[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] katie uh the study session for the york city council for monday august 16 2021 is called order with the clerk please read the rule mayor kaufman mayor pro-tem bergen here council member berzins here councilmember coombs president councilmember gardner here councilmember gruber here councilmember hilts here council member lawson here council member marcano president and council member mario president there's a forum uh um with the clerk please uh director's staff to do the announcement for the call-in line thank you for joining tonight's aurora city council study session if you are listening on the phone please note public comments are not taken during study sessions the phone line is in listen only mode the council does welcome comments from residents at regular council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda and during public invited to be heard on those nights the phone line will open at 6 pm to sign up for public comment thank you [Music] without objection i would like to move uh item number 4a the cp21 report uh to the beginning of the calendar beginning of the agenda is there any objection yeah no objection but um is it possible i know this is unusual during study session but just take a moment of silence for the um afghan people our military that are being deployed there now very well uh without objection uh we will take a moment of silence uh to pray for the people of afghanistan and our military personnel who are trying to extract the us citizens and allies of the united states out of the country got a moment of silence very well please proceed with uh cp21 report anyone i believe sean smith is leaving and he's been talking but perhaps he's on mute sean can we touch your camera or your microphone can you hear me now we can okay good evening mr mayor mayor pro temp city manager twombly members of the city council it's a pleasure to be with you this evening my name is sean smoot i'm the managing partner of 21cp solutions um first let me start at the outset as a united states army veteran myself thanking you for uh the moment of silence to start this meeting um 21cp solutions is a company that was founded by myself charles ramsey who's you'll be hearing from later in our presentation and uh roberto villa senor the three of us worked together on president obama's task force on 21st century policing and when that work concluded uh decided to move forward with a forming a company and starting direct consulting work for police departments across the united states and across the globe we do consent decree monitoring work assessment work like the work that we've done for the aurora police department and the report that you received a few days ago and a myriad of other uh consultancies uh related to public safety uh around the country um i'm going to lead off our presentation today just by introducing myself and each member of our team will introduce themselves when they when they first speak i am an attorney by training a former law enforcement officer from the state of illinois i've worked in and around policing for almost 30 years now i've had the incredible opportunities to work with folks in police reform and particularly with uh chief ramsey um i served on the executive session at harvard's kennedy school uh i uh for six years i served on the president's task force on 21st century of course and i serve on consent decree monitoring teams in the city of cleveland and the city of baltimore also have assisted the city of seattle in completing their consent decree [Music] on accountability each of us will discuss a different aspect of our report and let me just say at the outset we'll be giving you a high level view of the report clearly as you've probably seen if you've had an opportunity to look at it the report is voluminous it includes over 160 pages we make 48 overarching recommendations and i would be remiss if i didn't take this opportunity to to um say a few thank yous to the folks uh in aurora who uh really helped contribute to our work um and i and i should say this too um it's it was very courageous um in my view and it's uh i'm also a former elected alderman uh for city management uh elected officials and particular police departments um to to bring in an outside entity to to take a look at what they're doing and um and make recommendations on ways to improve not all not a lot of police departments uh do that um and i think that the city of aurora and the aurora police department should be lauded for doing so and i know that this is not the only assessment that the city and its police department have undergone in the past uh 24 months and i think it's uh i think it's really uh commendable that um that they've been willing to uh welcome us in and i should say for your benefit we received complete cooperation from the police department and from the city manager's office and all of the city officials that we talked to some of which were in fact some of you and so i i want to just on behalf of our company thank all of you and uh and everyone that we talked to we talked to over 220 folks inside the city police department inside the city administration the civil service commission and in the community and and i believe what you have is a very good product as a result of all the contacts that we made our report is broken down into six areas um and uh i will say some of the issues that we address uh overlap uh with other efforts that the city has made and the department has made in terms of self-assessment in particular some of these things overlap with the report that was done in response to the unfortunate death of elijah mclean uh and and uh i also am aware that the city is under uh has has been undergoing an investigation by the attorney general's office i will say at the outset we have not seen any documents related to that investigation although we strongly believe that our findings that are included in this report will be consistent with uh with any findings that are done by an outside entity the areas that we will address give you an overview of tonight will be critical operations community engagement and participation organization and command structure the selection supervision and support of personnel accountability and equipment technology and data systems let me now introduce my colleague charles ramsey chuck would you introduce yourself and uh lead us through the recommendations with regard to critical operations thanks john chuck ramsey here i'm a partner at 21cp good evening i guess this evening for me and probably late afternoon for some of you maybe if i have my time change uh correct anyway um let me tell you a little something about myself um i've been in policing my entire