm sure there are other developers out there who would be totally willing to build something that they weren't making quite as much money on. And I'm sorry. I don't see my time. So that's the time allotted. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. We're going to go ahead and go to our next speaker. So I. Guess. I was. Actually. Speaker before. 2011, my village, which is the. Single parents housing program, and that's at 30% AMI. And I can't even really afford to save up for myself going to school full time. I suppose that I could. Stop going out to eat, sometimes buying houseplants and maybe some self-care items. But for example, if somebody like Ian Frisch, I couldn't just have that kind of lifestyle of self care like he probably does in that sense that developers will develop because that's their goal, to make money, to develop spaces and gentrify. And so just because there's affordable housing asked. Doesn't mean they're not going to develop. Perhaps the greedy ones won't develop as much, but there will definitely be developers regardless. And the fact that it's 50. To 60%. AMI seriously, I'm at 30%. AMI As a full time student at Metro, I got my eighth communication with honors last two semesters ago, and now I'm working on my B.A. and my own business as well, and I'm supporting this little person and trying to get a car. And it's really difficult. I can ask you to try. And switch lives with me to maybe just see what it's like if he's even still there. But all of those developers I know we live in a plutocracy and I would like to perhaps even have conversations between the poor and them and see what comes of that. But the thing is, the plutocracy has the privilege to say no and to not talk to us and to stick their nose up at us and to all of you guys. And then unless they want to pay you so they can get their way. But not all of you guys are sold out, thankfully. But there's a lot of politicians and police officers who are sad. Because this is a plutocracy. But I really would appreciate it if there would be 30 to 40% and not just. 50 to. 60, because like that one. Guy said who said he helped develop this plan, he said it encompasses from. Homelessness all the way to home buyers. No, it doesn't. Homelessness is 30 to 40% am-I. He lied to us. He's he's trying to truly develop that. That was like a whole PR scheme or marketing scheme to cover up the truth. And that's just sad. But many of these people are just used. To covering up the truth because they're getting paid. And that's the truth. Thank you. Our next speaker, we're going to ask Mary. We're going to try to have a speaker go before you. Thank you for your consideration. Mr. Gary Jackson. Mary Coddington, who will be here in person, and then Kenny Owens and Samuel Valero. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Ladies and gentlemen, Counsel, please look up at these screens. I like to see the people whom I like to see the people who killed me. The ones who should never see my five grandkids grow up. In a South sweep a month and a half ago. You blew my heart as bad as this old man out there. Now I'm scared that I'll die. Maybe right here. And you deserve it. Each and every one of you deserves that. You just can't look at me. You just seem so. Hartmann. It's all put there. I'm drowning. In terror. Strongest man I ever knew and ever. I've almost died three times this week. He blew me up in the house and came screaming. You have four tents in my camp. Spotless. It was in a stolen cookie. We caused no problems. You put a trash man in charge of armed first responders. Those cops knew me. They would have never done that. They respect me as a force for good in that community. You're trash, man. It orders the cops around. Did this to me. I'm going to die today. Right now. Tomorrow, next week. Affordable housing. What's affordable? Listen to his brain sound. I went into the streets. I took care of the schizophrenics and the fair, the children that you're going to use. I gave them. Everything I had. I didn't steal a cookie in Newtown, not one cookie. I'm going to preach to these people whose obligations and love side, Mr. Councilman, the homeless need leaders they need who is still in the need to quit. Everything we will. And show the citizens respect. But after World War Two at Nuremberg, you put those Nazi leaders on trial. And they said. You told them. You said you're guilty of crimes against humanity. We've been following Moody's. You said that's not good enough. Your obligation was. To humanity when you took them out. Hung. Our obligations each other. I'm a good man. You wanted me and you Streets. You killed me. You don't even know what's going on out there. Whose last name? Any of you ladies? With the homeless housing camps. We saw what was being done in your name with your approval. Who's this time you really thought about these issues or you said screens we. Have allotted for each speaker, we've got 3 minutes for everybody. And so we want to make sure we can hear from everybody. Thank you for being here. And we're going. To put everything on. The speaker. Her name is Mary Coddington. And so we thank you for being here. We've got a lot of folks. God bless each of you people. Please make better decisions, your soul. Rest on it. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mary Coddington. Good evening, Council. It's nice to be here with you in person tonight. My name is Mary Coddington. I'm a resident of District nine. But tonight I'm speaking to you on behalf of the Neighborhood Development Collaborative, a coalition of 20 affordable housing providers across the. Denver metro area. Serving everyone from. Folks exiting homelessness, affordable rental housing and affordable. Homeownership. On behalf of in D.C., I am here to ask each of you to vote to approve expanding housing affordability through those for 24 and for 26. Firstly, we would like to thank CPD and host for the extensive stakeholder project stakeholder participation that they held throughout this process. We met with them several times and really felt that our thoughts. And feedback were considered and are represented to you in the final draft proposal tonight. And I want to spend a lot of time tonight talking about the need for affordable housing. I know that all of you are acutely aware of that. And we have a lot of representatives in the audience tonight that can speak firsthand. But one point that I want to call out is that. Affordable housing developers. Build and manage approximately 7% of the housing stock within the city. And yet 33% of Denver households are housing costs burden, and up to. 50% of renters are housing cost burden. So the affordable housing sector alone can't necessarily manage all of that need that's out there. And the pace of affordable housing development will never keep up with the pace of market rate development. Therefore, it's imperative that the private sector serve a portion of the growing needs. You'll probably hear tonight that it's unfair to put the burden of affordable housing onto one sector, but that's really not the case. As Britta and Brad mentioned earlier, this is one of a series of tools that's used to address the housing need in our community. And by focusing, you know, incorporating the this income range into market rate development, it frees up other resources in the city to address the lower aims that I know a lot of folks are concerned about tonight. This program is designed to build mixed income communities, which is essential for access for folks to be able to have amenities such as high quality schools and parks and grocery stores. But it's. Also important to remember that this is only a first step towards economic integration, and it should be followed by loosening the land use restrictions that limited owners ability to build. Different housing forms on their property. Once again, the affordable housing development community that's represented by in D.C. request that you approve this proposal and provide an additional tool to achieve housing stability in Denver. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kenny Owens. Hi. I'm Kenny Owens. I'm an advocate for those experiencing homelessness. Uh. I don't know what zip code I'm in most of the time. I. I'm a rough sleeper. And as I see it, these you're your host. I don't know how effective they are because those outside two inclement weather days. And. They didn't. They didn't. What do they call it when they, uh, they. They didn't declare inclement weather, so nobody got vouchers. Uh huh. But their numbers seem to be supported by everybody who's spoken. And what they were saying is that lesser the EMI that would be supported. I mean, this would be 36,000. Now they're looking at 41,000. So my question to your would be four years within maybe not this term, but next term you're up for reelection and people were paying a 400, $400 rent increase every year. Are y'all going to be able to get the votes for anything lower than 30% being looked after? Okay. Y'all are looking at 60%. And in Seattle, they did that. In L.A., they did. We're trying to overcome some of the challenges of homelessness while we're doing this. And I don't think that it measures that will increase homelessness by double will. Be effective, I. If, uh, if you can tell somebody who is making $57,470, uh oh, that's hard. So twice the, uh, fitting end to 50% and mine in four years because of the effect they will take place with, uh, with building these developments that don't have to pay linkage fees so that there is affordable housing. What's it going to do to the rest? And rent is my question. Everybody else is. Thanks for your time. I agree. Thank you. Our next speaker in chambers is Samuel Valentino. And then we're going to go ahead and transition to virtually sounds. Go ahead, Samuel. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Sam Valeriano and I'm the health policy manager for the BE Well Health and Wellness Initiative of the Foundation for Sustainable Urban Communities. I live in Council District six and the organization I work for primarily serves the diverse communities in Council districts eight and 11. The Bible Health and Wellness Initiative has a mission to effect programs, policies and practices to support health equity and create a culture in which all people genuinely have the opportunity to achieve the health status that they desire regardless of their race, income, gender, education, or any other social barrier. As we will hear from probably some of the supporters of this bill, the quality and affordability, quality, affordability and stability of a home are foundational to human health and wellness. Over the last decade, more than 100,000 people have moved into our city. This coincided with a massive increase in housing costs. In 2012, the median home price in Denver was around $200,000 and the median rent was about 1100 dollars a month. Today, the median home price is more than 550,000, and the median rent is almost 1800 dollars a month. Statewide, the number of available housing units that are considered affordable for people making less than $45,000 a year has been cut in half since 2010. Today, more than 100,000 Denver households spend at least 30% of their monthly income on rent or mortgage payments, and nearly 50,000 households spend more than half of their monthly income on housing costs , leaving precious little room for other basic necessities like food, transportation and health care. And we all know about the continuous plight of our own house population whose ranks continue to grow at a seemingly exponential rate. Now, while we understand and recognize the fact that there are issues like mental health and addiction that contribute to homelessness, we understand that the root cause is a lack of affordable places to live. According to one estimate reported in Denver earlier this year, the city and county of Denver needs at least 50,000 new units of housing just to keep up with demand. So we support these zoning amendments because they make very necessary, if long overdue reforms to the zoning code that will enhance our city's ability to increase the housing supply, ultimately stabilize costs, and eventually bring some level of relief to a majority of Denver residents. Thank you very much for your time this evening. Thank you. We're going to transition back virtually. And our next speaker is Brandi mangers. And it's not looking like we have Brandi with us and so we're going to go ahead and move on. Charles Allison Godfrey. Go ahead. Councilmember. Hi. My name is Charles Allison Godfrey. I'm a resident of Denver District six. I'm also an employee of Elevation Community Land Trust, an organization that creates affordable homeownership opportunities for Denver at and below 80% of the area median income. I'm testifying on behalf of elevation today. We support Denver's expanding housing affordability plan because it will increase our city's affordable housing stock. Homeownership is transformative at both family and community levels. Families. Homeownership built into generational wealth benefits, educational outcomes, and improves physical and mental health for the community. Increased homeownership rates, raise community wealth and increase the amount of cash that families have to spend in the local economy. Investing in homeownership is also important because it is one of the main drivers of the racial wealth gap. The typical white family has five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family and eight times that of typical black family. This corresponds with the fact that 68% of white households own their own home, while 52% of Hispanic and 37% of black households put in their homes. These statistics show the importance of investing in affordable homeownership for our cities residents of color who are disproportionately overrepresented at lower income levels. The Expanding Housing Affordability Ordinance will not cure all of Denver housing problems, but adding affordable homeownership opportunities to the city's housing stock is a crucial step in the right direction that will not overly impact developers profits nor their incentive to develop. However, when the city considered discretionary agreements under the alternative compliance options of these ordinances, Elevation urges the city government to maximize community benefits in these agreements. Instead of allowing these alternative compliance options to be a backdoor for housing developers to escape their responsibilities under the plan, Elevation Community Land Trust expresses deep gratitude to the city employees and advocates who are involved in drafting the plan and ask you to vote yes to adopt it. Thank you for your time. Think, think, think. Speaker is Tyler Carlson. Hello, counsel, good to see you tonight here on behalf of Nathan ICC. And I am a Denver resident and I want to first of all thank Brad and Annalise and the rest of their team for all the outreach that they provided over the last many months. While we don't always agree on everything. I think we do agree that we're all working hard to create a better city here in Denver, and we're really appreciative for all of the time and effort they spent listening to the real estate industry and trying to incorporate our feedback into the program. I do want to, as a commercial real representative, I we are concerned that we're creating a housing affordability problem for a small business affordability problem, because most small businesses rent their commercial space and the increased linkage fees that are being voted on tonight, which in some cases increase up to 400%, are going to trickle down to increased rents for our tenants because it's increasing the cost of commercial structures. So I think that should be something that the council weighs tonight in its decision and do want to encourage staff and council to be pretty mindful of the 14 month, I believe, threshold for obtaining approvals because as has recently been in the press, the Denver process has gotten longer and much more protracted than in the past, and we are very much concerned that projects are moving forward in good faith, will be caught in the gaps on delays in processing and will be subject to fees that they currently are not planning on because the runway is frankly too short on the timeframe for getting their piece approved. I think again, 14 months as I recall. As a private citizen, I support this program from a mixed income neighborhoods perspective. You know, I live in Parkville. I have lived in the Central Park neighborhood for a decade, and I see the value for my personal life and my family's life and living in a mixed income, integrated neighborhoods. And I think this proposal will do that. But I cannot support this as a housing affordability program because it will not decrease the cost of housing overall. There will be a select few who are fortunate enough to get subsidized rents, but those rents are subsidized by their neighbors. You know, I've got two kids who go to East High School, and if there's five boys, you want to go buy a $10 pizza. They each throw in two bucks, they buy a $10 pizza. If the government decides that only one boy has to pay a dollar, then guess what? The other four boys got to pay an extra $0.25 or they don't get a pizza. And I think that's the reality of this program is it does not decrease the cost of housing for its construction. All it does is limit the income potential from a certain segment of the renter pool. And either two things happen. Those lost the rents for the subsidized units got to have to be paid for by the other residents. The 80% or the project doesn't happen. And that's the mathematical economic reality of this program that was actually mentioned. David Pardo is the next speaker. David Pardo I live in the River North neighborhood and I actually wanted to speak specifically to that. I don't just live specifically in Liver River North, I also work in the neighborhood and both my work and my home are in the over. What was the overlay district around the train station? And so out of my window you can see a whole bunch of cranes. There are three that are visible right now and I like that. I like seeing this city grow. I like the fact that we're turning this neighborhood into a more vibrant place where there are more things to do, there are more people around. And so I would be speaking to a specific amendment that was presented tonight, would like to see that amendment not be adopted. I think that this neighborhood can accommodate the vertical growth. There aren't very many low lying housing type buildings left. Almost everything that's low lying is a warehouse space. Many of them are vacant. I walk past them on a daily basis. And so I have mixed feelings about the the entire program, because as the last speaker just said, if you lower the rents for a few people, some people have to pay more. That being said, I live in a building that's like that. We have limited income folks that live in the building that pay a little less rent. I pay a little more rent because of it. I don't mind. I don't think it's a bad deal. But I am concerned if what it does is it causes projects to not pencil. If a developer comes in and they say, I need to make I want to do this with this piece of land. And they realize that by having affordable units, they can't make the project work in a way that the bank will approve. Then we just don't get those units. They don't build the building. That's how development works. I know this because I work in the industry, and so to me, it's important to not say, Oh, let's not do this, but to make sure that over the coming years we look at the effects of this program on the amount of housing that gets built. Do we end up with more housing because of this? Because we get height incentives? Do we get less housing because developers are scared of building and having to build affordable units? I can't say one way or the other what's going to happen, but I think it's important to watch and see what happens. So that we can figure out, is this working perfectly? Does it need to be changed? What do we need to do with it so that our city gets what it needs? The last thing I wanted to speak to is I'm excited to see less parking. I don't think we need that much of it in a city that has as many things as it has. We have at this point, half a dozen ways to get to the mountains on public transit. So I don't think providing parking is the most important thing that we can do. I think it's providing housing for people. So and with that, I think that's good. All right. All right. Thank you. Our last speaker that we had online was Luke Leary. And it doesn't look like we have Luke with us. And so we're going to go ahead and transition then back into chambers here. Our first speaker is Joel Noble. Good evening, counsel. My name is Joel Noble. I live in Curtis Park. Although I serve on several boards and commissions, including the Denver Planning Board, I'm speaking here tonight only on my own behalf. First, I'd like to encourage council to vote in favor of each of the items on the agenda relating to expanding housing affordability. There's a lot to like in this package serving the range of incomes, either directly with included affordable units or indirectly by the linkage fee, providing funds that the city can use to help those who need even deeper levels of affordability. Thank you to the Council sponsors of this effort, to the staff and to the Community Advisory Committee that worked for so long on this, and we're ready to act. When the state gave the latitude to pursue this approach. In specific tonight, I want to speak to the 38th and Blake portion of the proposal. I served as Curtis Park Neighbors representative in 2016 to 2017 to the Community Steering Committee for the height amendments and the incentive overlay to the 38th and Blake Station area. As you know, the existing affordability incentive here was put in place as the city's pilot of what could be done to incentivize, including affordable housing, which at the time could not be required by offering additional height. That was that was as much as the city could do legally through that process. We had a consensus reached on building heights that were higher than they were previously allowed. And the map is block by block negotiated with all the neighborhoods surrounding that area. Tonight's proposal thoughtfully brings forward the maximum heights that we're in that agreement, and then the current zoning incentive overlay. That was the consensus from 2017. But now the affordability is going to be required and expected, which we couldn't do before. Previously is unless Hoke spoke to those who chose to do the incentive. Height would provide between two and 5% of the units affordable to get that height. Now, they'll just provide between eight and 10% affordability because of what I hope you'll pass tonight and consistent with the community vision. We do want to have the ability to stretch to do more. So if they do more affordability than that and have the incentive levels, then and only then can they hit the maximum heights that were agreed to in 2017. This brings forward an incredibly thoughtful way. The intention of the community to allow additional heights only when affordability is required and to have an incentive. And for that reason, and for so many more in this very comprehensive package, I encourage you to support this as it addresses one of our most critical issues. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Dominique Mack. And then the next speakers are Gerald Horner, Teresa Howard and and the Christian Coalition. Go ahead, please. I like to the council, first off. For allow me to come up here and basically let you all know how I feel. I just want to say I don't know what happened last time I was here, but the hearing about the walkout broke my heart because as a young lady that grew up having, you know, a lot of hope in our justice system that her because as a person to be homeless and a mother, I raised my children. So I believe that our system works. You punish those who do wrong. You reward those who do wrong. And you hear those who cry for help. And, you know, they're just kind of let down on me. So I just I hope everybody's past that now. So first and foremost, I'd like to say this much. I really can't say much. I'm not, quote, no stance, because all these faces here, you have our our mailmen, our doctors, our lawyers, our homeless, you have everybody here and letting you know how this bill is affecting us. This COVID has really made us see that homelessness and this whole situation is it's prejudice. It can affect all of us. And I really want you to take the time to consider this bill, because this might be your grandmother. And as you see, we had a grandmother standing here to speak on behalf of this situation to where? They income is not able to support this and to be out there in a tent helping somebody in these situations every day, watching the people that you go to sleep next to wake up and they in that hypothermia or heat exhaustion from being out here because they can't afford adequate housing. Are we asking you all to do is just revise this? Yes. This is the first step to change, but at least revise this because it's not flexibility. It's not flexibility for us. This out here, we are people's moms. We are people's grandmothers. We are people's fathers. We are your family. And we just want you all to know that we're here and just take the time to consider that. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Gerald Horner. Thank you. My name is Gerald Horner. I live in the Five Points neighborhood of District nine, and I'm here tonight to express my support for the recommendations that have come out of the Expanding Housing Affordability Project. I have to acknowledge, though, that this does. Not address the most vulnerable in our community those. In the zero, the 30%, and I those that are on the street today. Nonetheless, this these proposals, this proposal does address the need we have for workforce housing. We are we certainly have a crisis. Across all income spectrums. But to have housing geared toward teachers. Nurses, firefighters and the like is. Certainly critical to the city's. Livability. It's also important to note that this engagement that the city has had with the with the neighborhoods and the community over the last couple of years is also what we saw back when the original 38th and Blake overlay were created. There was tremendous community engagement and number of us that live in the area participated in those meetings. And we know that it was important at that time that this affordable. Housing was something that was critical. To improve the livability of our city. I am an advocate for supporting aspects of Livable City that include smart growth. Smart density. One of. The biggest concerns we have as. Residents is the very is the fact that as the city grows and we increase in our density, we're seeing a decrease in quality of life for our pedestrians, for cyclists, for families trying to cross the streets in our inner, inner city neighborhoods. And we're asking that. The city look at the neighborhood plans that have been developed over many years across the city that address issues such as traffic calming measures, ball about different converting streets from one way to two way that would help reduce the speeds in our neighborhoods and so on. So while this is part of the this is a tremendous step forward in helping with housing affordability. I would also ask that our incoming mayor and city council look closely at the existing neighborhood plans that call for increasing safety measures to make our inner city neighborhoods more livable, more livable. Thank you again for voting in support of these programs put out by expanding housing affordability. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Tyrese Howard. Hello. Truce Howard with House Keys Action Network, Denver. So the stable which enabled this city bill opened the doors for much needed city. Action to restrict prices and newly. Developed housing. We are in agreement with those supporting this bill that the city should mandate developers build housing. At restricted prices. However, we do not support this bill because it sets in stone a standard for acceptable affordability that will never create housing for our community. Poor and houseless people are left out entirely of this plan. We have been told by counsel people that, quote, no one ever said this plan was intended to meet the. Housing needs of people. Under 50 or 30%. And I. We're expected to be okay with this. To be grateful that maybe, just maybe, someday, funds will trickle down to build housing for poor and houseless people. We are told we have shelters and expected to accept that this is the inevitable way of life and that things for for for in houses, people . Well, housing is built for people above 60%. And I know. Thank you. We do not accept this. It was said today that the most need is at 60% AMI. This is not. True. And as city reports themselves, state people at 30% and I are 60, 64% of people at 30%. Army are severely cost burden. And compare that to 2% of people at 100% ami are severely cost burden. The report for this plan states that the city wants to meet the greatest needs yet. This bill includes housing created at. 100% AMI. And not for people at 30%. If Denver really believes that it is, then it should be meeting the greatest needs that the development should be required to build below 50%. In addition, looking at the linkage fee, it's great that there was an increase in that linkage fee. However, that does not cover the cost of building another unit. And so, again, we're expected to wait for that money to trickle down to people who are actually low income. You say it's not financially feasible. Yes, I understand that the financing of housing for poor people who can't afford the. Insane rents. Must depend much more on developers or on. Our government. Or others. But is this really not feasible? If it's feasible for developers to have high priced rents in apartments and keep many of them empty? Is it not feasible for those to be left reserved for people under 30%? Am I? If it's feasible for the city to pay millions of dollars for new sports stadiums and millions of dollars on policing and jails, is it not feasible to mandate that housing be put at 30% AMI. For each speaker? All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speakers, Andy, question. Hello. My name is Andy Christian. I live in West Colfax, currently represented by District one, soon to be District three. I'm just so pleased to be here tonight and I'm really, really pleased at the work that city council has done. I don't represent any organization. I am not part of any developer, and I've being paid by anybody to be here. I just am really encouraged by, honestly, the forward thinking, the strong thinking and the clever thinking, community focused thinking that has gone into this proposal. It started in a place without certain state laws that it now has the power to take advantage of. We now take advantage of existing laws and communities across Colorado. Large cities, small towns can all take advantage of the state laws that it sounds like due to our advocacy as a city. Instead of entertaining this, conversations with state lawmakers are now possible. I also think something else that we're missing out on or instead of not recognizing here, is the political courage it takes actually to implement something. Like this. In one of our biggest housing markets, city in county of Denver right here. You have folks like Lakewood, folks like Boulder. You folks like other cities nearby, you know, good cities, nice people there. But they have a problem with affordability, too. And I think to be able to take on sort of this type of policy, which is not an experiment, it's been tried in many other cities and states across the country. And to take on this policy in our biggest housing market in Denver is an act of political courage. I just have some little questions. Not that I looked at the answer tonight, but I want to entertain perhaps down the road. So this policy has a number of kind of knock ons that I find really fascinating, and I'm interested to kind of keep track of these. For instance, the West Area plan kind of implements height restrictions along the south side of the gulch, which is where the W line runs. And we'll further area plans like potentially the West Area plan looks to be doing what they implement strict height limits, which is perhaps a backdoor to limiting incentivize building height under deeper affordability. Will developers themselves look for it? Look to rezone parcels to slightly higher floor so that they're incentivized to leapfrog the limit of earlier incentive sites? They could have taken on, you know, from IMX 5x7 and they can suddenly go really high up and will rezonings drop? As developers find it's actually just very easy to instead of going through the rezoning process to just take on their buy. Right. Deeper affordability. I'm interested too, I think in something that a previous speaker said that the commercial real estate market in Denver, one of the small changes that have been suggested by community stakeholders was the commercial ground floor like linkage fee dropping that for new mixed use development. I wonder if down the road that means that we have a resurgence of weird retail back in Denver because we can afford to have a space that didn't have to pay a linkage fee that is ubiquitous in every new development around town. Again, I just want to thank you for your courage to do this work. There's so much more to be done. So much more to be done, as many of the other speakers have said tonight. But I think this is a very important first step and especially gives other political leaders in Colorado encouraged, too. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker are going to be a group of speakers virtually. And so we're moving back to Zoom. Nolan McGowan is first. Hi. Good evening. My name is No. Let me go. I'm part of the Global Response Coalition Organizing for Health and Housing Justice. And I guess I'm assuming that this will pass City Council tonight and therefore asking the city council and city staff very closely monitor this because I do believe there's a lot of potential unintended consequences that could come out of this. I was part of the committee for this and feel like the power in that committee was weighted towards the developer's stated bottom line instead of the needs of the people in this city. Well, I fully understand this is a market based solution. I don't think that it's creative enough to encourage partnerships either with affordable housing developers or the surrounding community of with private developments. I also don't see this proposal as bold enough or equitable enough to support. We know that there are areas that are vulnerable to displacement, and we need to address the biggest gaps in affordable housing, which is below 60%. And there are some major red flags when it comes to equity that we would hope that you are paying close attention to. Having across the board requirement across the city takes up for that very small amount of high cost area could actually encourage development in these neighborhoods, especially areas like us that are receiving high amounts of investment. For this reason, we proposed an equity pilot for the next neighborhoods that are currently receiving the highest amounts of public investment investment. That amendment was not approved at committee, and we really need you all to pay particular attention to this and track. If there's becoming concentrated development in these neighborhoods where the land cost less, if part of the purpose is to have affordable housing throughout Denver in areas that do not have affordable housing. Now, there's a lot of reasons why this isn't going to reach that outcome, including exclusive zoning in these neighborhoods and other impacts, ongoing impacts of redlining . Unfortunately, there are not enough accompanying policies to prevent ongoing patterns of displacement and destructive development in this proposal, and this could exacerbate patterns of displacement instead of stopping them. While we have this new Impact Investment Fund, we still don't know what it's being used for. We still don't know if that will be connected to affordable housing. We have the equity rezoning again. We don't know what's going to come out of that, and we are very concerned that this would be used for reasons to replace an actual conversation in agreement with community for changing neighborhoods like us that are very overwhelmed with new residential development. That's replacing an industrial uses. We really need more tools to be able to encourage equitable development. In order to get the lower arms we're going to we need a greater affordability. We also can't count on any developer going any lower at. Thank you. Keynote speaker joining us virtually is Keith Pryor. Hey. Keith Pryor into the queue. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, yes. Yeah. Great. Thanks. Keith Pryor live in the Five Points area and definitely in support of all three of these motions before you tonight. Definitely want to address the 38th and Blake Street Station and I do oppose the amendments that are being brought forward. There was extensive community outreach in that plan that allowed for the right incentives for the additional affordability. And now that we're mandating the affordability and not if that were to not pass, then you would be taking those developable spaces away from that which was already granted. And so it is critical that those two pieces move together because you are mandating the affordability. And we did agree for those additional height incentives in that area for that additional affordability. So that is a critical piece. I do think that that this is definitely something that is needed in the city. I do believe that DHS is a great partner that is working on the 0 to 30% and is an amazing partner in that. And we are meeting those needs, but obviously we need to meet them more. But this is not the program for that. I do have concerns and I'm hoping that down the road that the council will revisit one of I think one of the glaring missed pieces of this, and that is single family development. I don't believe that the linkage fees are sufficient enough. I think that this really does punish those that are trying to build density and help solve our problem while yet giving a free pass to those that continue to support sprawl, continue to support a car dependent city. And there is a need to basically say enough is enough on sprawl and that we have Master Masterplan communities in Green Valley Ranch, Montebello, Lowry, Central Park. There is no affordability. All of those houses will all be 400, 600, $800,000 because they're one house. And you're not basically capturing that market and you are supporting sprawl drive till you qualify by not having sufficient linkage fees and really discouraging single family development when we need more multifamily. And so I hope down the road that we will revisit this topic and really note the unsustainability single family development, because it really does promote more car dependency and it really does not support a sustainable community and a sustainable city. And you guys are giving them a free pass with this particular proposal that's in front of you. Added we're going to go ahead and transition back into chambers. Tyler Isreal is our next speaker, followed by Kinsey Hastert, Jerry Burton, Naomi Amaya and Kerry Washington. Hey, it's Tyler again. I just wanted. To say that all of these previous speakers have all been bringing up some very. Good points. And the general. Gist, which is basically what I have planned out. Is that this bill, this proposal. I would be in support of it if it was more inclusive. On the. Income level, I'm hearing less than 50%. Am I? The system once again, is just kind of going to forget about us. I know I don't make over 50%, am I? So there be the huge air quotes on the word affordable. Let's be real. The one. Thing that would work is if. Landlords and rental companies were restricted from charging more than one third. Whatever minimum wages. After taxes. With a 40 hour workweek. They want you to make three times the rent. And so that would be beneficial for everyone. Right now, the majority of the working class is convinced that this entire system is meant to keep us down. And not not protect us, but. Rather protect people's assets. But we are the people with no assets to begin with. Those who don't have assets and want them. Are pushed and forced back down to square one and live their whole life at square. One, if you will. Isn't the whole concept of renting from someone who does have their own property? Help to meant you are meant to help you save until you can get your own property. Renting is collectively more expensive. Than buying property like over the. Course of your entire life, but that requires. A lot of investment at once, and it's really hard to save for that if the majority of someone's income is being put towards housing to begin with. This isn't rocket science, y'all. If the jobs paid enough in. Housing was affordable, we wouldn't see those tents. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kinsey Hastert. Thank you, councilmembers. My name is Kinsey Halstead. I'm a resident of District ten. But this evening I'm here in my role as state and local policy director for Enterprise Community. Partners. Enterprise works nationally and in Denver to increase the supply of affordable housing, advance racial equity, and build resilience and upward mobility. I'm here to voice Enterprise's support for the expanding housing affordability proposal. I'd like to start by briefly thanking council members and Sandoval and their staff Annaliese Hoke, Brad Wine and in the teams at CPD and host and all the members of the advisory committee who have worked to put this policy before you today. Enterprise is proud to have served on the advisory committee and believes the proposal is a needed tool to create more affordable units through mixed income development and generate new funds for the city to invest in more and more deeply affordable homes. In particular, we appreciate tying the creation of new market rate housing to onsite affordable units, which will help advance more equitable access to community benefits and economic opportunity. Prioritizing units that are affordable to renters and homebuyers with incomes at 60 and 80% of area median income, while also providing flexibility for developers to include units affordable to individuals and families living on less. Ensuring the fee in lieu is high enough to meaningfully disincentivize developers from choosing this alternative to providing affordable homes in mixed income development. Prioritizing neighborhoods where residents are particularly vulnerable to involuntary displacement for the city's investment of fees in lieu collected from such communities and significantly increasing existing linkage fees projected to generate millions of dollars each year in much needed funding for affordable production and preservation. We further understand and appreciate the units created through this policy should ease investment demand for this income bracket, allowing the city to dedicate a greater share of its affordable housing resources, including those generated through increased linkage fees and fees in lieu to providing homes for those with incomes below 60% AMI. And we look forward to working with the city to help ensure these outcomes. We do recognize the. Benefits to affordable housing necessarily operate within the constraints of a market driven solution, and that while a critical step forward, this is but one piece of a much bigger puzzle of Denver's affordable housing solution. To that end, we appreciate the concerns of many of those here tonight and of partners representing neighborhoods experiencing particularly deep affordability needs and significant involuntary displacement. We hope to continue to engage with. These partners to advance. Equity in implementation and future policies and investments led by and serving these communities. Enterprise urges your support of the proposed. Package and looks forward to our shared. Work ahead to ensure everyone Brite has an affordable, safe and healthy place to call home. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jerry Burton, followed by Naomi Amaya and then Kerry Washington. Hello, my name is Burton. And with hand, I'm a veteran as well. Well, most of the thing that we're going to say have been said. And so I'm not going to duplicate it. What I'm saying is this bill does not do anything for us. A cellphone has already been done, was already going on in this city. The legal fee is too low because if they do not build for affordable, you only get back at the minimum $30,000 per unit. And that is not right. $30,000 per unit is nightmare enough to even begin to build a house of affordability. If you're going to put a little fee, we're losing our house by paying $30,000 or so to lose it to a market rate. Why not make them buy another unit at 200 to $250000 with a legacy CFP? And that way you will continue to have the housing that affordability, because at this rate that you are beginning to get this link to see that mean that we are losing at least one house every time that charge $30,000 depending on what that industry would be at the time a solution you charge them $250,000 or more, so that way you would not lose none. Now you got the. Money to build. The house. Affordability. Another thing I want to say, I'm a make this very short because I've been talking all day and I'm kind of tired and New York is tired as well. And I know anything that I can say. You know, I already heard. You already know. But why would why pass a bill that on what you already are doing in the beginning and what that would do? With that being said, I'm going to say leader unhoused people alone and find a way to give them a home and start to continue to do the sweeps and all that. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Naomi Amaya. Thank you, Madam President, and members of the City Council. I'm happy to speak in support of the expanding housing affordability policy. My name is Naomi Almon. I'm the director of policy and government. Affairs for the. Denver Foundation. But our foundation is the Community Foundation here in the metro region that has been funding non-profits, working to expand the affordable housing supply here in the region, but also provide systemic supports to respond to a history of exclusionary housing policies. And we've heard a lot from Kim. Yeah, sure, sure. I. I can happily do that. Thank you. I need a reminder some time. So we've heard a lot about the city of Denver and the housing crisis that we're in. We don't have enough units. They're not affordable. And we really are at a point where policy interventions are needed. We've heard a lot tonight about the expanding housing affordability proposal. It's a tool that will help in providing increased number of units as a new development is happening and increase the much needed increase in the linkage fees, but also providing for that family with the hope of putting more funding into our affordable housing fund. From a public welfare perspective, we really need to grow and maintain the existing affordable housing supply here in the metro region. Data and a lot of the community feedback has really shared that housing security is not evenly distributed across the population and it really disproportionately impacts those individuals from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, older individuals, and those living with the lowest incomes. That said, we recognize, again, this is one of many tools that's needed to address the affordable housing supply. We're really excited about the city's work on housing prioritization and really will look forward to working with the city and other community partners in their work in furthering policy efforts and funding to address the much needed need for housing here in Denver. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kerry Washington, followed by Adam. Hi, Councilor. Thank you for your time today. I am coming before you about this bill and I'm one of the ones that are under 30%. And I tried to qualify for some. Affordable housing and it had to be three times my income. So if it. Wasn't for the vouchers that I received, I wasn't able. To give into any of the affordable housing. So it kind of made it difficult for me to even try to proceed. So the affordable housing was not implemented because of the three times the rent for the and I end up finding something and then it went down to two times the rent. So by me being on the 30% less, I was still unable to qualify. But I fought the system and then I tried to make sure that everything went through. So yes, I got affordable housing, but it was a fight. I look out for my colleagues that are out here still trying to. Apply and trying to get approved for affordable housing. And it's very hard out here, especially in Denver. Denver County, it's not easy at all. Also, they push you to the outskirts of Denver County and try to get you to go to the other counties around Denver selections so that you can be able to afford the affordable housing , which is not fair. I don't consider that fair. Then not only the other counties. That are still. Out there unable to get housing. Is the. Hard. For them. I just wish that this act would not pass because I really think. They need to work more on. The affordable housing. So that everybody can qualify or at least be able to get affordable housing within their minimal rates of under the 30%, which is still quite high for people who are. On fixed incomes or or disabled or. Just unable to get within a minimum wages of. Working. Or being able to get affordable housing for individuals. I mean, just individuals under the age of 50. On down, they're still not able to get affordable housing. So that's where we're at right now. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker in chambers is Adam Astrof. Thank you so much for having me tonight. City Council. My name's Adam Astrup. I live in the Baker neighborhood and am a candidate for the Denver City Council District seven seat. I'm here today to support the expanding housing affordability policy. Once again, our staff have gone out of their way to produce something that is technically very efficient. It's very effective. It will not harm market rate development in our city. It has some process improvements that will help get affordable housing on the road, on our streets. Faster in our. Neighborhoods. And that's something that we all support. But unfortunately, this policy, just as it won't hurt market rate development, is also not going to go far enough to dig us out of our hole. I think that you've heard tonight that Denver voters, you know, from many different Army brackets, neighborhoods and political affiliations might big action on the housing crisis. And this, unfortunately, I think, really was the easy path instead of the right one. It once again keeps affordable housing. Constrained. Near the most polluted portions of our city. It doesn't. Serve. All of the Americans that we need, and it can't produce the number of housing units that we need. So for those of you who will be here after the next election, I hope we can work on more. But I do think Denver voters are tired of a politics that feels like a feud between old high school classmates . And I think that they're looking for something more and real solutions that can actually work. So I think this was a good one. It's a good step. And I hope next year that we can all work together to tackle these problems at every single AM event, because that's the last thing I just want to add here. There's been a lot of talk about competition between providing housing for 0 to 30 Army versus 60 to 80%. Those two services, we need them all. We're short every single army band. They're not in competition with each other. They're both in deficit. 60% Army is two parents working full time at Wal-Mart with two kids. They deserve housing people who are in crisis. We're coming out of an issue or they need help with addiction. They deserve housing, too. We can do more. So again, thanks so much for this first step and look forward to talking to you more. Thank you. Our next speaker in person is paradise. William Wilson. Excuse me. Paradise Wilson. Paradise, Wilson. Okay. We'll go ahead and transition back on to Zoom. And so our first speaker is Brandi Majors. Well. Can it be heard? It's about time I got back in your house the first time. I don't know what happened. All right, so I got 3 minutes almost. In my personal opinion. This bill. My personal opinion is a major. Why? Well, first of all, this is not for the people. It is for as usual. WIP is creative for Spirit four. That's what it is. Let's look at it for what it is. Does not help the people. The only positive thing I've heard out of any of this presentation, and it's probably just. From the men they spoke with about War Village. That was the only thing that sounded positive. To me at all. Everything else. Garbage, trash, trash, trash. And if not, this is your problem. This is what you did. You have to fix it. So you think it all sounds good. It then lays it out all nice and neat. But it's not for the people. Where the people. The people have been consistently telling you what they need. You be consistently. Ignoring the people. So the two people on this council. To deserve their position. They've really, really. Stepped it up, really worked out, shot. Up the bucket. But catch me. Oh, without you. Too. I mean, where would we be now? As poor as everybody else. Political musical chairs season update your resume me pray they don't call me because I tell you. You're not worthy of a job. The other thing is this British bishop. In ten people before, ten people behind. Underneath, they should be fired and everything else with that. These service providers have not been helping the people they have. You already know they have it. It's always a service provider. Linking you to this. Really? Could you do that? Where would you do that? Where is the success in this? We don't want to hear that. People don't want to hear from the people running these programs. The people come. Here and ask for money from you. We don't want to hear it because it lives more white. But they matter to you. They fill your pockets. The baddest man on the block. Had a point. You're killing everybody. You're murderous. You should know that, too. The single mother became the mother. The young mother wasted or came down huge to make a point. That's a group of people that you. Need to help. Wayne Petersen again, another. Person you need to. Help. Stop ignoring. It's not going away. Systemic racism has to end. Greed has to end. Your fraudulent misappropriation of funds has to end. Period. New administration. We're going to do better. Once we reduce it, work together. The mayor needs to work with you. You need to work harder. Do for. The people which we hired. You to do. Work for the people. Not your pockets. You're all greedy. You misappropriate. Funds. You're lying. Your money. Fraudulent. All fraudulent. You know what we know? We're telling you, bitch. You do better. We know this group right here, minus the other two, cannot do this. If I have to place, I would shut this down. It's a no. Personally, no. I brought me. Go ahead, Kate. Thank you, Madam President, and members of the city council. I'm Kate Barton, a Denver resident and executive vice president of the Downtown Denver Partnership. We are here today in support of the expanding housing affordability policy. Over the last six months, we came together with members of Denver's local business, residential and Commercial Development Community to work with city staff and provide comments, insights and technical expertize on how this policy could help achieve the goal of producing affordable housing options in Denver, which is largely contingent on development and the actual supply of housing in our city. This policy strikes a good balance to achieve this goal. We, like our partners, are committed to building diverse housing options that serve all income levels to meet the overwhelming demand and need for housing in our city. We share a common goal the creation and use of sound market based tools that address all housing needs in all Denver neighborhoods. First and foremost, I'd like to thank the teams at CPD and host for the extensive stakeholder process. Listening to our feedback and responding to many of the comments about this policy as it's evolved. This is a large and complicated issue that requires many tools to achieve the goal of affordability. This policy is not a silver bullet, but is a step in. The is a good step that helps to address one of our city's most significant needs. We appreciate the phased approach, the linkage fee to linkage fee increases that is included in the final policy before you fee increases will be passed on to the end user no matter the asset class increase in commercial rents to businesses large and small. Thus, a phased approach helps to allow for the market to absorb and adapt to these significant changes. We also recognize the work to strengthen and offset incentive programs to support the ultimate outcomes of these policies and mitigate some of the burden and burden placed on the development community, including building fee waivers and the exemption of linkage fees for all grounds where square footage and mixed use developments were on site. Affordable housing is included. A central issue in our discussion with city staff has been the development review process in ensuring that regulations do not hinder housing supply. An important element of any policy is the ability to know whether it's working. We appreciate how the city team has created transparency in this policy implementation. We also appreciate the commitment to efficiency of development, review the public facing dashboard and continue conversations to ensure that develop the development review process is supportive of projects moving forward. To that end, the provision that enables CPD to come in front of the City Council with an opportunity to extend the grace period for projects to be grandfathered under existing requirements. Should the city fall behind? The review of SGV is a critically important component of ensuring that this policy works. While we support this policy, we have ongoing concerns with an inclusion housing policies and their overall impact on the cost of housing. We want to acknowledge this, not the silver bullet, and we urge City Council to look towards policies to help address the missing middle housing across the city through increased housing supply tools. In the end, we come to you collaboratively in this important endeavor to achieve the important goal of affordability in our city. And the downtown Denver Partnership continues to be supportive of many components of this policy. The creation of this policy has appropriately included feedback from stakeholders, and we thank you for your hard work and consideration. I think it's just really I was watching a baby and on a. I am in speaking and listen to this proposal as it does not represent my community and the linkage fee needs to be put towards making more affordable housing. The AMA needs to be lowered its common sense. I am here representing my community here. Young house community. I'm here because when I had to flee a violent domestic situation, I had nowhere to go. And they took me in. And for all of you who say yes to this proposal, you're saying to them they don't deserve housing. Now, I want to ask you, why do certain citizens in your city deserve housing more than others? Why do people who are suffering from dependency, from miscarriages, from their support systems failing them? Why can't they have housing? Why do they go to shelters where there's addiction and violence? We talked to people on the streets. We know what they go through a. These are citizens of Denver. And you playing Monopoly with them, making negotiations with multi-million dollar developers, whatever. Just like these are human beings, these percentage figures, no matter how you slice of the pie. Like when you vote yes and go to sleep tonight. That piece that you forgot. Who are most in need? You're saying just wait. We'll get to you in a linkage fees or trickle down and you know, enjoy the sheltered. But I just want to say like I hope you never have to have the misfortune of living on the streets. Of having to have all of no privacy, all of your weaknesses, all the things you need. Just out on display for everyone to see. For cops to come when you're just trying to survive. And to take your tent away. To take your blanket away. To suffer frostbite, to suffer severed limbs, weak hearts. Nobody wants to die in the street. You don't want to. Nobody wants to. Families don't want to. This is passed down. Generations. Jenner. Jenner. Relationally. Poverty, racism, violence, dependency is pattern. You're not only doing these people, you're doing their families. And I just don't understand how to watch most of your walk out when people from my community are trying to tell you their experiences . You expect them to respect you and respect this house of law when they're just trying to strive for their basic rights, their basic human rights to survive. And that was shameful. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is online. Shay shadi. Well, thank you. Thank you. So I guess that means I'm shady. I am not only a. Member of the human race, but I am here with House Keys, Action Network, Denver. And I like a lot what Riley said about being taken in by House Keys. Because when they found. Me, it was during their outreach team, which I now have the. Absolute. Pleasure of being a part of. And what I mean is. Why was it so hard? For someone like that to find me, I just reach you. I cannot tell you how much of a difference. This has made not only and obviously financially is not the most serious aspect as it's hard for them to. Almost. Solely provide for me in this manner. What I mean is the hope it has given me and I tend to quote scripture a lot. My faith is absolutely everything to me. And faith is the substance of things unseen of things that you only hope for. Because if a man already has what he hopes for, what does he have? And this hunger I have is the most wonderfully devastating thing. This time. Two years ago, I was much like you. My ex-husband took everything from me in the divorce. But that's okay, because now I have a peace that surpasses understanding and I am ready to rebuild. And as a registered Republican, I believe in small government. And perhaps this is God teaching me something I didn't understand before. I was very concerned about how do we pay for things like this? Well, the truth of the matter is, I don't mind when I reenter into society because I would never stop trying. I'm going to respond from the concrete as many times as it takes to fix this. I am so emotional. I hate to lose track, but what I mean is. I'm just overcome right now. What I mean is it takes opportunity to get out of this situation and some people don't want to get out of this situation, and I've seen it. That's their right to do so, isn't it? This is America. And what the one of the first speakers said about. Dominique. She said that. Well. We believe in the system here. I believe in this House of law study law. I've absolutely got to get up off the street, get back into school so that I can afford to pay a little bit more. I wouldn't mind paying a little bit more taxes or whatever it takes to make this happen because. We are the future and if we build each other up, we're just going to do better. I absolutely oppose this of 50% and why it'll make something that's nearly impossible. Q Absolutely. Thank you so much. We'll go online to Aaron Clark. Thank you very much, the council members. It's good to see you this evening. My name is Aaron Clark. I'm a Denver native and I'm here to speak in favor of all of the combined packages or ordinances that you're looking at this evening with respect to the expanding housing affordability. I'm speaking tonight as a member of the. Expanding Housing Affordability Committee. I was a part of that committee. As a then current, now former member of the Denver Planning Board and also as a local affordable housing developer. Very much in support of this because. We need an all of the above approach to affordable housing in our city and in our region. I very much take to heart all that we have heard from many members of the local community looking for deeper affordability, really helping to house the unhoused. This is. What we're looking at this evening is one tool in a broader toolbox related to providing housing across the income spectrum, across the continuum of housing needs. And it is a meaningful way to bring market rate developers surely more meaningfully into the mix of how we how we really increase affordable housing supply. I focus on the word expanding versus affordable. Here it is. It is to increase the overall amount of affordable housing. It is to expand those who are part of that process. There are thousands of us across the state of Colorado who work to develop, produce, find land for affordable housing. Every day. And what we're hearing from our community, the cries of for the need for deep affordability really speaks to how far behind the behind the eight ball we are, how much. The need for housing. Is outpacing our ability to produce it. And for that reason, we need everyone possible to be providing to be part of the solution. And the market right now is does not have to be part of that solution. We do, at the end of the day, live in a private property system and a market based system. And so this is specific to those middle incomes that we also need to help help in the affordability so that we can focus our energies on the deeper affordability that many of us are working on on a daily basis. And that is not really where the market developers would be. This is because of the affordable housing state legislation, and Denver is really the only city that's moving forward with that. And you should be commended for doing so. So please support. Thank you. Our next speaker is Monica martinez. Hi there, Monica martinez. I'm a resident of Council District five. I'm also the executive director of the Facts Partnership, a nonprofit based on the East Coast Export War. I am a member of Mom Mothers Advocating for affordable housing that was founded by President Dana Crawford. I'm on the city's stimulus task force that is helping to inform the cities way to expend the ARPA dollars, the $305 million in ARPA dollars. Oh, I hope I didn't state the wrong amount. I think it's 305. Lastly, I was also the policy analyst for Hickenlooper, Mayor Hickenlooper's affordable housing plan way back in 2006. But guess what? Never got adopted. So I really want to commend you all for getting across the finish line or almost there. I know how hard it is to create citywide policy and satisfying multiple stakeholders. Community members that are in desperate need for housing is really a hard task. So I commend host team and CPD team for coming up with a policy that that will address the massive problem that we have of affordable housing. I know from our stimulus task force, we've heard from Denver residents the serious concern around the need for more affordable housing. Obviously, all policies could be improved upon, but I would commend and encourage you to pass this. I really like how you guys are using market based solutions. I think leveraging the market through providing height incentives, honoring housing over parking and then really those permit reductions really will help result in more predictable development processes for developers. We know that any time there's increased unpredictability to process results and increased cost, which in turn then impact the amount of housing we can build. So I would definitely encourage us. The other thing I would say I support is the the ability to create more mixed income communities. Really apologize. My my clock is going off. Lastly, I would offer. A question for you all to consider. I'm excited about the possibility of a concierge review, but I would encourage you all to revisit this and see what its effectiveness is. I worry. I do know that from the implementation and follow up. After the fact. Properties slipped through the cracks. And so I would really encourage a council to consider kind of a review of that implementation of the concierge. Lastly, I'll just applaud you for your work, and I just want to say I really support the passion of some of the speakers here tonight. But I think using language like murders has must. Be. Rejected in this era. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is in Chambers V Reeves. Hello. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Vee and I'm here to speak against this bill. And this is something that you've heard from a number of people today, from all different points of view. But overwhelmingly, this bill. We have to recognize the fact that it was created in favor of developers. We even heard today from someone supporting this bill. And they were from. The Denver business district. So to have a group, a business improvement district in support of this bill, which is called mandatory affordable housing, is a kind of expanding. Affordable housing is a kind of irony. Thank you for that for look, Sandoval. Appreciate that. But that's an important point that you made in the fact that literally when I said. That, because we also. Heard someone say they want to emphasize the idea of expanding. Over the idea of. Affordable. And that is really what's happening. So I think if we're going to have. A title. That's supposedly addressing this issue, supposedly suggesting that this is a way to create affordable housing, we just it's a lie. And it's inconsistent with the reality of it. We also heard from another stakeholder who was part of the process of creating this bill, who they themselves said felt it favored the developers. We're making a job for them a lot easier by allowing them to come into our city and to continue to develop and to continue to profit off of the people in a way that. Is still unbridled in comparison with other. Cities. And so for us to be introducing a concept. Like this with linkage. Fees and also with percentage armies of affordability, we really do need to consider the reality of what is happening there. We should also consider that. You know, you've heard from people saying that there is support for. 30% AMI. And that is not the case. We don't have new development of structures that are specifically for 30% or less. AMI And because of that, it is going to perpetuate this issue of house business that we're experiencing, one that's affecting everybody. One that is most. Importantly affecting the people who are in. The throes of it and experiencing it on the daily. So I just would like to reemphasize those points, reemphasize the fact that. So much of the support for this bill does come. From businesses, developers who are going to come in from out of state and really have a huge impact on our population here. And I hope that, you know, by seeing and hearing. The voices and the stories of the people who do believe in. You and who do believe that you have the power to consider what is happening. And act in a just. Manner. I hope that you will see it that way, too. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go back on the virtual platform. We've got Kate Stig Bergh. Thank you, President Gilmore, and members of council for giving me the opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Kate Steinberg, and I'm the senior director of activism at Healthier Colorado. We're a statewide nonprofit organization that aims to ensure every Coloradan has a fair shot at living a healthy life. One of the focus areas in which we engage is social determinants of health, which is why in the past we've supported policies in Denver, such as raising the minimum wage, ensuring the passage of our rental licensure program, and fighting against the repeal of the Group Living Ordinance and why we prioritized House Bill 1117 that was referenced earlier this evening on behalf of the nearly 13,000 members in Denver. We urge you to vote yes on the Expanding Housing Affordability Ordinance, also known as the in your home is the foundation for your Health. And it's no secret that Denver's severe lack of affordable housing has forced economic hardship on many families, especially for people with low incomes , older adults and communities of color. In fact, Denver is now ranked the fifth least affordable housing market in the country. This rise in housing costs has been devastating to the cultural diversity and vitality of our neighborhoods. Too many families have been pushed out of the communities they've called home for decades or are unable to live where they work. These housing pressures create family insecurity, exacerbate economic anxiety and cause displacement. It's long past due that Denver requires affordable housing as part of new market rate developments and brings developers to the table as partners to help keep people in their communities. And with a roof over their heads and a December 2020 poll, 75% of Denver's Denver voters supported inclusionary zoning policies like the one the Denver City Council is considering tonight. We recognize the proposal is one critical piece in a much bigger puzzle and that while a critical step forward, it cannot solve Denver's affordable housing crisis alone. This market driven policy will not address all the city's housing challenges, including disproportionate lack of access to homeownership for Bipoc Denver, its record high market rate rents and mortgages and restrictive zoning policies that exclude affordable housing from a large portion of Denver neighborhoods and beneficial community resources. But what it will do is set a solid foundation for the creation of affordable housing for many Denver residents in perpetuity. Simply put, we need actual, tangible homes and we need them to be affordable. All new development in Denver moving forward will now have standard and basic requirements to contribute to increasing housing affordable options should this pass . I understand and respect the varying viewpoints of this proposal. Healthier Colorado supports us because at the end of the day, we know that housing instability is a significant contributor to poor health outcomes for loved ones and neighbors. Please support this policy and you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Move back into chambers. Robert Bailey. You know, this expanded policy is not business driven. It is city planning driven. So a lot of willingness on the whole thing. Thank you very. Much for having me. Appreciate it very much, Brad. You say that this bill does not apply to educational facilities. Why is this? Well, she said we want more educational facilities. So do I. We agree on that. On the other hand, I also want more places to sleep at night. Brad I guess that is where we differ. The so-called affordable housing program is a policy that, in effect, works to tear down the people who build things up. And at the same time, you are not receiving receiving even half of the rent reduction proclaimed. A lot of shell game going on. Let's talk about the differences between policy and development. Pouring concrete and building the place where we sleep at night. This is development. Everything else is policy. Our so-called affordable housing policies are not working. Voting yes today means to expand on that voting no. All that does is hits the pause button. Let's wait another year or two. Let's think about this. Let's search for some sun, some hope, some signs of success. Let's see if we can find some. Pouring concrete is going very well. I like to go stand next to those large construction sites. I just stand there in such an enormous project that is being executed so well, so precisely. And I just look at that and I say, now, this is human achievement, and you want to blame that achievement and you want to control that achievement. You are in the beginning steps of losing this achievement. You will never be able to plan out the place where we sleep at night better than the millions of people who work in the field. We should focus our efforts. On helping more people back into the market, not trying to become the market bit by bit. How do we do this? Money, money, money. We need more vouchers at the federal, state and local level, and we need to make it illegal to discriminate against these vouchers. We could do that next week if you wanted to. It would be easy and we could do that. And then the owners can. Complain about tenants, toilets and vouchers. That's fine. I have no problem with that. But you call. Expanding the housing affordability. I call nationalizing the building industry. One more step. You're trying to take one more step in that direction. I would recommend not doing that. One of the very best books I've ever read on organizational. And this is it. I don't know if you. Can read that is. Just don't do it. Just don't do it. One of the very best organizational books I ever read. It makes a great case for saying no today. A great case. Organizations have a tendency to just do something, do something, do something. A lot of times the best thing to do is just don't do it. Thank you very much. I appreciate that very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is online, Darryl Watson. Council. President Gilmore and members of Council. Thank you for your service to city and county of Denver. My name is Darrell Watts, and I'm a 30 year resident of Denver's District nine. I speak tonight as the chair of the Housing Stability Strategic Advisors Board, the HSA, the board providing advice to the Department of Housing and Stability. Members of the HSA board engaged in almost two in this almost two year process, specific engagement through the official one and a half year community engagement process. We agree that more needs to be done at all levels. Brad winding from host and a lead talk from community planning and development provided presentations today to say board the board by consensus supported Denver City Council's adopting bill 2204 two for are the enhancing affordable housing initiative as an appropriate response to House Bill 1117 as it mandates the development of new affordable housing units. HSA rationale is as follows Each will work complementary with the spectrum of programs developed by host to confront the current housing crisis, specifically the housing opportunity, pillar and host five year plan. It does not remove the requirement for four host and service providers to find solutions for deeply affordable units. 