adult life i spent 30 years as a member of the chicago police department starting in 68 as a police cadet i rose to the rank of deputy superintendent and in 1998 i left to become police chief in washington d.c where i served nearly nine years i then left d.c retired very briefly and then came back into service where i served as police commissioner in philadelphia for eight years with mayor michael nutter currently like sean i am a member of the monitoring team in baltimore and in cleveland ohio i'm an advisor to the u.s conference of mayors i chair the pennsylvania commission on crime and delinquency for governor tom wolf here in pennsylvania and i also have the honor of serving as co-chair of president obama's task force on 21st century policing back in 2015. i've been asked to cover a very critical area of police operations beginning with use of force before i get into use of force um let me just kind of give you just a little bit of background in that particular area that's one of the most critical areas of operation for any police department um we took a look at um a data that the department provided to us from 2016 through uh 2020. now there are a couple different ways of looking at data as it relates to use of force one is looking at it by incident which is a an incident is uh defined as an encounter involving an officer in a in a distinct individual so it's it's an incident one incident you also look at it through um something called application application means the type of force that's being used you can have one incident and you can have more than one application for example you can have a use of force incident that involves a takedown of an individual uh the use of control holds perhaps the use of a taser that would all be one incident but it would be multiple applications of force and of course if you have multiple officers then obviously you're going to have even more uh applications of force the aurora pd uses a way of of categorizing uses of force very similar to what a lot of departments do they have three different tiers the most serious is tier three that is a use of deadly force or potentially deadly force a force that could lead to very serious injury uh to a suspect uh tier two is more of a mid-level as use of an impact weapon for an example a baton taser something like that it causes injury but it doesn't cause hospitalization and of course tier one is your lesser use of force there's no injury to the suspect there could be some pain using control holds and things of that nature the good news is that from 2016 to through 2020 there's been a steady decline in the use of force in the aurora pd now 2020 we did take a look at but we all know that was an unusual year because of kovit um there was a reduced number of calls from service but there was still a reduction in end use of force but 2020 is a year that really is going to stand out across the country as it relates to police departments and their reporting of crime and uses of force the first recommendation we made was that the policies need to be revised there needs to be more specificity in terms of the guidance for officers um that first recommendation has 14 different subsets uh just to show you the complexity of this whole area of use of force right now with the department uh you have at least 10 different directives that cover use of force in your directives manual chapter 5 of the directives manual so it's spread out and what you really need is something a lot more focused again it needs to be streamlined there needs to be more emphasis on de-escalation uh they need to define the various terms a lot of what we saw when we went through the directives was really a repeat of colorado law it really was not as as specific as it should be to give officers the kind of clarity in terms of direction uh that they need to have uh one thing that i didn't mention earlier but i think it's important in taking a look at overarching issues in use of force we did see disparity in terms of force being applied uh particularly toward african americans african americans make up at least african-american males make up nine percent of your population but they're like 29 of the use of force uh cases uh and so that's something we got to dig a little deeper uh to take a look at and we'll talk about a little later on in another part of the presentation around stop data and things of that nature but we do need to take a little deeper dive as it relates to that policy is one thing but policy drives your training and training really needs to be revised it really does need to focus more on decision making many departments have had the traditional use of force continuum we call it a way of looking at force from a lower level all the way up to it including deadly force but now departments are really starting to take a look at a decision-making model that's really reflective of best practices and we recommend that aurora really take a strong look at something like that and also incorporate reality-based training as part of that to reinforce uh their use of force training to help officers as they make decisions and really challenge them to make sure that they're making a good solid decisions when they're out on on the street the policies and procedures for your force review board to make sure it's objective fair and comprehensive whenever a use of force is reported to make sure that the following investigation is thorough complete and objective the directive's manual i already mentioned um they really do need to be more scenario based uh training um and also um when you talk about stops detentions and arrests really we're not capturing or you're not really capturing any data as it relates to non-consensual stops in other words people that are being stopped on the street this isn't part of community policing or anything there's reasonable suspicion to believe that an individual either has committed or is about to commit a crime of some kind you have to capture that information properly record it uh what were the circumstances surrounding that particular stop what's the sex of the individual the race of the individual all those kinds of things that way capturing that kind of data allows you to be able to analyze it to make sure that you don't have a problem in terms of bias policing when it comes to the way in which officers interact with members of the public even under circumstances where they have to actually challenge individuals on the street for whatever reason so they definitely need to be documenting that and right now that's really not happening the way it ought to the next slide is around bias policing i already touched on that a bit again that data is going to give you the ability to be able to really monitor