30% or lower. The current linkage fee and center protocols do not provide a necessary affordable housing needed, specifically between 60 to 80% AMI. That would increase access to housing to community teachers and firefighters, to name a few. This process included almost two and a half years of discussions with members of the community throughout Denver, with the Expanding Housing Affordability Advisory Committee and with the SSA board and with members of the development community that would build this necessary housing. If adopted, will impact the lives of community members at work in our city but cannot afford to live in our city. Our current housing crisis requires action and requires deliberate action now. We need more housing. This plan takes immediate steps to create some of that necessary housing. It is only one new tool. There is more work to be done. Thank you, council members, for voting yes on this plan. Same thing. Our next speaker is in person, Joe Davis. Three 2466 Being the 56 years I've been watching this struggle for a long time with my mom and my sisters. My grandma didn't get too involved because she was more independent upon herself. But the point being is this as we sit here and do this struggle, everybody's forgetting. The one most important thing is we are all equals. We all want. And the ones that think they're not got something to say to what won't be any of this. Once we all step up and see that we have one way to go, and that's only because we're all in this battle. It don't matter which way we go. And and as we get any and all this other stuff, as the relevant part does that the struggle is once is beating us, is beating us for the money to try and make money that you guys are asking for. And see, though, as we out here, I mean, 30 to 50 an hour a moment is $50 an hour. I can barely even make what you're asking. I can imagine something to do when they are struggling. And I'm ready. MAN 16 And you only getting $100 a day and you got to eat it. Then you just broke your ankle. I mean, you can. All this stuff adds up a lot faster than walking down the street, getting beat down, and the struggle is the heartbeat. And I didn't have something of the season in my life from heart attacks and stress and trying to accommodate what a lot of people up here are asking for. And the last of the living, 169 people. Joe Day was right here and quite a few of my family members suffered. Quite a few of my friends are still suffering, getting beat down for the little change that we got added to the $3.20 we don't get since the gunmen have shot me back that somebody owed me. Now I tell you like this. You talk to everybody. Everybody understand that you talk to everybody and everybody that thinks that they're a little higher. You know, you got to sit down in the conference room or the principal's office and. I hope that we come to a solution here real soon because of the facts that. If we don't put another foot down the US because we are all one. We are all in this struggle. If you ever had to step down that little bitty wage, then we need to understand what we are out here in the rain, snow, sleet, wind and humans that think they want what we got. And what do we have? Same thing. You know. Better land and you know, some materialistic stuff. And the money we struggle for. We break our backs trying to get it and then take 3000 hours to catch. The time we have allotted for each speaker. Thank you. We're going to go back virtually to Caitlyn Quander. Good evening. My name is Caitlin Quander. I live and work in Denver and I'm speaking this evening on behalf of Knapp, Colorado. Colorado represents a diverse network of over 600 developers, owners, investors and various real estate professionals. First, I want to thank CPD and host staff for their intensive and nuanced work on the issue over the last year. Also, the advisory committee made up of voices across the city. They proactively engage with all points of view in the community during the process. Working to solve affordable housing is complex, and we hope that the city has struck the right balance to promote more affordable housing, but also not curtail development of the city, which would impact the many jobs in construction and also further exacerbate the lack of housing. One of these examples is the phasing in of the linkage fee. We appreciate this incorporation to allow the market time to adjust as the free fee increases annually. This doesn't mean that Colorado is in complete agreement with the approach and we do have continuing concerns about the impacts. But that's what compromise is about and we support the proposal before you this evening. Some will suggest that the ordinance doesn't go far enough. The goal of it was to establish a market based program, meaning without any public funding. This program complements other city programs that do address homelessness, homelessness and 0 to 30% AMI. It also provides more funding for the Affordable Housing Fund to build housing for that population. I want to reiterate that while development is active in Denver, it's at the top of the market. New projects are already becoming more difficult given the supply chain issues and construction costs. We remain concerned that increased linkage fees and increased requirements will be passed along to the other business and residential tenants in these projects. The proposal will likely make the scene metal housing and the ability for small business to lease space. A new retail development more expensive in Denver. We hope staff and City Council will seriously consider an amendment come spring 2023 that allows projects in the pipeline making pragmatic progress be allowed to continue until the rules that existed at the time they submitted the application. We have substantial concerns. ACP CPD staff is already working hard and busy and it will be difficult to keep up. We hope the city will continue to partner on innovative ideas, including further changes at the state level to incentivize even more affordable housing. Thank you. Q Our next speaker is Anna DeWitt for. I spent a lot of winter and District ten. I understand that many of you have. Spent several years developing this plan. I appreciate your work, your time, your tears and your sweat on this. But before I can comment. On E.J., I want to tell you a story. Recently, I was teaching my five year old how to bake an apple pie. I don't know about you, but I love apple pies. But like most five year olds, my daughter wanted to add much more sugar than needed. And that's understandable. Sugar makes apple pie the sweetest. So we tend to focus on it. When I explained to her that sugar, while important, is only one part of baking a delicious apple pie. And this is how I view. With this, we're addressing an important part of expanding housing affordability. But we need other ingredients to truly make a difference in affordability. I'll give you an analogy. When we look at the prices of. New and used cars, we've seen a huge spike in prices. We know that this is because car manufacturers are struggling to make enough cars due to the shortage of electronic parts. But what if what if we as a city decided to make. Those greedy, unwilling car manufacturers who were out to hurt us? What if we made them sell. Each 10th car for half the price of their own while other nine cars would sell for a. Sorry. Hey, guys, I'm on a council meeting now. Sorry, I have several roommates anyway, so we won't see a spike in those other nine cars. In this case, a better solution would be to address the root cause of the castle prices. Not create a scapegoat. For me, this is similar to what we're deciding tonight. I do agree we need forced, affordable measures. But my concern with E.J. is that this forced measure will affect people purchasing new homes, meaning young people. We're not addressing the root cause, namely the fact that most of our city is owned by single family homeowners. The very people that have exasperated exhaust. Excuse me exacerbated the housing crisis have little to no. Responsibility in this plan. And that's my biggest concern. My hope. Is that when we pass the age, we also create a higher affordable housing tax for Denver residents. Who reside in large single. Family homes. It's not just up to young people buying small. Condos or townhomes. It is all of Denver's responsibility. My other hope is that when we pass, you change your bitter city of outdated zoning laws. If this council really wants to move the meter in regards to how high housing prices, we will work. Together to end restrictive. Exclusionary, single family zoning. I and this was saying I support DHEA, but I support DHEA. If this council will be. Bold enough to add the other ingredients. To make a delicious pie. Thank you. Think thinking. Our next speaker is Alfonso Espino. Hello. Good evening, everybody. It's now my pleasure to be here for what seems like an annual meeting of a celebration of what is essentially a kicking of the proverbial can down the road. Non solutions advocated as solutions. Language co-opted to vein for housing justice. It's not my pleasure to be here. So I'm not here to address council, which has become predictable in its capacity to vote for which way. But I am here to address some of the people that were speaking and some of the people that are watching, hopefully, and those that I know that are not because we are in direct contact with them in our communities organizing as we speak. To the housing developers and any developers that are opposed to it. Spare me or crocodile tears to those that are in favor. It shows me exactly why we should oppose it. To the so-called housing advocates who only co-opted the housing justice movement in favor of political power backed by institutions like BlackRock and the largest developers in the country, and some of the ones that are creating those portfolios that this new housing stock is going towards, right where this is all just retirement funds for the people that have been playing with us our whole lives. Most are here to address the people, the masses, the working class, to remind them and to remind myself for the public record and for those that will be studying history 30, 5000 years from now, who do not lay down and allow them to convince us that they brought forward solutions now . I'm here to remind them, to remind ourselves that our power lies nowhere near this chamber. It lies outside in the streets with our neighbors and our communities organizing among ourselves to take that power which will not be given to us to enact that change which will not take place here. It's more of the same. Not surprised. But I only came for the public record. Oh, and I'd like to offer one more correction to a gentleman that spoke about an hour ago before me stating that he somehow lived in a nonexistent rhino neighborhood, which, to my knowledge, does not exist. It's a special tax district. Please. Five points will still call. Thank you. That was near Miracle. And we have Erin with us. And so we're going to go ahead and go to our next speaker. Yolanda. Okay. All right. Doesn't look like Yolanda's with us. Thank you. Jonathan Piera is online virtually. Good evening, Counsel Johnson Pier, District three resident. I want to start by thanking CPD Counsel and partners for seeking solutions to Denver's affordability crisis. Both redirect subsidies for affordable home and shelter providers, as well as continue examination of policy solutions. As the capital city of a state short 175,000 homes today and projected to be short half a million homes by 2030. We have a long way to go to reach our goal of safe and stable housing for all. Regarding the rule, tonight's Inclusionary Housing Ordinance will play in reaching that goal. We should consider that for decades, cities have been debating whether inclusionary zoning can close their severe housing gaps. As you've heard in this room tonight, experience tells us that there are things these ordinances do well, such as creating mixed income residences and things they do poorly, such as increasing metropolitan sprawl. They're politically popular, of course, because they're seen as an easy win. The ordinance doesn't inconvenience homeowners by asking them to contribute more to the problem, instead placing that cost only on new development, often renters. And because mixed income homes can only be built in a small fraction of city. We don't even ask those homeowners to change what their neighborhood looks like. One thing is clear, though. From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, inclusionary zoning is not nearly enough to solve the problem, whether implemented in small cities or large. Many residents in all of these places still find stable homes out of the reach. These cities still have residents living on the streets. These cities still have residents moving away because they can't afford to live in their home town any longer. Clearly, to whatever extent these programs may help some residents, they are not providing everything we need. So I'd like to focus on the future. Once this ordinance passes tonight, you'll have finished the politically easy part. Next, we need you to show courage by doing what is politically hard in cities around the world. You, too, are doing a much better job of housing their residents. They are pushing policy that is far more effective but hard. These include eliminating costly parking mandates citywide, improving tenant protections, lowering barriers to neighborhood scale housing forms, subsidizing mixed income housing, simplifying rules, and speeding up permitting processes. Another important path is easing restrictions on how homes are used. One which you began to walk last year as you expanded access to living. There are even small building code changes that help, like preventing single start buildings. Weird things. Small things. I ask that you don't wait to see results before pursuing additional proven tools needed to house rights of all stripes. Please do not consider this mission accomplished. Let's move past this political hurdle and get back to working on real long term solutions quickly to produce more affordable homes. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Bill Zeigler. It doesn't. It doesn't. Bill with us. So, Tim Kraft. Good evening, Madam President, and members of council. My name is Tim Kraft, a long time Denver resident, and I'm here tonight speaking on behalf of the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, where I serve as the chair of our Government Affairs Committee. Our association and member submitted a letter to City and Denver excuse me, in December of 2021, and we greatly appreciate staff keeping us involved along the way. Ever since, our input has largely been focused on the underlying issue driving the need for this affordable housing measure. The fact that creation of housing has not kept up with the creation of households. While the steps proposed in the affordable measure before you now are great in that they help to improve equity. It does not do enough to help the underlying, if you will, that we don't have enough rooftops. The families that currently want to. This can only be solved by making it easier to build more homes. While great and meaningful incentives have been provided for traditional multifamily projects with house incentives, incentives attached and for sale product has to some degree been left by the wayside. Additional measures can be achieved to help the addition of housing through the creation or the allowance of smaller lot sizes, fee reductions and expedited review time. We also encourage the city to reinstitute the residential infill task force with the drive to increase supply by expediting approvals and increasing the use by rate approval process. We also want to remind the city that the state's construction defect litigation still makes it difficult and extremely risky to build vertical for sale multi-family housing. Moving forward, we ask the city to honor commitments made to the applicants who have projects in the pipeline submitted as IDPs before the applicable deadline of June 30th, and to honor the 14 month timeline previously discussed by several of the speakers. We hope the city is able to honor those projects. The construction industry and the city's goals are aligned in that we both want to deliver more homes to help alleviate the cost burdens currently burdening residents of debt and incentives to help achieve that we greatly support. Thank you for the opportunity to provide input and we appreciate all the hard work by city staff. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Our next speaker is Rich McClintock. And it doesn't look like we have Rich with us. And so we'll go ahead and move to Renee Martinez Stone. Good evening, counsel. My name is Rene Marsh. Penistone, and I am a Denver resident and employee of the Denver Housing Authority. I'm speaking tonight in support of expanding housing affordability. And I want to thank CPD and House for their innovative leadership on this effort. It's an impressive start to what I believe will help to bring many more bold and equitable housing solutions. In West Denver, 83% of households are currently vulnerable to gentrification and thousands of families. Almost 9000 have been displaced since 2015. One in two households have an additional person or family living with them. They're keeping residents from being homeless. They're doubled up and in need of more housing. I've been tonight I'd like to speak specifically to a proposed amendment tonight and describe why we need to keep it use it. It is accessory blowing units exempt from the future linkage to historically. We have seen use be built by developers and investors. Mostly. Because the complex the technical expertize they need and the financial flexibility needed to absorb the added costs and requirements that come with a use currently. The pilot program created at the Denver Housing Authority with Habitat and the city is changing. Who builds radios? We help residents navigate the process of building a road in their backyard. And this is an affordably restricted, though. In 2021. When 82 permits were down significantly citywide. 10% of those permits were for homeowners in our program, not affluent homeowners, not traditional developers, 100% of them below one 20%. And like 50% of them, below 80% am I. And even some below 60% in my 83%. Of those. Building ratings were persons of color. 25% were female. Heads of. Household, and 100% want to stay in place and providing affordable housing or changing the neighborhood. These are homeowners who want to help, and they're willing to invest their own financial resources in affordable housing. And they need to. Expand their living space. But they cannot be. A part of the solution without our support. I hope Council will approve this work tonight and will not approve the current amendment amendment to remove the linkage fee exemption. This is working backwards in terms of. Equitable. Opportunity for all and. Would create. An additional obstacle for homeowners adding affordable homes. In single. Families own neighborhoods, something we've heard many times tonight. Thank you for your time. Let's move to. Portland. Our next speaker is Lauren Hanson. So my name is learning and I am a resident of District ten and a resident of North Cap Hill. I would just like to keep my remarks brief and speak in favor of the three ordinances that we have in front of us right now. I also do want to actually touch on one of the comments some of the earlier speakers made. And personally, I think that we need to go a little bit further when it comes to reducing parking, particularly in places like where I live in northern Capitol Hill, where my apartment is situated on the crest of a large parking lot crater that is underutilized about about 70% of the time. My biggest thing in regards to that is we did have a speaker earlier that also spoke to the issue and useful source of concrete. I think one of the most useless pieces of concrete in the city is an underutilized parking space that can also be used to build more affordable and more housing overall. Thank you all for letting me speak and have read it. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ryan Keeney. Greetings, Council members. My name is Ryan Keeney and I live in Council District ten. I'm board president of Yimby Denver and also serve on the board of Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods. I was a member of the city's Expanding Housing Affordability Advisory Committee, which helped craft the package before you today. I am in support of the proposal as written before this Council meeting. It will create more attainable housing for people who are currently rent burdened or unable to buy a home in Denver. It will accomplish this through a variety of methods that leverage private development to build up affordable units without being so burdensome that homebuilders are unable to build anything at all. However, in the big picture, this proposal plays a game of financial musical chairs. Despite the development incentives, this proposal will likely on average increase the price of new market rate housing in order to fund a relatively small number of new homes at below market rate. It is unlikely to significantly increase the total amount of housing construction and the number of new affordable units will be grossly insufficient to meet our severe deficit. We need to empower the market to build as many homes as possible in order to maximize the effectiveness of city tools such as single unit detached houses. On large lots are still the only types of homes allowed on most of the city's layered land, which is now incredibly expensive, even in the form of a vacant lot. This means that it is effectively illegal to add to our housing supply in most of the city, and most of the city's geographic area will not directly contribute a single affordable units under this proposal. We must legalize housing abundance in the form of 80 youth and multi-unit buildings in every neighborhood in order to truly meet the challenge of the affordability crisis we are facing today. Only an abundance of housing can solve a housing crisis. The expanding housing affordability package takes small strides towards this vision, but is held short by the limitations of its approach. I urge Council to pass this bill today and to follow the lead of progressive localities like Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota, to pass a residential infill residential infill ordinance tomorrow. Thank you. You are net speakers John Duff and Bob. Focus on the community. I'm John Davenport, project director for Rhino Art District Rhino Districts. Thanks to teams of CPD and host for the comprehensive consultation process and commends. The city for taking. This step towards a more affordable future. This policy won't solve all the issues Denver is experiencing. But in a year when the city's been the fifth least affordable real estate market in the country ahead of New York City, this is a step forward. The 30th and Blake incentive overlay, which many constituents were involved in the creation of, was a pilot program, and a number of lessons were learned from that. These included the need for deeper affordability and for more consistent and predictable program. We're excited to see these lessons included in the city wide VHA policy. We also appreciate the way in which the 38 completed zoning heights have been considered and integrated within the policy before the change in state law. Height incentives were one of few ways to encourage affordable housing when the incentive overlay was created. Therefore, the difference between the base and incentive height was maximized to increase the likelihood of affordable housing outcomes. Now, with the ability to require affordable housing, a low base height is no longer necessary to create affordable units. Indeed, keeping the base height low would severely restrict the city's ability to focus growth near transit services and amenities and to maintain consistency with the to small area and city wide plans. However, the most notable way is that it would stifle the ability of the 38 complaint area to create more affordable units through linkage fees. We welcome the policy and the city's approach to integrate the 38 complaints overlay within the policy to deliver a city wide consistency and to maximize affordable housing outcomes. This was thoroughly consulted on and the city's community engagement process and we look forward to the 38 and Blake area contributing to the creation of Denver's future affordable housing needs. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, the next to Heather Lafferty and then James Warren. Then it. They were supposed to join us virtually. And it doesn't look like we have them on with us. And so that concludes our speakers this evening. I'd like to thank all of our speakers, and we're going to then move into questions from members of Council on Bills 22 Dashboard two, four, four, two, five and 426. And we'll start out with Councilman Leach. Thank you as well to all of the speakers. It's a long, late night and we really appreciate you being here. A lot of important questions were raised by our speakers and there are some answers. And so I'm going to ask some questions. One of the things about this bill is it's not one bill or strategy. There's like four or five different pieces of it. So I'm going to ask some questions about the lowest income folks that relate to each of those pieces. So the first question I wanted to ask is, Britta, if you could please come up. So one of the things this bill does is it generates revenue for something called our Affordable Housing Fund. We've talked about the linkage fee, but the linkage fee goes into something called the Affordable Housing Fund. Can you describe how that fund particularly impacts or assists those either below 30% of your immediate income or exiting homelessness? Thanks for that question. Council on a. Couple of key things about the. Affordable housing fund and homelessness. It helps us provide a deep subsidy, which is really needed in order to reach the rent. Levels for a person exiting homelessness. And so that is really helpful. Grant dollars, low interest loan dollars that. Help us do that. The second component that is an eligible use from this fund is services dollars. So services that help go alongside housing to support someone exiting homelessness as well. In since its inception between 2017 and 2021. Approximately 12% of the. Affordable Housing Fund, or about $15.7 million directly supported programs. In housing developments that serve people experiencing homelessness. During that same time period, another 18% of the Affordable Housing. Fund, or about 23.6 million. Has supported the AA delivers. For Denver or D3. Agreement, which will produce more than 2500 units in partnership with the Denver Housing Authority and other developers, including around half of those units that will including around half that serve people experiencing homelessness or earning below 30% AMI. So just to be clear, this bill will generate funding that will build housing below 30% of area median income. Yes. Thank you. Second part of this bill, the part that I think a lot of the speakers were talking about, is the residential development requirements on a lease. I have a question for you if you want to start heading up. So so requiring developers to include some some affordable homes. Did did you all did the studies look at doing 30% of area median income housing as part of those requirements? And what did they find? Yes, we absolutely did look at an entire range of incomes acknowledging that that the spectrum of need is great. When we evaluated what a market based program could support a 30% am-I, it was around 2 to 3% and so really less than 5%. And so we had to have a trade offs conversation of do we want to be getting on up to 120% and we could have produced more units or do we go down to 30? And that's really by having a community conversation and doing the feasibility. We came to a balanced need of acknowledging where this program could be successful but also still target incomes where there was a significantly greater need. So to summarize your quick response, we did look at 30% AMI 40%, 50%. They were just at substantially lower numbers. That being said, the negotiated alternatives allows for hosts to bring dollars to those programs and we can buy down affordability. So it's not off the table. It's just not something that that is spelled out explicitly. Great. I'll get there in just a second. But first, Brenda, and if you just want to stay closed, sorry, I'm bouncing back and forth between you. But so Britta, we had a really powerful speaker earlier today. I just want to be sure I say her name right. Kerry Washington shared a really powerful story about her voucher experience. And I wanted to ask you, who are we use who who's using vouchers in Denver? And what is the biggest challenge that they face from what you all are hearing? Yeah. I was grateful for that testimony, as well as some others who mentioned vouchers and vouchers. We are. Fortunate that this council did pass already legislation that makes source of income protected here in the city and county of Denver, which means that someone who has a landlord cannot discriminate against a. Tenant because the source of. How they're paying their rent is about. And that is really important. But it doesn't solve some of our other issues. And utilizing a voucher, there are. Two key ones that I'll focus on. There's several, but one is the availability of housing stock. There is just really not many apartments to be found to take those vouchers that are at the right price point because you still have to deal with the fair market rent. And right now, that restricts the pool, right? If you can only go up to. 100% of the fair. Market rent, then all those units above it aren't accessible to be used with that voucher because the voucher covers. The distance between what a person can afford to pay with 30% of their income and. That market rent. So it means that when the HUD calculates that there's league and all of that and it means that there are many people that cannot find in that further restricted pool of housing stock and in Denver, a place to use it. That is one of the beauties of this policy, is that by creating more affordable units, even if they are restricted at an 80% or less level or 60% or less level, someone could use their individual tenant based voucher as well to help make up that distance and. Be in an affordable home. It increases. The pool of. Stock that we have. For people utilizing vouchers. So let me just make sure I get it right. Every single unit created at 60, 70 or 80% of am-I would be available and within the rents for a voucher holder, meaning they could pay as much as, you know, a third of their income no matter what that is. If they earned 10% of my 20%, if they were leaving homelessness. Is that right? That is correct. Okay. So the next question, Brad, you're on deck. So we talked about the developer requirements, which are a formula, but the formula doesn't apply to every single project. There are some projects that are large, more than five acres. Maybe they're getting subsidies from the city. They don't go under the formula. So can you talk to me a little bit about how those projects are treated under this policy? Yes. Thank you for the question, Councilwoman. So those are, under this policy considered what we've defined as high impact developments, meaning the definition that you talked about, either the scale of it, just raw acreage or the utilization of tax increment financing or metro district financing. And those projects have to go through kind of an added community engagement process to ensure that what they are proposing, what they're negotiating with our department and the city is is responsive to the needs identified as part of that process. And so that typically will end up being is more responsive and a little bit less reflective of the citywide policy because of the need, because of the impact that those developments have. And so there are examples of in recent history, like the Navajo Market or like the red lights or River Mile, where we had large negotiated agreements with large developments that included a variety of affordable housing options, including several rental units below 30% ami restricted for sale options as well, and a mix in between. And the idea is that those typical developments are those atypical developments of that scale are more demanding of a of a more localized, more nuanced and more kind of context sensitive approach. So just to say back what I heard from you, which is that this policy provides for negotiated agreements in large developments, and those developments have included 30% of my housing in recent history. Just to answer your. Last strategy that we didn't talk a lot about during the testimony, but this policy includes incentives. Actually, one speaker talked about it it. And so we have affordable developers building housing for those exiting homelessness. We have those building supportive housing. And so what specifically is this policy providing that will increase housing for those exiting homelessness are 30% of AMI in some areas of the city. Sure. Thank you again for the question. So similar to Ethan for more and village just spoke to this exactly where the incentives are available to those developments. You are agreeing to provide units on site and especially the enhanced level of affordability yet to avail themselves of incentives like additional height which allows for additional units by right. Not having to go through a rezoning process to get there, the elimination or address the reduction in the parking required, which one eliminates a tremendous cost to that development to build that parking, especially even if it's in a structure, but also the square foot is it's not being utilized for parking can be utilized to provide more housing . Right. And so I think that the example that the gentleman from Warren Village mentioned was that the project they're working on at 30% AMI and below was targeted for 73 units because that's where they could fit in the box if they were allowed the new box that the spaces would allow them to build 89 units. That's a pretty substantial increase, and it's one example of what we hope will be consistent across the board, particularly for the providers of of housing, for almost all of them. All right. Thank you, council president. Those are my questions. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Kenny. Next up, we've got Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. Brad, I have a few questions for you as well, starting first with you and then I have one for Annaliese. So when you mentioned the 400 square feet, you mentioned above 400 square feet. Is that accurate for those that are exempt or was it below 400 square feet for someone adding onto an existing property? Yes, that's specific to additions to existing homes and additions under 400 square feet are exempt from paying them. Because when you spoke, you said above and I just wanted to. Oh, if I do, I am mistaken and I apologize. Thank you. For calling. Let's see. I have another one for you. So you just talked about the high impact developments. What is the policy around those projects requiring the affordable units to be built on site as opposed to allowing them to go build off site? Shouldn't there be different expectations where there are public subsidy dollars in a project to require more integrated communities with mixed incomes, as opposed to allowing people to do the buy out or go build their units off site? So I think it's important first to start with again, the House bill that enabled us to have this policy in the first place, which legally requires us to provide options, alternatives to providing units on site. That said, yes, if we are putting dollars into developments as a city, the expectation ought to be that the outcomes within that development are better or at least more responsive to the community needs than, say, city wide standard policy. And so our expectation of apartment will be to push forward as much as we can affordable housing on site, but there are options available to them to negotiate. If they have a parcel of land that they want to contribute. That would be a ideal for the creation of a deeply affordable, permanent, supportive housing development in a location that's near services or in a community that needs it greatly. We are open to that kind of alternative. But the but the threshold is high. And we expect, again, first and foremost, that it's responsive to the feedback that these developers receive from communities. So I think part of what's critical to this conversation is making sure that we don't create communities like what we saw happen with Lowry and with Stapleton, where the affordable housing that's on site were. Only because we created specific provisions that allowed that housing to exist in. And so I think, you know, ensuring that we do have blended communities is part of what has always made Denver a great city in terms of mixes of various incomes across this city. And we're, you know, at a point where we have priced many, many people out of our city. So I just wanted to say that. Let me go on to my question for in always the lower parking ratio. Can you tell me if any of the conversation around that involve conversations with lenders and do any of the provisions call for no parking in any of the developments? So to your first question, did it include conversations with lenders? Yes, they are an important piece of the conversation. And I think what we see is lenders tend to look back in time and so they tend to be more conservative. They say. What did the last four developments provide? Oh, they were at a 0.75. That's what we should provide, even though they didn't acknowledge that. Scooters and e-bikes and all the various transit investments have changed the mobility option. So I think that lenders will continue to be conservative, but we are seeing systems change and and I think that will vary. And whether it's affordable housing lenders like Charter or more informal lenders to market rates. In terms of your question around the parking exemption, this bill does introduce a new parking exemption that does not currently exist in the code. As a reminder, currently in the code, all of our downtown core, this area that we're here does not have a parking minimum. I think we've noticed that every new development that has gone up has multiple podiums of parking. So parking minimum enables for the opportunity for developers to choose units over parking spaces. But what that does is it restricts the parking exemption into particular zoned districts. So multi-unit and mixed use districts, as well as those that are also located within a quarter mile of a fixed transit station. And in the future, our high and medium capacity transit corridors like Colfax and Federal as BRT comes online, those projects that are providing an enhanced level of affordability, meaning more affordable units on site, can take advantage of not providing vehicle parking. So speaking to parking minimums, the 38th Street and 42nd and in Fox area, I see this in a very similar light. You've got the 38th Avenue underpass as a major entry point for this area. And I'm wondering if any of the conversations that looked at increasing the density in that area talked at all about the infrastructure and the fact that that is very similar to the 38 by 25 Fox in Park Avenue interchange, where that is the only entry point into the site right now until a developer may build a new bridge over the railroad tracks, which then increases the opportunity to increase the parking minimums for the area. So can you just speak to whether or not that was part of the bigger conversation? Simply put, yes. Blueprint Denver is a land use and transportation plan, meaning that we do not singularly look at land use decisions of where we should be directing jobs and housing growth separate from the infrastructure needed to safely and sustainably be able to support that. We've had continued conversations with our partners and dotted around the 41st and Fox station, which is why there are rules and regs that govern the area and the development. Acknowledging that the further connections of mobility of various modes need to occur to accommodate that development capacity. And similarly to we've continued conversations on the 38th complaint area. Just because you have zoning entitlement for something does not mean that carte blanche you can develop it. We have a very thorough development review process that includes over 38 various agencies to ensure that the public health, safety and welfare is executed with every development. And so it's really just important to note that that we look at it at a holistic scale, and this plan is implementing that holistic scale, but also it's looking at the site specific scale at the time of settlement plan. So in the review that is done at CPD, has any of that looked at an infrastructure improvement district that asks all the developers to participate in offsetting the costs that. Otherwise the taxpayers would be asked to offset. So, for example, if the 38th Avenue underpass is not part of that bigger conversation that they're all being asked to participate in, it should not be left to one particular project to bear that cost. Is that something at least being talked about or thought of in the process? And if you can answer that, maybe maybe Laura can address that. I know at the 41st and Fox station area, that was something that was under consideration. I don't believe a formal proposal has advanced or gone through. I'm not aware of one specific 238 and Blake, that would be an improvement district. But if any of the staff do have answer, I've not heard of that being proposed, but I really think it would be for our partners and Dottie that something like that would be brought forth. Yeah, I think with some of these areas where we know we're going to be seeing lots of development, being able to look at the infrastructure. And I know we've talked about this along the Federal Boulevard corridor as well, Laura, but in this area, that 38th and that 38th Avenue underpass that is right at that Blake Street Station is it's a bottleneck today. So as we add more traffic, that has to be addressed as part of how we look at the area more holistically. So can you tell me just looking at an infrastructure improvement district that all developers might participate in is something that you all have explored. Thank you for the question, Councilwoman. We are in conversation with Dottie to begin. Looking at what that might look like. I think we're too early in the process to be able to definitively say that we've got an answer or a concept that we're moving forward with. But if I guess. I guess I'm looking at the concept not necessarily solely at this area, but sort of more broad in in areas where we know a lot of development is being proposed. Sure. Fair question. I think we are looking at the applicability specific to Fox Park because it's very apparent just the constrained infrastructure. I think it's a great opportunity to expand. Once we've got an understanding of how how it might work at Fox Park, then how to take that much more broadly. Certainly to your point, and as you pointed out to us numerous. Times, are in a number of places. Around the city that could benefit from from a. Concept like that. So we're. Looking into. It with Dottie. So since you're up there, I'm going to bring up the other issue. We always talk about life, safety and welfare when we're doing development projects. And I notice with the 38th and Blake area, some of the sites abut the railroad tracks. And I just want to know if any of the conversation that looked at that area address some of the things we've been talking about related to the railroad safety work that is going on now that will ask developers to address the life safety issues as part of their development. Yeah, thank you for the question. It is my. Understanding that conversation and the research that was completed by community planning and development was prior to my position being here as executive director. My understanding is that. My as CPD worked to identify how. That might be, how we might engage with the development community, and what kind of regulations we have in place today, which are very limited in terms of requiring a developer to address that safety concern. I believe what we did is through our site development plan process is ensure that every developer was made aware of the safety concern and the potential for them to encouragement for them to think about that as a part of their development. I understand with this consultant. Who is now currently underway, we will be looking at how do we enact regulation that will bring that safety much more into. Yeah, so it's. Really more focused on identifying our vulnerable areas along the rail corridors where development may occur that would ensure that we are in fact addressing the life safety issues and we'll provide some guidance on how we address that. So I appreciate the conversation and the fact that we're we're not there yet on all of that. But collectively as a city, it is an issue that we have not been addressing. Because we made this a voluntary process. And so the work that we're doing will, in fact ensure that we have the ability to ask the developers to address the life safety issues by the sheer fact that we're giving them the permit to go build their project as they're proposing. And this is just asking them to look at it in a little bit different way. It's not to stop development, but to do it in a different way that in fact addresses those life safety issues. So thank you. I think I've got one last question. And this is around whether or not the process and the conversation around bringing that forward made any distinction on housing type. So for example, there are a number of affordable housing manufacturers around our state as governor just, you know, announced he's going to fund one up in Grand Junction. There's one in one vista, there's one down in Pueblo. There's discussions about doing one somewhere, you know, in the front range. And the hope is that that type of housing can be done faster, cheaper. And if that can bring online housing in Denver quicker and more affordable, then is there are there any restrictions? And I get that they have to go through the whole building department assessment, making sure that there and you actually meet the building code, fire code, all of our, you know, UBC. But are there was that part of the conversation and are there any restrictions on that? Thank you for the question. So, of course, part of the conversation is how do we deliver homes faster? Which is why many of the incentives we're looking at, the opportunity, modular home or prefabricated home is certainly something that we're seeing as a growing trend to better address some of the supply issues. From a zoning perspective, we do not treat those types of homes any differently. I will note that that sometimes those homes don't always fit our building envelopes. And so what we sometimes see is someone said, Oh, I have a modular home, I want to build it in Denver. And they don't do the homework to understand that our zoning might require, you know, a book plane or a setback or whatever else. So just like any building might need modification, that is a challenge that we continue to work through and find solutions with so we can advance on affordable housing. And then as it pertains to the building code, our building code is constantly evolving and changing. We're currently undergoing an update. So, so long as those are meeting the building code, there's no limits on those opportunities. More quickly, deliver affordable housing. And I've got one last question and this is for you, Brad. So as we look to the development community, which is, in my opinion, different from our nonprofit housing developers to now contribute and participate in providing affordable units in our city. Is it anticipated that when we're asking them to do affordable units, that they're encouraged to apply for low income tax credits, to maybe get that subsidy deeper or expand the number of units are able to provide on their development. Thank you for the question. So the short answer is no. This is designed around what a market development can feasibly achieve on site without the need for subsidy, which is critically important. That said, I think our department and the city ought to and are willing to invest additional resources if it's important to say, increase the number of units available or buy down the affordability of issues that are created. We're not opposed to doing that, but across the board, we want to make sure that these options available are ones that can be replicable and included without the need for for the city to putting additional dollars. And so. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Ortega, Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President. I have a question about linkage fee and the the thought process that went from that first iteration that we and council saw. And the current iteration, I guess, on a lease, I don't know, I'm you guys are looking at each other. So I guess between the two I bet you have the answer. And so as one example, this proposal shows four steps in the linkage fee increase as opposed to I think the first one that I saw only had three steps. Could you could you talk a little bit, I guess, to help guide that I don't want to lead you too much, but to help guide the the thought process. I think that the first iteration was probably not hard, not strong enough. And and so I think the first proposal then we had a second proposal, but that that had higher linkage fees. And then the third proposal or third iteration, we actually had a fourth step. So I can can you help me? Maybe I'm just making all this up. So that's why you're here to set the record straight. Well, thank you, Councilman, and good memory. This process has been evolutionary and responsive to community and stakeholder feedback. The first proposal was released in the fall of last year, and that included just a one time jump up to fees that were lower. And we certainly acknowledge that COVID is continuing to impact many facets of our lives, development being one of those. And then in the next iteration, we then said, let's phase us in over three years. But then we said, Well, we're on phasing it in over three years, but we're also keeping the fees on kind of a more modest side. At that point, we did increase the the linkage fee up to increase it by a dollar. So for larger single unit homes and that was a direct concern that we heard from community of our scrapes and rebuilds, of the loss of naturally occurring affordable housing and the replacement of of highly unattainable housing. Then kind of in that next iteration, we we acknowledge that there was still room for our linkage fee numbers to grow. However, kind of as a compromise. What we did is we increased that growth rate over four years, providing predictability, but in the long term, increasing those fees to a higher amount. So once we kind of go to that CPI, you adjustment will be at a really kind of healthy pace when we look at. Comparison appears as well as what we know the market can be able to bear, helping to ensure that we're maintaining a critical source of funding that's complementary to other things, such as the marijuana sales tax and the property tax all homeowners are paying and contributing to as well. He thinks. So that was that was what I was looking for. So I seem to recall that when there were three steps, we we looked at pier cities and the linkage fee amount was still below. Um, what we saw was the right amount or the, you know, the amount of linkage fees that people were charging just as we looked at peer cities. Is that right? Um, so generally speaking, peer cities range the whole gamut. So peer cities linkages range from 250, a square foot all the way up to 1750. However, there's a lot of important nuanced differences. Some of those districts with 1750, it only applies to the incentive, not to the entirety of the building. Some of them only apply to their central business districts and not the remainder of the city. Others, like Boston, Massachusetts, have had linkage fees on the books for decades, and so it's allowed for them to gradually increase over time, allowing for the market to absorb it. So when we do compare our proposed numbers, which also are a range based off of use and where it's located within the city, it is much more of that middle range of where we look at our peers, where previously we are well below every single peer in the country. Okay. I want to thank you for I know that you and I, when we had one of the briefings, I did express concern about how we should get a little higher with linkage fees. So I want to thank you for for I'm sure I wasn't the only one. So but I can pretend like I feel like you listened to me specifically. So thank you for that. Um, the, the other thing, the only other thing that I wanted to touch on was about parking ratios. Um, I want to thank you and Director Aldridge and, and my peers here on council for eliminating parking minimums, you mentioned . There are no parking minimums downtown as of July 19th of last year. There are no parking minimums in Golden Triangle either. So the question for you is, while this microphone works, um, does the eliminating. This is a leading question. Does the elimination of parking minimums mean that we will have no parking spaces in any new Golden Triangle development? We have not seen that trend to occur as of yet. But if you travel only to. Fair enough and I think where I'm going with this is the there were the questions a few minutes ago in comments and in in the many tests, the people testifying about how we could eliminate parking minimums. But banks still have parking minimums, as you were saying. They look back and they say, you know, this development had parking. And so they followed the trail us and and and how we want to move forward with land use in our city that a fair statement. Yeah. I think lenders are looking at lending risk and the marketability of those units. And we as a city have to look at this from a policy perspective of implementing our adopted plans, which call for a multimodal, sustainable, interconnected transit network that reduces single occupancy vehicle and individual ownership needs. So we might not see these policies play out in the sense that we might not see significant reductions in vehicle parking for the next couple of years. And that's okay because we are still at least eliminating a barrier and providing the opportunity for those affordable projects to take advantage of lower parking ratios and like the Warren Village example, provide a lower parking ratio, provide a fourth floor, and provide more housing for individuals and families exiting homelessness. Yeah, and I'll just repeat and this the last, my last comment, I would just repeat something that I mentioned in committee. I would be in favor of installing parking maximums if I felt that the the banks would support it. But I don't want to go down the path of installing parking maximums and then destroy any development in our city because because we couldn't get funding for them. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Hines, Councilmember Sawyer. Thanks. Just wanted to follow up on one thing we haven't kind of touched on yet, though. We heard a number of people comment on in public comment, and that is the idea of that of the fact that housing affordability is is lessening in our city because of the number of scrapes that are happening. Right. So one of the ways that CPD had discussed potentially alleviating that problem or addressing and incentivizing adaptive reuse was the what's the name of the project? I can't remember it now where we have one house and it gets split into three or four different units, but the house stays the same. I don't know if there is a fancy name for it, but I think you keep the existing building form, but you allow greater density. There was a whole project name for it that. I can't remember because I'm on like our 17. Of my day at this. Point and I'm afraid. You guys, if you remember it, let me know, please. Thank you. So we have abandoned that project and or set it aside for now in favor of some other priorities. So wanted to know how this proposal will address the problem of scrapes and and incentivize adaptive reuse. Yeah. And were you thinking of residential infill? Yes. Thank you. The residential. Development. Policy went to that level of specificity because I think we acknowledge that we needed to look at whether it was adaptive reuse or allowing. As part of the East Area plan. That was part of the proposal. Initially, also in the discussions. Yes, I totally get that day. And so I think that this this project and specifically the linkage fee is where we kind of broke the current use category, which said we're going to charge a new 800 square foot home, which very few people are building. But that's what we've historically seen in them. We're going to charge them the same exact linkage fee on a per square foot basis as a $4,000 mansion. And that's where we had the opportunity to say, we know that the city needs to be doing more, but this is a first step in which we can charge higher linkage fees on those larger units that are more than 1600 square feet. You can very easily fit a family friendly three plus bedroom home and 1600 square feet. So we want to still ensure that we're allowing for family friendly housing, which is much needed, but for those developments that are providing those kind of larger scrapes that are well over two or 3000 and selling at 1.2 plus million, that they're at least contributing in a more meaningful way to affordable housing if they do choose to move forward of those groups. Got it. Really appreciate that. I just felt like we hadn't quite clarified. There are so many different things that this proposal is doing. And so I wanted to just make sure that I understood exactly how it was addressing that challenge, which is something that I hear from my residents a lot. So. Thanks. No more questions. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Sawyer. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Unleash. Maybe you could help clear the air on the issue of the parking and the exemption, because a lot of us were treated to a flood of emails over the weekend, the last couple of days, because of the feeling that agreement or a consensus that came out of the advisory committees before I went to the planning board and then planning boards suggested then and the council committee amended and put in the park total parking exemption. Back into the audience and we're being asked to vote no on it because of the impact that that will have. So explain to us how one would qualify for a complete exemption, because it doesn't apply to just the way I'm reading it. It doesn't apply to simply any development of ten or more units within a quarter mile of a by an enhanced transit corridor. So how does it work? Yeah. Similar to my response of Councilman Hines to the parking reductions and exemptions have been a continuous evolution throughout the duration. Yeah. So in the fall we had a much broader applicability of the parking exemptions and we kind of peeled it back and took it and got some feedback from advisory committee saying, Oh, you guys peel the back too far, but I get it. Let's keep moving this piece forward. Planning Board also made a recommendation and then we had the passage of at Luti further expanding that. I think the really important piece to note is, I think what you just articulated, it's not every project within a quarter mile radius, it's projects that are building affordable units onsite at a higher level of affordability. And it's those corridors that have had city capital investment. So Colfax, as it exists today, while there is incredible transit service and I certainly get to benefit from that, does not qualify for the parking exemption. They can certainly provide reduced parking as our code allows for parking reductions. But it's not until about four or five years out from now when the city has made that capital investment and we have fixed BRT stations in place, that that parking exemption can be leveraged once again by projects that are providing a higher level of affordability on site. Not only just factored in represent. Could you explain on, for instance, on BRT, actually on on the transit on the rail transit, the measurement is from the center line of the platform of the station and not just within a quarter mile anywhere along a track. Because of course, for instance, on the line, if I live at on Clayton Street, I can easily walk to a station. From there, I could walk all the way over to 40 in Colorado or down to 38 in Blake. So on the BRT, does it apply also to within a quarter mile of a BRT stop or the corridor itself, the entire cadre? Great question. As drafted, it applies to the entirety of the corridor. And the reason being is, one, it's much more interconnected and in all of the plans for BRT that have been executed thus far. Stops are always about a quarter mile or less apart, oftentimes far less. So we could create all these little bubbles run along the corridor that would be quarter mile radius. But in all the instances, at least with the Colfax corridor, they overlap. So for simplicity's sake, it's applied to the entirety of the corridor. Okay. And I also I had difficulty finding a Chapter 27, Article ten, so that I could understand what are what are the enhanced affordable housing projects, what makes it an enhanced project over and above the mandatory? What are the triggers for that? Yeah, certainly. So it should be kind of towards the end of the bill I can pull up the page, but if the screen will show right what I needed to do, the enhanced affordability requirements on page 20 of the slide deck. And so it's an increase of 2 to 3% dependent upon choice and market area. But it's important to note that that overall percentage increase applies to the entirety of the building. And so what we actually see is that in many instances this can more than double the affordable housing contribution by leveraging a higher percentage of affordable units on site. Mm hmm. And you mentioned to Councilman Hines that we certainly don't expect that. Many builders would put up a new 120 unit, a 180 unit building and provide no parking. A bank probably wouldn't finance that. But I haven't seen any proposals of that scale come in. I think where we really see some of these projects being able to take advantage of lower parking ratios are some of our smaller, more affordable housing projects that are, you know, two or three stories. Typically less than 50 units are able to go to a very low parking alternative. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. And thank you to the city staff answering those questions. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 22, Dash 424. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I first want to thank the entire team of people that were involved in bringing this forward. I think they were very thoughtful in trying to come up with some great recommendations in this these three bills. This is not intended to solve the entirety of the problem of our affordable housing needs and issues. I think it's one more tool in the toolbox. I know we used to have an inclusionary housing ordinance when we created the housing fund. I had argued that we should keep the IATO in place because that at least allowed us to still get affordable for sale housing. But that that was then. This is now. And I think the the measures that our city staff and community partners that came together to come up with recommendations on how we could address various price points in our area. Immediate income scale can happen with with this legislation that is before us tonight. I want to thank my two colleagues, Councilwoman Canete and Councilwoman Sandoval, for their participation on behalf of this body and for keeping council informed as this was moving through the process. This doesn't solve everything for everybody. And I know that we have spent a lot of money on addressing homelessness. Not all of it has been done to the satisfaction of everyone, but. We have spent unprecedented dollars during this time frame, and in large part because we benefited from receiving some federal dollars that allowed us to meet the needs of so many people that have been struggling. And as you heard earlier tonight, we have many people staying in hotels until, you know, we can continue to work towards getting them into housing. But it's a supply issue, and we need to continue to work towards looking at how we create that and also not being expected to be the city that solves this problem for the whole metro area. Neighboring counties have been building housing at rapid paces as well, and a lot of that is market rate housing, too, and it's creating the same effect in their communities. And when we see people having to move away because the price point as far as Henderson and and creating some strain on some of our rural communities that don't have transportation. So we've got more people driving in their cars. This kind of legislation I think is a huge step in the right direction and allows us to ensure that we are continuing to move the needle in meeting our needs. And, you know, like any legislation, we can always come back and revisit it, make changes to it, and look at how we can continue to make those tweaks that need to be made. It doesn't mean that tonight's bill is, you know, cast in stone, but it will be important to have in place as we move forward and try to meet the needs of our missing middle, which is a huge segment of our population that can't afford to stay here. It allows us to create more on the lower admi scale, but that is a large part of what we have been doing this whole time and in large part with our nonprofit housing developers that are building housing across the city. So I will be supporting this tonight. And again, thank everyone from CPD, from a host that worked with our community partners to bring this forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Kenney. Thank you. Council President. I just chimed in briefly to provide a little orientation to those who might be following along, as Councilman Sandoval and I were clarifying where we're at procedurally. So there are three bills in this package, one of which is going to be having some amendment discussion. So I usually we do amendments first before we discuss the package so we can kind of comment on the whole package and what however it turns out, this bill does not have any amendments on it. But so I think what's best is I'm going to urge my colleagues to vote yes on this, and I'm going to reserve my comments for after we have the bigger discussion. So I'll be commenting on the entire package as a whole when we get to that bill. So it's a little different than I'm used to. All good. But I just wanted to, you know, urge folks to vote yes and then I'll have some longer comments on a next version of the package. Thank you. Council President. All right. Very good. Thank you, Councilman Canete. Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President My battery is saying that it's my laptop saying he's about to shut down, so hopefully I can get this through. So I want to bring up a comment that someone else had said, we have many other cities in the metro area and they also have housing affordability issues. And as Councilmember Ortega said, you know, it's not up to Denver for us to do everything on behalf of the entire metro area and frankly, on behalf of the entire state or region. So but we are doing what we can and we're trying to do our part. And in many ways, we're doing more than our part as as best we can. We also have fewer limitations that some of the other cities have. Like, for example, there's a city to our west that limited the development to 1% growth there, intentionally slowing development when and their, you know, their housing affordability is going up even more . And I think one of the comments on in testimony was about other cities like Boulder. And they are, you know, even more unaffordable than we are where the average home value is over $1,000,000. As as other commenters have already said. You know, we've been advocating our state counterparts to create these regulations. And and because of our success at the state level and encouraging our state counterparts to pass these laws, we now have expanding housing affordability. Like we also have additional control over the minimum wage. So Denver continues to work from the making housing more affordable perspective. We're also continuing to work from empowering people to get closer to a living wage. You know, we got the chance to increase the minimum wage above the state average and we jumped on it. Now we're more than $3.30 above the state minimum wage. That helps more than one in nine Denver rates in our city. This also will have a material impact for for people in our city. So we're doing what we can in many different angles. You know, this this is typically I mean, this is one of the many issues that our city, you know, struggles with and and policy struggles with because people want immediate results, but government cannot provide that. We've got to be prudent with the people's money, and we should consider the public when we consider how to spend the people's money. In 2008, the economy imploded, all housing projects stopped, and the Denver developers found other hobbies in other industries. Same with the construction workers in Denver. And then in 2013, Denver started to recover. And then shortly after that, Denver's housing market turned white high. We've had 130,000 people move to our lovely city since then, and Blueprint says we're expecting an additional 200,000 people to move to the city by the just the city of Denver by 2040. Housing development hasn't kept up, and we're doing our best to move quickly. That's part of the reason why prices continue to go up. But again, we've got that conflict where people want resolution. Now, that's not what government does. We want to make sure that we are methodical and measured with our our decisions. We're using the people's money. So I recognize that that we've got a lot of frustrated speakers who are just struggling to survive. We are doing what we can. And and and so I. Anyway, that's that. Thank you. I clearly am. I thought art is as solid as I could be if if it were earlier in the evening. Thank you, Council President. No worries. Councilman Haines, council member said. Thank you. I'm going to do my comments on the whole package. Since this next half, I'll be introducing in explaining the amendments. I want to contextualize my comments with with two titles that we've sadly been given. We were named the second top gentrifying city in the country recently and the top city displacing Latinos in the country. Supporters of this bill have touted that this will provide a steady and modest supply of affordable housing. After fighting for a decade for an opportunity to make it mandatory that developers build what Democrats need. Modest is hardly the approach we should be taking. The whole is just getting bigger and bigger and army is increasing as our population shifts to higher income earners. Therefore, affordable is slipping farther and farther out of reach for more Denver sites. The grace period we're giving for this to even kick in means that steady and modest impact will not even kick in fully for years. We've defined high costs markets in a way that ignores areas most vulnerable to displacement. We're ignoring the high social costs of displacement identified by our own gentrification study, and we've ignored the pleas from community to apply a higher cost to areas where we have driven change on purpose and development disproportionately is affecting black and brown families. This is a market based tool. We've established that relying on the market so far hasn't served us very well, has it? We've been relying on the market to self-correct and it has not corrected. We developers have not prioritized lower cost housing, despite that being the highest in demand. We fought for the ability to make mandates so that we didn't have to rely on developer generosity that was not manifesting at the needed levels. Yet here we are essentially codifying the status quo. We've written a policy to uplift developer power while ignoring the city's greatest needs. None of this was written from the perspective of people who are houseless or rent overburdened. People are going to say that this is a good start, but that's not true. If the linkage fees are low, you can't even change this for years and it doesn't actually solve the crisis we're facing. It's just virtues, virtue, signal policy, which we're getting really comfortable with these days. Community has been involved and many have pushed back only to be marginalized and overruled by the developers in the process. We heard that tonight. Best practices have been considered and a whole study was completed to tell us what would be a maximum justifiable fee . And we ignored our own study of best practices and that maximum justifiable fee. Why did we pay for the study? The entire proposal is nothing more than a repeat of the abysmally low linkage fee passed in 2016 that has locked us into our current situation. Incentives for developers linkage fees far below what data says we can justify this developer's sales pitch coming from our own planning department is real smooth. Sounds good. Took a long time and yet does very little for the people worried about a roof over their heads. It lets us off the hook because now we can say we did something and wait another decade before doing anything else. It's sad and it's infuriating. This body doesn't need my vote to pass this bill tonight. Your minds are made up. They always are. Well before the people speak. I too am still just a minority on this body. But the people out there, they need my vote tonight. They need it because they need to know that I see them. Someone sees them and understands this is smoke and mirrors and we all deserve more than developer crumbs. I will not support these bills tonight because they are a slap in the face to a city expecting us to treat this housing crisis as a real crisis. If a modest approach to putting out a blazing fire is the best we can do, everyone in this city should be outraged rather than placated by tonight's vote. I'd like CPD to go back to the drawing board and put the most impacted people in the city first for a change. But that's unlikely to happen. So I'm not supporting this tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember CdeBaca. Seeing no other members in the Q Council Bill 22, Dash 424 is on the floor for final passage. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 22, dash 424. Black eye. CdeBaca. No. When I. Turned. In my. Hands. I can each. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I swear i. Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. One night and eyes. Ten eyes council bill 22, Dash 424 has passed. Council members say to Barca, will you please put Council Bill 22, dash 426 on the floor for final passage.