and make sure that you don't have a problem any individual officer or you start to see a pattern emerge where it looks as if officers are engaged in biased policing of any kind crisis intervention you have a crisis response team within aurora pd a very good uh crisis response team that handles the bulk of the calls from people that are going through some kind of crisis uh mental health is the one that's more common um give you an example of the volume of work that they do uh over a 20-month period uh that we looked at there were like 3 300 calls for service that your crisis response team actually responded to you also have officers that have undergone training a crisis intervention team training that's based on a model that was developed in memphis tennessee it's 40 hours worth of training and it really does focus on de-escalation identifying individuals that are going through a mental health crisis and are or under extreme stress and being able to de-escalate the situation so it can be resolved without having to resort to any kind of force at all you do have many officers that have undergone cit training but they're not being used as effectively as perhaps they they could be there is a requirement to obviously notify crt crisis response team in certain situations but you really do need to take advantage of your cit train members as well to be able to fill that void that gap with crt is not available the cit trained officers ought to be integrated more the chief does want to expand crisis response does want to work more toward getting your cit officers more involved and i think that's really a positive direction to move in uh with that let me turn things over to jessica drake who's going to talk to you about community engagement and participation thank you first i'm going to allow sean smith a moment to speak scott i believe you're muted thanks jess uh real quick before jessica uh starts on uh community engagement participation i i do uh uh make a note and i meant to mention this at the outset um you know oftentimes we do these assessments and and present reports and um folks get the uh the sense or feeling that um we're accentuating the negative uh only and um i just want to be clear uh for the council and those listening in particular um that you know you should know that as our work unfolded and we had discussions with the the police department the chief the city manager and others the department actually has started uh implementing some of our recommendations uh of their own volition and in key areas including use of force accountability and an area that chuck spoke about in significant detail and an area which most if not all police departments struggle with with which is which is uh which is good data collection and analysis so uh i we do want to make sure that uh um we are giving you a balanced view of the city and of the police department and uh i i meant to mention that before we got started so i appreciate you giving me the opportunity to do so now jessica please introduce yourself thanks sean hi everyone i'm jessica drake i've been with 21cp since their inception but before that i started my career working with returning citizen populations in east baltimore through that i got an in-depth look at where community policing did ended at work for my home community and found myself working on a national stage with the department of justice office of community oriented policing as a grantee to help identify emerging issues in that field my career led me to supporting the president's task force on 21st century policing and logistics providing technical support and helping to write the final document as well as the implementation guide that came out out after and the year since i've helped in a number of different reform spaces with 21cp including in university campuses in major cities across the nation i currently serve on the baltimore consent decree monitoring team and i've been really happy to be a part of program management with the aurora project and learn about your wonderful community so to get started in community policing let me just say again that 21cp met with a number of community stakeholders in the creation of this report roughly 220 interview reviews were conducted with apd staff officers command community members task force members city council members educators faith-based leaders youth representatives and community organizations we listened we heard stories of success and heroism from apd we heard stories of fear and pain from communities that felt targeted based on their race or gender we learned about strong police community partnerships and where they fell short we heard the gamut but where we heard repeated things reoccurring and based on our knowledge of national best practices in community policing public safety and the truest intentions of what community policing was meant to be in its early design this is where we focused our recommendations in community engagement and participation aurora has in the space of public task forces and thinking through community listening aurora has appeared to develop a wealth of community task force related to policing and public safety issues over the years however both city leaders and members of the community indicated at 21cp that the various bodies that have been less have been less effective in building relationships between the community and the police or at identifying and implementing implementing specific solutions to the problems largely because there are so many groups that the work they work in silos and on different issues at different times and often when they're differing opinions on the same issue when they arise it's hard to consider how it all aligns this leaves the apd in the position of determining whose opinion to prioritize when setting policy these dynamics as well as others within aurora's task forces and communities mean that even as the city structurally is attempting to engage in substantive community listening and building on issues relating to policing and public safety many aurora residents do not feel like those structures adequately adequately reflect their views and allow their participation 21cp recommends that aurora should ensure that community policing task forces or something that they'll like serve as a permanent and standing body going forward that leads the city in creating a new shared vision of public safety in aurora among other primary tasks it should be responsible for helping to facilitate with the input from aurora's diverse state holders and communities on a definition of public safety in aurora that really defines the roles and responsibilities of the police department and the roles and responsibilities of other government and city stakeholders with respect to community safety and well-being it should also help in the creation and maintain maintenance of a community safety plan geared towards translating aurora's vision of public safety into operational milestones deliverables and deadlines they should convene regularly with listening sessions that are could incorporate relevant stakeholders but also subject matter experts to really explain critical issues so that as they build the community safety plan they're hyper-informed and it should coordinate across aurora's many government and institutional stakeholders on issues relating to public safety the police area representatives unit known as par and the community relations unit have a unique role in the aurora police department the power unit was created to engage deeper problem solving throughout the communities of aurora the unit's efforts are meant to engage in an active relationship building in community-based problem-solving based on their directives and their manual in a manner that can promote to improve quality of life and decreased crime and violence in aurora although this is a valued unit in its design many residents felt like they couldn't identify their par officers and those that did felt that due to kova that relationship had really faltered as 21cp analyzed this gap and understanding around community engagement and problem solving in the community we learned more broadly that the power officers themselves see their role more more as a tool for their fellow patrolmen more that they are a resource than that they are a resource for the community par officers report being required to handle everything from parking violations and animal control issues to homelessness challenges while also serving as conduits to various city entities in order to allow their peers to be more readily available to move from call to call chief wilson recently created apd's community relations section in january 2021. this section includes recruiting community relations office officers aurora for youth programs police explorers and the chiefs community police advisory team and the chief's youth advisory team 21cp understands that this is a new section is tasked with leading community engagement and problem solving at apd going forward at present the community relations unit was too new for us to really meaningfully review and evaluate however the amount of programming that the group has planned and the growth growth of its activities is super encouraging and we're really excited to see it we recommend to the extent that the police area representative unit and the community relations sections were main core elements of community engagement strategy apd should really endeavor to enhance the quality and impact of those units we also recommend that apd should provide par officers with annual training on key community problem solving topics to ensure that all the unit officers develop in-depth skills relating to best practices in community-centered and problem-solving approaches we also want to note that apd should provide formalized and regular mechanisms for our officers and the community relations unit to share their expertise experience and community relationships with the broader department this should not remain a silo effort they should include everyone in the department in the context of their role and really do in-service trainings for everyone based on their unique skills in conclusion aurora has a number of stakeholders who raised community issues and problems that may not be required of an armed police officer response and are therefore immediately right for alternative responses systems that do not relate to apd but are not limited to crisis intervention traffic accidences accidents response to residential and commercial alarms property considerations and welfare checks in discussions with apd and command staff and city leadership 21cp learned about some early initiatives aimed at identifying community needs that may be best situated for responses that do not involve sworn apd personnel and we are encouraged by that effort i'll turn now to my colleague nola joyce who will walk you through organization and command structure nola thanks jessica um so i'm going to very briefly introduce myself and just say i followed chuck ramsey in my career i too started out in chicago police department as a deputy director for research and development i joined him in washington dc as the senior executive director and chief administrative officer for that department and was convinced to join in once again up in philadelphia as i retired there as a deputy commissioner uh two things about my career i want to point out one is uh the unique ability to have worked in three very large and important agencies departments and and secondly that my career was one of uh being a civilian throughout i never was a sworn officer always worked as a civilian and as such i came into policing as an outsider working in the inside and that allowed me to develop a unique perspective and i think also contributed to some of the efforts there in those three departments i'm also a partner with 21cp and like chuck and sean and jessica have worked across the country on many projects so i'm going to talk about organization and command structure whenever their department is going through rapid changes such as aurora it's not unusual to find that their directives lag behind what has been changed that's understandable understandable but we're just pointing this out and urging that the directives get updated and reflect recent changes and at minimum that an order come out of the chief's office making clear what is the current organizational structure and any directive changes the crime analysis function is so critical in a modern day police department especially as resources begin to dwindle and demand doesn't this recommendation really looked at recommending a supervisory analyst which we understand has been brought on board by the city and and one of the roles or functions of this animal supervisor should be of coordination across all the analysts which are assigned to various units ensuring quality control of both the data sets that are used and the data and reports that are produced ensuring that sufficient training and onboarding occurs for the analysts throughout their career and and coordinating efforts certainly having analysts assigned to various units is a good thing but it's what has to happen is that coordination across units uh this uh next recommendation really we we discovered uh that there have been numerous studies or several studies already in existence that uh the police department asked to be taken undertaken so for example there was a study by the novak consulting department that looked at