Recommendation to receive and file a report on the Latino Cultural Center Community Engagement and Business Plan. (Citywide)

LongBeachCC_10122021_21-1058

Thank you. And with that, we're going to go and move on to the first presentation and then we'll do the consent calendar. So I know I think we have majority of people here for item 18. So let's go ahead and do item 18, please on record. Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a report on a Latino Cultural Center. Community Engagement and Business Plan Citywide. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council. I will. We do have a presentation. This is a pretty exciting item that we're in front of. This is an investment of the council made and it's been really important to the community. I'd like to turn it over to Tracy Conger, who will start off our presentation. Honorable Mayor and City Council. We are so excited and pleased to provide you with an update on the Latino Cultural Center. Next slide, please. Back in September of 2019. Council you all authorized $50,000 to support outreach efforts for Latino Cultural Center. And then back last November, we invited 50 prominent Latino leaders to serve on the steering committee. And many of those leaders are here in the audience today. And we want to thank them for their countless hours of advising and guiding us into this process. Also, we want to thank the Departments of Economic Development, Parks, Recreation, Marine and Public Works. Brant, Dennis, Eric Lopez, John Keisler and Sergio Ramirez have been huge partners in lifting this effort over the last year. Central CHA led a very robust community engagement process, which you'll see in just a moment. And Laud Cultural Resources has developed a draft business plan for your review this evening. Oh. Next slide, please. Yeah. Thank you. The steering committee has been working diligently over the last ten months to produce the report this evening. We had a big kick off last December. We were excited and the mayor welcomed everyone to the steering committee. We looked at the history and data about Latinos in Long Beach. We saw a market overview of models and trends and a case study review of other Latino cultural centers across the country. In addition, as I mentioned, Central Cha led a five month, very robust community engagement process. We reviewed the community engagement report and provided feedback. And then from all a culmination of all this information, Lord Cultural Resources developed the draft business plan for your review this evening. Next slide, please. Now I would like to call up Joseph Quintana, executive director of Central Cha and Megan and Nya. They're going to provide an overview of the community engagement process. Me. Can everybody hear me? Yeah. Perfect. Thank you so much. Tracy and Jessica will join us in just a few moments. But I will begin today's presentation. By giving you. An introduction into how our community engagement went. So next slide, please. Now this is going to be the quickest version of the history snapshot that we gave at the beginning of every community engagement session we had. And this is for the purpose of giving some community education, but also some cultural context into the issue and why it's needed. So just to begin after the 1848 US-Mexico war. Mexico lost about 55% of its territory to the US. This left over 100,000 Mexicanos north of the border. But following that. Event. Mexicans were largely decimated for decades to come. So between the 1850s to the 1940, the Latino population largely decreased. Now, following the establishment of the Willmar City, which eventually became Long Beach, this area was in an area that was largely derived from the last MI Atoll Brother Territory acquisition. And this comprised of Los Alamitos, Fritos and this. So this area was largely connected to the Latino roots. However, by the 1960 census, we saw that the Latino population had decreased to nearly 7500. But at that time, the Latino population started to revive and grow again because their labor force was largely looked for. For the current workforce development as well as for for the economics in the city. And so by 2019, we see that the Latino population grew from merely 7500 to over 1009, 190,000. That's an increase of over 191,000 or a factor of 2,652%. Now, that might not seem that big of a change, but if you take a look at the entire city's population, it increased by only 118,460 during the same time period. That's a factor of 74%. But the Latino population has grown to be the largest ethnic population in the city. Now I'm going to give you an introduction into what the city's current demographics look like. And this was just to give you context as to how the city has grown and how the demographics have changed over time. Next slide. Thank you. So we see that presently, according to the 2020 census, Lumbee Latinos represent 43% of the entire city's population of that. We take a look at family households in the city and we see that 31.9% of all family households identify as Latinos. Now, to take a further dove into what our our Latinos look like here in Long Beach, we see that 81.2% of all Latinos are of Mexican heritage. But we also have residents from Central America, South America, Peru, Peru. We also have them from Puerto Rico, Cuba and even the Dominican Republic. So we have a broad range of Latinos presented are represented here in Long Beach. And so if we take a look now not only at the composition of their origin, but we take a look at their age composition. We see that 30.4% of the Latinos living in Long Beach are under the age of 18. Those are youth populations. And then when we take a look at the Latinos who are of working age, that represents 65% of all Latinos here in Long Beach. Which is not surprising when we take a look at the workforce and we see that 42% of Long Beach's residential workforce are Latino. And this is important when we start to understand what kind of means, what can I give services and what is our population going to request from a cultural center? Now, I also must direct your attention to some of the opportunity gaps and the economic challenges that our community faces. Before we look at what the community requested, because in much of what the community requested, it's reflected in many of these opportunity gaps, including educational attainment. Income gaps, health access. As well as our digital divide, immigration issues, language barriers, and even some of our household challenges. Next slide, please. So of course, our community engagement was rich and robust. And as much as I would enjoy providing you with all of the details we don't have all night, so I'm going to give you just a glimpse of the outreach and findings that we had from our our our from our community engagement. So there was an overwhelming vocalized need for a cultural center that goes beyond the traditional museum or cultural center. And they were speaking our communities really seeking not only cultural recognition or arts, but they're looking for support through wellness, equity, social justice, economic opportunities, historical connections. They're looking for education, healing services and really opportunities for recovery. And so when we take a look at the tree presented, this is just a word tree that captures some of the dialog that our community brought up time and time again. And we see empowerment, we see recognition, we see acceptance. And so what we gain from this is that Latinos struggle not only with a sense of belonging or a sense of acceptance, but they're also struggling with trauma, financial burdens. They're struggling with job insecurity. Disparate health impacts, educational attainment gaps, family struggles, language barriers, immigration issues, and even a digital divide, as I mentioned before. Next slide, please. So Center Cha really did do our best to implement a outreach plan that was broad and robust to make sure that we didn't cherry pick our participants. But instead, we cast a broad net to make sure that our true Latino voice here in the city was captured. And through this effort, we hosted 19 focus groups, which encompassed 263 individuals. And it also gained participation from 25 local organizations. We held these sessions in both English and Spanish to make sure that it was language inclusive for all of our participants. Additionally, we collected 77 survey responses which were collected from students, youth as well as residents over the age of 18. We also connected with many of our city leaders and experts and hosted 15 key informant interviews to see what they had to say, what their input was on the center. And finally, we hosted a see if you will be MBA Student Research Study, which included 12 MBA program students, three professors, as well as one well-known urban planner . Next slide, please. So from all of these outreach, from all of this outreach, what we found can be summarized into four main categories. We see. That. Space and facilities. Was a big. Theme to our community. Programs, services and. Exhibits spoke. Directly to our community, community arts, health and wellness as well as education. Overall was a big theme, and economic and community development was very big to our community. But these are sort of umbrella categories. So to take a look at the more specific concepts that were identified by our community, you can see at the broad array of descriptions below with pictures and what our community really wants to see. And of course there's more, but these are just the most popular ideas and we have to phase in some of the ideas that our community is seeking. And historic exhibits was one of the first ones. Our community is really seeking acceptance and connections to the roots here. So they want to hear stories, pictures and really have that connection solidified between us and why and our history here in the region. Now, a trusted safe space was the next thing that came up. Very often. Our community wants to make sure that this cultural center is not only a space where they can get resources, but they want to make sure it's a safe space where they feel comfortable to access these resources and that it's safe for people of all ages, all backgrounds, and that everyone feels comfortable in the city to go. Additionally, making sure that we create a community resource hub as sort. Of a pipeline to. Give information as well as to provide information or other resources on some of the issues that our community may be facing, some of the challenges they are seeking help for now. Additionally, there was a very high outcry for services and programs regarding workforce development, entrepreneurial development, as well as business development. Now our community, of course, don't want to see cultural arts, education, language programs, language services, even assistance in tech services and so forth. And that all falls under cultural, education and arts. And then another interesting thing was that the community wanted to see architecture, decor, esthetics and displays that really reflected the diverse Latino community. Because one thing they mentioned was that when they look at downtown, it doesn't reflect the Latino people. There's not one thing that really reflects their culture. And so that's really missing to the connectedness in the community. Of course, Student Support Services was another large thing. But one thing that was interesting that I may mention is that the community really fell in love with the concept of including an elementary school, a traditional Latino marketplace that can serve in the historical cornerstone of the city. But it can be a comprehensive economic development and a mixed use project that's not only going to highlight and showcase the city's Latino population and their vitality, but it's also going to support as a support the center overall, as an economic generator, because this can pull in new businesses, this can support local businesses. And this could also be a place for tourist, for visitors and for even the city overall. So, of course, this is the overall view of the community engagement and a snapshot. If anyone is introduced, interested in the detailed information, I will be proud to provide that to you. But I'm going to keep the show going and I'm going to pass it on to Jeff cooking dinner. Okay. Thank you, Megan, so very much. For those who may not know, Megan just graduated with her. Masters in Economics. So she is one of the youngest economists here in the city of Long Beach and has already doing great work, as you can see. So we're so very proud to have her. So on behalf of Sensor Tower and our advisory committee and our Latino community and just want to give a big thank you to the city council members. To our mayor. To city manager Tom Modica, to John Keiser Brant, Dennis, to Eric Lopez, Tracy Colonia for all their support in this. Initiative, because without your investment, we would have never been able to do this feasibility study that's so much needed in our community. I'm not going to go over the demographics that's already been presented, but what I would just like to say thank you on behalf of the organization. And we look forward to the next steps, the next steps of conducting a feasibility study for the El Mercado de Long Beach and a Latino cultural district. So we're excited for that. I know. That's next. And we look forward to. Working with Mr. Kiser and our city manager to making that. Happen and our hardworking committee members and some of them are here today. So if some of our committee members could just stand up, I know we have a lot more who couldn't be here, and some of them are elders, but our committee advisors who are part of the cultural center just to stand up and. To be recognized or give a giveaways. One. Thank you for your time and service. As you can imagine, we have 40 members. But some folks. Cannot be here in person and they're watching. So thank you so much. For your time and service. And so I also just want to thank our community members who came out today. So this is why you won't hear a long speech from me today, because our community has so much to say. So thank you, our community, for coming out. Give yourselves a round of applause. And we're there in support. And we have a lot of. Watchers watching. At home, and. We are in full support of this project. So thank you. On behalf of Senator to. Thank you, Jessica, so much. And Mr. Motorcade, did staff have additional comments or. Yes, we would like to present the business plan by Lord Consulting. Great. Great. And we will go quickly through this, mayor. I would like to present Veronica Gonzalez and hub here, Jimenez from Lord Cultural Resources. Veronica's here in person and her colleague, whoever is in remote via WebEx. Honorable man, city council members, it's a pleasure to join you this evening. I'm from lower cultural resources and we have just celebrated our 40 year anniversary. Laura Cultural Resources was founded in 1981 in response to an emerging need for specialized planning services in the cultural and heritage sector. We are now the world's largest cultural professional practice, with completion of over 2500 projects in 57 countries across the world. Lord has earned an international reputation for sector leadership, innovation and excellence. It has been a true honor to have worked with your very esteemed steering committee, the city's amazing staff Tracy Brandt, Sergio and now Eric. And to have a very important partnership with Centro Cha on the planning of the Latino Cultural Center. Jessica, David and Megan, thank you all for the opportunity to work together. We join you in your enthusiasm, engagement and leadership in moving this very important project forward in a way that continues to be transparent, equitable, inclusive, with a focus on access of resources on behalf of your very substantial and growing Hispanic constituencies. We look forward to the Council deliberations and consideration of our plan. I now want to introduce my colleague, Javier Hermanas. Javier is our director of organization and strategy. He has a high level of expertize and many years of experience in leading a wide range of projects with museums, cultural organizations and municipalities. Of course, we will be here following our presentation to answer any questions you may have. Thank you so much. Thank you, Veronica. This is Vince Carter speaking. I hope you can hear me all right. We can hear you. Great. Great. So. So I'm going to be presenting just, just five slide slides, a snapshot of the of the business. And I just wanted to add in my my gratitude again for the process has been very enriching. You can see that the process followed as we faced the approach we we tried to build on your work with other other partners along the process. Very important the contributions from some of the community engagement and process sense which are led and part of our reform was to be, you know, quantifying the implications of this initiative, trying to come up with operations on the use of capital cost estimates for for this project moving forward. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. So what? What? The business plan includes the full document. Is this a process overview of the origins? Then the context. We look outside the controlled market realities and risk practices where we we we developed a long list of cultural centers of similar scope and also did a shortlist of a more detailed analysis of more and more relevant institutions. Alongside, we also conferred with local institutions in Long Beach to try and investigate attendance levels and other variables. We we then developed operating assumptions across a number of categories. And I have to say here that the business plan is built on these assumptions and the assumptions may change, and that is hope to be right. Because at this point in time, there are there there are things that need to be determined determinants like, for example, the scale of the building and some of these assumptions will have an impact on the final numbers. So for now, we are working with the assumptions that we that we have been able to build through to the process of consultation starts with the advice also from from the steering committee of the different stakeholders. And we believe that the assumptions that we have in place are solid enough. But as I say, we are we are realistic in the sense that this may all as the planning moves forward and the ultimate result is to produce the attendance and financial projections, projections for operations, meaning after opening day, so we can estimate how much it will cost to run during the first five years of operations and also a capital cost estimate that I would show you coming. And move on to the next one, please. Thank you. So. So typing right into the the summary of the operational revenues are expensive. We are we are focusing on EUR five operations after opening just because we experienced. The first the first couple of years are two years are years when when two issues may occur due to a novelty factor or due to inexperience cropped up of different programs. And by year four and or year five, we can start to to assess an institution in a more space. So these numbers are going to be present in our four, four year five after opening. And the budget that we have calculated is around $1.6 million per year. This would be non inflated and that would be the operating operational expense of the institution. The we have been analyzed revenue being different categories and we started with bad revenue, meaning that the revenue that the new student inside the control center can generate by itself by selling activities, for example, through admissions, through rentals, through programs, performing arts and other things that other services that may be on offer. And this amounts to 23% of operating cost being covered by it. It is a good performance in the cultural sector and we've seen anything between ten and 20, 25% in the comparables, very rarely anything above 30%. So so we we we believe this is, you know, it's a good target to achieve. But it does it does it does point to the fact that other other revenues are still required on our revenue. And we have to be very transparent if we want this institution to be sustainable in the long term in being aware that it's a very mission driven institution and the model reflects that it's not a market oriented performance, meaning that, for example, ticketing program, some of the services programs that center which have already shared some of those programs, will not be trying to make a profit in the price points. Right. So so what that means is that at some some kind of subsidy or some kind of alternative funding is required. So that's what we estimate, that around nine in-house full time positions would be created in the center, supplemented by approximately another 9.5 points. So we're looking in total 18 positions. This will be new jobs in that open economy. And in terms of attendance, we projected around 18,400 per year. It could be more than this. We would be conservative here. But also, you know, because we believe that the programs are going to be of high quality and attention to detail, attention to that, because we don't want to look as much in maximizing quantity, but making sure that the quality is there and programs that are. So the range of 18000 to 20000 seems reasonable. With that in mind, and I'm not finished with the point about other other sources of revenue and and that would be the need would be for around 1.3 million to come from other sources beyond programing on what other sources. That those would be good. That would be the Mercado and which which is going to be a study is going to be developed soon on the visibility of that specific initiative. Also, public public private partnerships and government contributions to different levels, including federal, state and local or post all types of of government funding. Also corporate contributions and donations. Sponsorships. And we are recommending unemployment for operations to be put in place as well as as the capital campaign is is called for giving you advice to create another another company, a company for the adult and entrepreneurs so we can move on to the next one time. One important assumption we had to make and which, as I said, may change, is the size of the building. A person we are working with with an assumption of 15,000 square feet of enough space. And you can see how we we you know, we recommended a breakdown of those spaces between exhibition spaces, public events and amenities, also education and meditation spaces or more specific workshops and classrooms, things like that. And then Michael and offices are 50% of the total excuse me, there was a big a big request from the community to also provide outdoor spaces. So we are also forecasting that in the end, the total in the total construction. So the total program space is actually 21,300, including indoor and outdoor. This, as I said, is is based on on our knowledge at this time. It might be a renovation of an existing building, potentially an optional or existing stretch of a park. But we don't know if it might also be a new buildings. So those are things that we express as the project moves forward. Move on to the next one. Thank you. Yeah. This is just a quick run up of operating expenses. These are revenue. And basically what this shows is pick up right between the 1.6 operating budget of the institution and the 383 180,000 end revenue that we forecast the tax to produce. And the next slide that we are moving to now. Thank you. I'll show you the other source of revenue that will cover the cost and what are the amounts that we have planned. And I just focus on the top three, starting with the largest, which is the last one that would be forming a private partnership and all or level of public funding. What we have learned from our research of control centers of this type is that they don't rely on some sort of public funding. And this also goes back to the reasoning that many of these institutions or all of our missions within institutions, they are put in place to to serve a community need and a subsidy to develop the involvement of the public sector. Is is is critical from the beginning at the moment that the public sector has been very important in all levels. And we hope that will continue. The second largest item that we have that we have forecasted here is some dominance. And this would, of course, depend on whether the campaign can afford or whether it's realistic to to put on a party something for a moment. But we believe that if 10 million to possibly 10 million fund was raised or dominant for operations, then that would yield approximately 270,000 per year, which would be, you know, if it were to be a great cash cushion for for sustainability long term. So we we already have to pay for this. And then the third item is the recall that medical there are 181,000. This is our very preliminary estimate of what the recoverable generate as a net revenue. But as I said, an analysis and there's another study doing this in more data that we offer whether these numbers at this level or be notable. And we can move on to the next slide. Thank you. And this is my last my last night. This is now talking about. We were talking about OpEx, operational revenue and cost. And we're just focusing on this line on capital estimation. We have we have run different ranges depending on and different scenarios, depending on whether the the control center is released on or it's a new project and whether, you know, that there's always a range between different costs and there are always some some unexpected costs that could originate. So far, renovations, for example, are in high level. We believe that the project would be achieved with between 26 or 26.9 million and 30 million. And this is this includes the three bullet points at the bottom. This includes construction costs. So hard costs at 20 to 40 million. It also would include costs. So all the architecture of these project licenses and around 5 to 6 million total, and then we are doing 8 to 10 million for the development fund for operations that I mentioned at the beginning. So for example, the development fund was was decided to not be pursued. Then we will decrease these capital campaign needs by 10 million. So actually the building just requires around €20 million, up to 31 winning to Fund Corporation. And this is this is it for me for now. I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone may have. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're going back to staff now, Mr. Marco. Yes. Thank you, Javier and Veronica, for your hard work on the business plan. In terms of next steps and to wrap up this report, central China has been identified as the nonprofit who will lead the Latino Cultural Center. They'll need to finalize the draft business plan and develop a work plan and fundraising efforts, as well as initiate the formal planning entitlement phase. And lastly, identify a permanent location for the Latino Cultural Center. Last slide, please. City staff are here to answer any questions you may have, and that concludes our report. Thank you. Thank you very much. There is a there is a motion. And the second I'm going to ask the maker of the motion if we can do public comment first unless there's and then we'll come back. So I do have a significant amount of public comment. So I'm going to when I read your name, please line up in that order and then we'll get to the public comment and then come back to the council. So I'll just read up what I have. If the first five speakers could please line up in this order. Armando Vazquez Ramos, David Salazar, Phyllis Arias, Ron Arias HURTADO. Are safe and eligible to vote for six could please come forward in that order that Amanda Vasquez Ramos. David Salazar. Nicholas Arias Ron Arias parasail and Olivia Ortega. What the fuck is wrong? Thank you. I would like to start with a prayer. Lord made the Dodgers make it tonight. I know. I said everybody's mine. Okay? And I wanted to share a little levity, but to celebrate with you and thank all the cooperation from city fathers and in the administration that has been so supportive and it's so wonderful that we're at this at this point in time because it's a night and day difference from 50 years ago. So when you know that I go back to the late sixties and certainly that what we have in this city today is capacity, the capacity to be able to go through this process, to create a vision and to implement the project. And certainly that the future of Long Beach is strong. This project will certainly create the viable opportunity to develop a long term project in perpetuity. And now with the cooperation with the cities development of the downtown of Long Beach, connecting Drake Park with Cesar Chavez, the ailing river expansion, and certainly I have already introduced or provided a letter of support that outlines what I wanted to express. I just want to say a huge thank you. And of course. We look. Forward to this journey together. Thank you so much, city manager. Thank you so much. City Council and of course, the mayor of L.A. And then I have to thank you, Dr. Ramos. Speaker, please. Mayor Garcia and members of the City Council. My name is David Salazar and I'm a secretary, a board member, as well as a resident of the fifth District. We're pleased to be before you tonight to present our report for the Community Engagement and Business Plan for the Latino Cultural Center and Mercado. The creation of the center and the Mercado has been discussed for many years in the city, and we feel now that time has come. Currently, Long Beach Latinos do not have a cultural home where the community can celebrate their history, identity and culture in a place they can call their home their hub. They also do not have a cultural and relevant retail and commercial space that serves the needs, serves their needs, and promotes entrepreneurial ship, small business development and economic self-determination. We believe that the cultural center and the Mercado addresses multiple objectives and speak to the long standing social and economic inequalities in the city. The combination of the two projects are in perfect alignment with the city's racial and equity equitable equity I'm sorry, Equity Reconciliation Initiative, as well as the up and coming 2.0 economic development plan. In summary, the creation of space and the development of the Latino Cultural Center, McCollam will not only showcase the vitality and the spirit of the city's Mexican-American and Latino community, but also establishes a much needed cultural home that will provide a place of belonging, pride and economic opportunities for generations to come. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Next propose. Good ending. My name is Phyllis Aria, and I've been a resident of Long Beach for exactly 50 years. In my 50 years in Long Beach. I've seen the city's community of. Latinos grow from. About 7% in 1971 when I arrived to about 45%. Today, which is remarkable. But in my years. As an instructor, as a teacher, as an educator, I was always struck by how much our Latino community doesn't know about its own history. And I think that the Latino Cultural Center is the perfect opportunity for us to make sure that we all know that the entire community knows the history of Latinos in Long Beach, the history of Latinos in California, the history. Of Latinos in the. Entire country. And so I fully support the Latino Cultural Center, and I thank the city and its staff for its support. Good evening, Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Ron Audios, and I'm here to completely and totally support the concept of a Latino community cultural center. As Armando mentioned, I am also one of the old guys that have been around for 50 years. For those of you that remember the original Centro on Anaheim and Holy Pedro, that's where I got my first job. And so the idea for a permanent home for the Latino, Hispanic, Latino community has been around for many, many years as communities across the nation struggle with diversity, inclusion and equity and access issues as a result of our social change and all that is going on in the country, in the world. This is a great project. It brings us together. It allows us to celebrate who we are. And ultimately, we are much more alike than we are different. This is an investment and I thank the Council for supporting this concept. The staff members John Kyser, Tracy Brant, Eric Sergio they have been absolutely wonderful and we wouldn't be here without them. So I just want to completely and totally support this project. Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, City Council members. My name is Harold La Salle. I am the community affairs director at Interval House. We are very proud to support the proposed Latino Cultural Center at Mercado there, Long Beach. We have no doubt that it will become an important and successful cultural, educational and economic hub for the city, especially because of the involvement of Central Cha and Jessica Quintana. Without question, there is no other organization that could better lead the development of this district center, which has been our community's premiere cutting edge program that has advocated for the protection and advancement of not only Latinos, but our culturally underserved and disenfranchized communities in our city. We know that they will continue to be forward thinking and inclusive in their efforts. So on behalf of everyone at Interval House, of which only a few of us are here tonight, we enthusiastically support this incredibly important development. Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayors and members of the City Council. My name is Sylvia, although. I am the legal and Latino program director at Interval House. We have provided housing and support services for victims of domestic violence in our community since 1979. I am also the. President of the ROMANA, the largest support group for Latina domestic violence survivors. For residents of Long Beach or over 45 years, I am so hopeful to see. The creation of a Latino cultural center in Kabul the longest. It could be such a great development for our city, and we would create a sense of pride for Latinos living in Long Beach to have a dedicated. Area that highlights our. Culture. Um. Also, it would. Be great for tourism to create a. Fun and a great place for people to come and enjoy and appreciate the diverse and. And College for Latino culture and music and modern art. This would be a great this would be a dream for our community. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Gracias. Good to see you. Nice to see. You. And next our next speakers are going to be Adrianna Guerrero, Joshua Sneed, Priscilla Suarez, Diego Zamora. Hear me get here. Mina Cruz. I think it says Marta Cota and Yvonne Garcia. So repeat those, please line up in that order. Adriana Guerrero. Joshua Sneed. Griselda Suarez. Diego Zamora. Filomena Cruz, Marta Cota and Yvonne Garcia. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, and members of the City Council. My name is Guerrero and I'm the Administrative and client services director at Interval House. As a lifelong Long Beach resident and director at Interval House, which has been serving Long Beach and the Latino community for over 40 years, we couldn't be more enthusiastic. About this. Important development for our community. It will not. Only be exhilarating and exciting in terms of culture, tourism and entertainment, but it will also be of serious importance in terms of helping our. Community access. Critical resources for support. From health. And education to economic and housing support, and much more. It's poised to be a central hub for our community, and we thank you for making this a reality for our city. Thank you. Good evening. Members of the Long Beach City Council, fellow residents of Long Beach. Anyone else I have the honor of addressing tonight? My name is Joshua Sneed. I'm a Long Beach resident in the seventh District. And I'm a local nonprofit executive and L.A. County commissioner. I'm currently enrolled in classes at California State University, Long Beach. I'm addressing that tonight because I recently attended a presentation about the proposed Latino Cultural Center here in Long Beach. And I want to share my impressions about this project. One thing the presenters did especially well was to help me see why our fine city deserves to have a place like the proposed Latino Cultural Center, a place that feels like home, where important celebrations can be held and remembered for decades. Where events and exhibits add life and meaning to the history taught in our schools. This idea will eventually become reality. It's inevitable. It's overdue. We should throw our full support behind making this happen. Now I ask our city council if you have an opportunity to provide material support to this idea, please consider how a space like the proposed Latino Cultural Center can make our city a more complete. This great idea is worth our investment of time, attention, and the funds needed to make it a reality. Thank you. All right. When I have no chance, I'm going to tell that Suarez, the executive director of the Arts Council for Long Beach. I just want to take a moment to also be told I can take a psychic stand or check on a sore throat. You think it is the studio you have to go through though? Umberto Liberal Bavaria's Bertone, endemic to the love camp, is a long beach the in central the middle. Yesterday wasn't really bad. Thank you very much, mayor and council for voting to have this study and to have a steering committee. This, along with the work of the African-American Cultural Center and the Cambodian Cultural Center, is an important part of Lumbee Fabric as Arts Council. It's been a pleasure to be on the steering committee and as a beacon. Actually, Ghana to be on the steering committee has made a world of difference, to know that you are invested in the Latino community here in Long Beach. This is just one intersection of how the cultural center can uplift voices in economy, in arts and culture, in education. It is an intersection, and this Latino cultural center is just one example of many actions. There is deep, rich history not only in Long Beach but in the greater Long Beach area. And I think this will be a destination for many families and many residents around the area. So thank you again. And what I actually. Good evening. My name is Diego Zamora. I am born and raised from Long Beach. I reside in the district. I support Santa Clara, Latino and vision of America here in Long Beach because I consider myself to be two sides of one coin. One side being born in Long Beach and the other one is having a mexican background. With that being said, growing up, it's always been needed in media, which means to say not from here, but from over there into this cultural center, which would be from the bottle, is just kind of bringing both of those two together and creating an area where I can relate to something where a lot of people that are just like me can go and be who they are. Thank you. One of my kids at. They ran through the serial number if you get through. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. And council members. My name is De La Cruz. So Miembro de la Paz inaction people in the street to say. I am member of Latinas in Action and I'm a member of the Protect. Your Boy Centro Cultural Latino concept then gathered in Long Beach Parliament and in La Boulet Latina. I support the Latino Cultural Center and the concept of Mercado in order to support the Latino culture. But love Comunidad Latina in Centro Cultural Latino. But I represent them. Well Melanie that ended in a strike only that. So for the Latino community. This center is going to represent our unity and in our community. Them being back there on the ground in nosotros Podemos convivial communities familiar with Yami studies and the world championship up. Their love will do that as they did that Latina a company that is. And this place is going to allow families and friends to share a good time together and also to show the Latino identity to other cultures. It's important that. But I'm mi mi familia Martinez. I don't do that. And if I see that kind of joke and I said, But I left Proximus candidacy on this. It is important for me and my family to keep our identity for the next and future generations to see that we are growth in this city. It was for you in the city. So thanks for your support in this initiative. It with. Well. When I notice that I see you. Well. Good evening. May I rather see? It's a pleasure to see you. Now, you have told me a lot. I can see. Another council member. It is a pleasure to see you. If you look by the four yellow butterfly. Yes, they are Latino. I am here to support the Latino Cultural Center. You see a little bit gurgle, but the native language. And also the vision of the America that you have here in the city of long. Sorry. I'm also bothered by Latino I've got the name of and I thought that. We know that we have a big percentage of Latino neighbors living in this city. But all of us are more European. So Korea and the U.S. is intercultural. But the most beautiful thing that I believe there, by creating this cultural center and this mercado. The entire parastatal, then, of course, basis. Is to be able to bring a little piece of our own country. People that connect are nothing of a penal spoiler. They look well made the form of way of life. And to be able to connect that don't feel like outsiders outside our country. Has a wonderful circuit and we'll see on that. If I were killed, that's cool. Buda Nordstrom made a terrible noise, I thought is the only noise. Celebration and other thing that makes me really very emotional. I it's really exciting to know that other cultures are going to be able to experience and to see our identity, our culture, our tradition. The have in my if I project forward in their own opportunity that if the sense would be so if I look at people before I lose you got to sit up economy are going to suck on Maria Latina. And also because this project is going to offer education opportunities is going to also offer health opportunity and economic growth for the entire community. That is going to do away with my problem of voces intercultural though they're almost like a totally stone age economic and it's like a little legacy, but I can say about the same moment. So I envision that moment when they're in the cultural center. Another, more color. There we go. And cut the ribbon. And the mayor and the council members are there celebrating that moment. That is to come. We support the Latin American. Granted. That's a. Greetings, Mayor and council members. My name is Ivan Garcia. I live in District one and I'm with Latinos in Action. And today I am speaking in support of the Cultural Latino Cultural Center and the Mercado the marketplace in Long Beach. The reason I speak in favor is because the Latinos make a very significant chunk of the population here in Long Beach, and it only it's only fair that their significance is celebrated in the city. And this marketplace, this cultural hub, is a very good be a very good way to do so. In addition to that, it can also bring about many economic benefits. Small business, Latino owned small businesses could benefit highly from this hub, this marketplace. And it's also a way to ensure that, as others have mentioned, that immigrants and Latino communities of all types are able to be celebrated and in this in the city. And it only makes sense because tourists, people from outside come to visit this highly diverse place. And when they see a Latino hub, they're able to have greater exposure to the diversity, to the very, very diverse nature of the city. And that only benefits us as a city. As you know, we have an image of being very diverse, of being a highly place with a lot of high number of Latinos and a high Latino influence. And so to me, it only makes sense that we have a cultural hub that celebrates and encourages Latino entrepreneurship and economic development . And that's those are those are the main reasons. Those are the reasons I am in support of the Cultural Center for Latinos and a Mercado in the city of Miami. Thank you for your time and thank you for your support. Thank you very much. An excellent speakers we have Arianna, Segun, Rana. I think it says. Seven relievers Zambrano, Perez, Jennifer Aguiar, Aguiar, Kenny Green and Maricela Rivera, Ariana Shogun, Rodrigo Zambrano, Edith Perez. Jennifer Aguiar. Avila, Kenny Green and Maricela de Rivera. Hello. Good evening. My name is Ariana Fagen. I am from District four. I was born and raised. In the city of Long Beach and I'm for support of the Central Coast to a Latino and the vision of America in Long Beach. Growing up as a first. Generation Mexican-American, I hold significant value to my Latina identity. I understand the importance. Of creating and cleaning space. To feel a sense of belonging. That sense of belonging will be created with a sense of cultural, Latino and the vision of a mercado in the city of Miami. To me, this piece represents the Latino community to flourish and prosper through the creation of economic, educational, social. And health opportunities. This space for the. Latino community in Long Beach to. Claim their identity and express their diverse culture, tradition and values through music, art and performance. I am excited for the opportunity to embrace and preserve the Latino culture in the city of Long Beach. Thank you. But whatever your color, the name of the closet you wouldn't in, Mr. Mayor and members of the city council. We know from what I know, they want to get rid of Roger. My name is Rodrigo Zamorano and I live in Detroit. If I remember it, I believe in action. And I am a member of Latinas in Action. Bangura player in central control of the Union. I'm here to support the Latino Cultural Center, LA Vision, the image of Carol, the numbers for the second year and also the vision of El Mercato in Long Beach in order to support our diverse community. Look on the map, the ever present federal policy in Long Beach. So the Latino community represents a big part of the population here in Long Beach. In Congress, after what happened in the Dallas policy, all of this. But it's elements that are contrary tradition. So this is going to bring the opportunity to express in this space our culture and traditions and policies that are really happening there. It is part of that tradition. Yes. And this space is going to offer an opportunity to express those cultures and traditions that we have, again, brought in there . And it's possible that instead of an associate of Patria, for example, to have a space to celebrate our patriotic celebration of culture with our music occurring, present a human Latino view to hear our music with a live presentation of the shows of Latino show, by our continued tradition of preserving, trying to be able to dance our dances and also express our culture through the visual arts. That's certainly more than the parliament for their own party to preserve the present language. So it is very important for us to have a little piece of our Latino countries here in the city of beach. Where are. I have an issue there. That's why I supported this initiative. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the city council. First and foremost, I want to thank you for your dedication to serve our city and the implementation of this new policy. My name is Edith, for I am first generation Mexican-American, born and raised in the city of Long Beach. I reside on the seventh District in a Senate district with my family. I fully support the Latino Cultural Center Business District and the vision of Ella mercado, the Lumbee, because of their opportunities to our community and the economic growth of our city. Most importantly, I support the implementation of the ultimate goal, the Long Beach, because it will value our traditions of Latinos and my language will represent our history, our identity, our bond to the past, to our present and the future. Thank you. Good afternoon. Mayor. Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Jennifer Geary and I'm a promoter of community health and education worker. For Central Chair. I am also a first generation. Mexican-American, born and raised in the city of Long Beach. I am a resident and registered voter in the seventh District. My father also owns a small furniture and upholstery business in the fourth District. I am also. Here to support the Latino. Cultural Center and Business District and our vision of the Long Beach that it will help to grow Latino and Hispanic entrepreneurship and support local Hispanic business owners who. Have been impacted by the pandemic. Thank you for your time. We look for your support on this initiative. Good evening, honorable mayor and the rest of the elected officials, leaders of Long Beach. My name is Kenny Green and I am part of the Workforce Development or Social Charter. We talked about history throughout this presentation and you know that we are writing history where people are going to look back 100 years and study what was done to say you guys have you guys could make history right now with the Latino Cultural Center and why this is important, because people 50 years, 100 years could look back because of the center and the history. The Latino journey could be memorialized so it won't be lost every time one of our seniors passed away. It also will give opportunity for our youth to create the history that's that's going to be here for generations. We talk about the American dream. This would give, you know, opportunities for folks to live the American dream by having their own businesses and also ensure that youth and young adults can create a career pathways. Very important because right now you guys could make history where people could look back 100 years from now and look at the Latino Center and study what we've done and where we're going. Okay. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Council and community. My name is Maricela Rivera. I am the proud mother of these two. The three of us are proud members of the ninth district in North Language. This is. The first time we have attended in. Person since. COVID. And I hope that that stresses to you how important this is to us. We are here to stress our. Support. For the Latino Cultural Center Center, also senators but. Center and. Irma mercado. And I am going to relinquish the rest of my time to the staff because that I should still get a card for her. We must remind ourselves. That with no. Culture, there are no jobs. With no jobs, there's no economy, no economy. There is no Long Beach. With no Long Beach. There is no diversity. There is. No. Democracy. But I said otherwise. Thank you. That was that was so great. And I have our final three speakers, which are Shane Weaver, Britta Cortina and Abigail me here. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Shane Weaver, field representative for Assembly Member Patrick O'Donnell. Happy to be here tonight in support of Agenda Item 18 and just to read aloud a letter from the Assembly member. I am pleased to support the Long Beach Latino Cultural Center Feasibility Report in collaboration with Central Shore and the City of Long Beach. The feasibility report includes a community engagement study and a proposed business plan exploring support and financing options to create a Latino cultural center district and a mixed use small business economic development hub. As Assembly member representing the city of Long Beach. I commend such try and the City of Long Beach for championing the Latino Cultural Center Feasibility Plan and business plan. Currently there is no established commercial area representing Long Beach Latinos, which roughly is 43% of the city's population. The Latino Cultural Center will not only serve as a source of inclusion and innovation, but will also help revitalize neighborhoods by becoming a regional economic generator offering visitors and tourists an authentic cultural experience. The Latino Cultural Center feasibility report captured the huge impact through direct engagement and explored financing options to develop the Latino Cultural Center District and a mixed use small business economic development. I urge a favorable consideration of the Latino Cultural Center, Community Engagement and Business Plan. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Good evening. Mayor and. Council Members. My name is Marissa Cortina. I reside in the seventh district. Um. I am supporting the. Latino Culture. Center and Mercado. As a resident business owner, Latina woman, business owner. I have two locations in the sixth District and also in the seventh District. I plan on contributing to the resources and financial literacy. Because I am a tax preparer and because we see that this has been a project that has been much needed in our community . I growing up, I was in the Central Chop program and which introduced me to entrepreneurship using my skills. I'm creating jobs now that I am. Um, so I support and I think this is a great idea and this is something that's much needed in our community, and I hope that we can make this possible together. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name's Abigail, and I'm district director for. State Senator Lena Gonzalez, and. I have a letter. On behalf of the senator to share. State Senator representing California's 33rd District and a member of the Latino Cultural Steering Committee. I write to support the Latino Cultural Center Community. Engagement Business Plan. The City of Miami should prioritize equity, inclusion and celebrating. Of its diversity. And its commitment to ensuring that all. Residents have an equal opportunity to thrive. The Latino Cultural Center will serve as a focal point to blend the city's unique cultural identity and embrace its historical significance. These efforts can help revitalize the neighborhoods and increase the quality of life of residents, creating community pride, belonging, identity, and reconnecting Latinos. 43 I support the Latino Culture Center's visibility and business plan. Thank you, everyone. Well, thank you. And I want to just thank everyone for speaking to. We do have a motion to set and I'm going to turn it over to customers. And in just a minute, I'm going to say just a few things. Let me let me start. But it is mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Cleo, instead of those who stress our story, ask on this experience. Yes. It's okay to say that it's a memento. A memento, comma, something important. None of us such a little bit better in la la. A study of Latinos in this economy that one grande applause so in which are more a simple chart Latinas index your total operating history on a scale you about how the mucho para you got the momentum. Como también como como latino rhythm with your concern document them their own will mercado oligarchy giving you know none of us in Mexico battle for Latin America men amateur who eat at the man may see talk tomorrow the bassoon devil but the madness of commedia e but there is an article. Is being. Presented. It's also the practice and mundo. A eukaryote is being important in this one, too. Just briefly to say also that in the cap, but it is giving a lot of pride to see all of you. You've worked so hard for this moment. Everyone in this audience, all of our Latino elders, the leaders, Central China, Latinos in action. And I'm especially excited about the Mercado. I know, Jessica, you've been talking about the Mercado forever to me. And I just think it's going to be a great place to share our culture. I think you all know also that I'm you know, my other half is Mexican. And so I have the great fortune of eating a lot of Mexican food, which is almost as good as Peruvian food. Just almost are my two favorite foods. And so I look forward to all the all the tamales. And that was first class and, you know, all the great food we're going to have at the ultimate travel together. I will also say the one thing that makes me proud of this moment and I've shared this with a lot of you at a lot of meetings is. As Latinos have grown. Our share of our responsibility in leadership is also growing. And that means that with additional power or influence or ability to reach people, that not that also brings additional responsibility as a community. So I think it's important for us to recognize and for everyone here to recognize that the growth and population should equal a stronger desire. Any stronger sense of responsibility to the city and to the community. And so I know that that's something that's really important and that I hope that's part of the center, part of its education core is about that responsibility to serve community and the country that has welcomed us and given us and our families so much. I know that's going to be a big part of what the center is all about and that experience that we've all had in being a part of this country. So I just want to thank you all all for that great power comes great responsibility. My favorite my favorite Spider-Man quote. And I want to also just think I'm going to turn it over to the council. So I'm very happy about this. And I'm, you know, I'm super supportive. So I do plan on being there the day that we cut the ribbon in whatever capacity, you know, maybe a teacher at Chelsea Long Beach again to with Dr. Vazquez Ramos. And and I look forward to to sharing that moment. I want to thank our staff have done a fantastic job. I know the tricycle longa you worked so hard on this project. I just want to thank you so much for your commitment to the project. All of the staff have worked a lot, but tracy is like really gone to bat, I think, at the city. So I want to thank you, Christopher, for that. And and I do want to also especially thank the two council champions that have really been also pushing me not just on this issue, but on a lot of issues. The council is and they have some customary ranga who I know have been talking about Latino issues in general for a very long time. I just want to thank them. I want to particularly also I know Councilman Mongo also discussed this issue at the Economic Development Committee. I know that Councilman Allen also was a strong advocate at the committee as well with a lot of advocates here at the council. I think everyone here is supportive of this of this project. And so congratulations. Very, very, very proud day for the community. Historic day for the community. And with that, I'm going to turn over to the mic of the motion, compliments of the house. Thank you, Mayor. I am such a proud Latina today. Today, being a famous historian again, I feel that the long reads of what is so good that most of us will not blossom when we played the profound. I want to thank everybody who came up to speak today and shared their story and their support for this amazing Latino cultural center slash, Edmund Cardon, especially Rosita, of course, and her her companion, Bijan. So thank you. Thank you very much. Another big thanks to our amazing staff like mayor, said Tracy. I'm always going to want you on my side to bat for me. Thank you. Thank you so much. I also want to acknowledge on the work that has already been done towards this vision. For many decades, this just didn't happen. So I really want to say thank you to all of those who kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing to bring us here to this day. Today, I am honored to have been part of the Latino Cultural Center Steering Committee. Thank you for that opportunity. I am super excited and supportive of the cities of Long Beach's vision for creation of the Latino Cultural Center. I would like to begin by acknowledging and thanking the work of the Latino Cultural Center Committee, who was composed of some very, very impressive members. I also would like to thank the leadership and collaboration efforts with Centro CHA and our consultant team, the Lord Cultural Resources, the points, components of the community engagement, visioning workshops, best practice research , marketing analysis and the development of concepts and business plan. All this all of this that was considered for the Latino Cultural Center have been a main theme at this point in this process. No formal specific sites have been identified, although, as we heard tonight, we have a very, very strong community interest in the location in the areas of the Drake Chavez masterplan. I also want to acknowledge that there's much more work to do in this effort and a lot more details to the vision for the center and as well as the concepts and plans and detailed marketing analysis and fundraising strategies that must be fully developed by the nonprofit central to that's leading this effort as it moves forward. I'd like to make a motion that the city continue to be engaged in the steering committee's efforts that at the appropriate time, as potential locations are explored, that both public and private are explored, and that the public sites that are that meet the need for our Latino cultural centers objective be including and not limited but included in the Drake Chavez Park. May may it be may be considered as well. If you need me to be a little more clear, staff, please let me know. They've got that loud and clear. So that makes a lot of sense. We'll add that into motion. Thank you. Thank you. The reasoning for my motion is that it the possible inclusion of the Latino Cultural Center in the Mercado Project and the fact that Chavis Master Plan, which is something we're all advocating for it it would be have a historic cornerstone area in the city's Mexican-American and Latino community. Complementing are open space and parks that we have in in the surrounding community. This location also would enhance the use and programing of its existing general base at Community Center and Art Park. Furthermore, the development of the Latino Cultural Center and Mercado around the around or on the site, Chavez Park, is consistent with the goals of the city's Racial Equality, Equity and Reconciliation Initiative Report The Blueprint for Economic Development and the economic profile for the Latino Community Report. Given that it is addressing long standing social, economic, social and environmental and equities affecting the city's business community and promotes community empowerment, cultural recognition, interpersonal ship and self-determination in the city of Long Beach. As we know presently, there is no established cultural and retail project representing the city's growing Latino community, which stands at 43.3 of the adult population in the city, along with the Latino Cultural Center and Met Project, will provide identity and recognition for this population and can be integrated into the city's downtown core and and waterfront. This creation of place at Cesar Chavez Park hopefully will not only showcase the vitality and spirit of the long before female community, but also will become a regional economic generator and offering visitors and tourist and authentic cultural experience. And that makes me super happy. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I want to turn it over the customary ringer, if you and I very happily second that motion cast members and then as to what a promotion. Today we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month. Out in the foyer, out here in front of City Hall. It's the seventh annual celebration that we had here when I first was elected in 2014. We didn't have that celebration. We sort of like went dormant after many years of having celebrations in the theater lobby Chelsea, Long Beach, Bixby Park. I'm with Ron and Phyllis in Nevada, a little bit here, 50 years. And, you know, we've been through a lot and we've had a couple of false starts in trying to get a central established here. We're starting with Central La Raza, the Accademia, and then and here we are tonight making history. This is this is one of those efforts that I think is going to be successful. And I think it's because of the people that are involved. Phyllis, Ron, Armando And of course, can't do it without Central Chad and the leadership of Jessica Quintana, who has basically been at the forefront of making this happen and making it a reality. And, of course, the support of staff. Tracy, you've been wonderful. And of course, our city manager has been very supportive of this cultural center right from the start. And it's a very proud moment that we had here tonight because of the efforts of the community and, of course, all of you who came here to speak in support of this project, because without without the support of community, there is no project. It works because you make it work. You make it happen. And it's not that's not us here at the city council that make it happen. It's you. We basically advocate for you. That's our that's our role. We're advocates. And you let us know what you want. And we try to make it happen. And we try to make it happen in a way that is going to be conducive to being moving forward the agenda for our people. The the night tonight is that I am a Chicano. I always call myself a Chicano and I've always been and will be. And a Latino or Hispanic Heritage Cultural Center is is something that will be very proud for. One thing I would like to see that I did not see presented here is also the fact that, you know, we as Latino leaders who are up here, we get old. No, we're not as young as we used to be. So we need new leadership. We need those individuals who are in the third, fourth or fifth grade now, or those who are just graduated from high school to take leadership role in leadership positions in the near future, because we're not going to be here that long. We need we're going to move on. We have to make room for the new leadership is coming. So I hope that this culture center also presents leadership opportunities to advance the the leadership that we need here in this city as it diversifies and becomes even more so than the period of three years now. So we know what the statistics are showing. We know what the data is saying. You know, we're becoming more diverse. And with that diversity comes responsibility. And with that responsibility comes leadership. And I hope that the Culture Center will also include some classes or some opportunities for our youth to advance their leadership skills and the opportunity to eventually take positions of leadership locally, state and nationally. I want to thank you all for being here. I want to thank. Of course, that which Mary said there has the mayor who who had been always supportive was. By the way, one thing he didn't mention. I hope he won't get a lot of Mexican food. Today we get Peruvian food and back at the city council. That delicious. Very good. So, again, thank you very much. And I very happily and proudly support this motion. This motion. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. And we thank those those behind the diocese getting getting very old. I think he's excluding Mary. And I hope that Councilman Austin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I'd like to just weigh in and express my full support for this item. I stand with my colleagues, as well as the community in the call for cultural center for Latinos in Long Beach, in support of this whole community engagement and business plan. You know, I just want to commend the report, the work that went into, you know. Presenting this. You know, I'm always impressed with the young lady, Megan and I. And her data, I think, illustrates our Latino community so, so clearly and and the importance of what we're doing here today. Obviously, our staff report and forward community law, cultural services are they they are amazing to work with. And I think they're going to be an amazing partner not only for this cultural center, but we've also been working with them on the African-American Cultural Center. And I expect they'll be involved in other cultural activities as we as a city strive to be more inclusive. And this work is really all about inclusion and recognizing and bringing people together, helping us understand who we are as neighbors, as a community. And I'm really proud to support this this evening. I want to hear you say that many of the concepts expressed in the visiting plan here are very similar to to the concepts that were expressed in the African-American cultural center process and to the community involved here today. Those of you who came out and spoke this is an amazing, historic moment for you to get involved, to be a part of something, be a part of something that's going to really require a great deal of collaboration as a community, as a city . And there's a space and a place. There's an opportunity, I would hope, for each and every one of you who want to be involved, to be involved in this. And I would just say that this is a vision. The vision is shared by many people, but the work is just beginning and it's going to be a heavy lift. And so it's going to take a lot of work to get there. I'm here to support and hope we get across that finish line very soon. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you to everyone who came out and spoke in favor of the item tonight. And for all of you who have been working really hard behind the scenes to make this. Project a reality. I'm really impressed with the presentation that we heard tonight, and I. Appreciate the education. Regarding some of the history and the importance of a city asset like this. I could not be more supportive. I love the city of Long Beach because of its diversity. And I. Mean, it's just it's just. One example of how we celebrate one another's culture. But the mayor highlighted food. And I will say I think he secretly thinks Persian food is the best, but he probably won't admit that tonight. But he does often talk to me about how much he appreciates that. But, I mean, you just look at the people behind the diets and what amazing diversity we have in our city. So I think anything we can do to to. Further support our. Cultural differences and educate one another. On the beauty and the history of our cultures is a positive for the city. And I will always support efforts to do that. All day long. I will say the staff first of all. Tracy, you're amazing. You're just amazing. I love. Having you on the city. Team. And I. Just it's just it's really it's really. Hard not to get behind something that that woman works hard. On because she's very thorough. And so I appreciate that. But I will say to the city team, I think the. Challenge is pretty clear for the city team idea that everyone loves. How do we get that shovel ready so that all of these wonderful elected officials who. Sent their representatives to speak to us tonight can be ready when there is funding available for either a matching funds grant or some sort of grant to allow the city to expand on our. Cultural diversity. And our cultural. Assets. So I think that the idea for us, the challenge is going to be projects like this are really. Great, but a lot of times. They don't become a reality because we're not perfectly situated at the right time to make it happen. So hopefully we can get to a place where this is shovel. Ready when those funds become available and we don't miss that opportunity. But with that, I want to thank my colleagues. Councilman and de Haas and Councilmember Ranga for championing this project and allowing us all to be a part of it. I fully support it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. So thank you, Mayor. First, I want to just congratulate you all for coming to this kind of milestone and finishing at least this portion of the plan and the business plan. You know, I think that what what I want to lift up is the process it takes to bring everyone together, young generation and our elders, but also just the diverse Latino community. I think just that some people don't realize the vast number of their various culture and mentioned and food as well. Right. And how important it is to educate everybody in Long Beach and just the broader community diversity of the Latino community and just want to share that. It's an inspiration in what you're all doing. I think the African-American Cultural Center kind of said that they started with theirs and have come to milestone themselves as well as you. And I think the Cambodian American Cultural Center will be on its way so that we're all able to come together at some point and share with each other across culture. Meanwhile, as as education is done within the culture of these centers. And so I just want to reiterate my thanks to staff as well as the leadership of Councilmember Sunday House and Urunga for bringing the item forward with a central cause leadership, Latinos in action and many of you all. So and I just want to share that and I think as we had one speaker earlier with her, Maricela with her children, and that it is really for our next generation to making sure that we lift up the culture and the pride of our diverse community. And I'm just really proud that we as a city highlight that and celebrate it. Thank you. Thank you. I'm cute. Next. So I'll take a plate, a personal privilege, and say it's my turn. And thank you all for coming. This has been a long time going. I remember the first time I met with David Salazar. In addition to hearing this amazing idea and talking through his vision and what the board had come up with and all the work all of you had done, I also encouraged him to run for city council. His wife said, No, I strongly encourage you to continue to encourage him all through January of 2022. He still can get in on it. You guys have brought forward some amazing ideas and it takes strong leaders like David and Jessica and Ron to really continue to be resilient to the ups and downs of the city and the ups and downs of the economy and the ups and downs of the priorities of different council leaders who rotate in and out of this dais. But through those years, this group of people and most of you in this room have been constant in your your continued pursuit of what you know to be an amazing vision. And I see that vision, and I'm so blessed to be able to be here to be a part of it. I look forward to finding a way to get this over the finish line. I would love to again meet with some of the community members. We have an amazing nonprofit organization and economic development partner. And many of, you know, I do a lot of grants and over the last 24 months. Hundreds of millions of dollars in this country have been set aside over the next five years for diversity and inclusion. And I think that this project is primed to receive one of those grants. I was on a call with one of the members of that community, a nonprofit group that connected with our city. I'm talking specifically with banks that have specific funds available for projects like this that will lift people out of poverty and give them the opportunity to have their own business in a cultural district that they're passionate about, to have a job where when you show up every day, it's not a job because you're actually just doing something you love. And the funds are there. We just need to work together to find a way to put them into an organization that can accept them in a meaningful way and implement them. And I'm here to do whatever it takes to get us there. But thank you each and every one of you, because as we move through that process, your voices will continue to be needed for continual input and continual support to get over the finish line. And I will be there when the ribbon is cut. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Allen. Yes. Thank you for the presentation and congratulations to Central Char and the future of Long Beach is definitely stronger. So I also want to thank Jessica and Tracy for your leadership. And I stand with my colleagues when we say that we wholeheartedly support this. I'm just so excited and I just think it's really important that we highlight the heritage and the ongoing contributions of our Latino communities. As many of the speakers mentioned today. I know that our community looks forward to a place where they can go and embrace the cultural significance of Latinos and their history and our community. So thank you so much to all the people that made this happen, to all the people that came out today and spoke. You really touched me. I love everything about this project. And like my colleagues, I can't wait to be there at this ribbon cutting. Congratulations. Thank you. And Customer Supernova. Thank you. I, too, would like to thank all the speakers here tonight. I really appreciate you being here. It's it's just an absolute honor to sit on the dais tonight to support this item. But I want to bring the conversation back to food and rather specifically. And I'm looking at Ron and Phyllis here. I mean, listen, listen. It's Pancho's in the fourth District, is it not? There you go. Thumbs up. Okay. But I just like to give a special congratulations to Jessica Quintana, and you should be very proud tonight. And what I'm most impressed about is tonight is a big picture item. It's a global issue for the community. And Jessica has the talent to lead that effort. And yet no detail is too small for her to keep an eye on. The most minor detail on a vaccination clinic. It always have a park. She's on it. And that's that's a real tight end. And our our district has been the beneficiary of that. So I say thank you for that. Well, thank thank you. And that concludes everyone here on the on the council. Dove, congratulations again to everybody. We have a motion and a second by council member and they have some contemporary ranga on the floor. So members, please go out and cast your vote. Motion is carried. Grip graduations, everyone. Thank you. We're going to we're going to move on to that consent calendar item two through 14. Yes. Thank you, guys. Thank you. I get emotional. A second person sent calendar. I have and I can find Dave and there's a I believe here.

Continued Public Hearing (of Item 6-E on the March 19, 2019 City Council Agenda) to Consider Adoption of Resolution Denying the Appeal and Remanding the Design Review for a 96-Room Hotel with 62 Parking Spaces at 1825 Park Street (PLN17-0538) for Further Consideration by the Planning Board (for Reasons Independently Considered by the City Council that Were Not Raised in the Appeal). (Planning, Building & Transportation 481005) [Please note: Public Comment was closed on March 19, 2019]