staffing and the staffing levels and staffing plan although it's a 2018 study there are really quite a few recommendations in there we think should be brought back and revisited our experience also suggests that the workload very seldom changes in a department unless uh the department makes significant changes in how the work is done so the point being that although this study is a few years old we think it's worth revisiting especially by a small work group to determine if any of those recommendations should be part of this overall change effort that's currently underway we also are suggesting that that the police department look at both non-sworn and external applicants to fill command staff vacancies we understand that again as sean said has already uh been done to some extent and we just encourage that that continues when there's a vacancy reason being if you look at the pipeline inside of the aurora police department for diversity is not very promising because you don't have them in the lower you don't have diversity in the lower ranks and this is one way to increase diversity in the department at the top ranks uh quickly um we also are recommending that uh the department actually codify in policy the process for selecting commanders and division chiefs the reason for this is for transparency both within the department and with the community about how individuals are selected for command and secondly inside the department it's really important for people to understand how these positions are filled the uh other piece that perhaps chuck may want to talk a little bit more about is the leadership program for the command staff yeah thanks nola um you know this is an area that departments around the country for the most part um could improve on and that is developing talent within their own organization leadership development at all levels within the organization that gives you that broader pool and more diverse pool that you need for individuals to step up into the top leadership uh positions and one of the things that we certainly recommend is that apd implement a leadership and professional development program for comm for command staff but i would argue also for other levels within the department as well first line mid managers and so forth and that's for both sworn and civilian again it is not just about the sworn side there are many uh parts of policing now that really you need to have qualified professional civilian staff to be able to step into these various positions like forensics and things of that nature so that's one of our recommendations also something we heard from the various focus groups of officers is that they want to see their command staff a lot more often out on the street and uh visiting roll calls and so just increasing the level of visibility throughout the department is something that we feel is also important so no law yep so related to this is uh the selection of uh officers so including both uh recruitment and and hiring thank you jessica um and you know this is not new news um the diversity of apd uh does not uh reflect at all the um population of aurora and work needs to be done to bring that fetter in line so for example we don't think that recruitment can be or should be the responsibility of only the police department especially for people in the police department that the need here is so great and so important that it is not just a police department responsibility but it should also be a city-wide uh responsibility by that i mean everyone has a role in recruitment uh including civil service commission the city the community and the businesses because it's everybody's good to recruit and hire a diverse qualified police department and so we also think that the civil service commission really needs to take a review of the current hiring criteria i know you i know the council has heard from the civil service commission about their process and have heard the results of their own internal study but just to point out again between 2018 and 2020 there were like 5964 applicants so the recruitment was happening 183 people were hired that's three percent of the total applicants and then when you look at it by race fewer than one percent of the african-american apple applicants and 2.4 percent of the hispanic applicants made it through the hiring process um and where the biggest dropout occurred especially for the african-american uh population and i think you can go on just to come is in the area of suitability interview polygraph and full background and we really encourage that those areas get looked at in detail by every every step every criteria that is used to decide whether an applicant is suitable or not and to determine its the impact on hiring a greater diversity into the police department certainly we're not at all suggesting that one should lower standards but that sometimes as society changes we need to step back and look at the standards we used and see if they're still suitable for today's environment and finally i think it's fair to say that as a profession the police department police departments tend to do a decent job of selecting people out of the profession but we do a really poor job of selecting the right people into it and that's a different orientation and one i think we should explore even more so the fto program the fto program is the basis of the future of the apd not only for the it the officer in training and how he or she will perform their job on the street but also it's through the fta program that formal and informal culture of a police department is transmitted many of the changes recommendations that we've made in this report the police department has already taken steps to to implement and we want to acknowledge and and i think those are very good steps as they move forward sean thanks uh uh thanks nola and let me just say is this makes a very good segue into accountability i i just would um direct your attention to uh with regard to what nola was talking about in terms of recruiting and hiring and the civil service commission role uh uh in that process uh recommendation 41 in our report which says that the city of aurora should examine its civil service commission to ensure hiring and disciplinary decisions that are fair efficient timely equitable and consistent with the mission and goals of the city the police department and the community we had a lot of discussion with the civil service commission and got great cooperation uh from the civil service commission staff they spent a lot of time with with myself and other of our consultants explaining their processes and this is not in any way shape or form a statement that should be seen as an indictment of the civil service commission or its staff however