AlamedaCC_03192019_2019-6614

Far. Okay. Okay. If everyone could please take your seats. We are back in session staff. We are back in session here. My children always hang on my every word. This training, they didn't. Okay. I am going to propose a couple of agenda changes. So we. Our next item is six C, the public hearing to consider endorsing the annual report on the status of the general plan and housing element and more. But we have an item item six E, which is this public hearing having to do with an appeal about this Park Street hotel, which I have close to 60 and growing speakers clips. So I'm going to propose that we move that item next, because I hate to keep you all out late. And then we also have a lot of city staff here because item six F is the adoption of the resolution amending the fiscal year 2018 19 budget workforce change and others. So my proposal council is that we take items six E, items six F and then I just talk to Mr. Thomas about item six C. If we didn't get it to to it tonight, it wouldn't be the end of the world, as my colleagues would say. The sun will still rise in tomorrow morning. Right. We have. Okay. So is that okay with everybody? Councilmember Otis, I mean, I'm. Just wondering if, given the number of staff here on the budget, that if it might make sense to do that 1/1? We have we have 50 we have 60 speakers slips from the public. I really would favor taking that item next. Okay. I just know I'm worried about overworking our. Staff and making them said far too. Many things. So why don't we. Why don't we get started then? Okay, I make one suggestion. Yes. Can we just decide to bump six C? We said. Okay. I just if somebody is here for six I'd like to. Oh good point. Do we have speaker absent 669. We have one speaker A on 60 and it is a public hearing. So if you would like to, you could continue it to the date specific of April 2nd and we wouldn't have to re notice. I'm getting a thumbs up from Mr. Thomas. Okay. Okay. Do we need a motion on that, too? Sure. There was a motion, Mr. Knox. Wait in a second, Mr. Odie. Okay. That's what I thought. All in favor. I That's unanimous. Okay. Right along. We can do this. Okay, so we have item six E and that's you, Mr. Thomas Rae Hotel. Hotel Rep. Europe. Oh, scary. Are you ready? We're ready. Okay, great. I promised planning director. I will be introducing your item tonight. I think if it is the pleasure of the council, the. The the project applicant would like a few minutes to speak after my presentation and then this is an appeal. So you might consider allowing the appellant to speak after the applicant before taking all the public speakers. Thank you. We can do that. If you wish. This is as I said. Okay. One minute, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted, since we have so many speakers and we are going to like this short that I just want to make, maybe if we give. Should we do that now? So just so. People have some time to adjust if they need to. Okay. And what is it? Are you suggesting shorter? Well, we can't do 3 minutes because we have exceeded the number. Are you making a motion on, say, allowing a minute each or what's your proposal? I would like to move that. We allow speakers one minute to speak, which will still be an hour of public comment. And with the requests that if you just want to say, I agree with that guy, that's perfect and we will listen. Okay. You have second in that. Question the of inquiry for the appellant and the applicant that I think we have some rules that give them what is it, 10 minutes or 50. Typically give them 10 minutes. Okay. Okay. Somebody move that last second time. They hang on to every word. It's okay. It's been moved in, seconded that we give speakers one minute each because we have 60 or more speakers and the applicant and the appellant will each get up to 10 minutes. Correct. Okay. All in favor. I, i any opposed? Okay. That was unanimous. Right? Okay. Okay. Once again. Okay. I'll try to set the tone here and move along quickly so you can get to the speakers. This is a appeal of a planning board decision to approve a new hotel at 1825 Park Street. The hotel would be 96 rooms with 62 parking spaces. It's four stories and meets the zoning and height requirements for the district. The Planning Board's decision was a decision to approve essentially two entitlements that were required for this project to move forward. They needed to be approved before it could get building permits. Number one, design review. That's the architectural design. That's our process for the review of architectural design. The planning board approved that a design with a condition that the they still had some concerns about some of the detailing on the building and they required their resolution of approval required that the applicant and their architect come back for refinements on the final design before building permits are issued. They also approved a parking reduction which allowed for the 96 required parking spaces to be reduced to 62 parking spaces. But they conditioned it that in all cases, on all parking required for the hotel that they exceeded their six two space. It had to be provided on site through a valet parking program. So essentially ensuring that all the cars generated by the full 96 rooms would be parked on site. If the spaces are not available, then it would be done through valet service on site. This, as I said, the project meets the North Park Gateway Zoning District Zoning designation. This is also this site does have a multi-family residential combining overlay on it. This is raised in the in the appeal. That is a permissive zoning overlay. It allows for multifamily housing, but it does not require multifamily housing on the site. The hotels are permitted by right on the North Park Street zoning district. The general plan is can you commercial hotels are encouraged and allowed in community commercial in the general plan. And of course, hotels are supported strongly by our economic development strategic plan that was approved by the council just last year. So as I said, this was approved by the planning board. That was on July 20 excuse me, January 28th. They had a study session a few months earlier at which time they looked at a prior design, which they weren't happy with, gave the architect instructions. He came back. They came back on June 28th, at which time the project was approved with those conditions that I mentioned earlier. The Appellant has raised three issues in their appeal. They've focused really on the parking aspect of the Planning Board's decision. They questioned the adequacy of the parking analysis and the team measures which were imposed by the city and approved by the planning board on this project, and because of their dispute on the part where their questioning of the parking analysis. They then the appellant makes the case that the the project was not adequately reviewed under the California Environmental Quality Act. And they also raise the issue of the fact that this is a multifamily zoning district and there's no housing in this project. Staff disagrees with the appellant's analysis on the parking and the California Environmental Quality Act. We believe that the planning board did follow the zoning code, which and the parking code which allows the planning board to evaluate parking on a case by case basis, imposed measures to reduce the demand and therefore allow for reduction in parking. In this case, the Planning Board didn't even actually allow a reduction in parking. It simply required a valet parking and required and imposed tedium, tedium measures to reduce demand on top of that. So we feel that the planning board did the right decision on the parking aspect of the project. And the other issue that was raised in terms of California Environmental Quality Act. We respectfully disagree with the appellant. This project is consistent with the zoning because the zoning allows for these types of waivers and adjustments by the planning board. Therefore, there is no problem with the analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act. And then of course, as I said earlier, the multifamily zoning district is a permissive zone. It permits multifamily housing on the site. It does not require it. So for those reasons, we don't support these aspects of the or don't believe that the appellant has made a strong case on the parking issue or the multifamily overlay issue. Staff is recommending that the City Council uphold the Planning Board's decision. We think the Planning Board made the right decision in moving this forward with their conditions of approval and which would allow the project to proceed under the conditions I described. However, the planning this is a de novo hearing, which means that you can consider any issues brought before you and or that are raised by this approval by the Planning Board board. Therefore, an alternative action by the Council could be to uphold the appeal and direct the planning board to reconsider their prior approval. When you send it back to the planning board, you can also specify what it is that you want them to reconsider. As I said earlier, there's two pieces to this to this approval that they made design review, the actual architecture of the building, the parking plan that they approved, or of course, you could send it back if you wanted to uphold the appeal, send it back to have them reconsider both of those issues. So you can you can and should, if you decide to uphold the appeal, give the planning board clear direction as to what it is you think they did wrong and you'd like them to reconsider. That is the end of my presentation myself. I also want to recognize staff member Linda PEREIRA and Alan Tigh from our staff here, who did really most of the work on this project and I think did a. Nice thank you staff. Okay. All right. So who's up next? Appellant The applicant goes first or the appellant. Okay. Thank you. Before I start, I also wanted to say thank you very much for moving us up a little bit. And I wanted to say that we did lose like 15, 20 people already. They did fill out the slip, but they're gone. But they did put up there that they are in favor of this project. So good evening, everyone. I want to thank honorable mayor, vice mayor and city council members. As many of you know. My name is Paul Patel and I wanted to thank all of you guys for being here tonight. Your support, guidance and suggestions in helping me to bring this project to the city of Alameda has been incredible. No matter the outcome, you will always have my thanks and respect. I still remember so well the moment when 18 years ago, I fell in love with Alameda. I had just moved from India. I was a housekeeper at Days Inn, which is now roadway in cleaning rooms and cleaning toilets. I had very little money. I remember looking out the ocean and how my heart skipped a beat when I realized something. I was home. I have had some people ask me, why not invest elsewhere? And I'm speechless. I love this city. I still live just a few blocks from that ocean. I eat at Alameda Restaurants in Alameda, Texas, and dream not of building of faraway cities, but my own. Everything I have learned and earned is from this city, this community, and these citizens. I'm a seasoned hotel owner. I'm getting my MBA from Harvard. I have the skills, the funds and the will. I want to give back to this city that has given me so much. I'm not a foreigner. I'm son of Alameda. I had a moment of total desperation last week when I called my mother in India. She's a small town woman, doesn't understand the political world, but she's also one of the most moral people that I know. She was trying to make sense of all of these. So she asked me three questions. Is everything you're doing legal? Yes. Will your project help the community? Yes. And will you take care of the people that works with you? Yes. She laughed and told me to have hope that all would be fine with the project. She said an argument where the answer to all three of those questions was yes would be unbeatable. Downtown Alameda has a problem. There is no hotel within walking distance of our downtown restaurants and other businesses. There are too many empty storefronts because we don't have enough foot traffic. This new hotel will create jobs and revenue for all of our well-loved downtown establishments from tiny little House to Maggie's to Alameda Cineplex to Alameda Island Brewing Company to East End Pizza . Our restaurants, coffee shops, our bars will benefit. We will provide meeting space for local at discounted rates. Contribute to the local transportation agency, open up our gym to Alameda residents, increase tourism, benefit local nonprofit organization and local artist and contribute to the beautification of Park Street. The direct and indirect benefit are endless and enduring. It is a win win situation for everyone. I'm the only Alameda Hotel developer who's also a resident who cares about this community as much as you all. If we don't take this opportunity now and the owner of the land decides to do something else with it, there is no other appropriate lodge. So we may never have a hotel in downtown Alameda. The reason I'm here before you is to work with you, to partner with other businesses and support the people that live here. Because at the end of the day, who cares about this community as much as we do? Before I go, I would also like to thank Alan, Linda and Mr. Andrew Thomas and the city staff. For all your help. You have made this process much better for me and it is appreciated whether you're here to support this project or not. Each of you that took time out of your lives to be here, you truly cares about this community. And that's why I love this city. And I'm doing this project because I also care about this community and want to give back. My goal has always been to solve the problem that needs to be addressed. And with your help, we can work together to make this a reality. So please vote for this photo. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Battelle. And then we will also hear from the appellate tie, Hudson and Mr. Hudson. You will also have 10 minutes. Good evening, mayor. As you Ashcraft and members of the city council. My name is Ty Hudson. I'm with Unite Here Local 2850 and we are the appellant. And I want to speak to a couple of different issues here. First, I'm going to speak to really the letter of the law when it comes to how the city, how the Alameda Municipal Code talks about allows for parking reductions. And second, I'm going to speak to whether this is really the right project for the city and for that location from a bigger picture point of view. But I'll start with with the letter of the law on the parking. The municipal code allows for does allow for for parking reductions by the planning board. And that, as Mr. Thomas mentioned, that that is true. But it also spells out very specifically what the planning board has to find and what what the the project has to provide in order to qualify for those reductions. The two reductions that are sort of that this project claims to or the two criteria this project claims to to to meet are a a parking demand study that would show that the parking that the project wouldn't need as much parking as it is the code would ordinarily require. And that and a transportation demand management program which the the criteria which are very specifically defined in the code. So I'll start with that one. One of the. The program that the this project purports to provide is participation in the Transportation Management Association, which would give transit passes to employees of the hotel and subsidizing Uber or Lyft to various locations for the guests. And but that does not meet the criteria of the code. The code requires, among other things, specific performance targets for trip reductions and parking reductions that these measures would are supposed to try to meet and. Secondary measures that they that the project would be committed to implementing if those targets were not met. There are no targets included in the proposal here for how many of the guests would take rideshare. There are no targets mentioned for how many of the employees would actually use public transportation to get to work. And there are no secondary measures proposed for if those two measures weren't enough. And so it just simply doesn't meet the criteria. I'll say a little bit more about the Uber and the lift further, further along. Second is the parking study. There have been other hotels that have come forward that that in some cases that I've been here to oppose or support. And but whether I suppose opposed them or supported them, some of them have done real parking demand studies. There was a hotel out on Harbor Bay Parkway which which I was opposed to, which we were opposed to that did a parking study that observed a comparable hotels. For 77 days over the course of four months to determine how many parking spaces this new hotel would would likely require. The purported parking study for this project observed two days, once on a weekend and once on a weekday. That is not a parking study, and any anyone who tries to pass that off as a parking study should be embarrassed. There was no mention of how how what was the occupancy of the particular hotel on Webster Street that they observed? And it's just it's just not a it's not a credible study. For what it's worth, the study out on Harvard Bay Parkway came up with a much higher ratio of of parking spaces to rooms that would be required. After they actually did a robust, robust data collection. Then what this then what this purported study concludes. So that's the letter of the law and the parking. The project simply hasn't met the the criteria that required for the granting of a parking reduction. And I respectfully would submit to you that perhaps the parking that they want to provide would be enough, but they should go back to the planning board, do their homework and actually demonstrate that. Second, I want to talk about whether this project is really what the city of Alameda needs. Our appeal mentioned and Mr. Thomas mentioned that this is one of very few sites that is designated as a multi-family overlay. I recognize that that doesn't mean hotels are not allowed and I don't make the argument that a hotel is not allowed to use here. But we just had a long presentation about the housing crisis and all of the. Really extreme measures that that legislators and other policymakers are considering taking to address this serious crisis and to put a sort of mediocre hotel on a spot that has that that is an opportunity site for for multifamily housing. I would I would suggest that the council should think really hard before before approving that. Second of all, there is a lot of rhetoric about activating the street and improving the pedestrian activity on Park Street. But this hotel is inward faces, places in the parking lot in the back to be. To be perfectly honest, people are going to drive in, parked their car, or have a valet parked their car and drive from the back and the front door and the front windows are really just decoration. There was a lot of talk at the planning board about about the the appearance of the windows to create an appearance of pedestrian friendliness. But there's nothing that about this hotel that activates the street in any way. There's nothing that, you know, there's no retail or food on the ground floor that would actually bring people in and have and have people walking up and down that street. And that is a second that is a portion of Park Street that, you know, could really use that kind of pedestrian activity. So on the whole, is this a project that is good enough for the city to overlook that the that it doesn't need the the letter of the law and the parking reductions? I believe it's not. And I, I hope you'll at the very least send it back to the Planning Board for it to really do its homework and to create a better project for the city. Thank you. Thank you. Counsel, before we get to our stack of speaker slips, do we have any clarifying questions for staff? Councilmember Desai Yeah. One clarifying question is on the if we're going to basically remove this from the housing overlay, are we require then to make up the loss of this area? That would have been no. We're already in surplus, so sites on it. Thank you. Mr. Thomas. I don't. Don't go. I had a question about the appellant's assertion that the parking study just observed two days at another hotel. Can you speak to that? Yeah. You know, I we looked at the the Webster the hotel on Webster Street. We did some independent analysis as well. You know, I think, you know, the issue for us as staff when we think about the appellants arguments is we keep coming back to the larger question. That entire provision in the zoning code that Mr. Hudson referenced references is all about the planning board reducing the amount of parking on the site available under what the code requires. And what the planning board actually did is they said, look, you need we think you probably only need 62 spaces. That's what your parking lot shows. But when you if in fact, we're wrong and you need more, you're going to park it all on site through a valet program. So they technically didn't actually reduce the amount of parking. They said you have to park. If if 96 people show up and rent 96 rooms and each one of them has a car that they need to park on the site, you're going to park all 96 of them. So the whole argument about the parking analysis is for us at staff becomes we sort of find ourselves jumping ahead. If really the issue is you want 96 spaces that are independently accessible without any valet, then there there is really a simple solution. The hotel has to get smaller because we just can't fit 96 rooms and 96 parking spaces on that site. So you could say, all right, 62, that's all you the parking you have. So let's reduce the hotel to 62 rooms if you really felt that you needed every room to have an independently accessible parking space. So for us, the whole argument about the parking study is interesting, but just not particularly relevant because at the end of the day, the planning board said if the parking study is wrong. Then you'll be valet parking because we don't want you dumping any cars into the neighborhood or onto the street. You're going to park at least 96 cars on this parking lot. And if that means you need to have your staff people come out in valet park and that's what you're going to do. Okay. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions before we go to public speakers? Okay. So public speakers. It would help if you don't wait until I've called your name. The third time to walk up to the front. I'm going to call three or four in advance, cut out to the aisle so you can get up here easily. We will get you home sooner if you do. So our first public speakers in this order are Carrie Thompson. Michelle Russo. Correct me if I mispronounce your name. Oh, wait. And Paul, Minnesota. Oh, I know who that is. He's ten pizza and cut a long line and bah! Thank you for the phonetic pronunciation. Miss Thompson, you are for it. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I just wanted to say that I feel that the planning board did do a good job on their due diligence and that they are taking into account everything, including parking, including the design of the hotel. Whether they enter from the front or the back makes no difference. And that we fully the the Government Relations and Economic Development Committee fully supports this project. Thank you. Thank you. And you even gave me the phonetic spelling. Michelle Manila. Sorry, it's getting late. Hello. Hello. My name is Fisherman who says I am an Alameda resident and one of the owners of East End Restaurant down on a park. And what a vista. I want to also second, a lot of feeling here that I think the planning department did do due diligence on this project. The many, many hoops they had them jump through on design review and still more to come. I feel that there's a viable project here, and especially to address the idea that there's not going to be pedestrian activity because the hotel has a parking lot. I just want to say feet in that end of Park Street is going to benefit my business. A lot of the businesses around us and I look forward to meeting and greeting a lot of new visitors to Alameda. Thank you. Thank you. And Paul, is this. You know and a man and council I am family says I am one also of the owners of East End restaurant here in Alameda and I say no to the appeal and yet to the hotel because I think it'll do wonders for businesses here in Alameda and I think it's a great idea. Thank you. Thank you. By the way, you're all rock stars. It's staying under one minute, so keep that up and you'll be home even sooner. Okay. And also continue these phonetic pronunciations. I love it. Kurt, Long and Bob. Then I have no excuse for mispronouncing your name. All right, he's left. All right, so then we have O Zens and Lee. And I bet I said that incorrectly. Thank you for all your time. There's a lot of business and, you know, companies here. And I mean, that is a great thing. It's a great thing. But they also don't need in a hotel to help them because they have clients coming into the city. You don't want you know, they are doing their business with their clime and go to, you know, San Francisco or Oakland to live. So I think, you know, and to me, that is another, you know, tourist destination. But, you know, to help business and the companies to stay here. Thank you. I support a hotel. Thank you. And then our next speakers in this order are Justin Wong, Wes Warren and Sam Patel. Mr. Wong. No. All right. Good evening, everyone. So I went to be for elementary. I went to Lincoln Middle School. I went to Alameda High. Park Street has been a great part of my childhood and some of my best childhood memories. And a lot of it is the retail. And so I think that the Bay Area should know about Alameda. And I think that, you know, more traffic would really bode well for Park Street and the city of Alameda. Thank you. And San Patel here is. I'm Sam, but I was a resident of Alameda. Two years ago, I moved to Saint Louis, Missouri. But I still have business here. Uh, consulting, say business. I bring in a staff, people here, uh, for the interviews and all that, and we've been housing them at the airport. The biggest problem is they don't want to go to Oakland. Uh, they want to come to eliminate some beautiful island. They feel safe here. Very safe. And it's a beautiful. I lived here, so I know. And why I was sitting and hearing all the different cases before us, uh, the, the one at the golf course. So they're building the event center and that is very exciting news for us as a business then. Now we can do a event there and have my staff living in, in downtown, and that will help us very big because the staff will be very happy. And I will I will love to see this hotel coming up. It's a beautiful project. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Patel is followed by Ming Yanan and also private citizen Cameron and Jean Schmidt in that order. Hi, my name is Amelia Yang. I support the hotel because we are the on this side. There are no hotel really nice and new and provide for the city and also the citizens who has family members come visit. So I will be Fred I my family members, they stay in Oakland and come over visit me. That's why I support for how they are like this. Thank you. Thank you. And then we have private citizen Cameron. Are you here? There he is. Followed by John Schmidt. It's John Schmidt here. Okay. John Schmidt's not here. Then Ed Shore will go next. Good evening. Thank you for the time. After hearing the facts in this. Case and understanding Park Street and Alameda, myself, being a community member and coming down here all my life, I think that downtown needs a. Little bit of a revitalization. And hearing both sides and facts the case, I don't see really a reason why this community wouldn't benefit. From. A hotel like this, being in the area and knowing the brand. Hearing the objections. On the park's parking side, it doesn't really seem like. It's going to negatively hurt the city in the way it would benefit it. So I just wanted to take a couple of moments coming here and thank you for the time. Thank you. So is it are you Mr. Shaw? Yeah. Okay. Come on up. The Mayor and staff and city council. I'm Ed Shy. I'm the regional development director for Intercontinental Hotels Group. And the proposed hotel would be one of our brands, a Holiday Inn Express. And we're very excited to have a hotel in downtown Alameda. We think it's hugely beneficial to the city with the all the taxes that this hotel will pay and provide and also not use very many city services. And we'll also greatly support all the businesses along Park Street, which could use a help, you know. So this is a wonderful project. We're very excited. I take a little offense to the union representative calling it a mediocre hotel because it's a fantastic hotel brand. It's one of the top largest hotels in the country. We do not do applies. We have got 60 plus speakers. We will be here all night. Please, no more applause. Thank you. And you get the speaker off. So don't do that again. Please keep the mayor more cheerful. Okay. Our next speakers. Are. Benjamin Winters, followed by a rich at Creek's King Rich crank. So it is followed by a who's who know he you know in host. Boy, you're going to have to help me with that one. Okay. Are you Mr. Winter? I am. Hello, I am Benjamin Winter. I'm the owner of Phenix, the venue right here on the corner. I am speaking in favor of the hotel. I was on the fence until Mr. Pertell took the time three or four times to come by, to call me and to get to know me and to talk to me and be personal about this. And I just hope we take that very seriously. I opened my venue two years ago and it takes a fire and it takes local pride. And I saw that in him. And I didn't know him. I didn't know about I didn't know about the project. And I had the same kind of shared the sentiment of a of a major hotel chain coming in. And but things need to be local and personal. Our growth needs to be local. It needs to be personal. I think that's at the root of the concern. And I see local and personal in this project, and I think it will catalyze a lot of vitality downtown, which is a band game. Thank you. Thank you. Which brings. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And Council members and staff, rich drinks, long time resident and commercial broker here in town. I want to bring to your mind 1989 1990 movie called Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee. This project has been going on for three years. About a half a million dollars spent by the applicant, two planning boards, two mayors and two councils. So it's time to move on. We have a50 vote by the planning board. They've done their homework. Staff has really done their homework. We've gone over and over and over with the design. Three architects on the design hotels bring in a lot of businesses and that means more jobs. I know someone spoke earlier about not having jobs. I think we need jobs and this will bring in more jobs. It's also going to bring more money to the businesses in town where their their employees can maybe afford to live here and the rents will be better. So I implore you, as Spike Lee said, do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. And now will you will you correct me on the awful pronunciation? I'll make. It. I'll make it easy for you. Seni in Hausa. Hausa. Thank you very much. Thank you. I knew it was going to happen, so. Okay. Well, first off, thank you so much for letting me talk for a moment or for a minute. This is a fantastic opportunity to bring something to the city that I think it needs. But more importantly, I'm here to support the Planning Commission and what they've already approved and they've already talked about. It's interesting when I see the the unite here come and talk negatively about the location of what it is and what it could be and on set. But they've addressed all those things. Everything has been. The Planning Commission was very, very they did their homework. They knew what was going on. One of the things that I do for a living as a filmmaker and when I do a film, I shot a short film here a few years back. And the first thing I do is I go to the local businesses, I go to the restaurants, I bring a crew to the you know, we shot inside the Starbucks, we shot inside the movie theater. We were at the marina. This is a beautiful and wonderful place to be, but without a hotel downtown makes it really inconvenient to do things like that. So I just want to say that I support I support the hotel and I. Hope you make the right decision. Thank you. Thank you. So our next speakers are being followed by hisses joining us, followed by Vincent some hello. My name is Phoebe. I'm a local resident of Alameda for many, many years. I am in favor of full title. I believe that it will bring a lot of new business, will bring life to downtown. Growing up here, downtown has changed so much and I think that we need to provide stay for a lot of people. There's not very many high end or very nice hotels in the area, and I think a brand new hotel will definitely change the flavor, especially towards the bridge where right now people say it's dead. I think it'll bring a lot more people to Alameda than want to stay because currently everybody is staying and either Jack London or downtown Oakland. And I think that Alameda has a lot to bring and I think I'll bring a lot more people. Thank you. Thank you. And do we have his his 20th Mr.. Joining us going once going twice. Okay Vincent some Mr.. Some is followed by Mike Gorman. I'm from Irwin Vincent's. I'm here to speak in favor of the hotel. I believe it's going to be a boon to the economy, both in the construction phase and after construction. The minute you break ground, you'll have construction crews here all day, sometimes at night. And that number of people will be visiting local businesses. Following that, he's also going to be helping revitalize some of the infrastructure in the local area with regard to undergrounding of the overhead lines, the ADA compliance of the sidewalks and some of the streets. Now nearby the hotel, he will be taking on the cost and the effort of redoing all of those for the city of Alameda, as well as his own business. The burden of proof to prove that this is a viable and beneficial project has been met. And I believe that you should proceed with this without any further delay. Thank you. Thank you. And are you Mike Gorman? You're another former councilmember, Mike Gorman. But that's okay. Thank you for your time. I'll be brief. I grew up in a small island community in the great state of Maryland. I moved to the Bay Area two years ago. Ever since then, I've taken probably around 20 client meetings in Oakland. And every time I try to stop by Alameda because it reminds me of home tonight, I have to drive 45 minutes back to Campbell. If there was a conveniently placed hotel, I would probably stay the night and wouldn't have to drive back. I believe it would be great for the city both with tax revenue and jobs. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Gorman is followed by Sean Flynn. Followed by Vincent Moore, followed by. Lay Tai chi. Tai, you're going to help me. Okay. Mr. Flynn. My name is John Flynn. I've waited a couple of hours now just to say I am for this hotel, all right? And we. And we were waiting for you. Okay. Vincent, is Vincent my hair? Vincent. Hi. My name is Vince and Mom, former business owner, owner in Alameda, also a former commercial property owner. And I'm currently a barber shop owner. And I can tell you right now, I heard on the way over here that tourism is down now all time high. They have absolutely no hotel rooms here. And this is a perfect opportunity for you guys to be the first in Alameda. And I applaud you that I flavor favored the proposal and I really hope you guys can consider it. And thank you very much. Thank you. And do we have Louie, Louie, tie dye. Tie dye, man, tie food. Say, okay, perfect. Oh, yeah, it is. I'm here. I'm just here to support the hotel, that's all. Simple. Straightforward. It took me longer to say your name than you spoke. Okay, whatever. You get credit for that. Okay. Michael Villa. Villa Luna. Level the Villa Luna via you. Come help me out with your. Name, please. Oh, it's really a luna. What is it? Villa Luna. Villa Luna. Hello. Hi, I'm Mike. Villa Luna. And I'm in favor of the hotel. I think it will be good for the economy and creates jobs. The hotel visitors will help local businesses with. Visitors need to eat and shop. Thank you. You guys are doing a great job on your public speaking. Okay, three more. We have Harvey Yang, followed by John. Oh, boy. Friend Gordon Ali. And Madeleine Sadek. Hi. RV. Yes. Hi. And is John here as well, or did I butcher your name so badly you don't recognize it? Well, try again, Mr. Yen. I am going to keep this real sweet. Yes, my name is Harvey Young, and I couldn't say it any better than what he's already saying. So I'm going to support this. Thank you. Okay. All right. You can come correct me on that of a pronunciation. By the mayor. Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the council. My name is John Franklin. My kids and I own the new Park Street Tavern across the street from the proposed New York City, hopefully hotel. My father in law had a grocery store on Park Street in the forties and fifties. My kids have 30 year lease on that place and they plan to stay there for a long time. I heard that the proposed project is a mediocre project. By no means that project is going to enhance the gateway to the city. We plan to hire between 5 to 10 more people to do because of the increased visitor to anticipate. So I hope you approve the project without any further delay, because it's going to create no more no more and more income for the city from the hotel, but also from the rest of the business around. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Evangelist. I can say that. Okay. Madeline Saric. Good evening. Mayor and Council Members. My name is Madeline Saturday and I'm the new executive director of Alameda Chamber and I'm very proud to be one. And I'm going to echo a lot of the people that said great things about it. But being new to the city of Alameda, I call it the destination. It's the hidden gem of the Bay Area. And I think we do need the hotels here because we need to increase tourism to the city very much. And I'm all for that. Plus, it's going to increase business, it's going to increase jobs and everything. So we're all for it. The chamber supports that. Thank you so much. Thank you. And then we have Brian Landers, followed by Ryan Mooney, followed by. Gary Garrick. Garrick. Garrick. Okay. Do I have. I'm Brian Landers. Brian Landers. Maybe not. I know I have run Mooney. Are you Brian? No, that's Mike Gorman. Come on up. Don't be shy. He's not. Good evening, Mayor and council members. The attempt to keep the mayor happy will be short. I live just a couple of blocks from here and that's six blocks from the project. I'm in support of the project. I've read the full packet, listen to the applicant and the appellant and think you should support the Planning Commission in their decision and move it. Do the resolution are provided. Thank you, Mr. Mooney. And you are. Mr. Garrick. How? My name is Gary Yaniv. My family and I are patrons of the Park Street. We support the hotel. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I have Lisa Fong, followed by Tina Blaine, followed by Enrique. Ms.. Samantha. Okay. Miss Fine, right? Yes. Hi, Mayor. Vice mayor and council. People of men. Women. The people. Okay. Second phase. I'm in support of the hotel. I believe that it will bring more, you know, tourists, everything like that. I think that Patel has done a lot of research and the planning commission has all. Are in favor. And you see all the business people that are actually here in support of the hotel. I feel that you guys should not delay and I'll vote yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I. Tina Brown. Blue. My name is Tina Blaine. I am a resident of Alameda. I live about two blocks away from the new proposed hotel project. And I'm also the director of Rhythmic Sculptural Works, which I think will benefit greatly from having more visitors to our island. I was really inspired by Mr. Patel story. I think it's a very Alameda story that most people could really feel really good about that someone who is really ingrained and enmeshed in the community and like Benjamin Winters from Phenix said. Mr. Patel took the time to come out and meet with me and hear about my concerns and was really looking for ways to partner and to find ways that his guests could benefit from the kinds of entertainment that rhythmic provides to the community here. I also think that the hotel tax fund and the moneys that will be generated for public art are great for the city. Thank you to I have Enrique Nascimento cabinet. Gustav Link, Mr. Link and Mr. Link is followed by Amy Quintero. Hi. How's it going? All right. Gustavo, like I said, I'll let you know I support the project. Not gonna really go any farther. Sean Simple. Thank you. Great. 5 seconds. I love it. All right, so do I have Amy Quintero. Here she is. I thank you so much for the vetting that you're doing for this project. My husband and I are business owners and residents of Alameda. My husband went to Alameda High School. We have a vested interest in. This hotel happening for the community. We all know Paul has met every requirement thrown at him. He's done it with grace and a big smile on his face. What you might not know is what he's doing because. Of his heart. I'm on the board of Dreamcatcher. It's a shelter for sexually trafficked youth. I know, Mayor, you and I have attended some of the same fundraisers. When I told Paul about their mission, he asked for an introduction because. Their mission is close to his heart. He doesn't have to do this for the hotel. He's reaching out because he cares and he's offered to provide additional shelter for sexually trafficked youth when the shelter has no more beds. He's also. Reached out to Alameda Family Services to. See how he might work with their Family Resource Center. He's a good human being and deserves. Thank you, Miss Quintero. Miss Quintero is followed by Mike Parisi, my priest here yet there he is. Followed. Followed by Mark Skolnick. Followed by Lars Hansen. Hi. My name is Mike Parisi, the owner of the tiny little house on Alameda. My wife's Thai. I've seen the faces. Some Thai. It's a it's a mediocre little restaurant on Park Street, but it goes out. Well, first of all, I'm kind of fascinated that that somebody that interested a union rep in the parking situation. But I'm just going to call it short. I, I want this hotel. It's great, great opportunity for everybody. And I agree. Thank you, Mr. Percy and Mark Skolnick. Are you here? There you are. Hi. Good evening. My name is Mark Skolnick. I'm here to support this hotel. It's going to bring a lot of revenue to the city. It's a well thought out program that's been thoroughly vetted by the planning department at very high expense to Mr. Patel. And this is the right project at the right time in the right place. So I thoroughly approve. And I urge you to do the same. Thank you. And could I just ask the audience not to be talking like speakers are talking? Let's give everyone their do because we want to hear from Mr. Hansen. Lars Hansen, you're up next, followed by Eric Hamlin, panelists and as well as panelists. Okay, that's an interesting spy. And Christina, hurry after that. Mr. Hansen. Good evening. My name is Lance Hansen and I, both a restaurant and business owner in Alameda. I'm here tonight to give my support for the hotel project, have my work with Park Street Business Association for many, many years. A project like what is in front of us tonight at the north end of Park Street has been a goal for the organization for many, many years that I welcome this project. The hotel will not only generate needed revenue to the city, but I also believe it will inspire other developments and improvement to the north end of the Park Street. And in that process, the gateway to Park Street and our city will improve and become more attractive. I believe that this project will do due to the north end of Park Street, but the theater project, Detroit, downtown, it will become a success. So I urge you to support it tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hansen. And Eric, you're going to help me with that last name, Rose Railers. Okay. Good evening. My name is Eric Willows and I'm here to support Paul's project. I'm going to echo many of the benefits that others have already said. The business tax revenue for the city of Alameda is going to be great. I think there's spillover benefits to many of the retailers and merchants along Park Street and other streets. Others like it in Alameda will be tremendous and a gentleman mentioned it earlier. Now, if I have friends and family visiting instead of packing them in my house, they have a place to stay. Thank you. Thank you. You won't get on each other's nerves that way. Okay. Christina Huie. Hi. Followed by Michel Rayo Arroyo, followed by La, my Korean. And you can correct me on that pronunciation mystery. Good evening. My name's Christina. Hi. Hi. It's okay. Everyone says Huey. I am in favor of the hotel. I think Alameda is a beautiful little place. It deserves to be shared not only through tourism, but also promoting local businesses. I think overall it's a win win situation. Thank you. And Michelle and Michelle, is it real or real? Okay. Good evening. My name is Michelle Rayo. I'm just like a lot of people here. I do support the hotel. I believe it's going to be good for the community of Alameda. And I would like to commend Mr. Patel as an immigrant myself. And he planted here 18 years ago and he wants to build his business here. I think it's going to be good for Alameda. Thank you. Thank you. And LA my Damien do you recognize your name? Is it that person has left okay. Because they pronounce the name so badly. And then we have to picture Michoud. The last name is Michelle. Janet Maccabee. I saw her. There she is. Good evening, Madam Mayor and council members. My name is Janet Mckelvie, I. I'm the executive director of the Downtown Alameda Business Association, which enthusiastically supports this hotel. We hope you feel the same way. I want to put a little bit of spin on something that you may not be thinking about, but we do, as an association, produce the biggest events in downtown Alameda. And all of those people need to stay a second day and spend the night and spend twice as much money as they would spend if they just came to the mother the Mother's Day event for one day or the art and wine fair for one day or so many of the other great events that we have. And Mr. Pertell has been an absolute delight to work with his community minded. He's resilient, certainly, and he is somebody that we really want to support. And on behalf of our board of directors and our committee members, we ask you to approve this project. Thank you. Thank you. Ms.. Maccabee is followed by Steven Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman followed by the champion Nam Cam. Followed by Steven. So, so sorry. So sorry. Mr. Zimmerman. Hi. Thank you. Mayor. And members of the council whose proposed project, hotel project, will revitalize the northern section, partially bring more visitors, obviously revenue to our town and support businesses like Tuckers, but also will support a lot of nonprofit groups. What a lot of people forget to realize as we put on a lot of great events in town as the incoming president of Rotary, we're going to be hosting a district call in the Hornet this May. We're going to bring some world class speakers like astronaut Scott Kelly. It's a three day event. We're expecting hundreds, if not over a thousand attendees for three days. During this time, we were trying to reserve room hotel rooms on the island. We could only get 46 rooms, not only to be an asset to the businesses, but also nonprofit groups in town like Darbar, Rotary Boys and Girls Club and their big event in October. So there are many reasons to support this project. It makes sense for the community, it makes sense for businesses, it makes sense for visitors and their family members. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Do we have Ms. or Mr. Nam Cam? No. Okay. I'm Steven. So sorry. No. Nora Gordon. We could be out of here even sooner. Darren and. No. Okay. We really scared them off. Ivan Gutierrez, Mr. Gobierno, Joe La Parra. I saw him. There he is. Where you are. Well, I get the other ten in. Front of me, you know. You do know we have rules in this body. There's nothing more I can say other than I support this hotel and everybody else. Every single speaker in front of me supports the hotel, and they said everything beautifully. Better than I could. So thank. You. Thank you. Okay. And then I have. See, look, look, look. No, Nora. A bill. No. Oh. Do you want to come up here and just read this now? Okay. I need to ng. There you are. Okay. You coming up? You read. I know, but remember, we've got rules. Okay. Ms.. NG. Hello, everyone. I'm a local resident, small business owner in town and a commercial property owner on Park Street. I think the hotel is good for our downtown district. Hotel guests will come stay and spend money in our beautiful downtown. I think it will help our economy. I totally support the hotel project. Thank you. Ms.. NG is followed by Vida's Vida Circus. Here he is. Hi. And you can tell us the real pronunciation of your name. Yeah. Vida Sharky's. Vida. Not too bad. Speaking of the hotel without the restaurant is the best news to all Park Street restaurants. No, that's confirmed. That was the first what I figured when people told me about the situation and I really feel the pain for years trying to present this project and start building. I mean, that's wow. It took me half a year to build my little restaurant and I thought, it's a disaster. So for years, I really feel the pain. I really want to support him as much as they can. And all this nearby out of mobile, out body shops, maybe they will convert for more parking lots, so who knows? Maybe they will see the opportunity once the hotel is going to be standing there. So it can really bring good news to everybody. So I shouldn't be really sad about locals comments. Thank you. Thank you. What's your restaurant, by the way? I'm more popular to my restaurant. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Thank you. And then Richard kind of Powell. Kind of Powell. Followed by Alex. Rachel, Rachel followed by Crash. I hear. So thank you for the opportunity to speak. As a long time East Bay resident and supporter of our major businesses. I heartily support the project and urge acceptance. Thank you. Alex Patel. Hi. Good evening. I'll try to keep it brief. I grew up in Oakland for first 24 years of my life and every time I would get a straight AA, we would go to Tucker's. Every time we wanted to, as Burma came up, we would go to Burma. I mean, it's been a place that I've come my entire life and it's been really special. And then seeing it grow and expand over the years has been really tremendous. And just and this is a project that I think will drive a lot of business here. And hearing everybody talk about the business growth, it just seems like it makes sense. And then also, my brother had a very important event. We brought family in. We lived in Oakland for a while and we looked for places and we didn't find a place safe that we felt comfortable bringing our families here. But we would always come here to Alameda with all of the family when they would come into town. And so having a hotel like this, I could see family bringing in people to stay at the hotel. And it would be something that would be great for us to be able to come here and spend more time. Thank you. And to have Koresh are here and and followed by Carlos Rosales, followed by Sunil Lama. Hi. Hi. Good evening. I'm in favor of the hotel project. I'm an L.A. based filmmaker who does business here in Alameda and, you know, have meetings over projects. And it's usually here in downtown. You know, all these is one of the examples that we usually meet. So it would be great to walk down the hotel and just walk over to the restaurant versus driving. So I hope this happens. Thank you. Thank you. And Carlos Rosales, there is. So hello. You just want to start by saying that a certain said from the local union that the gas will come in through the back, go inside the hotel and inside there they need to eat. Everybody here in Alameda has most of the restaurants are privately owned. They're not a big chain. So I think the all the businesses will benefit, you know, by having 97 people come out in the city every day if it's sold out. So I am for the hotel. Okay. Thank you. And let's see, we've got Sunil Lama there. Sunil. Followed by William Smith, followed by Brian Maguire, followed by Carlos Serrano crying. Hello. Hello. Good evening. I'm here to support Paul's Hotel Project. Thank you. It took longer to walk to the microphone. Bill Smith. That was short. Bill Smith, again, welcome to you. Back up here. I'm really impressed and delighted to see the business community get behind something, the business. And so that's very impressive. But not one of them has mentioned housing and where these employers are going to live and all these new jobs are. And I do have find a couple of suggestions for our planning director to work about in terms of approaching this. He said, we met arena numbers. That is absolutely not true. We are way behind on the affordable housing component, which is the housing group where they employ most, employ for the restaurants and the hotels will live. And so we're going to have a problem that we're going to add to it. They said, oh, it isn't high. Everybody locally, well, they're not going hiring away from someone else locally. So eventually people are going to move in. So that doesn't work. Then the other thing I wanted to say is we really should do a social vulnerability analysis because you wrote me, the city wrote me that squat does not do consider social vulnerability in the fact of income for affordable housing. That's outside of CEQA. We need to get that in. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Brian Maguire. Hello, Brian Maguire. You guys dealt with a couple of big issues today climate change item, big housing crisis item. And one thing that both of those colossal problems have in common is that they're one of the big contributors to those is bad local process that leads to bad faith appeals that delay in order to delay and deny projects for infill development. So hopefully we're not going to play that game here any longer, even if it's our friends who are asking for something. Putting on my bike walk hat. I'm hopeful that we can have a way to direct the right chair, sort of which to substituting for a shuttle to go to the back of the hotel. Better yet, offering to transit day passes to users as an alternative to Uber and Lyft. I think this is would be a decent project to have a few project based bike share options for guests. Three or four bikes, maybe. Lastly, if you've ever scratch your head trying to park at the marketplace, you should grant staff flexibility to give one further reduction of parking so that the 17 compact spaces can be six inches wider. Carlos Serrano, Keegan and Mr. Serrano. Quinn is my last speaker slip. If you want to speak, just don't feel compelled. But if you want to speak, get his speeches live. And right away. That could be Ashcraft and the council member for this evening. Okay. Mr. Patel is a personal friend of mine, actually, and he's very passionate about this project. About a year ago, he actually toward me around Park Street. I used to live in Bay Port Alameda myself, and he's so passionate about this project that he explained to me about all the economic benefits that it would bring to the city that would bring the parks. As a matter of fact, he took it all the way down Park Street. How he would benefit all the companies and businesses down Park Street. And I used to have a friend that owns chicken wire. I don't know if you guys remember on Park Street. He didn't make it. He was right there really close to the hotel site. So in my 20 seconds, let me just tell you a little story about Mr. Patel and where he has come from and where he's going right now with this hotel. This is not his first. This was not at first. I'll tell he's experience hotel operator and he no, he's really knows what he's doing. And I highly urge you guys to support the denial of the people. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Our last speaker is Michael McKenna. Is it morning yet? No, it's still afternoon. Still evening. Good evening, council mayor. I'm Michael McDonough, president of the Alameda Chamber of Commerce. I turned in my speaker slip, slip last because I wanted to speak last. And I don't know if any of you were taking roll or taking. I was chicken scratching. Everybody that came up here, we had 46 for one that I'm not sure if he was for or against, but it sounded like you might have been against. But I have never seen that many speak. We had 12 that left or 13 that left. That's on the back of my slip. Mayor, if you want to check that. I have never seen that many speakers come out and all be for something. And I think it's because there's no doubt that the businesses in Alameda, as we see today, need a hotel in Alameda. There's no doubt that the residents need another hotel in Alameda. There's no doubt that the tote tax will benefit our budget. There's no doubt that it will stimulate the economy again. On Park Street, remember what the thinking is. Thank you, guys. See you again. All right. With that, I'm closing public comment and I'm opening up council discussion. Who wants to go first? Councilmember Vela. A couple of questions for Mr. Thomas. So we heard about that story in question. And we also heard that there was a study done from a hotel on Webster. There's two hotels on Webster. How many rooms do they have? So number. Mm hmm. Approximately 50 rooms for both. Both hotels. You know. That's the Hawthorne Suites we're talking about. I mean, I guess part of my question is just we're hearing about all the business that is going to be generated. Do the and at the Hawthorne and the I think the date but I don't know the name of the other hotel. Days in. Days Inn or something like that. The roadway or. Roadway in. That that. How much business are they generating right now for Webster Street? They're both at the entrance of Webster. Do we do we have can we quantify that? I can't standing here now. Okay. But we're hearing that they're at capacity. I have. I know. Yes. The I don't know about the roadway. And I do know about the Webster. The other Hawthorne Suites is often at capacity. Okay. And that's that's about 50% of what this proposed hotel is. Yeah, it's about 50 rooms. Okay. Regarding the the ride share proposals, you know, have we I mean, obviously that came up. That was one of the that's one of the proposals in terms of how to handle that. Do we have any sort of guidance or policies in place regarding. You know, what the what the condition of approval requires is that to make that available to hotel patrons so that they can get a ride? What we're trying to do is we were trying to make it as easy as possible for people flying into the open airport to not have to rent a car. So with with different hotels, we've taken different approaches. Sometimes we require that they run a free shuttle just back and forth. In this case, the operator and staff discussed using a ride share program so that make that available for. I'm sorry. You could feel free to come up if you want. Also, I know she's got a broken foot, but if you. Say yes to the idea. The idea of the ride share was to essentially make it free for the for the patrons to be able to get back and forth from the airport to the hotel without having to rent a car. So the operator would be paying for the ride share. Right. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And, Councilor, we've got a little bit of housekeeping business we need to conduct first. We are approaching 11 p.m.. It's 1051. We need four yes votes to call new items after this one after 11 p.m.. We have six F is our budget. We have nine is a council referral on the transient occupancy tax, nine B is a breastfeeding etc. referral. 10 a.m. a head swim center update ten be sure a moved. So okay to hear the dates here all of them the balance. Okay. Oh I'm happy to delay my till next time. Okay. By me. Okay. That one. That's the Toti and Mr. Adejumo. Yeah. The stop waste info thing is for info so we can just push that. Is that. Okay, so. Amend my motion to move the balance except for those two. Is that that was the. Ten C. Okay. And what's the charter amendment. That's the subcommittee. Subcommittee's report. Back. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Right. That was the time frame. Okay. Okay. The motion. Okay. So that's the motion to hear. Six, seven, 9a9b, ten a, ten B, okay. All in favor. By. Anyone opposed. Abstained. Okay, we've got two five over on that one. Okay. Sorry to cut you off for you. Did you finish your what. I'm done with my questions. Okay, I have. I don't know if anyone else has any questions. Otherwise, I'm happy to move in my comments. If I may just finish the answer to that one. Oh, I'm sorry. Linda was cluing me in there. She the the way the condition is written, it's hotel pays for ride, share services for the guests airport and any place within three miles. So once again the idea is try to reduce the need for for patrons of the hotel to have to rent cars, which would then have to be stored in the parking area. Question. Okay. So finish your. Question. Go ahead and I spell. Okay, then I'm ready. Okay. Oh, well, we'll see if anyone else. Councilman Brody. My quick question was like, practically, I'm like in use case mode. How's that going to work? I mean, because usually. Usually, like you pick it up on your phone, but then you pay for. It. You call. Let's say you're flying in from Oklahoma. You've you've observed a room at the hotel. You ask if there's a shuttle from the airport. They say, well, yes, we'll pay for the ride share. And they contact the ride share for you. Oh, okay. Okay. So they will dispatch or I mean, the. Idea is you're you know, I mean, obviously, if you don't know that it's available, but if you call the hotel and say, hey, how do I get to your hotel? Do you have a free shuttle from the airport? That's how you'd find out about it. I mean, do we consider any type of bike option like not necessarily like calling luggage from the. Airport, but, you know. Yeah. Park Street or whatever. Those sort of things. I mean, we didn't we didn't require that when the we need to get you up here. They do have they have onsite bike parking but not bike share. Yeah. Oh, do we. Have a bike that we can give Linda. Don't we live that. We have the. Holder. So I think. We'll be. All right. Well, the budget hearing coming up. Maybe. It was not a conditional approval. This is a de novo hearing. You certainly can add conditions if if you'd like to. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Any other clarifying questions? Okay. Who wants to start with discussion, Miss Vella? So we just had our two items. One was on climate impact and the other was on the the CASA Compact. And I think, you know, the questions that I was really asking is it's not so much about parking to me. It's about what are we doing to reduce single occupancy vehicles. And so, you know, we've also heard from the business community. I mean, Tony Kuttner has been up here multiple times talking about the need for an Alameda shuttle and a free Alameda shuttle. And we are trying to promote that. And I've heard from a lot of you in support of that shuttle. And I think that, you know, to me, it's, you know, I think the number of parking spaces, yeah, I think I would do away with the compact spaces and just make them passable. Actually, I got pinned in some some nice gentleman decided to park so close to me at the marketplace that with my seven months belly, I couldn't quite get into my car. And I ended up waiting for 45 minutes for him to come out of the restaurant he was in. But but I, I do think also, you know, with with the rideshare agreement, I'm not in support of that, frankly. I think that we need to be supporting public transit. We do have we have busses that go to and from the airport. I've taken them. I in fact, I've had friends that were visiting recently from another country who were able to manage it. And I think we need to we need to be looking in that direction. I don't want to be supporting any extra single, single occupancy vehicles coming in and out. And I certainly don't want our businesses supporting that. I also, you know, I, I like the idea that this is going to generate business. I'm not necessarily we have two hotels on Webster Street. I think, you know, they to a certain extent might improve business, but not to the level that I've kind of heard into in terms of the enthusiasm. But I do, I do think that we need to work on improving, uh, you know, doing what we can to improve our business districts. Again, I and I like the idea of of of you know again the offer to house traffic youth. I used to be on Almeida Family Services Board and have done a lot with dream catchers. There's actually new laws you can't house traffic youth anywhere there's there it's very highly regulated. I hope that the support for dream catchers will continue and there's actually new training for hotel and motel workers that's just gone into place because of trafficking actually occurring in hotels, which is why you're not allowed to use temporary beds in in hotels and motels for traffic in particular. But I do think overall, there's there's a problem and a couple of speakers have raised it with the process involved for hotel approvals. And we have these processes involved that are very strict for certain projects. And then for hotels, it kind of seems like, you know, each hotel project is very different and I get that we've done the work session before, the planning board. But I also think that, you know, we should have a process that includes at least one public like community meeting. I'm not talking about a study session before planning board. I'm talking about just generally speaking, there should be a community meeting where we notify the neighbors and we let them know. And I think the city should be doing that, not to not to impede or bogged down the design review process or the approval process, but just so that we're we're we're just kind of creating a level playing field and saying this should happen. And neighbors know and we don't hear from people, people that live nearby after the fact that they weren't noticed and why city require that. So that's just something that I've seen and there's been a lot of talk. Michael mentioned the number of people who've come out. I've also heard from a number of people who had various complaints and different things and didn't know who to who to talk to. I directed them to rich cranks and and other folks, but I think just setting that process up would be helpful before it even goes to a study session or final, final planning, planning, board approval . I you know. I do think that there you know, I do have concerns about the pedestrian just safety in general. We also have things like Vision Zero in place. And if we're again, if we're in encouraging rideshares and there isn't a designated drop off point or we're not investing in public transit right now, there's a big problem on Park Street with double parking. And it's become it's becoming increasingly bad and it's actually slowing down traffic. And so I do think that there needs to be some work done on that in terms of how are people going to get dropped off? Where are they going to get dropped off? And why are we not supporting public transit or the Alameda shuttle or some of these other things? So I do want those things looked at. Okay. Who wants to go next? Mr. Desai. Thank you. I've read the staff report, reviewed the planning board documents, looked into the relevant ordinances and the the TDM analyzes. And I've concluded that the appeal does not rise to the level of significance. And so I will vote to deny the appeal and vote in favor of the hotel. Okay. Who's next with the. Did you finish? I didn't mean to cut you off, Councilman Brody. I just make up comments. I appreciate everyone coming out and waiting till after 11 to to hear us deliberate on this. I do share some of the concerns raised by my colleague, Ms.. Vella, especially related to the ride share, and that we we just went through an exercise declaring a climate emergency where we want to get more cars off the road. And yet, you know, we're asked to approve a project that basically puts more cars on the road. And I won't even get into the whole like independent contractor gig economy thing and income inequality that that I think is exasperated by by some of these rideshare companies. And I do think if we're going to want people to take bicycles and, you know, walk more, you know, we need to have projects that actually promote that. I mean, in an ideal world, I would have liked to seen a project that had ground floor retail, that generated foot traffic for retail, that had three stories of hotel and three stories of residents. I mean, the issue or housing, I mean, we had a long discussion earlier about the housing crisis, yet we're giving up one of our multifamily overlay sites for purely commercial. So I think there's a way that we could have worked in retail, commercial, hotel and residence at the same time and really taken advantage of the position of this property right in the gateway of Alameda to generate foot traffic from tourists and residents. And I think that's a missed opportunity. And I would have liked to have I would like to see in a project like that come forward. On the parking thing, I'm not really convinced that that that's an issue. I, I can't remember where I saw it, but I think it was one of our agenda items that, you know, these parking minimum parking requirements seem to be a tool that people use to oppose these development projects. And, you know, I don't think that's a good idea. Again, if our goal is to reduce the amount of cars providing more parking, it's kind of disincentivizes that. So that that argument really didn't hold a lot of water with me. On the design review, I mean, this is a matter of taste. You know, I personally would have preferred something other than art deco there. But, you know, I'm not going to like again, it's a matter of taste and style, so I'm not going to tell anyone to come back and do anything differently, considering it's been like done redone three times. But I think, again, I'm disappointed that a project didn't come to us that included housing, because I think we could have we could have done we could have done more with this project and more with this property. Then. Okay. Vice Mayor Knox White. Sure. So I'll pick up from there. I will. Jim's no councilmember. I'm coming to you. Vision, I think, is a great one. And I hope one of the things that comes out of this is maybe as a part of maybe the general general plan and housing update. We can talk about how in the future, if we're going to go up five or six stories on Park Street, maybe we can actually require it . Changes are needed to look at requiring some of that to be housing. You know, I was on the planning board when we wrote the North Park Street zoning rules. It was on the subcommittee that helped write those rules. And one of the things we wanted to do with the north north of Lincoln, on Park Street District was was attract businesses that are not like businesses in other parts of Park Street so that there was no competition. And so I do think that a hotel makes sense here. And, you know, I do want to thank Mr. Patel. I met with him over three years, so I did not get to vote for his project on the planning board. So there's no inconsistency here. But he did come before us for at least one hearing, and I think I met with him about a year before he ever got to the planning board, as did most of the planning board members, just to talk about the design and whatnot. And through those through those meetings over that time, through the many architects, we saw a significant improvement in the design. And we really listened listened to the architects on the board. Right. The people who should be making these decisions listen very carefully. I want to echo Jim Emilia's concerns about the tenses, Ubers and lifts there. Yeah, they're not ride share. They're surrogate ride programs and surrogate chauffeurs. You know, I would like to for me, I would like to see and I've talked to the applicant and he was supportive of this. I would like to see some of that engagement on the on the ground floor happened. The lobby is going to be open to the public, and I think it should be. I think when this goes back to to design review with the planning board, I'd like to see signage and how the design of this first floor is going to actually look like it doesn't have to be a Starbucks, but it should look like it's a coffee shop that somebody who lives across the street should feel comfortable walking into. That goes with the design inside the building, etc. It should be very clear that it's open to the public and if you want to go use the wi fi and sit down and drink a cup of coffee and grab a snack from the from the snack machine, then you could do that. I would like to. I would like to see the team program much more. You know, I think my colleagues have really said it very well, so I won't say it, but I would like to see that that that team shift. And, you know, this is one of the places where the 21 bus literally stops outside. Right. And gets you straight to the airport. There is no reason why we are not just giving people a free pick up at the airport and drop off in front of the Holiday Inn. And if people decide that they don't want to do that and they want to pay for our TNC or something like that, if they want to drive that, just like driving their car, they will do that better. But I think that that we should be taking steps to not encourage it. I would like to you know, I think the appellant tonight raises a good point and a good point that he raises is is not I do not they will not find that there is a violation of sequel, because at the end of the day, the planning board actually helped them force them to meet the parking requirements with the with the the valet parking. But I do think the way in which we keep going through this, not just with this project, with other projects, it is the way we have written our parking requirements is not it's a 1970s mindset and here we are. And you know, I want to say post global warming, but in mid global warming mindset where we know that, we know that those requirements didn't make sense in the seventies and now they don't make sense today. But we keep trying to pretend they do. And then we get very almost every project comes to us. It's a variant. So let's let's change that and look at, you know, removing them or doing parking maximums or something like that. And I think that that's probably a pretty quick fix that we could look at while we come up with our new one. And then lastly. Yeah. That's it. I oh. Yeah, I'd like to, you know, I do think we continue to have conversation some hotels come forward with, uh, you know, with agreements for the workers and some don't. And I think that it's something that we can look at as we go forward. You know, we have to be careful in not putting our position ourselves in a position where we can require, you know, no city can require labor use and whatever else. But we do, too, that we had a couple of we did have one speaker who was not glowing about the project. And one of the things he talked about is where will these people be able to afford to live? And we want to make sure that when people are working in our city that they can afford to live in our city as well. Part of that is addressing the housing issue and the other side of that is addressing the the wage issue. And I would like to have some conversations around that because I don't think this'll be. The last that I will see. So those are my thoughts. Okay. Councilmember Desai wants to speak before I do. If I can. Just add one more point really quickly. You know, as a west ender who lives right next to Webster Street, literally, I always, you know, go to restaurants and eating places on Web's history. Kapok Nation's West Cafe Cafe Zola You know, I mean, those are my go to places. But I have to say, though, you know, in the few times that I, you know, venture on the other side of Grand Street to Park Street, you know, Park Street, north of Lincoln Avenue, especially, you know, the where the monkey restaurant is or whatever or where the you know, is. It's a whole bunch of great restaurants that that I just say to myself, I want to go to there when I go to there. So I know that when this hotel is made that the people who go there will feel the same way. So, you know, maybe my presentation tonight is a little dry, but. But I find this project exciting. Okay, my turn. So I am supportive of the parking waiver. I think the planning board has done a good job on that. I in no particular order, just maybe the way the topics came up, I think it's great to get people to ride the bus. I ride the bus a lot. I think it's unrealistic to expect every guest who flies in from out of town to hop on the 21 bus. Sometimes you're jetlagged from, you know, flying across the country. Sometimes you're elderly or have some physical limitations. But I'm all for having a variety of options available. And I was just thinking of maybe a month ago, I tagged along with my husband on a business trip to St Petersburg, Florida. It's quite lovely. We were seeing a beautiful hotel right on the water. We took a Uber, Lyft or a taxi, I don't remember in because we didn't want to pay for parking in the hotel. And once we got there, St Peter's St Petersburg is a very walkable city. It also has a free shuttle. The free shuttle is paid for by all the businesses and the hotels in the downtown. It is not borne by the most recent hotel developer. I also feel like people, even Alameda Inns, don't realize just how widespread AC transit is. But I do like the idea and maybe will consider including it as a condition to make available day passes for AC transit because as was noted, there's nearby bus routes. But and then the other thing about rideshare, I know there's the argument that's been made. I will also say I love talking to my rideshare drivers and asking them about themselves. The majority are immigrants. They're here. This is a way oftentimes they you know, as soon as one spouse comes home, they go off to work or they go off and drive. And that's how they handle child care and that's how they handle establishing a foothold in in a new country. So I the model I get, there's some arguments to be made. I don't think we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on that one. But I think the Army, the shuttle, good idea. We're not going to have it right now today. But and then I I don't think the comparison with Webster and Park Street as far as will show us how many how much business the Hawthorne Suites has generated and their different streets. But what we are hearing and we heard from a lot of business owners is that you need the foot traffic. And I know from talking to many of you, you are barely making ends meet as far as, you know, paying your workers and your benefits and your insurance and all that. So if we can bring a hotel to the downtown to increase business visitors and getting people to stay in Alameda, I think that's great. The other thing is we did just have a really serious discussion about climate change and our need for more housing. But isn't the idea that we want to get people out of single occupancy vehicles? I don't want them all to just drive their. Their rental car in from the from the airport. But I do think there's a range of options. The bike share. Yeah, they had that in St Petersburg too. They also had this parking meters that we're going to do where you put in money to donate to homelessness. But that's off the subject right now. But anyway, just I think that we we definitely want to that that's why the parking waiver makes sense. And I think Councilmember Brody said it, if you keep saying, yeah, for every room, we're going to give you a parking space, it's not a disincentive. And as far as the housing on the upper levels, an inspired idea for a future project, but it is not fair to hold an applicant to a standard that was not set forth for him to meet. I mean, we don't keep adding on as we go. So but I will say that I'm not 100% on board because I also served on the city council. And no, I'm in the city council now. I served on the planning board when Vice Mayor Knox White was on and I was part of the group that drafted the the the North Park Suite north of Lincoln form based codes. And that is indeed the gateway to Alameda. And so I am not taken with the current design of this hotel and I want it to get better. And I don't care that it's already been back to the planning board because this, this design and I don't mean to be unkind, but I'll just be frank, I would describe it as nondescript. It could be located anywhere along a freeway. It might be better viewed at 65 miles an hour, but it doesn't seem appropriate to the historic gateway of our downtown. I will hasten to add that I'm not saying everything has to be Victorian or Brick or whatever. There's a very nice building going up even closer to the Park Street Bridge. It's Morris single's glass and steel, but it's really exciting quality architecture and so that that is what I am looking for. I do not find the streamlined moderne architectural style appropriate for the site or for the adjacent neighbors. And again, you don't have to look too far down Park Street, north of Lincoln. You've got the market place. You've got the the brick building that is the Walgreens that is there. And that's more what I'm looking for. But I consulted with our very capable city attorney, deputy city attorney, Selina chan, and she gave me some framework that I I'm going to just propose to the council. If any of you share my ideas, we can break out the different issues before us. And this is a de novo hearing so we can consider other things. We can take a vote to approve the parking waiver. And then I believe well, I'm not sure would that be the time to add whatever conditions people were suggesting to make it better? Mischin At I think somebody had said about easy transit day passes and. Bike shares. But. But anyway, just, you know, interested. Mr. Thomas I'm just saying I was just whispering back there. I think in terms of process, I think the first issue to to decide as a group is, are you are you upholding the appeal and sending it back to the planning board? And if you are, then then get to the question of, for example, on the design as you were arguing or making the. Case for the appeal doesn't go to the design right. Of the appeal. So think of it this way. Project gets approved by planning board. Somebody appeals it. What they're saying is, don't let this project go forward. Stop it in its tracks. In this case, one of your options is, you know, and send it back. You might send it back for the reasons they argued in this case, parking waiver. Or you might send it back for other reasons, like design. At the end of the day, it's a de novo hearing. You get to decide whether this project is ready for prime time or not. So I think what I was hearing from just your position here is that you're not sending it back for the parking. You're sending it back for the the design, if that's the feeling of the board, I mean, the full council, what's good about articulating why you're sending it back? And so the planning board knows what they need to work on. Absolutely. I've been in the planning board before. We appreciate that. Okay. So I would be in favor of sending it back for the design. Does anyone want to chime in their thoughts? Council Councilmember Vella. So I'll I'll second that. I do have a question though about the the parking. My whole thing with the parking is I actually think there's too much parking and I would like to see I would I think there's too much parking. I think we over park our hotels, to be honest with you. Well, that's your proposal. So, you know what could we I was thinking maybe we would handle one item at a time design and then go to parking and that's fine. Okay, that's fine. But so if it goes back to planning board, could there be one community meeting or something like that or notification to the committee? I mean, we, we send out notices for other projects, even if there isn't a community meeting because I think when it comes to the subject of design, people have a lot of opinions. That is true. Is that what you're thinking of as far as sending it to a community meeting? But I know it could go back to the planning board, but just that there would be like a community meeting or that we would notice the community to let them know what specifically is going back to the planning board relative to design and input. Mr. Thomas, you want to. Come back up. Please? Okay. We if it goes back to the planning where we can certainly notice that the community that it's coming back to the planning board then is a study session. If if the council wishes that there be a separate community meeting before that, the planning board reviews it, that's also something that could be orchestrated. I don't know that I'm saying that because I think, you know, we also heard in the course of a little bit different because it's talking about housing. But we we want to be fair to our applicants as well. And so if we do, we need a separate, separate public meeting on the design. I want to go back to planning, but. I'm not saying that there needs to be a separate meeting. I'm saying that it might be helpful to have, if it is a work session, whatever, to let the community know, because I think there are strong feelings about design. Yeah, absolutely. The community would be noticed. I mean, it's it's a public meeting and then. But specifically about what's on the table. Right. But that might also be your parking waiver. But hold that thought. Well, and then I would also say that if we are going to send it back, I agree that we need to send it back with some specific guidelines for what we're looking for. Vice Mayor, I sense you might want to say something. It's not a flag that I mean, this is had at least two public hearings that were on the front page of the newspaper with drawings before the planning board did it. And I guess I'm a little I'm not going to support that is sending the design back because I think the design is fine. I mean, that's fine. It's that the personal tastes on that one. But but I want to be careful. We didn't have 60 speakers. We didn't have one person stand up and say they hate the design. So I just want to make sure that it's going to go back for design review that which is going back to the planning board and that we're not adding multiple more meetings to that to solve an issue that I don't think we've actually heard. And I'll just say to that that I feel a responsibility as an elected official voting to approve a project that it is as high quality and is appropriate in appearance as I think believes belongs in our downtown. Gateway corridor. Councilmember Brody, did you have your hand up? No, no. Decide. Okay. On something. I'll just. On the issue of design. Like I said, having reviewed the staff reports and having reviewed the planning board report's documents, I am satisfied that the project has been properly vetted, which means that I am satisfied with the design that we have now. More importantly, I am satisfied that the design is consistent with north of Lincoln Avenue Park Street strategy that we put together. One of the reasons why we have reversed the project that's near the the bridge, because I think we had demonstrated that it was not consistent with the north of Lincoln Park Street Plan. I believe this project is consistent. So I am satisfied with the project. And I would I would encourage us not to return it for design review. More importantly, on the issue of parking, I am satisfied with the vetting that has gone through on the parking and the TDM strategy that was put in place. So for that reason, I will still continue to encourage us to deny the appeal. And yeah. Councilman Brody. Okay. I mean, since you brought up design, I'll chime in. I mean, I kind of agree with the mayor's comments about. I mean, fitting in with that neighborhood. I mean, we have like the the Rialto Building, the marketplace, the Walgreens, I mean, the City Hall, which is not quite there, but, you know, that kind of feel as opposed to something that looks like this is not a bad thing. But, you know, it looks like an office building on the base there. Nothing wrong with office buildings on the base. But, you know, all those kind of look alike and they are totally in character for that neighborhood. But, you know, if it if it does come back and go back for that that reason, you know, that's kind of my thought on the design. Again, I mean, it's all a matter of taste. So, you know, I'm not going to be like insistent on it, but I mean, I would like to see something a little bit more fit, for lack of a better word, traditional brick that kind of fits in with, you know, with the surrounding buildings, not the Salvation Army. But something I'll take it that now and there are findings, there are three design review findings we have to make in those last two that the proposed design is appropriate for the site compatible with adjacent or neighboring buildings or surroundings, and promotes harmonious transitions and scale and character in areas between different designated land uses and proposed design of the structure and exterior materials and landscaping are visually compatible with the surrounding. Development and design elements have been incorporated to ensure the compatibility of the structure with the character and uses of adjacent development. I think I'm hearing that there are three councilmembers in favor, so with that I'm going to make a motion that we will. I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought that the. Oh, so this is help me out with the mechanics. Can we, can we move to, to send it back to planning board on that to improve the design. Yes. To be more compatible with those last two designs. And in making that motion, if you don't if you, if you're satisfied with the planning board's action on the parking, then just say so. So they know what they what it what you want them to work on and improve. And Mr. Chen. Good evening. Celina Chen, on behalf of the city attorney's office, I think more specifically, if the city council can't make all three of the findings that are required for design review, we'd like you to specify which findings you can't make and for the reasons you've enunciated, in which case, you know, the motion would be to uphold the appeal for reasons independently reviewed by the City Council. These weren't raised in the appeal, but you do have because it's a de novo hearing. You do have the ability doesn't. Decide if it's a council's will that that one or more of the required findings has not been met. And then with regard to the parking waiver, can we take a vote this evening or does it need to be a straw vote and, you know, of direction? So the resolution that's in your packet tonight is in staff's recommendation is to deny the appeal and approve the project. We don't have a resolution prepared that reflects these these considerations that have been brought up this evening. So if that's. If the council if there's a motion in a second which there has been to move in the opposite direction of staff's recommendation, what we'd ask you to do is take a straw vote. And if that motion passes, you would direct staff to return at the next regularly scheduled meeting with a resolution that has the appropriate findings that reflect your discussion tonight. And we'll do that both for design and then for parking waiver, because I think we have some I think we have some concurrence on the parking waiver issue. I think. It's a. Do we need to make them all in together? I think you could do it together. You could. And you know why I think we can't? Because I can hear three. I can count. And I've got three votes in support of the design review. But I. I don't have. But I don't think if the design review were in there, that two of my colleagues would join in. So can we bifurcate those? So I think to uphold the appeal, you can base it on either not being able to make the design review findings or not being able to make the parking waiver findings. You know that you're finding that the planning board erred somewhere, made a mistake somewhere by making all these findings. My sense is I think the council is going to say that they do uphold. The. Plan. I think it's just my sense that they're going to uphold the planning board's parking waiver. So. And I want to just hear from my colleague, Ms.. Vella. You're going to say something. Earlier, the vice mayor had said that he thinks that there's a fix, pretty easy fix relative to just treating parking in general. Do you? Yeah. So I'm just wondering, rather than do a straw poll, I mean, I'm just saying, if it's going, I'm fine, you know, basically upholding the the parking waiver. I just think that in general, we need to look at that, what we're doing with parking. I think that that's something that we could perhaps separately agenda as at a future meeting and address since we all have input and ideas and perhaps since this is already going back to the planning board on a design review issue, that that there's going to be leeway there, further leeway that they could discuss relative to the design and what what they might be able to get on those tradeoffs. So if that's possible. Yeah. What I what I would suggest is. To read. That if there's three votes to uphold the appeal on the basis of design, that you take that vote. And then separately, if you want the planning commission, while is reviewing the design aspect to look at the parking issue more generally, then take a vote on that to direct the Planning Commission to look at that in context of the. Of reviewing that design review, not in context, but as part of that review. I think that's what Council Member Valdes saying. Right. But I mean, I also want to be clear that, yeah, that's bifurcating because then will vote on the parking waiver next. That's what you said, isn't it? Well, essentially, your if I'm hearing correctly, that the parking waiver is not really at issue, but there seems to be a a feeling that the whole parking the parking issue more generally needs to be discussed at the Planning Commission level because there's concern about the way it is, about the way it's currently written. Okay, Miss Chen. And here's an idea. What I heard Councilmember Avila say is that the the parking waiver may not be an issue to the council. And I think what you could do in the motion is if the council is going this way, the council could approve the parking waiver because that's under your consideration right now. And first and also send, you know, say that you can't meet one or more of the design review findings and remand to the planning board for that purpose only. It sounds like two votes to me. Question. Yes, sorry. Maybe that's a. Comment. I'm sorry. But I think there was also some concern raised by more than three of us on the transit component and, you know, the Ryan chair. So the thing is, I don't want to relitigate the parking so or I don't want the planning board to have to relitigate the parking when they reevaluate this. So if there's a wait staff that we could do that and perhaps I mean, assuming every there's a majority, please tell us. So I'm if I'm hearing you correctly, so we could approve the parking waiver, but ask that it be augmented. By. Certain suggestions that were made by my colleagues. And I think for me, look, this is I think we're making this all more complicated and needs to be. What I'm hearing is there's three of you who at least three of you who are wanting to go back to the planning board for to look at the design of the project. That's what I mean. You haven't voted yet, but that's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that a number of you are also interested in having the planning board relook at the ride share aspect, not the parking numbers, just the ride share aspect and how that's going to work. And you can just tell us that and will tell the planning board that. I'm also hearing that there's a majority of you were like, don't miss what you did on the parking and the waiver for the six of you spaces is fine. What what Salena is suggesting is if one of you were to make that vote and make that motion sort of in those terms, if if it's clear that there's three of you who support sending it back with those directions, you've closed the public hearing tonight. What we would like to do is then come back with a resolution that is written to reflect what you just said, hopefully will, or that you voted at your next meeting. So then we'll have it actually articulated in writing for you to approve on consent. In the meantime, we can start working with the planning board and tell them why it's coming back and specifically what the council wants. To look at. And again, I'm probably getting a little laggy here, but. Two different votes on that. I think you can just reticulated it that way and you can make a motion. But we have one motion window. Why don't you do it? I mean, because I do hear there is sort of a difference of opinion. So why don't you do the design aspect? Get that out of the way. And then if there's a desire for the planning board to look at the ride share issue, then make a separate motion to do that. Point of inquiry. Council Member. So if, if, if the majority of council are going to find that the design review is questionable and on that grounds, basically they're going to send it back, don't we have to have particular findings that constitute the parameters of what the problem is with design review? Well, not necessarily. I mean, if you can't make the required findings that's know, it's sort of the end of the issue if there are particular aspects of it other than what's been articulated. Yeah, that would be helpful. But you don't necessarily have to articulate you don't have to be the architect on the the project. Yeah, I. Know that that is helpful. Yeah. I think some of the things that I mean, it's paying attention to the second and third required findings and your design review and again concern with the streamline return architecture and also maybe even the earth tone and colors that fin. I just think it needs another look to be more consistent with the second and third findings and your design review. So I do think we had a motion in a second to send the project back on design review. So all in favor. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Discretion. Vice Mayor, I want to ask your question really quickly about the North Park Street plan. Has design guidelines a streamline moderne, one of those? Yes. So I just I would just like I am not going to be supportive about this, but I think it would be fair to the applicant if it's going to get sent back that that there be really specific, like what what do we want to see? Because we have a whole design guideline booklet that says, here's what you're allowed to do and we'll pull from this design language booklet. Oh, we're going to. You're good. And I think it's I honestly think it's a little if the problem is we don't like the way they've done the the streamlined model. And I think that's one thing. But I think it's a little problematic that we're going to send this back without really specific streamlined doesn't work on this site because of this reason . And so therefore we'd like to see one of the other things that we've already done all the work around to decide. Well. So there is. If I go away and I think it doesn't I think it doesn't work because of the size of the building relative to what's around it and the fact that they're it's a very abrupt design to kind of walk into. And that's what I've heard the mayor say, is essentially that there's other there's other design options that are nearby that might better kind of fit in terms of. Building into the fabric of the street. And part of the two other points, two and three, are specific to that in terms of streamlining and fitting in with the overall neighboring buildings. And I will just tag on to say that there might be a streamlined moderne building for that site that would work better. I just find the design very stark and just that's what looks that's what I was calling nondescript and out of place. I think it's improvable. Okay. So with that, we've had a motion in a second. All in favor. I, I. Okay. The motion passes 3 to 2. Yeah. Three to that was a 3 to 2. Right. Okay. And now do I have the motion to approve the parking waiver and perhaps with some conditions for it. Do we can I ask a question quickly? Do we have to the parking waivers approved? We don't have to approve. Correct. I thought the issue was if there were. Other. Aspects such as the ride share or other parts of it that you want the commission, the board to look at, that would be the appropriate motion at this point. I think the waiver is is off the table. Right. So so I move that we we as a part of the design review, a quick review, a review of the TDM program that relies less on tanks and more on public transit and and multi person shuttles as well as bike share, etc. In align with our climate goals which we declared an emergency today, be a part of that as well. That would be an appropriate motion. Would you bring. I'm sorry. And so we have discussion. Mr. Brody. I'm sorry. Would you be willing to, instead of saying just tenses, tenses and automobiles. And I'm sorry, tenses. Being. Uber and Lyft. What's it? Stanford tents. British, generic Japanese. Okay. And automobiles. Automobiles, I mean. Yes. Wait. So what is it we're saying? So. So we are asking them to re re. Reassess. This plan with less emphasis on transportation network companies and automobiles as a way to get to and more reliance on multiple person vehicles, public transit and bicycles in a line in compliance with our or in alignment with our climate goals. So adding more more options than just the. Couple that were presented. They were just going to pay for you to get over it. We're not saying you can't take over. I personally I'm not saying you can't take Uber and Lyft to or from the airport. I'm saying we should not tell the hotel they are required to provide that. We should tell the hotel you can provide free transit. If somebody wants to take a ride. They'll do it in Saint Petersburg. Because I think we want to encourage people to come out the front door and walk down the street. Right. But not from the Oakland airport. Okay. Right. All right. And then we have the hours. I'm sorry. Can I have just a quick point and then what it might be helpful to have? And this is not going to be part of the motion, but if staff could come back with some update on the shuttle, because I have been hearing questions on why we haven't had any update on that. So let's try to take that. That's another. Yeah, that's another. Okay. Yeah. That. Okay. Okay. We have a motion. We have a second. All in favor. Wait, wait. Sorry. One more. Thing. And also, when we're looking at the rideshares that there be a specific designated safe drop off space in the in the parking lot, that it's not that basically because otherwise what happens is the rideshare companies will drop off right in front and that's just not safe. We could have a very. Good point and perhaps I think there's a way that the hotel can list its location actually on the side street, which is Buena Vista way to us, too, so that when it comes when it comes up in rideshare, that's where the rider goes rather than we don't really want to encourage double parking on Park Street, I would imagine. Okay. All right. Shall we try this again? Sure. On these machines spin segment. All in favor, I. All right. Well. Opposed and opposed. Sorry. And when opposed? When opposed. Okay. But the motion passes for the. The resolution. Coming back. So that was a. No, no, no, no. But what you need from us is to, um. What do you. What you need from us is that to bring it to you, because the resolution has to come back to us with these items in it and. Your vote on it. And that point, you know, to be on the consent calendar and you can vote, you know, I'm voting no on this on content calendar item three. Well. I, I. Think, Madam. Clerk, I'm sorry we kind of pout about this a little earlier and we were thinking is since you've closed this public hearing, if you continue this item to that April 2nd date consent calendar, could we. Not say that? You didn't say you continue to thinking, sorry. I was technically looking for in the motion that that was what you meant. Okay. Which she said didn't hear it. Yes. So and okay, so you're continuing this public hearing to the resolution. Do you want an amended motion or. No, no, no. I just didn't hear it specifically stated in the motion was concerned. So my that just a no. No. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, everyone, for who came out. Yes, sir. Sorry. I wanted everything. So I. I understand your concern about, like, not having the the the project. Add requirements at the end, but I would like to see something come back to us that we can discuss that talks about the future of development on Park Street and Webster Street, that it does include the ground floor, retail and commercial and then residential. If my colleagues don't have a problem with that. That's that's fine. Okay. All right, everybody, thank you all to the public speakers and my sturdy city staff who are still here. Hang on. We're coming to the question. Do you want a five minute break and a five minute break? That's my theme for tonight. Thank you. Nice to see you, too. Mr. Adair, I think we're going to need you. Okay. Okay, everyone. We are resuming. So we are going to. We said that we're going to do six F next. Hello. And that is, uh, Adam Kirk. Did you want that? Sure. It has adopted a resolution amending the fiscal year 2018 19 budget and adoption of resolution. Doing workforce changes. And then an adoption of a resolution amending the Alameda City Employees Association salary schedule.