realigning aurora with you know national best practices in the 21st century we we strongly believe that the city and the police department should work with the civil service commission and uh the city administration in particular the human human resources director as well as the community and the police organizations and the police union to to realign its systems not just in not just with with regard to handling disciplinary cases but with regard to hiring as well and um i know that's a heavy lift we've we've talked about it we talked to the civil service commission's attorney we talked the city's attorney um and and for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the city charter we understand that that there are uh there's a significant amount of effort involved in making changes uh but that doesn't mean they're not worth attempting and um you know and let me just shift into the the accountability of work um you know the police department is uh has been really since we started this work making efforts to reduce the amount of time it takes for complaints to be investigated and move through the review system for this final disposition the the fact of the matter is we spoke to folks in the police department's administration people in the community people in the city administration and a lot of police officers who work for the city all of whom expressed a good deal of frustration and a good deal might be a great deal of frustration um with the the process uh when it comes to reviewing officer allegations of officer misconduct uh just in terms of the timing and the length of time and and kind of the the current process is one which is uh very complicated um and not well understood um even by people within the police department and so um we really feel and and our report goes into some very significant detail of the ways um in which the system um um is challenged and and ought to be uh improved um but this is a this is an effort that will require a significant amount of of time and effort on behalf of all of the parties that i just named the police union the community the city administration and the civil service commission and uh but it is something that uh that really uh needs to be done your current system just in its own structure and the amount of time it takes for uh complaints to move through the process is not uh well grounded in in procedural justice theory for the complainant or for the officer upon whose a complaint has been made and um and this is uh this is something that can be fixed and there are a lot of good models and i think we give some good guidance in the report uh on that as well um i i i will note the department has done a significant amount of work as i said in improving the timing within the system that currently exists they don't control uh of the entire system and um and this really is gonna is gonna require uh people kind of putting their shoulder into it and being willing to have uh some some honest but difficult conversations about the roles and interplay of the various players in this system so beyond that we strongly uh feel and just to really highlight the kind of things that we're talking about in most uh police departments there are very significant and and fairly strict timelines that are codified in policy and procedure for the different stages of investigations those timelines are are um what's really kind of needed and they should be timelines that all the parties agree are realistic and can get done it's very damaging to the relationship between the community and the police department and the police officers who work for the police department for there to be a feeling or sense in the community that you know complaints aren't treated seriously um to see uh complaints that are not uh adjudicated uh or or uh where there is not a disposition reached in some cases for uh um several months up to and over a year um that really erodes the trust uh that that is necessary for the public to to um feel the police department um is acting in a way that's uh is procedurally just and so um but we really feel that the that the key components are uh outlined in our report and the and the um there's a clear direction that um the city can move and we certainly would be uh happy to discuss those things further with the city and the players if they desired us to do so um i'll uh go ahead and hand the mantle back over to nola and then we will be happy to answer uh questions if you have any uh go ahead nola so i just very simply here uh the two recommendations that we're highlighting highlighting is uh the need to really uh and this again just not the police department but also with the city uh to do a an assessment of current technology technology needs identify priorities including uh the maintenance and replacement of technology and to have that uh become part of the budget process similarly we suggest the same thing for facilities and equipment often police departments will buy whether it's technology or equipment and it's a one and done but that's not the case because there's always need for maintenance and replacement and with facilities the need to again it's maintenance and perhaps upgrades especially as you begin to look at how you want the police department to interface with the community in the future and what that means for facilities um thanks so at this point um we will um i'm not sure if it's the the if the mayor i'll take the helmet i will take that home uh let me ask the first question and that is can you go over again why you want um some of the physicians in the chain of command for uniform post-certified officers to be replaced by civilians so i'll i'll jump in first and then others please do the same uh so i'm a civilian and i've experienced that he i think there's two there's two uh uh myths within the policing profession one is if you if you've if you've never been sworn if you've never had a gun and you've never had a badge then you cannot understand anything that goes on inside the police department that's a myth because all that all it takes is uh sufficient onboarding and understanding of how a police department works and so i really think that the civilian the civilian positions and individuals can do several things first when we talk about diversity certainly we're talking about race ethnic background gender but also diversity and thought the police department not just aurora but across the country there's only two ways somebody can join the police department only two places at the very bottom as a police officer are at the very top as a chief otherwise you're growing from the inside well you kind of inbreed the culture you have a stagnant uh orientation and you begin to develop group think so by bringing in