A MOTION making an appointment to fill a judicial vacancy in the southwest division of King County district court.

KingCountyCC_05042016_2016-0218

So thank you very much. So with that, we are going to move the first motion. The first motion is the one for Southwest Division, and that is proposed motion 2016 0218. And because it's Southwest, we are going to have a Southwest Councilmember Council member at the Grove. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move the proposed motion 2016 0218 be adopted. Thank you. Would you like to make a motion of filling in a name? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would move that the name of Laurel Gibson be inserted on line 18. Thank you very much. All those in favor of the. So I speak to it. Yes, please speak to it first. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, this is really an honor for me. To be able to nominate Laurel Gibson to the Southwest Division District. Court. She got her undergraduate degree from University. Of Washington and her. Law degree from Seattle University. She's been practicing criminal law for 12 years. And but most. Importantly and what stands out in my mind is she brings four years. Experience both as an administrative. Law judge, but as a pro tem in this court on the Friday calendars. And the folks she worked with, the current bench and the staff have nothing but praise for the work she's been doing in the district court right now. I want to also mention how much I enjoyed listening to the remarks this morning of Brian Todd. He brings a tremendous life experience and commitment to people who are disadvantaged, and I hope he stays engaged and we get to see his name again in the future. And so we were blessed to have many excellent candidates, but I think we will be very well served in Southwest Division Court with what I hope to be a Judge Laura Gibson, and committed to you. For your support. Thank you very much. Any other comments? Can I please ask our clerk? Yeah. Okay. So the name being built into I treat that as an amendment and we vote on that as an amendment or since it was already a blank, do I just go forward and do it as just so I think we'll treat that as an amended motion? Okay. That's what I that's where we will report it. Okay. That's what I was going to do. But I want to make sure. Okay, good. So, Councilmember Domestic. Thank you, Madam Chair, of be very brief. I wanted to echo Councilmember up the Grove's comments in support of Ms.. Gibson as the appointed judge for the Southwest District. Really excellent job in the interview is a great background, great recommendations. But I also wanted to recognize Mr. Todd. I thought he did very well and made a very compelling case, really appreciate his service to the community at El Centro de la Raza and in the community legal clinics. And I want to note that the most compelling recommendations for me were for Mr. Todd from court staff bailiffs who sometimes don't up bailiffs wrote in in his materials. And to me that was very telling about Mr. Todd as an individual, as a person, as a human being, how he treats the court staff. And it wasn't just one, but there were multiple letters from court staff. And I think that we'll see. Mr.. Todd again. Thank you. And that also tells our bailiffs we care about them. So thank you for pointing that out. Anybody else? All right. So before us right now is the amendment, oral amendment, to put the name of Laura Gibson in to this motion. All those in favor of the amendment, please say those opposed. Nay amendment is on. And so now before us we have the underlying legislation 2016 0218 Any questions or comments? The clerk please call. Did we push? Do okay. Call for the roll. Okay. Please call the off. Thank you, Madam Chair. You didn't I remember Dumbo Knight Councilmember Dunn Knight. Councilmember Gossett. Councilmember Toll. Well, I've. Been a councilmember. Experiment, all right. Which remember. The girl? Navajo Code Council councilmember of the girl, I think. Councilmember. Brown right there. Madam Chair, I don't know who is Ada. Mike Bowers Excellent. So that one will proceed to Monday. And we want that on the consent calendar to want to talk about it. We want to talk about it or not. Do you want to consent for us to say a few words? Okay. So it'll be expedited, but not no consent. Okay. So the next two motions that are before us to 2016, oh two and nine and oh to 20, we're going to move those together. So would you please move both of those at the same time?

A resolution approving a proposed First Amendment to Management Program Agreement by and between the City and County of Denver and Conduent State & Local Solutions, Inc. f/ka Xerox State & Local Solutions, Inc. to reflect the contractor’s name change and increase the contract maximum amount to provide expanded Photo Radar and Photo Red Light Services. Amends a contract with Conduent State and Local Solutions, Inc. by adding $1,177,460 for a new total of $7,807,421 for expanded photo radar and photo red light services including the relocation of one photo red light, the addition of two photo red light locations and one additional photo speed van. No change to contract duration (201627552). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 1-7-19. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-5-18. Pursuant to Council Rule 3.7, Councilman Flynn called out this resolution at the Monday, December 17, 2018 Council meeting for a postponement to the next regularly scheduled meeting of Wednesday, January 2, 2019.

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This was actually brought to my attention by one of the residents in the community. And so I think to honor the park name change that we did a few months ago, we wanted that to be consistent. So that will happen and we can allow this bill to move forward. Thank you very much, Councilwoman Ortega. Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? And Councilman Brooks, will you please for councilor as resolution 1437 on the floor for adoption? Yes, Mr. President. A move, the Council Resolution 1437 series of 2018 be adopted. It has been moved and seconded questions or comments from members of Council. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. This is a contract amendment to our conduit, conduit, local, state and Local Solutions Inc. contract for the operation of our four speed photo speed vans and the photo red light program. And it was an expansion of the of the photo red light program as well. And I held this over on December 17th because I had some questions. And once I got the data, I and looked at the contract. There's actually had some errors in the contract. It listed the wrong intersections where we were going to put in the cameras. So that alone would would call for us to kill it and ask for a new or a new amendment to be brought forward. But in the meantime, both traffic engineering and Denver police came down to visit me at the office today, and they looked at the the information that I presented on Monday to to the members here in an email. And and they agreed to evaluate the yellow change interval, the timing of the yellow light, and to see if that would eliminate red light running better than a than I can't a ticket camera can do. I pointed out, for instance, that in the city of Loma Linda, California, a camera had been giving out an average of 249 tickets per month until the traffic engineers adjusted the yellow timing and it ended up issuing one ticket every six days . And that's the kind of results in the kind of safety we want here. And so they've agreed to to ask us to kill the contract tonight. So we're asking for a no vote on those. Based on those two factors, they're going to reevaluate the yellow change interval and other countermeasures and the fact that the contract amendment has the wrong intersections in it. And so they'll come back to us after this evaluation of all the other locations in up to maybe nine months and present us with with a different proposal. I do not oppose the expansion of the photo radar, a speeding van, and this contract would have added an additional van to that program. And so I've asked the administration to consider coming back to a sooner with a contract amendment that would add that van regardless, because these have been budgeted this has been budgeted for 2019 anyway, and I would support that. But I'm very grateful and thankful to DPD and traffic engineering for undertaking this because as I said before, the laws of traffic will always be trumped by the laws of physics. So if we give folks the requisite amount of time to come safely to a stop at a red light, I want to do that rather than just photograph an accident. So we asked for a no vote on this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. See no other comment, Madam Secretary, roll call. Flynn. No Black? No Brooks, no. Espinosa, no. Gilmore, no. Herndon. No. Cashman, no. Carnage, no. No, no. Ortega No. Susman No. Mr. President. No. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. Announce the results. 12 nays. 12 nays. Council Resolution 1437 has been defeated. Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? And, Councilwoman Sussman, what would you like to do with this item? Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to request a one hour courtesy public hearing Monday, January 7th, 2019. On second reading or final consideration of Council Bill 18, Dash 1476 regarding governing the operation of electric mobility scooters.

Recommendation to adopt resolution recognizing the second Monday of each October as Indigenous Peoples Day.

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Motion carries. The term 30. Communication from City Attorney Recommendation to adopt resolution recognizing the second Monday of each October as Indigenous People Day. I know I have to. You don't have to. Okay. There's a motion in a second. Public comment. Please come forward. Thank you for this time. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for listening this long. First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy National Coming Out Day, which is in about an hour and a half. I'm 28 and never going back. I've been deeply conflicted about whether or not I should speak to this. Certainly last time. Last week it was time for a white lady to get up and discuss this issue. And I hope you're going to find my story kind of interesting. I wasn't sure what I should do then. One of the indigenous women who did come on stage, everybody last week walked up to me at the start of the meeting tonight and handed me this unbelievable bone artifact. Which obviously is a talisman. And I took it as. An omen to go ahead with my very short presentation. I usually talk about you, but tonight I want to tell you something about me. I grew up in a very privileged house decorated with Barry Goldwater glasses and John Birch documents. My only counterpoint was my Uncle Bill, who rode. In the cavalry against Hitler, lost half of his hand. He died in 2011, leaving me his documents, his Purple Heart, his favorite cap, and his papers. It was then I discovered the bigotry of my family that kept me from even knowing that my great grandmother was Potawatomi. Her name was Eulalia, and she was bought with fur pelts by my great grandfather, a French trapper. I have traced down their marriage license to 1868. They had ten children, the youngest of which was my grandmother. Many Potawatomi girls were sold to trappers, and since the villages were set on fire. I believe that possibly she had a safer outcome. But the invisibility that the bigotry of my family forced on me would not have happened. Hopefully in years to come, where we have Indigenous Peoples Day. There are a lot of people don't even understand what these original landowners have done for us. And finally, let me point out to you, you might find this interesting. I hope you do. But actually it was the Quaker women. At Seneca Falls who brought forward the 19th. Amendment. They were educated by the Iroquois. They had become friends with the. Iroquois who were not using labor. Divided by. Gender, but rather by skill and. Size and capability. So we I'm one to congratulate you. I'm here to thank you. I know that had a nuclear meltdown about an hour ago, but every now and then, I rise to say thank you very much for everything. You do for the city of Long Beach. I'm just so proud to be a member of this city. Thank you. Thank you. That was not a nuclear meltdown. So we've seen we have seen plenty of those. Thank you very much. That concludes the. I'm sorry. It does not include one vote. No, the public comment. And we need to cast their votes.

A bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 59 (Zoning) of the Denver Revised Municipal Code relating to Former Chapter 59 uses and limitations. (NEIGHBORHOODS & PLANNING) Revises the Denver Revised Municipal Code, Section 59-2, to align with zoning limitations passed in 2013 to limit and control growing marijuana for personal use in private homes. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 8-6-14.

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It has been moved. And second, the public hearing for Council Bill 610 is open. May we have the staff report? Good evening, Councilor Tina, Axel Rev, Community Planning and Development. This Council bill is pretty straightforward. We are going to try to put on the same playing field properties in the city of Denver that have zoning under our old code with properties that are zoned under the new code. We just want to apply the same rules consistently throughout the city on what in how you can grow marijuana at home for personal use. Jeannie Ras Councilwoman Jamie Robb is the ordinance sponsor. We've worked closely together with the councilwoman at KPD and with the city attorney's office to bring this bill before you. We have provided early notification to R.A. through posting on our website and through notice notifications throughout this public adoption process. The Denver Planning Board considered this ordinance request on July 16th and voted 10 to 0 to recommend approval to the City Council at this bill. Currently, we have in place in the City of Denver some standards for growing marijuana at home under the Colorado Constitution. These were adopted in 2013 and they are summarized on this slide. Generally, you're allowed to grow no more than six plants per adult and no more than 12 plants per total per household. Any marijuana grown at home must be grown in a completely enclosed structure. You cannot use common areas if you live in an apartment building or condo building. That marijuana that you do grow at home is only for personal use and cannot be resold or distributed otherwise offsite. And the key thing here is that these limited limitations apply only to residential properties with Denver zoning code zoning. Examples of those codes are shown above. The challenge is that inadvertently we did not think because we've got two codes and we often forget that we have two codes in the city of Denver. At the time we adopted these in 2013, we didn't extend the same limitations to residential properties with all codes zoning. Those are the are one or twos or twenties with waivers or pads with residential units in them. So what we have is a very unlevel playing field as far as the rules go. If you're in one of these homes under an old code zoning, you would still be limited by state law to no more than six plants per adult, but you'd have no similar limit on the total number of plants per household. In other words, it could be more than 12 plants, and there's no similar prohibition on growing marijuana outdoors. Some of the words you might be able to have it outdoors if you could grow it inside a lock fence enclosure. But that's all that the state law and constitution require doesn't require to be moved inside. Just at a glance. Here's a map showing you where we have all codes zoning today in the city of Denver. Everything you see colored is an old code zoning district mapped. Now, this includes all land uses, but it's approximately it's over 16,000 acres of land in the city that have all code zoning. In terms of the number of homes or residences in play, it's about 20%. Our best estimate of all the residential units in the city of Denver are still under old code zoning. So this does affect quite a few homes in the city of Denver. So the proposed change is simply to amend the city's municipal code. This is an amendment to the Denver revised municipal code, not to the new code, because that's not going to help us reach or code zone land. And we'll simply state the gardens are allowed as accessory to a home use and that if you have a garden with your home and you want to grow marijuana, that's allowed. But it's going to be subject to the same limitations in the new Denver zoning code. And it just point you to that direction to say, do that. This is the proposed language. I won't linger here, but that's what you'll see in your touch red line and what's in the ordinance before you. And then our review criteria generally is spelled out in more detail in the staff report. Staff has has conducted its analysis and has found that the amendment is consistent with the city's adopted plans, that the amendment will further public health, safety and general welfare and will result in regulations that are uniform in each zone district throughout the city. Whether your old code or new code zoned so upon two are finding that we that the that this ordinance meets the criteria we're recommending to you tonight that you approve the text amendment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Tina. We have one individual signed up to speak today. And Mr. Texter, you may come on up and speak when you're ready. Thad, Texas 4535. Julian Street, Denver, Colorado. I was pleased to learn last Monday that because of your actions, Billy the Elephant and all the other animals at the zoo will have plenty to eat this winter and a warm place to sleep. No elephants will be dying in our alleys or by our rivers. It's too bad the same cannot be said of our homeless citizens. I guess this means that Denver must be thought of as a city that thinks more of its pachyderms than its people. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jackson. All right. We are on to questions. Any questions from members of council? Councilwoman Fox. Thank you, Mr. President. A question, please. When I saw the word garden as it relates to marijuana and I heard that the discussion of garden I'd like for you for people at home to mention whether we are talking about outdoor flourishing gardens. A garden as accessory to a home. Your home, for example, could be outdoors, and many of them are and maybe most of them are that we see around our neighborhoods. But it could also be enclosed inside a greenhouse that would be considered a necessary garden as well. And in fact, if you want to grow marijuana, you've got to it's got to be completely enclosed. So either you're going to have it inside your your greenhouse or inside your house like a container garden in your basement under lights. That was the clarification I was looking for because I don't want people hearing this and then immediately planting right along beside their lettuce. Right. Marijuana doesn't work that way, folks. Completely enclosed for four walls on a roof. Thank you, Councilwoman Fox. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Mr. President. And this is sort of a clarifying question, Tina, on a technicality, I guess, but we are amending our municipal code so that this applies to the old code. So really see if I've got this right. We are amending sort of the enactment ordinance when we put the new code in place that told how we were going to transition between old and new and what things still applied and what changed. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Robb. Councilman Lopez. I'm sorry. I actually had a comment, so I'll hold on to the comments. Okay, great. Any other questions from members of the council? And seen none. The public hearing is closed for counsel ten. Now we're on to comments from members of Council Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Mr. President. I became aware of the need to make this change partially through conversations with the police. Although this is not a criminal act to grow more than 12 plants at your home, but rather is enforced through zoning in the administrative but in from both the police. In our in is inspectors a neighbor might call and complain about another neighbor growing an excessive amount of marijuana. And it's easy to say, oh, no, we don't allow that in our code. And then lo and behold, look and see that no in that house next to yours, because it may be a different PD than the one your house is in or just across the street, a different zone district that's under the old code. Yes, indeed. That neighbor has that right. So I think this is an important housekeeping measure to take so that the enforcement is clear to the enforcers as well as the people who are being enforced upon. Is that the right verbiage? I think it's really significant to look at the map that Tina brought tonight because 20% of the city's a significant part of the city. And if you look at that map, you do see how irregular the placement is. So it takes more than just a good guess about where our past measures apply and where the current. Yeah. And where it now it'll cover the whole area. So I urge my colleagues to support this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I just I wondered why that Basil grown in the side of my house tasted funky and then my mouth really numb. No, I'm just kidding. Now I just miss. And I. I do think this is a smart catch and I am very supportive. I know that there was a lot of confusion in our district around that around this amendment. And I think this clears it up. I, too, got communication from the police department about this. So it's going to be good. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, any other comments from members of council? Scene. Madam Secretary, roll call. Rob Shepherd I Susman I Brooks high brown i fats I can eat lemon high Lopez Monteiro I Nevitt. Hi, Ortega. Hi, Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the vote. And now the results. 3930 916 has been placed upon final consideration and and does pass. All right. We are ready for the second public hearing, which is on Council Bill 665. Councilwoman Sussman, will you please put six, six, five on the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill six, six, five be placed upon final consideration and do pass.

Refers to the ballot at the November 3, 2015 coordinated election a question concerning the approval of an Amendatory Intergovernmental Agreement with Adams County governing the development and use of certain property at Denver International Airport. (BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT) Refers to the ballot at the November 3, 2015 coordinated election a question concerning the approval of an Amendatory Intergovernmental Agreement with Adams County governing the development and use of certain property at Denver International Airport. The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on . The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting 6-9-15.

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Thank you, Madam President. And move that bill for order to be published. Actually, it's final consideration. Oh, it's consideration. Okay. The place upon final thought. I'll do it again. I believe I move that council bill for it to be placed upon final consideration. Do pass. Thank you so much. Okay. I need a second. It's been moved and seconded. Councilman Neville, we need a motion to amend. Thank you, Madam President. So there are two amendments. And if we could take them in sequence, that would be great. So I move that Council Bill four to be amended in the following particulars on page three, lines six and seven, strike the clerk file reference 2015 Dash 0264 and insert this is important. 2015 dash 026 for a. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded comments by members of council councilmen Nevett and then Councilwoman Sheperd. Thank you, Madam President. So this this is to change or to update the clerk filing number as a consequence for the. I'm sorry, I'll start again. This is to change the clerk filing number for the amended I.J with Adams County. After the original filing of the document on June 18th, there was some back and forth between our attorneys and their attorneys and some clarifying language. No, no substantive changes have been made, but agreements and changes on clarifying language have been added. And so we need a new clerk filing number to refer to the updated document. The the changes just to outline them for you. There were four changes. One had to do with notice to the the OCC, the Adams County Group involved with the with the IGR in the airport regarding concessions and leasing activity at DIA, we had committed in our in our term sheet and what we had approved at committee and then here last week to give notice to the airport coordinating committee of any new leases and concessions at DIA outside of the terminal complex area. But there was some additional language to properly define what the terminal complex area is, and that's now clarified and is illustrated in the amended Iwga Amendment. Number two, or minor change number two has to do with the procedures for the approval of bioscience businesses on development parcels at DIA. The Intergovernmental Agreement limits bioscience businesses at DIA that would compete with the Fitzsimmons Medical Campus in Aurora, but includes procedures for waiving those restrictions. And the IGA needed to be clarified regarding what those procedures were on how the RCC would grant a waiver for biomedical businesses at DIA. The third minor clarification involved the enforcement of the revenue sharing obligation on the part of Denver, if you recall, were sharing 50% of the tax revenue on the specified development parcels and clarity was added to the proposed IGA that the the the share that Denver would be sharing could not be diverted for any other purpose. And then finally, the, the fourth minor change had to do with the rights of third party beneficiaries under the original IGA, the 1988 IGA, that was with Adams County. But there are provisions that grant cities in Adams County that border the airport, special third party beneficiary status, and those were Aurora and Commerce City. And the the clarifying language that's been added to the a mandatory IGA ensures that Aurora and Commerce City alone as those third party beneficiaries will continue to enjoy this third party beneficiary status. So those are the that's a that's a lot of palaver for the addition of the letter A to a clerk filing number. But that was the the the language that we're adding to the IGA. Thank you, Councilman Nevett. Councilman Shepard. Thank you, Madam President. Pro Tem, I actually called this out because I wanted to call it up for a vote. So I'm assuming you want to do that after the motions. Want to call it out. Yeah. Okay. It's. I should work on the amendment first. Okay. Yeah. All right. All right. So, Madam Secretary, roll call on the amendment. Nevett I. Ortega, Rob Shepherd, i. Sussman Brooks, i. Brown. I thought I can eat lemon pie. Lopez All right. Madam President. Hi, Ortega. Sorry. Still waiting for councilman parts. Thank you, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting and announce the results. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes. Council Bill 402 has been amended. Councilman Neville, we need a motion to amend. Thank you, Madam President. This is the Second Amendment. So I move that council bill 402 be amended in the following particulars on page two, line 20. Strike the quote unquote comma after the word development and insert the following words, quote Without imposing any new tax or increasing any tax rate. Comma. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. Comments by members of council. Gentlemen never do anything additional. Yes, ma'am. So the purpose of this amendment is just to add some clarifying language to the ballot question that we are sending to the voters to assure them that a yes vote on approving the new a mandatory IGA will not result in any tax increase over and above any current tax rates. There's a number of other items on the ballot this November that have tax issues in them, and we just wanted to make absolutely sure that the voters understood that, that this would be consistent with those other measures in that it would have no impact on anyone's tax rates. Thank you to any other members of council have comments. Madam Secretary, roll call. Nevitt Hi. Ortega Rob Shepherd. Susman Brooks Brown. I thought I. Can eat Lemon Lopez. All right. Madam President, I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 12 Eyes. 12 Eyes Council Bill 402 has been amended. Councilman Lopez, we need a motion to order. Published as amended. Council Bill 4020. Madam President, a point of clarification or publish or or on final consideration is it adopted. Or published. As amended? No, I don't think that's right. I think it should be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Unless there's clarification from council. I'm ah council. City Attorney David Barr. Madam President. David Broadwell, Assistant City Attorney. Because his amendments change neither the title nor does the description of the bill. It can be adopted on final consideration tonight if you choose to do so. Thank you. State here. Thank you, Madam President. I order. I order the order. I move that council bill for all to be placed upon final consideration and do pass as amended. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded comments by members of council. So. Yeah. Councilwoman Shepherd. Thank you. So I had asked for this to be pulled out for a vote because I talked about this at great length last week, but I asked a lot of questions of of staff regarding this. And for me, this issue is not just a business deal. It's not just a business agreement between the two counties. What we're talking about here is development of 1500 acres at Dig, yet there is no land use or transportation planning moving forward. At the same time as this ordinance and from what I understood last week, there would not be one before the November vote. I realize that there are those who will say that this is just an opportunity for this conversation to begin, and I appreciate that sentiment. But land use and transportation is very much in the purview of what the city council does. And I cannot feel good about asking voters to vote on something that we don't understand what it is outside of the agreement. The last time I saw some conceptual planning around this issue was in January, which, as we all know, was several months ago. So although I certainly think the fact that Adams and Denver will be sharing tax revenue is historic and, you know, very much something, you know, to be proud of. And that's that level of coordination. And I certainly appreciate all of the work that has gone on behind the scenes between the two counties, and everyone has been involved in this project. And my vote is in no way intended to disparage that. But I just have to say that I'm not comfortable asking the voters to vote on something when I don't even understand what it is. So I will be voting no tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman, never. Did you have another comment? Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Madam President. And before I go to my comment or really ask a question of the folks at DIA, I just want to point out last week we were graced with the presence of two county commissioners from Adams County here for this historic move forward together. And today we have again county commissioners Steve OTU Recio. Steve, raise your hands so the Denver voters can understand who their partner is. Thank you so much for being here. This is an amazing thing we're doing together. And I really appreciate you being in the chambers with us. So just to I don't know if it would change Councilwoman Sheppard's mind, but to get a little bit more clarity from DIA, I don't know who wants to sort of answer the question. So what is the why is this the proper sequence of moving forward, getting to this historic idea with Adams County? Before we do a detailed land use plan. Hi. I'm Kim Dan, the CEO of. Denver International Airport. We have been working on some planning, as you as you've mentioned, that you have been briefed on. And that work continues that work actually changes with this agreement because it as additional land and it further clarifies what we can and can not do on airport. What I would like to say is we are not going to leave the voters without any. Idea of what we're going to. Do. We have some conceptual decisions that have been made, and we are going to put together a package that will explain to the best of our ability to our citizens what it is we think we could do on airport. But in terms of having a really detailed land plan, that that still needs some work. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, followed by Councilman Ortega, followed by Councilwoman Kennish. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to also say that this is something I'm glad I'm glad to see somebody from Adams County. I know this has been a lot of work. It's a it was a lot of work to get to this actual point where where we're voting on it. You know, it's hard not to see it sometimes if you're really don't if you're not in the mix of things. But when you are, you know. Exactly for some reason or the other, I think a lot of it happened, I think, before even I was conceptualized was there literally there's been a lot of this. You know, we haven't had very good relationships with our neighboring counties. There's a lot of things that folks are still bitter over and sour over. And, you know, ask anybody in the legislature and they'll fill you in on it. You see it on a daily basis out there. The fact that we have this agreement, this inter, this IG is a very good thing and it's a very good thing with an important neighbor because that neighbor is growing as a city. We're growing. You know, there's a lot of folks that, hey, we don't like to see anybody building up this density. Well, we have this area that we believe we're able to develop to help offset offset that, offset that. And also because we have so many people calling Denver home, it's a good thing. The other thing, why I feel comfortable voting for this right now, and this is in no way any any fight that I'm trying to pick up. My colleague, Councilman Shepard, my neighbor, Councilman Shepard, I as a as a US as commissioners as well, and Denver County, I don't feel comfortable planning for property. We don't know. We can't we don't necessarily have the right to not develop. We own it, but we can develop it. And I think it's an act of it's not an act in good faith. If we're already taking that step ahead before the contracts being signed. Right. I would think something was fishy if I was on the Adams County side. And then there goes another two decades of distrust with the two counties. I think this is a good opportunity to do it. If there is any kind of zoning change or land use implementation, I would believe it would come to this body individually to vote on right as a separate as a separate entity in and of itself and as a separate issue. So I think it's going to be a good thing. You know, at the end of the day, this language going to be on the ballot. So. With that. You know, I'm fully supportive. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I have a couple of questions. My first one is for David Broadwell. Since you've been here longer than most. When was the last time we actually either updated or adopted a comprehensive plan for the city of Denver? For a strategic plan, whatever you want to call it it. You mean a comprehensive plan for the entire city that goes back to the early 2000? I think Councilman Rob might actually have the date more readily at our fingertips than I do, but. I think it was before this council came on. It was an it was in the year 2000. I knew it was a century. Yeah. All right. Was it? So I think that's part of what I'm hearing Councilwoman Shepherd raise. And interestingly, today, I met with one of the new incoming council members who is talking about a strategic plan for the city. Because we do have so many big projects coming forward and looking at how all of that plays into use of water, making sure that we work towards having a sustainable food source because we know not all of our food will continue coming from California because we can't get all of our Colorado water, the Colorado River water down to there before it all dissipates. So I think at some point, this is something that this body needs to begin to talk about. Obviously, we're not going to hold up this bill tonight to do that. But I think it's an important conversation that we need to have, given that as a metropolitan area, we continue to grow. And so I appreciate you raising that point. Councilwoman Shepherd, the other question that I wanted to ask was related to the master plan. Kim, if you wouldn't mind coming up to the microphone, please. You. You made mention of some decisions that have been made with regard to conceptual plans, if you will. I the word you used was conceptual decisions. But I'm just trying to figure out, is there. An updated DIA masterplan that looks at all of this other than what we've seen in some of the Aerotropolis documents, or is this part of what's been negotiated with Adams County during this last year and a half, almost two year negotiation process? Councilor one If I could clarify. So when I say we've made some decisions, an example of that would be I think you all have heard us talk in the last couple of years about using the. Term Airport City. But we don't use that term anymore because we have determined that what we are what we want to do on airport is not build some consolidated development at one point on the airport, but instead we want. To develop areas that are contiguous. With our neighbors and help to activate off airport development while it activates on airport. So it's decisions like that we have made the actual land use has a lot of work that does have to do with things like utilities, you mentioned and resources then and certainly now that we have the IGA in place and we know the area that we can develop, we will be developing a true land use but we do not have an up to date masterplan. Or land use plan that reflects this idea. Today. And Kim, will you just help clarify that when we talk about the clear zones, that's part of this agreement that is land that we own, that's off airport property, that's in Adams County. And so if I could. Clarify, I know it is it is on airport, but it is in Adams County. Sorry to say that. I turn that around. So when we talk about doing land use planning, it's conceptually what we want to do. But we have to go through Adams County zoning process, if you will, if we don't have the appropriate zoning to do what we might want to do within Adams County boundaries. And I think even more importantly, we would want to do that planning with Adams County. That makes sense. Okay. So I was just trying to figure out if there was anything more that is being discussed that might come forward as additional amendments? Or do we think this is it? Because as of last or Thursday before last one bill was actually filed, we thought that was that was it with the negotiations and the decision making, that's actually a David Broadwater question. I believe, Councilwoman, I am hopeful that this is the final document. There won't be any more tweaks, even clarifications. But I have to say it with this caution. This is has to be approved by six other jurisdictions right on its way to the ballot. And they'll be sitting in their city councils and all of those all five of those municipalities. And the Adams County commissioners, the commissioners in particular, have been very hands on in the negotiation. But there is this third party beneficiary status and the municipalities to one degree or another. And over the next couple of weeks, they'll be going to each of their governing bodies. And so, you know, unknown whether there's going to be any last minute things that will come up as a part of that approval process, as part of the key complexity of the whole deal is there are lots of parties involved, but we've been working diligently and long and hard to reach what we believe is the point of finality here tonight. And that's why confidently I felt like we could bring it forward to you and have you vote on it with a very high degree of confidence that this is it. But as you all know, there's a period of time now between now and the statutory deadline when it will actually go to the polls in both counties. And you can never say never, there's a possibility that something might have to be tweaked or changed. Non substantive, I'm sure, because as Councilman Levitt indicated, we've got a very firm commitment on all sides to the basic deal point, the term sheet that was given to you several weeks ago, the deal will not change if there's going to be any additional tweaks or amendments is going to be absolutely around the periphery. But as we sit here tonight, I don't expect that to occur. Thank you. That answers all of my questions, I think. Clearly when my colleagues worked with them, their partner and Mayor Webb subsequently, who work to build out the airport. But Mayor Pena, who worked to put this issue before Denver voters and many of us were out knocking on doors and trying to convince voters both in Denver and Adams County to place this on the ballot, that this was, in fact, going to be the economic engine for this region. And it has, in fact, been. I've seen communities both in Commerce City and Aurora grow tremendously, both commercial and residential. So there have been some benefit to our neighboring communities. We know that many of the people who work at DIA actually live outside of Denver in in many of those neighborhoods. Those communities. And I think this will continue to be an economic engine for Denver and for neighboring jurisdictions. And I am pleased that this, at least for now, limits the development to the 1500 acres. We have restrictions under FAA by which we cannot build within close proximity to the airfield. Those have already been defined in terms of where they're going to be placed. And so I think those assurances to the public are already intact. And so I think moving this forward makes great sense. And I am hopeful that we don't have to continue to see tweaks to this, that the work that's been done and the many things that have been part of the give and take on both sides works out on behalf of all of the parties that have been involved in this process. So I will be supporting this tonight. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilwoman Kennish, did you have a comment? Thank you, Madam President. I withdraw my name. I'll pass. Thank you. Councilman Farr to have a comment on Council Bill 402. Yes, ma'am. I think the issue before us is, should there have been more definitive planning to vote on this tonight? And it is my feeling that that we should not have done more definitive planning. Let me explain a different perspective. I recall when I served in the legislature, this issue was being embraced by Adams County. I mean, as I mentioned before, it was tough swallow for them. And they were giving permission for the airport to take over their land and they wanted it for an airport. The discussion wasn't about economic development on the airport land and having Denver do planning for the airport land. It was about building an airport that in surrounding communities could benefit, but not necessarily right on that airport. That was not to be economic development on the airport land. I would feel it's very disrespectful to our adjacent county to go ahead and say, gee, we've already worked all this out. Now we want your permission. We are going to them saying we want to go forth working with you. And not only is it legally a good idea, because some people, I believe, up in Adams County were feeling we were getting a little bit ahead of ourselves there and that we just better slow down a bit and start involving them so that as we go forth, everybody is in agreement. And I feel very comfortable about this stage of the agreement. I'm supportive of it tonight. And I it is just fine. I would be very uncomfortable if we said this is the deal and here we want you to take it and go sell it to your people. That would be arrogant on our part. This is doing it the right way. Thank you, Councilman. Okay. Counsel McInnis, your name appeared on the screen again. It did. And it was only because I could not resist the opportunity before she leaves office to say. I agree with every word that Councilwoman Fox. Oh, okay. Thank you. All right. Councilwoman Sheppard. Yeah. Just quickly, so, you know, I understand what all of my colleagues are saying, but I think it's respectful for the voters to get to know what what they're voting on. And it's not just an agreement. It will involve a huge land use and transportation plan. And how is it going to be paid for? There's a huge question I have. I appreciate Councilman Leavitt's clarification that there won't be any new tax or tax rate, but that still leaves a lot of other fiscal opportunities open and we don't have any of that information. So I just don't feel comfortable. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Brown. Briefly, Madam President. Thank you. This is really a first step. Ordinance. This simply puts it on the ballot in Denver. It will be put on the ballot in Adams County. And again, welcome councilor from Adams County. Good to see you here tonight. There will be a four. Month campaign in Adams County as well as. Denver County to sell this to the voters. And if the questions that people will come up with are not answered. Then perhaps it won't pass. That's why we have campaigns, and this is what this is all about. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Brown. Any other comments from members of Council see? None. Madam Secretary, roll call. Nevett I. Ortega Rob Shepherd. No. Sussman Brooks, i. Brown, I. But I can eat lemon. Lopez All right. Madam President, I. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. 11 eyes one ni. 11 Eyes, one ni. Council Bill 402 has been ordered. Published as amended. Final, final consideration. Passed the. Test as amended. October 11, ays one nay council bill 402 has passed. Correct. As amended. As amended. Thank you. Okay, let's move on. Councilman Fox, you have called out under bills for final consideration council bill 376. What would you like to do with this? Please place it on the floor for a vote. Thank you, gentlemen. Lopez, can you please place Council Bill 376 on the floor for a vote?

A bill for an ordinance naming the park at 3200 East 52nd Avenue as “Lorraine Granado Community Park”. Approves the naming of the park at 52nd Avenue and Steele Street in the Swansea neighborhood as Lorraine Granado Community Park in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-4-20.

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Yes, thank you. Just a request for our team. I don't think that the letter has been uploaded into the public facing system. And so if we could get that in there, I think it is very important to the public to have access to that. Okay. All right. I don't see anything else on this one. So, Madam Secretary, will you please put the next item on our screens? And that would be Bill 88, called out by two members. I'll go first to Councilmember Ortega. Thank you. This is something that I believe Councilwoman CdeBaca brought forward. Oh, sorry. Did you. Oh, do you want to go first, then? Okay. But I just wanted to say, Lauren Granado is somebody who really was a legend in our community that did amazing work in the Globeville, Swansea, Elyria community. And it was actually through her work with the community in securing some natural resource damage funds from, I believe it was an acid spill that took place on the rail lines that those resources were used to acquire this land for a park. This park is across the street from a trailer park that has a lot of small children. And to have this park named after her is. And let me just add that she just passed about a month and a half ago. And this is different than all of our other naming because of how this property was acquired. Even though it is one of our parks. So this does not have to meet that three year threshold. But I am just honored to be able to vote for this tonight and to allow her family to have the opportunity to have something that honors her, her legacy and her significant contributions to these communities. She was the catalyst who found the attorney that filed the Asarco lawsuit that resulted in one of the largest property damage settlements from Asarco. And the residents from the community were not only able to get some property damage resources, the soils in their homes were cleaned up to a larger degree than what had been worked out with the state process that had been going on. So I'm I'm honored to support this tonight. And I want to thank Councilwoman CdeBaca for her efforts in making this happen. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you. The public hearing that I requested for this is not to bring anyone to the table who opposes this park naming, but to give the family an opportunity to share with this body more than you get in a typical proclamation. And and really help us understand what she's contributed to our climate change and environmental justice work citywide in Denver. And so if you know anyone who's been affected, touched by known Ms.. Granado, please invite them to testify. Her family will have a lovely presentation and testimony, and I will as well, because it is a full circle moment for me to be able to have this honor and participate in in a park renaming for Lorraine. So can wait until then and make sure you let people know about it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I will say that some of my favorite, favorite things that I've been able to sit and experience on this bench has been park naming. And this one sounds like it is going to be fantastic. So mark your calendars.

Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all documents, including additional lease and capital funding provisions, necessary for an Amended and Restated Lease and Operations Agreement No. 22697 with Urban Commons, LLC, for the Queen Mary and adjacent properties; and Authorize City Manager to proceed with funding up to $23 million in infrastructure repairs to the Queen Mary by using up to $5.8 million in total reserves designated for the Queen Mary and borrowing approximately $17.2 million to be repaid from Queen Mary related revenues. (District 2)

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Motion carries the the vote go up. Okay. Item number 18. Mr. West. Mayor council members. Tonight is a real epic evening regarding the Queen Mary property. As we know, it was picked up by a company called Garrison, a financial company when Save the Queen went bankrupt. We've been working for the past several years to attract a new company, to take the lease from Garrison, where we would develop the 45 acres and also manage the Queen Mary. This is a property that I know previous director of economic development Mike Conway, has been working with for the past couple of years, and he's been briefing us so long that we're finally down to the end of the wire here. We're going to hear the rest of the presentation by Katherine McDermott, the interim director of economic development of Property Management. But this basically transitions the lease to. Urban commons, a group that we've been working with for the past. Year to facilitate. What. The task force for the Queen Mary has been putting together for guiding principles to the city council and the community. So with. That, Catherine, let me see. Thank you. I'm sorry about that, Mr.. Mr.. West, you turn it over to Catherine. Catherine McDermott. Good evening, Mayor. Council people, city staff and members of the public. We're pleased to bring this item to the council tonight for approval. As Mr. West said, this is the culmination of several years of negotiation and planning by city leaders and staff and the urban Commons team. On November 17, 2015, the City Council approved the assignment of the existing amended and restated lease for the Queen Mary from Garrison Investment to Urban Commons LLC. The lease includes the operations of the Queen Mary, Carnival Cruise Lines and Catalina Express in the 42 acres of land surrounding the ship. The Council also approved the terms and conditions of a new amended and restated lease with urban commons, which will call the new lease. The new lease was expected to be signed in the following six months or by May of 2016. The negotiations were extended past May due to several new issues. The lease terms are in that are in front of you tonight concerning the physical condition of the Queen Mary and the need for urgent repairs. Proposed terms to facilitate the construction of a replacement passenger facility for Carnival to allow urban commons to retake use of the Dome in the future for special events. And lastly, a card check neutrality agreement. First, I want to discuss the issues related to the physical condition of the Queen Mary. Garrison investments in it and its successor, Urban Commons, commissioned a marine survey of the Queen Mary. The survey concluded that there is over 200 million and repairs required to to be made to the ship. The terms of the new lease would include a pass through of revenue from Carnival to the city, which would be used for capital repairs and renovation on the ship. Based on the recommendations of the Marine survey, there are urgent repairs that require immediate attention that exceed the expected annual pass through amount. And I'm sure these slides show you some of the repairs that need to be done. Based on the recommendation of the Marine survey, Urban Commons asks the city to create a more robust fund at the onset of the new lease to address some of the urgent issues. The city and urgent in urban Commons have each agreed to divert future and current revenues from Carnival to create a fund of approximately $23 million. First, I want to make it really clear that there are no new funds being used to accomplish the ship repairs. The city's contribution will come from a combination of tidelands in Queen Mary, cash reserves and from future revenues from Carnival and Urban Commons in the form of base rent and passenger fees totaling approx. Totaling approximately. Over the first seven years the least. Sorry. Urban Commons is also contributing their share of passenger fees rosier received from Carnival in years five through ten of the new lease. The city intends to issue bonds for 17.2 million to be repaid by these revenues over the first ten years of the new lease. Secondly, the new lease also required urban commons to turn over the entire dome to Carnival for their expanded cruise operations to accommodate larger vessels expected to begin to call in Long Beach in the future. This has been accomplished, as you may have read in Carnival's recent press release, Urban Commons believes the use of the dome for an event facility is integral to its development plans. In order for urban commons to utilize the dome. They will be required to construct a passenger terminal facility for Carnival. This added cost to the development will reduce the capital for development of the vacant land and for visitor serving uses. The city and urban Commons have agreed to amend the revenue sharing provision in the new lease to increase the passenger fees paid to urban commons. The additional revenue to urban commons will help defray the cost of construction of the replacement passenger facility and preserve capital for the commercial development of the land. The reduction in resident revenue is estimated at approximately 5.375 million in the first ten years of the lease, which is the length of the bond issue. As was mentioned, the city intends to issue revenue bonds for $17.2 million. The bond issue is expected to be sized at $19 million to provide about 17.2 million in contract construction proceeds and is to be completed within six months after the effective date of the lease. The bond issue would be backed by a pledge of tidelands revenue. The actual source of the debt payment is anticipated to be passenger fees and base rent from urban commons. Lastly, the city and urban Commons have agreed to add language to the newly stating that if urban commons constructs a hotel on the property, a new hotel, they will require the hotel operator or management company to participate in a card check neutrality agreement within three months of receipt of the site plan review. The city believes that these changes to the new lease approved by the Council last November are consistent with the city's priorities associated with this project, which include ensuring that Carnival has a facility that will handle or handle future expected larger ships and additional passengers to the Long Beach cruise terminal. Commercial development of the land surrounding the Queen Mary, which is integral to the long term viability of the city's historic asset. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. At this time, I'd also like to introduce members of the Urban Commons team, including Taylor Woods, Howard Wu and Dan Roney , who are in the in the audience. Sistematica. That concludes stats presentation were available for questions if needed. Okay, thank you. I'm going to turn over to the maker of the motion. Councilwoman Pierce. Thank you very much, staff. I want to thank you guys for not only your presentation today, but the very intensive, long days that led up to this to get us where we are today. I know that you've worked hard and that we are doing our best to preserve what is a city asset, which is the Queen, and trying to activate an area that has been particularly challenging to activate. And so, as I said last time this item came up around the Queen is I'm very excited about what we can do there. And I want to thank Urban Commons for thinking outside the box, for being innovative and really pushing ourselves to think about how we can preserve the ship, how we can support Carnival, which is one of the largest companies that we have here in the city. That is something we've been able to depend on over the years to make sure that we have revenue coming in and that we are expanding that opportunity here in the city. Over the last several months, I have seen even the Queen with you guys taking over. It activated in ways that it wasn't before. And so tonight's vote really being around ensuring that the city is not spending any additional money, but that we are investing in a ship to make sure that we're protecting our asset and that I feel confident in the bond that the city is issuing, that we're going to pay that off in seven years. I feel confident in that the sharing of the passenger fees is an appropriate share. And so I'm really excited to hopefully ask for my council support in making sure that this goes through tonight. And thank you, staff again. Appreciate it. Thank you, Councilmember Andrews. Okay. Well, you're on this. You're the second. Yeah, go ahead. I can only say that, you know, it's been a long time coming. And I really want to commend the individuals who have taken this over, because I think you see the pride that we're looking for. And I think with your support and help that we're going to get this ship to where it should be. And that's the dream that everyone has. And all the things that you guys have in your mind. Put it in action. And I'm telling you, Long Beach is going to be the way to Always Strong Beach. Thank you guys again for the work you've done. Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. I like the comments that I'm hearing from my colleagues, but I really would like to focus on the agenda item, which isn't really how wonderful the change in ownership has been, which I think is great, and how much we should try to invest in the Queen Mary, which is also great. But the agenda item is actually it's it's involving a debt that we're going to be issuing as a city. Right. So that's the that's the I'm talking about that this has nothing to do with the lease, correct? Actually, the issuance of the bond and the repayment from the revenues coming from Carnival are a part of the lease. Yes. Okay. And that's. Can I just ask, why is it that the city is undergoing this these expenditures at this time? Well, the city had always intended in the lease that was approved last year by the council. The city had always intended that the passenger fees from Carnival would go to the city and then into a historic preservation fund, and that urban commons would use that to preserve the ship. The difference that is being made is that that that amount of about $2 million a year just isn't enough to take care of some of these urgent repairs. And so what we're doing is front funding the money with the bond. And for the first seven years, we will end four, five years of urban commons. We will both put our fees from the passenger fees. We will put that toward the repayment of the debt. So, again, we're not using money in a different way. We're just we're using money as it was intended, which was for the historic preservation of the ship. And I understand that I did read the staff memo. My question is, and I guess this is something I didn't know until this item appeared on the agenda, which was frankly a little bit surprising that we're going to be using a pledge of tidelands revenues. There are some tailwinds. The Tidelands revenues is the pledge, but those revenues are the passenger fees we intend for those revenues that are going to repay the bond to be these passenger fees. So there aren't the. The idea is we are using the fees that come in from Carnival, which are Tidelands revenues to pay off the bond . And Councilmember, if I can jump in and help explain as well. Anything in that area has to do with Tidelands. So all the money that comes in and out of the Queen Mary that is also reserved for Queen Mary purposes is actually tidelands funds. So I think Catherine explained it very well. We expect no additional money to be needed that we are putting in money that comes from Carnival that used to go to urban commons under the new agreement comes to the city. We would then use that as a debt issuance and also as part of this $23 million urban commons is putting their own private money into the deal that the city will go to the bond market. So part of the reason that you see in the in the agenda item that it talks about Tidelands, is for us to get a very good interest rate and to have a low cost of borrowing. We're going to be pledging that tidelands revenues will will make up for it. Well, will be the backstop. But we're very certain that the money coming from Carnival will cover that. And if that doesn't happen, we do have emergency reserves that would be available. We do not expect to need those that we have all the money that we need from Carnival Lease to be able to pay for this seven year city commitment, plus the other three for urban commons. And these emergency reserves. I'm assuming those are out of Tidelands as well. First, we have money from Queen Mary, so we have Queen Mary Reserves. That would be as part of that. And then we have operating reserves from Tidelands as well. Yes. Okay. So this plan would not use as its insurance any projects that we've already committed to. Our constituents will be paid out of Tidelands. So, no, that is not envisioned, although we always plan for every and any risk in eventuality. So if in the very unlikely event, Carnival, one of the largest cruise corporations, would go bankrupt in the next 7 to 10 years, that whatever remaining would be first pledged from any Queen Mary Reserves, we would look to our operating reserves . And between those pots of money, we're already looking at almost $19 million, which is the debt that we would go to go to the bond market on. If for some reason that weren't enough, we would look to other tidelands, but we are not pledging any additional projects or anything as collateral as part of this. I know it's not part of the staff report, but I know that the city auditor's here and I wonder if it's possible for her to give us her thoughts on this, because I know this has been a subject of study and consideration in the past, and I'm just want to make sure that we're proceeding because to me , this is a pretty significant action by the city to take. And so I would feel more comfortable hearing from the city auditor and even John GROSS if he's prepared to make any comments about and thoughts on this moving forward. I don't mean to put you guys on the spot, but if either of you guys have you just happened to be sitting in the front row. So why don't we have missed out? And then, Mr. GROSS, maybe after you can make some comments as well, please sit down. Thank you. I believe this is a significant item. My last discussions regarding the Queen Mary were with the former director, Mike Conway, several months ago. And at that time, the city was not liable for assuming any risk for the new lease. And so there is a significant change happening today. I've reviewed this item and called a meeting with the city manager this morning to discuss it with him. He provided the documents I requested this afternoon, but I haven't had time to review them adequately. And any time we're using public funds to invest in something, I would always prefer time to review the details of the financing plan for the the Queen Mary. And thank you, Kathy, for your presentation that you just gave. I think that help clarify some things and and it does bring up more questions that I that I have. One of her first comments was the fact that the Queen Mary has over $200 million worth of infrastructure needs. And I think that's extremely significant. And how this $23 million investment fits into the long term plan for the Queen Mary. And who's responsible for those $200 million worth of investment infrastructure needs the Queen Mary has? It's an important question I think we need to ask as a city. I. I feel like I would prefer to have more time to review the the projections, to feel more comfortable with the risk that the city is assuming at this time. From the documents I've reviewed, it appears the city is the only one assuming risk at this time, and so we would like more time to review it before the council would vote on an item like this. And that would be my recommendation to allow us some time to review the documentation that was just provided to us today. What would be a reasonable amount of time? Like 30 days? Would that be enough? Mm hmm. Is that a possibility, Mr. City Manager. We've been stretching this for quite some time as we learn for a couple of years. We've been negotiating with urban commons really for the past three months intensely. We came up to the final negotiations recently. They are stretched. If we go any further. With interest rate changes, that could affect the interest rate on what. They're going to do. Additionally, their extent, they. Are perhaps this remote. Could talk to this as well that at some point in time. I don't know how quickly that's going to be. They could reverse our position with Garrison and actually lose our position with the Queen Mary and it would revert back to Garrison and potentially put urban commons in bankruptcy. Can I do I just want to make sure that the one question that Ms.. Doughty did bring up about the liability question, so why don't we have that answered as well? But before I do that, Mr. Price, are you did you want to continue everything else? Yes. And I appreciate that for for Mr. West. I appreciate that this has been going on, as you said, for two years. But I think I've tried to be really diligent on this. And before Mr. Conway left, I spoke with him frequently about this lease and this contract and my concerns. And this may be going on for two years, but until this appeared on the agenda, I did not realize that we were going to be pledging tidelands funds for this type of debt. So perhaps that's my negligence. Or perhaps there could have been a better job at a briefing that went on, because I did not know that this was going on for two years. And I, I do have an issue when items come before us and we're told that there's this imminent urgency that we have to make a decision that night that that to me is puts us in a very difficult place. Council Member I let's when we're prepared when Mr. out is concluded, I think that I. Think the discussion here is the amount of risk regarding the tidelands, which we think is. Fairly. Brief. And that's something that Mr. GROSS can talk about when we're ready. Mr.. Can you guys please. Mr.. MODICA You were going to say something. Yes. I wanted to respond a little bit to the and just clarify the the liability in the 200 million. And, of course, the city attorney can jump in any time. And if I say something that that needs to be clarified. So the the Queen Mary is a city asset that actually belongs to the city. So the way that we have managed our risk in the past is, rather than as a city, take on everything that's responsible to the Queen Mary, we enter into a long term lease with somebody who can make revenue on that site and able to create some revenue to put it back into the Tidelands, to pay for the maintenance for a city asset. That, frankly, is very expensive. It's been here since the 1960s. Anything in a marine environment is going to require a tremendous amount of maintenance. And so from time to time, the owner of the or we're the owner, but the the lessee over there does Marine surveys. We've done this in the past, and they normally show that there is a lot of maintenance that needs to be done. So this was conducted by Garrison before it transitioned to urban commons and looking at over $200 million worth of infrastructure repair. That's not unlike what we see in any facility that we have anywhere in the city. So every facility is going to have maintenance issues. And so that is the summary of the major issues, what you've seen in front of you today, those are the structural issues, the ones that are the most urgent. And the way we've done this agreement is urban commons. Ultimately, at the end of the day, per the lease is responsible for all of those investments. However, if at some point the city puts the full burden on them, they have the option of basically walking away and the city would it would revert back to the city and we would have that $200 million worth of infrastructure repair without really any revenue source to be able to pay for it. So we think that this agreement makes a lot of sense. We're using Tidelands reserved money for the Queen Mary to put into the deal, money that we're receiving from Carnival. So no additional tidelands dollars that aren't already going into the ship and then also having urban commons put their money into the deal in order to do that, $23 million with very little risk. So and then, of course, urban commons is also putting in $15 million of their own funds to put into the parts of the ship that people see, the part that really makes them want to come spend money like the hotel rooms and the lobbies, which is really the revenue generator. So under this deal, the city helps finance kind of the the structural bones, the utility systems, the plumbing, the things that the city, you know, that need make the ship go. And there will be investing more money into what makes money. And I appreciate that explanation. It makes a lot of sense to me. My my I guess my confusion lies in the fact that prior to even the last day that Mr. Conway was here, my understanding was that we hadn't reached an agreement yet. We didn't have a legal document. So all these terms that you're talking about in terms of this, if this were to happen, this would happen to urban commons of this. Where is that coming from? What, where, how? We're counsel to be made aware of those those conditions. That's what I don't understand. So there's two documents. One is the lease that they're currently in that has been the lease that we had with Garrison Urban Commons is actually our lessee. We have transferred the existing lease over to urban commons. And so they are our lessee. What we brought to you back in November 15th was really the the majority of the of the things that we're talking about today and all those lease conditions, all the things that transfer risk and responsibility over to urban comments. That is what the council saw in in pretty great detail on November 15th. Since that time, we've had those discussions with Carnival and with Urban Commons and with the city about really the Dome. And then also now this component about how to fund some of the maintenance. And this was a request, as we did back in November, was create that that pot of money, that $2.15 million that we would be able to invest every year. What is a little different in this is they're asking us to just front that money and do it in a short time frame, about seven years of money that we were going to put in the ship already that the council approved back in November and just do it quicker. So we have a larger pot of money that frankly, you can get more repairs done efficiently because you're going to have larger sums that you can invest all at once. So I'd like to hear from my colleagues on this, but I think that and I'd also like to hear from Mr. GROSS. But I think that our auditor saying that the benefit of 30 days would be very valuable to her and in terms of her comfort is very reasonable. And I understand that this is probably something that should have happened yesterday, but the reality is that it's coming to us today and giving us 30 days to feel comfortable with a decision that's this big is is very reasonable there. I think 30 days is is not much time at all. In light of I understand the urgency on the part of the negotiating parties, however, we have not been subject to those negotiations in those discussions. So I think 30 days is reasonable to give us some more time. I also feel incredibly uncomfortable pledging revenues that could potentially have been already committed to constituents through our Tidelands budget. Those are real constituents advocating for real needs. And I don't I know that while I understand the risk is low. I do think that we need to have some thorough and comprehensive and meaningful, genuine discussions before we we pledge that kind of money, because we've worked really hard to prioritize items. And, you know, it's the fact that that something could be set in a meeting that could cause somebody to want to undo years of of of commitment to a project is one thing. But meaningfully voting as a council to pledge that money long term is problematic to me. And I think the the the first risk that I just mentioned, you know, I can't control somebody may want to just pull money that's been committed to a project to make a point. But I can control us making long term decisions about our finances, knowing that we've already committed some funds to particular constituent groups. And so that's that's a problem that I have is is pledging money that we've already committed elsewhere. That's a problem for me. So I'd ask my colleagues to consider putting this over 30 days as the city auditor has suggested, and allow us some time to have the financial numbers so that we can all feel comfortable moving forward. Thank you. Okay. Let me go ahead and move on. I know we have a couple more speakers. Just as a reminder, we have another critical item that we have to get to after this. And I know that Councilman Ringa also has to go. So just I know as I know as we move forward to consider that councilman mongo. Thank you i to appreciate and respect. City official and auditor Laura dowd and I think that within the context of the information you have available to you, I can understand why you might think that some more time would be valuable. I, like Councilman Price had have had several meetings not only with Mr. Conaway, but also with Councilmember Pierce, and before that, several meetings with Councilmember Lowenthal. I've made the efforts to have meetings with members of urban commons, and I'm familiar. I will say that during discussions with Vice Mayor Lowenthal at the time, I realized that I had not experienced anything with Carnival Cruise Lines and had any personal opinions on their value to the city of Long Beach. So my fiancee and I, with our own personal funds, decided to take a weekend and experience Carnival. I am very excited that they're bringing another ship. I think this will be huge for economic development. And I think that in in the industry of economic development, one of the things that I've learned in traveling and meeting with brokers and individuals is that a lot of things can change in 30 days, time can kill deals, and this deal is a good deal for Long Beach. I worry that should we not find another partner like this in the future? I think we're in a great situation and the assessment and knowledge of what risks urban commons is taking on is, in my opinion, greater than the risks we as the city is taking on. And for that, I will be supportive of this item and I hope my colleagues will as well. This was not put on the supplemental agenda. This was not jammed down our throats at the last minute. I believe that over the last seven days, I've had the time necessary to follow up on any conversations I've had since November . And I feel very confident that this is the right direction. And I appreciate the work in filling me in and briefing me throughout the process, as I know many of my colleagues have as well. And so. I too, want to be mindful and timely in ensuring that we think things over carefully. And in looking at the the little matrix that the city manager gives us, I've known this was on the agenda for several weeks. And so for that, I appreciate you. Have a great day and I hope you'll all support me. I got some of them. I'll be very, very brief if we can bring up slide eight. I just had any clarification on one item there. Is that easy to do? Slide eight, please. And I'm just talking about years one through five versus years six through ten. I want to make sure I'm really clear on that. Okay. As soon as they load that. It's right here. So we can move on to the next speaker, if you like. I'd coming up. I. We're trying. You've got to load it back there. There, loading it now. Okay. So if you can just go over your your version of that. Urban commons, can you can you tell us the years one through five versus six? Yeah. So in years one through five, the city receives up to 2.15 million from Carnival's passenger revenue fees, plus 300,000 for base red that would go toward. For five years that share of the city's passenger fees. We'd go, okay. I think we have a type. I spotted a typo when it was up there. I believe it says went through seven spots. We went through five. I believe that's. It. No, it actually is one through seven. Is it. So the year six and seven, the amount goes down to 1.5 million. So the city is pledging seven years of its revenue. It's just in year six and seven. It goes down. Urban Commons is pledging year six through ten and that's estimated at about 800,000 $815,000 a year. So and just out of that, to be fiscally responsible, the city didn't want to pledge long term this money. We wanted to do it on a short term. So we wanted to put about seven years of hours in. So that's one through seven. Carnival Urban Commons doesn't really see any of that passenger facility until year five. So in part of our negotiations, we asked them to put money in. So their money, once it starts in year five, under the current agreement on the lease, they're putting their money in from years 5 to 10. We put money in from years 1 to 7. Okay. I think that clarifies it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Before I go back to Councilman Pearce, do might we go to public comment first and we'll come back any public comment on this issue? Please come forward. If there is, please quickly. Yes. Thank you. My name is Diane Roche. I reside in Los Alamitos, California, and I'm here tonight to ask mainly a couple of questions about this new lease. Mayor Garcia and members of the council in the 1990s, I chaired an organization called the Queen Mary Foundation, and that's the organization that is responsible for the ocean liners admittance to the to the National Register of Historic Places. And I had a couple of questions about the structural integrity. I know back in 1990 and again in 1992, Radio's International Marine Survey Organization did detailed surveys of the Queen Mary's Hall and superstructure. And there were some concerns at that time that were going to be addressed when Joseph still took over the lease of the ship in 1993 and the city engineer Edward Bionic drew up a base maintenance plan. That's Document HD 1605. And there were several concerns during the ship's conversion. There were some bulkheads removed, some load bearing members that have never been replaced since that time. And I noticed that when you flashed up on the screen, there were lists of the immediately needed maintenance and restoration concerns of the recent survey. I believe it's by Simpson, Gompertz and Hager. I'd like to request at this time, if I may, by Public Records Act, I would like to have a copy of that that Marine survey to compare it with the original reader's reports, because I know what to look for. I knew several of the ship's original designers and engineers. So I would really like to make that request. I also would like to share a little bit of the history on that document. 22697. That's the current lease that's being amended and restated. That was initially drawn up in 1993 and during Patel's lease it had been. Revised in order to accommodate his nonperformance and non conformance. So I was just wondering how robust that lease is. I really applaud you for holding off. Hopefully you'll hold off on making a decision because I think there are probably lots of things in the lease that have to be looked at in terms of the maintenance needs, in terms of the funding. I know that there was a thing called the Queen Mary Fund that was $6.5 million set aside. Thank you. Ma'am. Time's up. Okay. Could you look into that? We've made we made a note of that. We'll try to connect with you as well. Okay. Can you give the clerk your information, please? And we'll get that for you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Thank you. Oh. $53 million went to the Aquarium of the Pacific. $53 million that they didn't need, but they wanted. For. Beautification of a project that is beautiful. And now we're discussing $23 million. To go to the Queen Mary boat. It sits vacant at night. I don't I'm speaking because my other non-profits who work for the for the homeless are not here. The committee commission newly installed is not here. So someone should be here every time the city council begins to discuss, to use money, expeditiously, implementable funds. But you still have the humans sleeping in the streets. Still. If the marijuana dispensaries were to open tomorrow, I believe I remember hearing someone to my right saying that they would have immediate $1,000,000 to throw into that project to fund the marijuana dispensaries. Now. God is the angels and. The host of heaven. Has assembled again tonight and is listening to this conversation, this meeting. And I worked for him. And when I'm not telling people about the Holy Spirit and Jesus and God and the mission, he's told me to argue, to defend, as if I were a police officer. The rights of the homeless. How can you. With a clear conscience. Continue to do this. How can you? The rains. Are here. You're hoping for more rain. You have a proposal that has been put on your desk as of January 2016. And your piece mealing that thing out. I want to congratulate you for the for the work that you are doing. But you're going to discuss spending $23 million again. And it would just take 1 million to clear your streets of the homeless. Martin Luther King said, I have a dream and we're living his dream tonight. Well, that plan that is on your desk. He gave it to me and he said, this is implementable. And he would ask you again, how can you discuss spending that kind of money when it would just take 1 million to get the homeless off the street? Thank you. Next speaker, please. Then this is our last speaker. The last two speakers kept out offering it back to the council. Thank you. Well, good evening. Diane Roche was trying to ask you about the Queen Mary Fund. That was $6.5 million in the budget previously for repairs. And I, too, would like to know, has that 6 million ever been spent or is this part of the 5 million that you're including in this? Money that you're going to give to add to the 23 million. How in the world have we allowed this ship to require $200 million worth of repair? Somebody has not been overseeing. The funds that were supposed to be spent on this in the past. And I can see. No. Reason to believe that this new lessee is going to do any better. Last year. He said he was going to do all these wonderful things for the Queen Mary if we just give them him the land. Then he gets an idea. He has a survey after his. I guess we haven't signed the lease, but. Urban Commons is now looked at it and said, Wow, I can't come up with $23 million to repair this ship. I would think if. He is made. If this company has made the obligation to get this lease. They should be responsible for the repairs. That was part of the lease. Now we're changing the lease. So that the city is responsible for these repairs. Another thing I had a question about last year was the inclusion of the park. Which is known as Queen Mary Events Park, but it's really Harry Bridges Park, which was mitigation for the park land taken from shoreline to build. The aquarium. This park last year was being included in the lease. I heard no mention tonight whether it was or not, and the public has never seen this lease. We've seen parts of it in the staff report. Have you seen the lease? Are you willing to have this lease be signed when you haven't even read it? I hope that you will at least put this over. If not 30 days. 15 days. So that somebody can. Thank you, Miss Cantrell. Reading the lease. Thank you. And our last speaker, please. Thank you. My name is Ramon. I'll be brief. I know that we got Iran. Got. He's got a quick fuze here. Um, I know. I don't mean like you're angry or anything. I mean, you got to get out of here. That's what I mean to say. Okay. I've been involved with government contracts for a long time, and this type of situation seems to be pretty normal for the city of Long Beach. And I'm not trying to criticize. I'm I'm in I've been involved with ambiguous situations quite often in my my job. And I understand sometimes things get out of hand. And I'd like to thank Councilwoman Mongo for making a great sacrifice and testing out some of the some of the facilities there. Getting her firsthand information. I'd like to. Congratulate Miss Price in in her concerns. I think it's it's pretty clear. One of the things that I'm worried about is that these people were evidently involved with the negotiations and they didn't involve the auditor. While they're doing that, there's something called concurrent, you know, working with people. And I get suspicious when people aren't working. They know the process. They're obviously there, but they're not getting all the people involved. And, um, we do know that we have a situation where we're going to be taking some of the revenue that we think that we're going to be making. And we're going to use it for the interest payments for the bonds that we're taking out. So you're actually I mean, all this stuff that you're doing, it costs money for it. So we're now losing more money to kind of front them. The, uh, the bonds that we're trying to do. And, you know, I understand this is a situation where here, but we also need to do some due diligence with $23 million, we can't just move forward. And the arguments that that my councilwoman in her great wisdom has made doesn't really hit you the root of the cause of why we can't do it. I don't know if if the subcontractor has actually given a date. Hey, look, we're going to suffer. We're going to die by if we don't do 30 days or if the auditor can actually work within a shorter timeframe. But something like that needs to be hopefully worked out. And I'm giving you 40 seconds there, Mr. York. That's it. Thank you. We're going to go to the last few speakers. We're going to get to get to a vote, please. Councilmember Pearce and Councilman Price. Yeah. I want to just one more time. Thank everybody for all your work on this and all the community comments. And I want to urge my council to go ahead and take a vote so we can move on. Councilman Price. Thank you. We do want to hear from Mr. GROSS because he took a seat over there and never got to be heard. So I would like to hear from him, but I also want to highlight that my comments have nothing to do with urban commons. I think we're headed in a great direction. I'm very much looking forward to the future. I am a little bit confused as to how we're there in this predicament where we're talking about the city having to be responsible for these repairs like tonight. Look at the vote has to happen tonight. It's just a discussion we've never had and certainly not something I was aware of. I think that any time your auditor expresses concerns, those with the fiduciary duty have to stop and ask themselves, you know, what, what they feel comfortable doing. And that's going to change with it. It's going to depend on each individual council member. So I appreciate that. But I would like to hear from Mr. GROSS on these financial plans that have been put before us. Mr. GROSS. Thank you. I think it is a I think it Councilwoman Price has raised a good issue that should always be raised when you issue bonds, what is what is the risk? And I'll try to try to address that. From our viewpoint, financial management's viewpoint. What we have is a situation where the lease provides for investment in a city asset, the Queen Mary, and repairs to the Queen Mary. Money flowing into that historic preservation fund. And the concept that we looked at was, okay, we have these urgent repairs and that money flowing over a number of years is not going to do those urgent repairs. Can we make a change? And what financial management did is it came up with using that stream of money. We can convert it to upfront cash of about $17 million. You add 5.8 million from the Queen Mary Reserves and you're at the $23 million to do those urgent repairs. And what is the risk and how did we do that? As as was said by both Mrs. McDermott and Mr. Modica, we are using a bond issue structure that pledges all tidelands funds. That's the typical way we do money to support land area projects. The aquarium is another example where we have pledged all tidelands monies, but we don't expect to use all Tidelands monies because there's rent being paid by the aquarium. In this case, we're moving the money from the H, from the historic preservation account to pay debt service. And that risk has been evaluated through the Economic Development Department and seems logical to be a very low risk that money will not be coming in. We, in addition, looked at the risk of, gee, what happens? We pledged $23 million, 17 of which comes from a bond issue. That's a $19 million bond issue. It yields about 17 million in cash. What's the risk of us having to pay urban commons and something goes wrong with the bond market temporarily? We would have to come up with cash at that time. We consider that risk to be so low as to not be a significant consideration. But we do have to say, if something goes wrong in that second type of risk, yes, we'd have to temporarily use reserves. And we believe that's not going to be an imposition, significant imposition on titans, because eventually, within whatever timeframe of the market stabilizes, six months, even a year, we would return the money to the fund and we don't think there'll be any significant damage overall. Yes, there is risk. We think the risk is either minute in the case of not being able to issue bonds timely or has been evaluated by economic development, financial management thinks that a valuation is reasonable. Evaluated by the department is a very low risk. I thank you for those comments, Mr. Ross. I wonder if that has any impact on the auditor or if there's anything further that the auditor would like to say. It would be nice if we were all on the same page moving forward, and if not, it would be nice if we took a pause to get on the same page. Yes. Thank you for all of the comments tonight. I think, you know, as the elected leader, I feel like I have a duty to express my concerns. My over arching concern is the to the over $200 million of infrastructure needs in the Queen Mary. And I don't think we should ignore the inevitable. It's a significant problem. I. I've been here with the city for over ten years. And these these are serious problems. The queen of this, Queen Mary, has a history with problems. And I feel like we need more than seven days to look at the documents that have been presented, to look at the analysis, to look at the risks, to look at the financing. To look and see how this $23 million investment fits into. A long term plan for the Queen Mary, its infrastructure needs and how it's going to be financed long term. I don't think we should ignore. Uh, the significance of the issues surrounding the ship. So. If the council would feel more comfortable with 14 days rather than 30, it would at least give us a little time, a little more time to to look at this. And we would work as quickly as possible and do as much due diligence as we could. But I really do think that in big picture long term strategy, we need to. Reconsider. Well, thank you for that. I do want to make a couple of comments in regards to Councilwoman Mangos. And, you know, anytime anyone raises an issue about something on the agenda, there's always someone who, you know, chimes in with this has been on the agenda. I don't know why anyone didn't prepare for it. You know, I read every staff report in my agenda and I read all ten pages of the staff report. And until I asked a few questions, I did not realize that committed Tidelands projects could be at risk. And that's where my concerns came. The ten pages here don't say anything about Tidelands projects that have already been committed being the source of a potential risk. So I did read the ten pages. I'm very mindful of when items come out on the agenda. I think I do a very good job of reading and preparing for my council meetings and I meet regularly with department heads. We have regular tidelands meetings. We have a briefing. We had a briefing that I wasn't able to be on today, but I meet with the city manager every week. I did not realize, and perhaps it's written in here and I missed it, although that's doubtful that Tidelands projects that are committed could be at risk. So I have a problem with that because like I mentioned a moment ago, unfortunately there is even though we work really hard to build collaborations and consensus, unfortunately there's an unnecessary. An inappropriate level of risk that already exists that I don't have control over in terms of projects that I've already committed to the constituents of the city. I can't I don't feel comfortable moving forward without and I understand the risk is low. But when the auditor is saying, you know, I need two weeks or a month to look at the numbers so that I can feel comfortable with it, I think that's very reasonable. And, you know, I'm asking my colleagues, I realize that this the tidelands revenue doesn't impact every district, but the the districts that it does impact involve people who work really hard on projects, just like projects in every other district. And just because we need to to have some sort of an insurance policy for a debt doesn't mean we start to put, you know, their projects that we've committed at risk of potentially if something were to happen that those projects are if we can guarantee right now that none of the projects that are impacted and I'm sure Councilwoman Pierce feels the same way, she doesn't want any of the projects that she's committed to her constituents to be attacked. And I would never, ever in a million years disrespect the people that have worked hard on those projects. So I think if we can have some sort of a commitment that those projects won't get impacted as part of this, and I'd feel a lot more comfortable with it. But either I completely missed it or we never discussed this being a potential risk when we approved all of the negotiations and the discussions that we as a council were privy to. So that's my concern is, yes, I do know when the agenda comes out and yes, I'm aware of the index. And yes, I did read the ten page report. It doesn't answer the questions. Thank you. Councilmember Turanga. Covered question. Okay. Questions been called. There is a motion on the floor by Councilmember Pearce and Councilmember Andrews. Please go and cast your vote. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Next item we're going to hear is item number. I think it was 18. No, I'm sorry. We just heard 18. 27. Thank you. As we're getting up to the urban common guys, we're back there. I just want to thank you all for your commitment to this project.