outsiders civilians among others you kind of break that good thing down secondly what you do is you bring into the department people who already have skills that you don't have to teach oftentimes perhaps a police officer didn't join a department to become a crime analyst he joined the police department to be a police officer or he didn't join a police department uh to be a paper pusher in a back office he joined it to be a police officer so i would argue and suggest that in any police department a good majority of the back office work that is any job that does not require a face-to-face relationship with the community and a gun and a badge to do the job could be done by a civilian and then also frees up your sworn officers to do the job that they were hired to do okay i thought you were taking positions that would traditionally be being done in a leadership role uh you know where uniform officers were supervised uniform officers but in a strictly law enforcement role so you're not saying that okay okay uh further uh questions of staff might be able to presenters yes for the um presentation and the report uh very thorough a lot of reading to do but um i did have a question you did know in your report our population and our population growth which actually seems a little bit low on the on the growth part but um did i don't know if i missed it in the report did you address how to deal with our increased crime in terms of you know current staffing levels because i am concerned that we we've lost you probably know we've lost a lot of officers last year and it continued to this year um and then i as a council member i get a lot of constituents that contact me about the rising crime and what are we doing about it so it's just did did you address that at all we uh we did um in in a few areas and uh let me talk about a little bit about um hiring and recruiting uh first that isn't that's a national trend um and we were it's our understanding that just since uh just in the last i think uh three or four months the aurora police department has lost 25 officers um i've heard 80 i've heard 80. i i mean just in the last i think since april maybe 25 in the in the last year i think it's your your numbers is closer and that is a that is a national trend um you have a few things uh that are unique about uh colorado in particular not necessarily just aurora but um but certainly some changes in state statute that folks that do police work have are viewing in a very negative sense with regard to things like qualified immunity are are certainly i think causing some people in policing to either reassess whether they want to be police or reassess if they want to work in a different jurisdiction and we're seeing that that trend not just in colorado but in other states where there's some significant police reform legislation for instance um the other thing is you're just you're you're also being affected by a very significant negative public image in nationwide of policing everyone is everyone is familiar with the george floyd death and that and a number of other incidents have brought policing under a great deal of scrutiny but also frankly [Music] painted police in a bad light and that in some cases is deserved but in many cases is also not deserved uh um and uh you know but unfortunately i'm an attorney uh you know when it when there's news of an attorney that has stolen a client's money or something like all attorneys are are kind of painted with that brush and i think you're you're battling that uh that as well right but as far as addressing the the violent crime and we we had a joint operation recently that was very successful but my concern is the reduction of our police officers and being able to to address that violent crime because that that is probably the number one thing i hear from from my constituents their concerns yeah and i think that's uh i and again you're also there's a crime is up everywhere um and uh that is also a national trend um and i think that um you know we've had a lot of discussions with the chief and with with the executive staff about strategies that will not only improve the police department but also help in reducing violent crime we were not asked um specifically to like target uh uh violence reduction um um we have done that kind of work uh in other places in fact nola is one of the nation's top experts on the reduction of violent crime and does a lot of work for the united states department of justice on that so we didn't look at its specific programming to do that but we are certainly uh happy to do that and uh we have i believe there's a piece of our contract that includes uh um public safety consulting um and we would be happy to well i guess maybe i'll just get a different way since you didn't i understand you didn't study that you know how to decrease crime but being that you did look at our operations and our staffing levels so you know detectives and patrolling and and that and game units uh narcotics do you think we're sufficiently staffed to handle the increased crime so sean if i can jump in yeah go ahead and then maybe chuck so uh so so the way what's happening across the country is really uh what we've learned is that we have to focus we have to focus our resources and and not do the the shatter uh shotgun approach and by that i mean uh for example uh and i think uh uh aurora does this but uh identifying those uh hot locations so you know where is the crime happening within those hot locations who are the hot offenders who are the people who are committing the the violent offenses and then uh focusing and focusing resources then in those violent places on those violent people but not just apd resources but coordinating across the system meaning that bringing in probation and parole for example working with the district attorney about uh prosecution strategies uh reaching out to federal partners such as atf which has been a great partner across the country when it comes to looking at fire shootings and homicides as well as the fbi uh and really developing a coordinated strategy across the system focusing on like i have said hot places and hot people uh that's how uh other places have found a way of reducing uh violence uh by using the research resources that currently exist through leveraging them and coordinating them i think again this is probably old numbers now uh but when uh but when back when we looked at it you had about 50 percent roughly of your police officers assigned to patrol the benchmark is closer to 60 percent also it appears when you look at the the staffing is that you may have the police department may have some gaps in staffing and it's like the lieutenant rank and may and may have too many and i'm not saying they do because