A proclamation celebrating the 8th annual “Buy Local Week” from November 28 through December 5, as part of the ongoing "Buy Local" campaign to encourage the support of local businesses. A proclamation celebrating the 8th annual “Buy Local Week” from November 28 through December 2nd, as part of the ongoing Buy Local campaign to encourage the support of local businesses.

DenverCityCouncil_11242014_14-1035

We do have one proclamation this evening. Proclamation? 1035 Councilwoman Canete, will you please read Proclamation 1035? Yes, Mr. President. Thank you. Proclamation 135 celebrating the eighth annual Buy Local Week from November 28th through December 5th as part of the ongoing buy local campaign to encourage the support of local businesses. Whereas local businesses are owned by our neighbors and the unique products and services they provide enhance the character of our city and the strength of our neighborhoods. And. Whereas, these local companies provide vital employment opportunities and generate tax revenues that support city services, our schools and our state. And. Whereas, retail spending accounts for more than $11 billion during the holidays and dollars spent at local retailers have a greater impact on our local economy by keeping profits in our community and using local suppliers and services. And. Whereas, the city and county of Denver recognizes the vital role of local businesses in building a diverse and resilient economy and is committed to growing our base of local retailers and restaurants. And. Whereas, supporting locally owned businesses during the holiday season and beyond has a positive economic impact and contributes to the quality of life and sense of community in Denver. And. Whereas, The Mile-High Business Alliance and its members mobilized Coloradans to shop local businesses first and to raise awareness of the opportunities and impacts of mining locally. And. WHEREAS, more than 10,000 small businesses in Denver employ nearly 200,000 persons, 44% of the employment in the city, contributing more than $10 billion in wages to our local economy. And. Whereas, the residents of Denver are encouraged to support our local retailers and restaurant establishments this holiday season and throughout the year. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the City and Council of the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, that, in recognition of the annual buy local campaign, Denver City Council proclaims the week of November 28th through December 5th as buy local week in Denver to show its support and to highlight the importance of buying in Denver at its many retail and restaurant businesses. Section two that the clerk of the city and county of Denver shall test and affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and that a copy be transmitted to Mikki Langston Mile-High Business Alliance. Thank you. Councilwoman can eat your motion to adopt. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that proclamation 1035 be adopted. It has been moved in. Second it comments from members of the council council and can each. Thank you, Mr. President. It's my annual buy local proclamation because we are getting ready for the beginning of that shopping season. People call it Black Friday, but remember that Saturday is small business Saturday. And as usual, just thinking about with intentionality the things that we can buy. You know, we have so many local business districts in Denver, South Pearl, we've got Gaylord Street, we've got Cherry Creek, we've got Tennyson Street. We've got all of the great independent businesses around Larimer Square and downtown in the LoDo vicinity. And so we are blessed with these opportunities and these businesses. This is a make or break season for them and it takes that little bit of thought to really go ahead and get a gift certificate from them or pick up a piece of jewelry or some item that can really bring joy to the people you buy gifts for, but also bring more dollars back to your economy because those businesses are more likely to be using local suppliers, they're more likely to be using local banks, and they probably are investing their profits back into their own homes, in their own communities, with their own shopping and their own economic purchasing power. So it really is a circle of money that these businesses create in our community. And so for that reason, I hope that folks do go ahead and buy local beginning Friday and all year long. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Canning. Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Mr. President. Very well put, and thank you for bringing the proclamation. Councilwoman Kennish. I know all my colleagues know. About Cherry Creek. But maybe someone's flipping channels. And I want. You to know at home that there are. 292. Locally owned and operated. Businesses in. Cherry Creek. This is the largest. Accumulation of local businesses. In the region, maybe in quite a large region. And the other really cool thing that you should know. Is this year for the. Holidays, starting on Saturday Shop Local Saturday. The Business Improvement District will. Be providing. Free valet parking. You can get the valet, you can have your car laid on the west side. Of Fillmore Plaza between first and second, or on. Josephine Street, between second and third on the east side. Of the street. You do have to bring proof of a purchase back when you pick up your car. That's all you have to do. But you can park free. No hassle. So we'll look forward to seeing people. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Ortega. I just wanted to thank Councilwoman Canete for bringing this forward and just add that there's one other place that people don't always think about as one of our shopping venues, if you will, and that's how it does. We have a number of locally owned businesses that, you know, have restaurants as well as other types of goods, and just encourage that if you're picking someone up or if you're flying through Denver, that's another place to shop locally. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Any other comments on 1035 C None, Madam Secretary. Roll call can each layman by Lopez. Hi, Monteiro. I Nevitt. Hi, Ortega. Hi, Rob Shepherd. Sussman Hi. Brooks. Hi, Brown. I thought. I. Lopez. Hi. Mr. President. Hi. Student. Councilmembers Brooks and Brown. Your votes are hanging. Fire BS. One more. Thank you, councilman. Round. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. And as a result 3939 1035 has been adopted. Councilman McNeish, is there someone you'd like to invite to the podium to receive the proclamation? You need to call someone up. Yes, Mr. President. I'm sorry. May I please have Mikki Langston join us to accept the proclamation? Thank you, Mr. President, and members of Council. It's always such a privilege to hear your support of local businesses during by work week. When I first started at Mile High Business Lyons in 2007, some people said to me, Why are you talking about the economy? There's nothing wrong with the economy. And that was 27. Obviously, it became very clear very quickly that creating an economy that works for everyone is not an accident. And that's especially true for I'm sorry, I get nervous. It's especially true for the millions of Americans who are still struggling to recover from the recession that started in 2008. And in Colorado, we're really lucky. We live in a state that has one of the highest rates of economic growth and one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the entire nation. But that really is the point of buy local week, that what Buy Local Week is about is reminding us that we have the power individually and collectively to build the kind of community that we want to live in that has independent, local businesses that not only add to the economic vitality of our community , but also the neighborhoods that we really love to live in. So I'm honored to receive this proclamation and have great gratitude for Councilwoman Canete and for all of you for supporting local businesses now and into the future. And for those folks that do want to connect with local businesses, we always invite them to our website at Mile High Best at work. Thank you and have a great evening. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Langston. Thank you, Councilman Kenny, for bringing this forward. We are now moving on to the resolution. Madam Secretary, please read the resolution. From safety and well-being 1036 resolution authorizing approving expenditure and payment from the appropriation account. Designated labor liability claim sum at $25,000 payable to Regina and Petraeus in amount of $14,600 into Kilmer Lane of Newman LLP in the amount of $10,400 for payment suspension, all claims to the election number of 13 dashboards 303220w id KMT in United States

Councilor Fernandes Anderson called Docket #00485, message and order, referred on April 13, 2022 Docket #0488, approving an appropriation of Five Hundred Fifty Million Three Hundred Seventy Thousand Dollars ($550,370,000.00) for the acquisition of interests in land or the acquisition of assets, or the landscaping, alteration, remediation, rehabilitation improvement of public land, the construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, improvement, alteration, remodeling, enlargement, demolition, removal or extraordinary repairs of public buildings, facilities, assets, works or infrastructure; for the cost of feasibility studies or engineering or architectural services for plans and specifications; for the development, design, purchase and installation of computer hardware or software and computer-assisted integrated financial management and accounting systems; and any and all cost incidental or related to the above described projects; for the purposes of various city departments included Boston Center for Youth and Families, Department of Innovation and Technology, Environment, Fire, Neig

BostonCC_06082022_2022-0485

Motor vehicles and trailers. Ambulances. Firefighting equipment. Office equipment. Telecommunications equipment. Photocopying equipment. Medical equipment. School and educational equipment. School busses, parking meters. Street lighting, installation, traffic signal equipment and equipment functionally related to and components of the foregoing. Filed in the office of the City Clerk on April 11th, 2022, and docket numbers 0485. Message in order approving an appropriation of 500 $550,370,000 for the acquisition of interest in land or the acquisition of assets or the landscaping, alteration, remediation, rehabilitation, improvement of public land, the construction reconstruction, rehabilitation improvement, alteration, remodeling, enlargement, demolition removal or extra ordinary repairs of public buildings, facilities, assets, works, or infrastructure for the cost of feasibility studies or engineering or architectural services for plans and specifications for the development, design, purchase and installation of computer hardware or software and computer assisted. Integrated Financial Management and accounting systems. In any and all cost incidental or related to the above described projects for the purposes of various city departments, including Boston Center for Youth and Families, Department of Innovation and Technology, Environment, Fire, Neighborhood Development, Office for Arts and Culture. Parks and Recreation. Police. Property Department. Property Management. Public Works and Transportation Departments. Boston Public Library. Boston Redevelopment Authority and Public Health Commission filed in the Office of the City Clerk on April 11, 2020 20486.

Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Use District Map of the City of Long Beach as said Map has been established and amended by amending portions of Part 22 of said Map from R-1-L (Single-Family Residential, Large Lot) to CCA (Community Commercial Automobile-Oriented), read and adopted as read. (District 8)

LongBeachCC_06112019_19-0483

Motion carries. Thank you. And we have item 44, please. Report from Development Services Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the use district map of the City of Long Beach by amending portions of part 22 of said map from single family, residential, large lot to community commercial automobile oriented read and adopted as read District eight. There's emotion in a second republic comment on this signal and please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. We're going to move on to new business. We do have some some folks we want to honor and closing the meeting tonight. And so I'm going to begin with those. I have to. And then I know that Vice Marie Andrews has one as well. I want to begin by closing the meeting tonight. And on behalf of Laura Killingsworth. Mayor Garcia. Yes. We still have one more item. Item 45.

AN ORDINANCE relating to land use review decision and meeting procedures; temporarily modifying and suspending procedures in Titles 23 and 25 of the Seattle Municipal Code and amending Chapters 23.41, 23.49, 23.66, 23.79, 25.12, 25.16, 25.20, 25.21, 25.22, 25.24, and 25.30 of the Seattle Municipal Code, consistent with the Governor’s proclamations and the Mayor’s proclamation of civil emergency on March 3, 2020; declaring an emergency; and establishing an immediate effective date; all by a 3/4 vote of the City Council.

SeattleCityCouncil_04272020_CB 119769

Agenda Item. One Constable 119. 769 relating to land use review decision and procedures, temporally modifying and suspending procedures in Title. 23 and 25 and on the. Code. Just think I will need somebody on the prevailing side to act on this motion for reconsideration to call up the motion. Councilmember Morales. I am sorry I lost track of where we are here. I call the motion to reconsider passage of House Bill 119769. Thank you so much. This motion does not require a second. So reconsideration of Council Bill 119769 is now before the Council for consideration. Council members at the April 20th City Council meeting, we considered and amended Council Bill 119769. The bill, as amended, did not secure the needed seven votes to pass it and Councilmember Verbal moved to reconsider the bill on April 20th. So pursuant to the City Charter, that motion was moved and seconded and held until this city council meeting. We now have before us the motion to reconsider the ballot, the bill. Councilmember Morales as the maker. I'm sorry. Councilmember Herbold As the maker of the original motion. Do you have any comments? Oh, my comments. Thank you. Thank you so much. Are there any further comments on the motion to reconsider the bill? Again, we're not voting on the actual substance of the bill at this point. We're still voting on the procedural vote to reconsider passage of Council Bill 119769. You hear and see no comments. The city council will now vote to reconsider passage of Council Bill 119769. Will the clerk please call the roll? PETERSON No. So what. I. Strauss takes her vote. No. Whereas I. Lewis. Hi. Or. I. Let's get to. I. President Gonzalez, I. Seven in favor, two opposed. Thank you, Madam Clerk. That vote only required a majority. In other words, five council members present to be in favor of moving forward. And so that motion carries in Council Bill 119769 is now before the council. Council Member Strauss As sponsor of this bill, do you have any opening remarks that you would like to make? Yes, thank you. Council President I'll try and make this short. As we've discussed this many times before, this emergency legislation addresses design review, historic preservation and permitting process, including the COVID 19. Emergency is temporary in nature, and the intention of this legislation is to allow critically needed housing projects to continue moving forward through the permitting process in a way that preserves public input and engagement and protects public health. Specifically as such, the legislation would allow projects to opt into administrative design review for six months, or until the design review boards are able to meet virtually or in person. It would allow for Pre-Application community outreach to be done virtually and explicitly highlights how that can be done. It would allow for minor decisions related to his remarks or historic and special review districts to be made administratively while suspending meetings and major decisions of the landmarks and special review boards. Because the legislation is being enacted on an emergency basis. All provisions would lapse after 180 days and would be. And we are required to hold a public hearing within 60 days more than the time. Sensitivity around this is more than 20 proposed residential projects representing over 3500 housing units. And ending this living facility are currently on hold because design review meetings have been indefinitely canceled. Another 20 projects are expected to be delayed each month, creating a significant backlog for their design review boards that could outlast our current emergency and typically takes the project about a year to move through the design review process. So allowing these projects to keep moving is important. Another 30 projects, including four affordable housing projects, are unable to proceed because they cannot complete their early community outreach until this legislation is passed. There's also a minor landmark recommendation that the key arena project needs and has been delayed for several weeks. This will become a pinch point in May. While departments have been taking steps to hold design review boards, meetings virtually, there are several barriers that still need to be addressed. And I share with you that this is different than our city council meetings. It's different than the design commission meetings because there is feedback and conversation that is needed on detailed documents, and that can be confusing. Even last week, I personally experienced not speaking for any other council members experience. I was kicked off our virtual meetings here at City Council twice. We have only been able to start our public input last week and this is just. This doesn't even begin to cover the complex level of design review. The size of the design review program, which involves 20 to 30 meetings each month. Councilmember Lewis I did confirm it's over 100 staff members who would need additional training and 70 volunteer board members with varying abilities and technological access. There are also challenges with facilitating comment and signing for these complex and technical documents that are graphic rich in their presentation. We are all able to be together on this call today for because it's our jobs and the design review process relies on volunteers dealing with all the challenges of this pandemic, which changes their availability for frequent and virtual meetings and doesn't guarantee that full participation is able to to occur. The Design Commission has, as I said, been able to hold a virtual meeting, which is promising. Again, this is different than design review boards. One of my amendments that we passed last week would require reporting in 60 days on the executive's progress towards these virtual meetings, and the legislation is written to virtually mirror the public engagement opportunities the community members would have used if we were using the typical process. I will, just as a final note, go over the. Amendments that we made last week that would allow projects to receive a recommendation through administrative administrative design review process to remain in that process, allow self nominated projects seeking landmark designation to negotiate their controls and incentive agreements. Not the final designation allows the Housing Authority to utilize the design review exemption for affordable housing, clarifying community outreach requirements, improving tree protections by removing an exemption that would allow for hazardous tree removal to be done. So administratively is allow another amendment to allow for administrative approval of door and window replacements in historic and special review districts and allow for administrative approval of penthouses when those guidelines already exist. Nevermore. I will leave it at that, because we are we have had extensive conversation on this bill. And also, I would like to compliment Councilmember Lewis for his community outreach on his amendment. So thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for those introductory remarks. I know that we have two amendments to manage. As we discussed during council briefing this morning, so I'm going to go through the amendments at this point in the order that they appeared on the published agenda. So that means that Councilmember Morales will be up first, followed by Councilmember Lewis on his amendment. So I'm going to hand it over to Councilmember Morales so that she can make her motion to have us consider Amendment one. Councilmember Alice, the floor is yours. Thank you. I move to amend Council Bill 119769 presented on the Morales Amendment one. That can. It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill. Councilmember Morales I will go ahead and hand it over to you to address the amendment. Okay. Thank you. So this amendment would allow the director of neighborhoods to approve certificates of approval for some changes within the International Special Review District. It would also remove a provision that would have allowed for virtual meetings of the ISRG Board in lieu of in-person meetings. If in-person meetings could not be held safely, Isrg board meetings would not be held for 60 days. And the amendment also corrects some drafting errors that were in the version that we had last week. The purpose of this really is, as I said this morning in briefing, to allow meetings to continue. Once we have once we are able to meet in-person again safely, but not meet virtually. And the real point here is to protect the community that doesn't have a lot of access to technology and where we can't always have assurance that there will be sufficient language interpretation services available for some of these technical conversations. And so the community is willing to just wait and and gather again in that when it's safe to do so. After the 60 day period. I thank you, Councilmember Morales, for addressing the amendment. Are there any other comments on this amendment? Councilmember Herbold, the floor is yours. Thank you. Councilman Morales, could you, for my benefit, explain to me how this amendment is different from the one that you brought forward last week? The reason why I am asking is the guidance I received from the clerk's office is for if an amendment fails in order for us to bring it back, it has to be a different question. And so I would just really appreciate the clarity of of understanding how this amendment differs from the one that you brought last week . So what happened last week was that there were some drafting errors. As I said, the intention was to eliminate the option for electronic meetings. But what was actually incorporated into the language from last week would have would have allowed for the certificate of approval process, administrative process to continue for the Pioneer Square Review District, but not for the International District's special review district. So so part of the challenge was that there was just that drafting error that needed to be removed from what we were trying to accomplish. So I'm trying to provide an opportunity for you to say that this the effect of this amendment is different than the amendment that you brought forward. Is that would that be an accurate statement? Yes, because the effect of the previous amendment was much broader, had a much broader scope of that. It would have changed the ability of the isrg to meet. So this is sort of narrowing the scope of what had been proposed or what had been included in last week's version. And that was a mistake. Perfect. Thank you. I thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold, for that kind of questioning. Are there any other comments on the on the Morales Amendment one? Okay. Hearing none. I'm going to go ahead. However, I'm a skater. Did I see your hand go up? Thank you. President, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate Councilmember Morales's work with the folks who brought up the need for additional clarity and happy to support this amendment. Appreciate all your work. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm going to go ahead and close out discussion on this particular amendment. Will the Kirk call the roll on the adoption of the Morales Amendment one? Peterson, I. The ones. I. Strauss. I. Purple. I. Suarez. I. Lewis. Hi. Or else I. Macheda I. President Gonzalez. I. Nine in favor. None oppose. The motion carries and the amendment is adopted. Are there any further comments on the bill as amended? And I think this is an opportunity for Councilmember Lewis to walk us through Amendment two. So I'm going to hand it over to you, Councilmember Lewis, to put Amendment two on the on the table. Thank you, Madam President. I move to amend Council Bill 119769 as presented on version two of the Lewis amendment to on the agenda. Second. It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill. Councilmember Lewis, I'm going to hand it back over to you so that you can address your amendment. Well, I'll just be brief. I think we had a good discussion of this amendment during briefing this morning. Just to reiterate some of the arguments that I brought up at that time. I think that for two reasons this amendment is appropriate. First, that the buildings that are going forward under this pilot program are of a particular size involved. The design review is more important than for similarly situated projects that are not part of the just of the Living Building Pilot program. I think too, that given the status of the three projects that this amendment would address, all of which are mid-stream through the established in-person design review process, that it would be warranted for these projects to continue along in that path and go back to the design review boards, be they in-person or virtual, to get the final go ahead to proceed to the master use permit. For those reasons, I think that this amendment at this time is appropriate. It's narrowly tailored. It speaks to specific, articulable reasons why exemptions like this would be warranted given the scope of the current ordinance. And I would ask that the council approved this amendment. Thank you. Councilmember Lewis, are there any comments on Councilmember Lewis's amendment? Councilmember Mosqueda, the floor is yours. I will defer to the prime sponsor. I'm sorry. Again, just want to compliment Councilmember Lewis on his joint outreach. This is the very type of outreach and amendment that I appreciate when engaging in land use decisions. He did an excellent job of convincing me that this should come forward, despite my request of no new topics on the bill because we're trying to get it across the finish line. So I just want all of Councilmember Lewis's constituents to know that he is doing work in their stead. I appreciate it. Despite my desire to really not engage in new topics on this bill since it's been such a heavy lift so far. Thank you. Councilmember Strauss, councilmember mosqueda you're recognized for resource. Thank you very much, Madam President. And I do appreciate the hard work that has gone into this legislation, both from the prime sponsor and from the folks who've been crafting amendments. I know we're trying to do our best to make sure that basic city government functions in the time of COVID and making sure that our community constituent engagement processes and don't miss a beat. And you all have been exemplary in that action. I do need to speak up, as I noted this morning, with my concerns about this amendment and offer a first piece of clarification and second, sort of my rationale for not voting for this amendment. First, I think it's really important that we make sure that folks know that there's been a misperception about community engagement not continuing. In fact, Administrative Design Review mirrors the public engagement process that takes place during full design review. It simply replaces the in-person comment period with a written comment period. All the same, public engagement opportunities exist. They just take a different form. People can call, send written comments to CCI rather than providing comments in person. All steps in the administrative review process are publicly posted through a website, and if you sign up to be part of the administrative design review process, you receive notifications on all materials, submitted planners, comments and recommendations similar to full design review. I would also posture, as I said in last week's conversation, it's arguably more inclusive to be able to accept phone calls and written comments than just having meetings in person. Think about all the folks who are working two and three jobs, the people who would like to be there, but for their error or possibilities at home or at work and or mobility issues, and want to make sure that we're thinking about inclusivity and equity as we think about engaging in soliciting public comment, especially now during COVID. I think that this bill strikes that nice balance. Secondly, the reason that I'm speaking in opposition to this amendment is that I think that living buildings projects is exactly the type of outstanding projects that we'd like to see, be able to get the design review process moving forward and get the green light to move forward so that we don't lose any interest in the ability to build these exact types of buildings. These are socially just sustainable, human health oriented green buildings, as I talked about this morning. This is not just about setbacks or green roofs. It's about incorporating nature in every aspect of the building design in the materials and the energy systems to create spaces that integrate the physical and psychological well-being of people and the health of the surrounding environment. And I think it's really important that we think about how we encourage more, more developers to go this route. So this pilot is extremely important as we think about reducing the amount of energy use, creating green spaces and and really facilitating that integration between community preference and what we'd like to see in these buildings, if we I think the unintended consequence here is that if we pull out living buildings, there's a chance that folks who are interested in building greener buildings will opt for the administrative design review. And we've missed the opportunity to see more of these living buildings come into fruition. And in fact, I'm worry about the message that we send to folks that might be considering future living buildings, that they don't want to go down this route either. I am appreciative of the conversation. It sounds like you've had in districts. I think that is important for us though, to push back to say that living building projects just like this are exactly what we'd like to see to make sure that we can incorporate the public feedback that has already been received. Work with CCI to ensure that that public comment is integrated as we move forward and make sure for the environment's sake that we are encouraging, facilitating and creating more opportunities for living, building and projects to move forward. Especially in this time where we worry that with COVID developers could potentially pull out of projects like this as uncertain economic forecasts cause people to question future investments, let's move forward. Let's include living buildings in our efforts. And let's remember that this will absolutely allow for community engagement to continue as outlined by our department partners in previous presentations. Thank you for letting me explain my position on this and for your ongoing work colleagues to make sure that the public comment is included and that we hopefully include living buildings as well. I think you can sometimes get out. Are there any other comments? I see. Councilmember Herbold, the floor is yours if you have a question for the amendment sponsor, Councilmember Lewis. It's been said that there's a concern that for buildings that have been have submitted their their permit applications as living buildings, that if we passed an amendment today that had those buildings that had already submitted their permits as a living building and were already in the design review process, that they would then that that might somehow be a damper, might have a chilling effect on on on either those particular buildings or future buildings. I want to just clarify that this is only for buildings that have already filed their permits and are already have already already have a design review track. This is not for future living buildings. This is only for the ones that are that are currently on track. And I think. I am speculating that the costs associated with redesigning one of those buildings to not be subject to the same design review track as they are before passage of this legislation would be pretty, pretty extensive. So I'm just giving you another another chance to defend your your amendment or correct me if I'm wrong. And I also want to reference the point of the bill sponsor. Councilmember Strauss, for the purposes just I know we all know what the rules are among us on the Council, but for purposes of the viewing public, I just want to clarify that we don't require the consent of of bill sponsors in order to bring forward amendments during full council, even in this very in this very stressful time of trying to hear hear legislation not in committee, but all only in full council. So we have we're working on a compressed time, time period. And I believe Councilmember Straus was only referring to his preference to not address new issues that we as individual council members do, as long as we follow our rules, do have the ability to bring forward amendments, even in this in this time of compressed meetings. Thank you. So I think there was a question in there for Councilmember Lewis that I'll let him field in terms of the procedure and council rules. I'll I'll address that since since I am the presiding officer, if you will, on these meetings. You are you are correct, Councilmember Herbold, that so long as council rules are followed, amendments can be brought forward by any of us as individually elected council members. I took Councilmember Strauss's comments as being a preference that that not occur, given that he is the prime sponsor of this council bill. And that is pretty ordinary. Many of us on many occasions who have a message that or signaled that in the course of advancing our legislation, that that we're not supporting a particular amendment because of a feeling that it's untimely or opens up potential new issues that could compromise the need to pass a bill on a particular timeline. So I think you're absolutely correct in your observation that it's not a rule that new issues not be brought up. But I do I do sort of want to agree with that that perspective and with sort of my understanding of Councilmember Strauss's plea, which was let's let's minimize the issues we're considering here, given given that this is our second go around on this. And I certainly respect his encouragement for us to expedite this. That's where. Lewis. Can you. Would you like to address the question that was posed by Councilmember Herbold? And then I see Councilmember Strauss has raised his hand. Yeah, very briefly. I mean, you know, I think it is it's an open question as to the concerns that Councilmember Mosquito raised. And I think they are, well, well-taken. And I'm glad that she did raise it as to whether kind of any kind of legislating around this pilot program could have a freezing effect or deterrent effect, I think that's certainly something that is credible to bring up and credible to raise. I would say that the way that the amendment is drafted, it would actually only ever, for the entire history of this amendment, affect three projects, because any subsequent projects that did come in, as Councilmember Skirboll mentioned in her comments, would immediately be put into the administrative review track. So it would only be these projects that are already engaged in design review, have had a meeting and are sort of locked. This amendment would basically lock those three projects in. So the 15 current living building projects, only three would be affected. No subsequent living building project would be affected by the amendment. They would be able to take advantage of the other letting the administrative track that the ordinance provides. But I do think the broader point made by Councilmember Skate is certainly fair and and appreciate it. I would also add that there'd be a procedural not or not. I do appreciate Councilmember Strauss's indulgence in letting this issue be aired. So I want to thank him for that. And that that can even be my closing comments to on the amendment. Council President. If after Councilmember Strauss's comments you were to come back to me, I think I'll just rest on that and and leave it there. Thank you, Councilmember Lewis. I appreciate that. And Councilmember Strauss, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you. I think the fact that we've had this long of debate on this amendment is probably approving Councilmember Strauss's point around not wanting to introduce a last minute issues into an already kind of complex bill. But Councilmember Strauss, I'll go ahead and hand it over to you. Yes, I'm just responding to Councilmember Herbold. You are correct in everything that you've said, I and really, I just want to say thank you to Councilmember Lewis for bringing this process forward. And with that, Councilmember Lewis, great work. All right. Okay. Council rooms. Get a one. One last time. I need you to really be succinct and in. And let's let's try to move forward on this minute. Thank you, council president. You know, I am really hopeful that this legislation does pass today, and I'm hopeful that we get a chance to revisit the living building conversation that Councilmember Lewis has started. Thank you so much. I know that you understand where I'm coming from. Councilmember Lewis, so appreciate the ongoing work that you are doing to try to elevate the issue of how folks continue to stay engaged in these conversations. I shouldn't have asked the question this morning when we had the opportunity here from central staff. I think that it does bear sort of me underscoring. I think that we have a difference of opinion, though, and perhaps I'm reading it wrong. But my my read is that projects in the future would not be able to opt in to participating in living buildings later in the permitting process if this amendment is in place. And so I'm not sure that I am reading it the same way. I am hopeful that the amendment doesn't hang and we can continue to look into this question and and have a conversation about the importance of living buildings in the future. But I worry that if projects decide to opt into living buildings after they go through an early design guidance, they would be stuck in a full design review path. And so that's where my concern is coming from. I don't want to sort of belabor the point any more because I know you're about to call the question, but I think that just precisely because this question is out there and I have a different read of it, I wanted to underscore my concern about the language as is. I won't repeat myself. Councilmember Lewis, I appreciate everything you did to put this forward, but I just wanted to be clear about where my my concerns were coming from. Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda. Councilmember Lewis, you are the primary sponsor of this amendment. I know that you had indicated that you didn't have anything else to add, but just wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to have the last word if you need to have it done. I'll stand by my previous commitment to rest it where I did. That's what I like to hear. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and move forward. I'm going to close out discussion on the Lewis amendment, too, and and ask that the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of version two of the Lewis amendment. Peterson, I. So I don't. No. Strauss Yeah. Herbold, I. SUAREZ No. Lewis. I. MORALES No. Macheda? No. President Gonzalez. Now. Three in favor, six opposed. Thank you. The motion fails and the amendment is not adopted. Are there any further comments on the bill as amended and colleagues. This is going to be a vote on. The next thing that we're going to do is we're going to make we're going to we're going to vote on that on the passage of the bill as amended today and last Monday. So are there any comments on the bill as amended? I saw Councilmember Lewis first, then Councilmember Peterson and then Councilmember Morales. So I'm going to be really brief. I mean, I do intend to vote for this ordinance again today, as I did last week. I did want to flag just a couple of things first. You know, I continue to to implore Stsci to develop a way to conduct these meetings online sooner rather than later. You know, I actually if there's any council members here that's privy to more information on the current status of that, since SETI has now had an additional week to plan and prepare for that. If anyone can provide that information, that would be great. Because, you know, I do think that that it is critical. It's really the underlying issue here. There wouldn't even be any debate in this, wouldn't be a contentious issue if we could see a plan of action or see some more public effort on the part of Stsci to stand up this meeting. So I would just flag that one more time that, you know, I would urge the department to do that sooner rather than later. The second thing I would say is I have talked to Stsci and I know a number of folks in my district commenting today have been sending me emails, I've been reaching out some talking about particular and specific projects. Folks at Stsci have told me that they're happy to work with my office to make sure people concerned about particular projects can get in touch, that their input can be taken in, as Councilmember Mesquita indicated earlier, into the administrative process, and that they can be included in that administrative process. So I just wanted to flag if there's folks there still listening, if there's specific projects you're concerned about, contact my office and I'll make sure that you're put in touch with Stsci so that you can engage in the administrative process. And those are the only comments I wanted to make before voting on this. I think you council member Lewis for those remarks. I am now going to move over to Councilmember Peterson, who's next in the queue for Peterson. The floor is yours. Thank you. Again, I want to thank Council President Gonzales and Councilmember Strauss for providing us with an extra week between April 13 and April 20 to review this complex council bill. 119769. I'd also like to thank the many constituents who have written with their views on the legislation, whether they are for or against this council bill. They clearly care about land use policies, real estate projects, their neighborhoods and our city. I also appreciate the various amendments from my council colleagues to try to make this legislation better, to be consistent with my vote last week. And based on. My many years of experience in the field of commercial real estate finance, I will be voting no again because I don't think it meets the requirements of an emergency, and I'm concerned that reduces input and discussion from the general public. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Peterson, we're not going to hear from Councilmember Morales or yours. Thank you, everyone, for this long discussion. I want to thank Councilmember Strauss and his staff for working with my office over the last week, the last few weeks. We've heard lots of concerns from neighbors, particularly in the Chinatown International District. So I appreciate your willingness to collaborate with us. I will say I do intend to support this bill, and I stand conflicted in this, as I said last week. I do think that this bill conflates some issues around affordable housing with lots of other issues. It moves construction forward, and we might think that that is generally a good thing. But the only way to address the affordable housing issue is to prioritize and build affordable housing. And this bill seems to be, especially as it relates to the Chinatown International District. The overwhelming majority of projects, there are hotels and market rate condos. So, you know, I was elected to ensure that we have a racial equity lens as we're making these decisions and quickening the pace of administrative backlog in the name of progress very often has disparate impacts on communities of color. I was elected to stop displacement and knowing that making the development process easier is rarely a benefit for the communities that I represent. And the trade off is that what's seen as efficient for government or for developers often means inequity for my community. So I do plan to vote yes today, and this will be my first and last concession in the name of easing process or relieving administrative burdens, especially if it means that it will accelerate disaster gentrification. It's my responsibility to vote in a way that benefits my community. Sometimes that means slowing down the process to ensure that their voices are heard. But don't mistake that for naivete or for confusion. That's about ensuring that those voices have access to power. I know that we all want to see affordable housing built, and it's going to we're going to have regular discussions about how to make that happen . And I know that if our plans for a post-COVID life mean going back to business as usual, we will have done this wrong. So I look forward to continuing conversations with all of you about how to ensure that the recovery is just and equitable and that we work together to make sure that that happens. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilmember Morales, I know that we have other council members who might want to make comment on the bill before we. But I'm going to give Councilmember Strauss as the primary sponsor the final word. But I see Councilmember Herbals is raise your hand. Please. The floor is yours. Thank you. As I hope I have expressed over the last couple of weeks, I'm generally supportive of this legislation, excepting the concern, as I've expressed last, with the section of the bill that exempts affordable housing from all design review. I believe this section of the law is in conflict with the Governor's Proclamation 2028 relating to adherence to the Open Public Meetings Act and the State Attorney General's guidance on that proclamation. This guidance states that the matter before the Council must be a matter that is either necessary and routine or necessary to respond to the COVID 19 outbreak and current public health emergency. My amendment failed last week by one vote. Had it passed, I would have supported this bill. Council rules dictate that I cannot make a motion for reconsideration of this amendment. Because they wanted to find a way to support the bill. I considered altering the amendment substantially enough so that I could bring forth another version of my amendment. But I was unable to find a substantial enough edit that would fulfill our council rules that are reconsidered. Motion be substantially a substantially new question while also accomplishing my goal of removing the section that I believe conflicts with the Governor's Proclamation 2028 relating to adherence to the Open Public Meetings Act. Finally in. And in order to find another way to support this bill, I also reached out to Seattle Department of Construction Director Tom Wilson again to see if the findings could be written. The findings are the the the the words in the bill that explain the why it is in this case we feel that this is consistent with the governor's PMA Act order. So I reached out to see if the findings could be written differently to clarify that this section of the bill actually addressed a need related to the COVID 19 crisis. For instance, I suggested perhaps there might be barriers to the existing CCI policy that affordable housing be prioritized as a result of the current public health emergency, or the passage of this bill putting more other kinds of construction projects through administrative design review. My hope was to include legal findings like these in the legislation that might create a legal path forward. Unfortunately, Director Tom Wilson responded that I mean, it's good news that this is the case, but it did not meet my my, my hoped to draft the different legal finding. But the response was ultimately good news that if a significant number of projects were to move from full design review to administrative design review due to the passage of this legislation and affordable housing projects were still required to go through administrative design review. We would continue to prioritize affordable housing projects in relation to market rate housing projects and commercial projects going through design review. So consequently, I could not conceive of another finding to clarify that this section of the bill actually addressed a need resulting from the COVID 19 crisis. Despite all of my efforts, I don't see a path forward for me to support this bill with. That includes brand new policy to address a need unrelated to COVID 19. That is, I believe, out of the scope of the Governor's proclamation. I have been a stalwart supporter of affordable housing for three decades, and I heard many people testify last week and today that the need to change administrative design review predated the COVID 19 crisis. I would have been interested in design review reform at the right time, but my commitment to the Open Public Meetings Act and the obligations to follow it when deliberating on new policy unrelated to COVID 19 is unwavering in principle. Nevertheless, I really appreciate the support of amendments by council members last week that I have sponsored regarding a number of amendments, a number of issues, including regarding historic landmarks that were supported by historic Seattle. Thank you. I thank you, Councilmember, for those remarks. Are there any other council members who'd like to make some remarks at this point? Hey. And Counselor Suarez. I'm not ignoring you. You do have some remarks you'd like to make. I'm happy to. Hear from you. Actually, for the love of God, let's take the vote. Okay. Councilmember Suarez. Thank you. Thank you so much. We will we will make sure that the record reflects that. Those are your comments. Bill, you know, I just wanted to before I hand it over to Councilmember Strauss, who's going to make the closing remarks. I do want to address Councilmember Rebel's comments that she believes that that the inclusion of certain portions of this bill run afoul of the governor's proclamation that prohibits us from considering anything that is either not COVID 19 related or that is neither routine nor necessary. I do want to say that I and my staff spent quite a bit of time talking with the law department in consultation with the clerk's office, to evaluate very closely this bill, just like we evaluate all of the legislation that comes before us to make a determination as to whether or not it is appropriately before the City Council in the construct of the Governor's proclamation. And again, while I think that, you know, there could be different perspectives and points of view and in fact, I think that the example is right here, it's a living example. I think Councilmember Herbold has a a much more conservative read of the proclamation. I, however, came to the conclusion, along with a lot of partment, that there's enough of a nexus here for us to appropriately consider this bill as as COVID and emergency related. So there is an argument that can be made. There is an argument that has been made. There is, you know, many conversations I've had with the Office of Housing, for example, related to. The realities of how this economic crisis is going to impact not just access to affordable housing, but the development of affordable housing. And our design review processes and permits and other administrative processes has a direct impact on what that pipeline will look like in the future. So they're very is, in my view, a reasonable, rational connection between trying to address some of the operational issues that we control as government in the context of this emergency that I think merit action and consideration by the city council. Now, through this Council Bill, in order to address those real operational impacts that are before us in in only because we are in, in an emergency response period of time in where the way that business is usually conducted by these commissions and by the Office of Housing are directly impacted. So I just feel really I feel compelled to sort of explain my rationale and my reasoning for allowing this legislation to be on the introduction referral calendar in the first place. And again, I respect that there is a difference of opinion as it relates to the applicability of the Governor's proclamation on this particular bill. And colleagues, I will and will endeavor to work with each of you transparently and collaboratively on future Council bills to make sure that we have consistent application of the Governor's Proclamation, so long as it is in effect, on future pieces of legislation that come before the Council. So that with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Councilmember Strauss to close out debate so that we can, as Councilmember wise, his so aptly put it, for the love of God, put this to a vote. Thank you, council president and thank you, Councilmember Juarez, for that extra little oomph of getting it. Let's wrap this up. So I want to start by restating my goal, which is to get this bill passed. If Kevin Scofield last week wrote about this is what council looks like in the area in the era of OPM, where open public meetings, act requirements require us to not count votes. And so sometimes this becomes messy in the public's eye. And so this is my request that if anyone we have heard from Councilmember Herbold about what is needed for her to support this bill. There's anyone who's not anticipating to support the bill who had done so previously. Please make that be known before we take this vote. You know, really what I want to say is this experience has demonstrated to me the complexity of working remotely on complex information, very deep amounts of detailed analysis has to be done. And working remotely can sometimes be challenging. So I want to thank my colleagues. Councilmember Lewis, Councilmember Peterson, I know. Thank you for all of your thoughts. Council President Gonzales And a pleasure. Councilmember Swan. Thank you. Councilmember Herbold. Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda. Councilmember Morales, thank you very much for your work over this last week. Councilmember Waters Thank you for your get it done mentality. And finally, I want to thank the staff, Noah and my office, Ketel, Allie Lish, the Lexus Devan Christina Gunn passed away. Anthony Arriola for your assistance in this bill. That's all I have. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Strauss So I'm going to go ahead and close out debate and discussion on this particular bill. And I'm going to ask the clerk to please call the role of the passage of the bill as amended. PETERSON No. So what. I. Strauss, I. Purple Day. Excuse me. Nay? No. Thank you. Juarez. Yes. I'm sorry. Where is. Yes. Thank you, Louis. I. Morales. I. Let's get up. I. President Gonzalez. I. Seven in favor, two opposed. Okay. The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it. I would ask that the clerk please fix my signature to the legislation. Thank you, colleagues, for that conversation. We're going to go ahead and move quickly through our agenda. The good news is that we spent a lot of time on that particular agenda, which is agenda item one, but it's going to be smooth sailing from here on out. So item two is our next agenda item. Will the clerk please read agenda item two into the record?