i haven't done that deep of a dive but they might want to take a look at uh the command staff and see if there's you know too much command not enough uh down in the captain and lieutenant maybe maybe not i don't know um but those are the so the way to look at it is yes you want to hire up where you can you want to retain the good officers that are working for you and at the same time you can only work with what you have and by working with what you have you leverage your analytics you leverage your partnerships and you focus your resources on page 94 of our report to dig in a little more about what nola just mentioned sorry chuck go ahead no i was just going to say that well nola covered it very well but you asked the question do you have sufficient staffing right now i think you're under staff because you're losing more people than you're bringing on board and so that's an issue uh and it can't be overlooked so as a result of that because even if you were able to hire a new class tomorrow it takes time before they're ready to go on the street because of training and and so forth so you have to make some adjustments in the meantime and i have to look at how you're currently deploying the people that you currently have and whether or not you can afford to do some of the things that you would like to do but it's not really a core function in the sense of you've got to do it you've got to answer those calls for service the question is which calls do you actually send people on versus alternate ways of responding for an example you know can you take it over the phone can you take a report online you know those kinds of things as opposed to sending someone uh out there to uh actually take the report which just takes somebody out of service so there are a variety of things uh nola already mentioned you know who are the people who are actually you know committing a crime that's where crime analysis intelligence all those things so you can really focus and zero in on those bad actors that are causing a problem and but you got to have the cooperation of your district attorney you got to have cooperation of probation i mean everybody's got to pull together on this one because it's not going to get better uh on its own uh you know there has to be some action taken in order to make it better for everyone concerned and that's just my personal opinion but certainly a crime strategy crime plans everybody knows exactly what's expected of them who's responsible for doing what because you're not going to get out of this personnel the staffing issue probably for a couple years because that's how long it takes to make up for attrition and that's under the best of circumstances when there are people who are actually knocking the door down trying to become police officers again you're fighting against right now an environment where you know you need marketing and you've got to really sell the department uh in a different way because that's the only way you're going to be able to make up those numbers thank you further questions mayor mayor uh councilmember combs um as a follow-up to the question from mayor pro tem bergen i noticed that there is also um an issue with what or rather it was stated in the report that very little of our response and police time is spent on violent violent crime and in fact a similar or a significant amount is spent on non-criminal issues in general so can you comment on the impact of that on the department's ability to address crime well if i can just jump in real quickly and then nola and others just please jump in but no you're right i mean i in the report and during the course of our investigation we saw that the city when it comes to responding to people in crisis uh the city is looking at a model i think it's called right response or something of that nature where you know depending on the nature of it who's best suited to be that first responder right is it police should it be mental health should i mean who should be the first responder that needs to be done not just for that type of call but for all types of issues that you're dealing with police are the ones that wind up with everything i don't care if it's a homeless issue if it's substance abuse no matter what it is police get called and i understand how that evolves but at the same time it takes it takes away from their ability to be able to really focus in on those individuals who are really causing harm in the community but i would argue that it's not just about violent crime i mean property crime the fear of crime all those kinds of things play in to this notion of community safety which we use that term as opposed to public safety because when we say public safety we tend to think about police fire emergency medical whereas with people in community safety is much broader that takes in a lot of different things but combined it all adds up to the same thing making people feel safe and secure police only play a role in that they're not the only thing that makes that really happen so yeah i mean that's something at the city government level uh we need to be taking a strong look at that to see whether or not there are some areas where that can be offloaded from police doesn't mean they can totally be removed from it uh but maybe not be necessarily the first responder for everything i just i would just add that we need to to make a distinction between a call for service and the response and investigation and prevention of violent crime what when you look at calls for service as chuck just said and as the data shows uh the police department is called to respond to a variety of types of calls not all of them and pr and in fact what the data suggests uh the majority of them are not uh violent in nature um and so when we so when we talk about in this whole report is really if you step back it's a holistic approach so what we're saying is if you civilianize for example functions that do not require a sworn officer you're freeing up morse warren officers to deal with violent crime as we just heard from the previous council person the community is concerned about violent crime and when you begin to free up officers from responding to cause for service that does not require an officer's response then you again you've got more officers who can be directed toward preventing intervening in violent crime and helping to reduce it as chuck says certainly not just violence but it's domestic violence it's it's property crime as well uh and and so it's really looking at the whole picture in alternative ways in which you use your resources and your most valuable resource right now is that sworn officer and asking the question what do you want that officer to be doing every day on on the job and then once you have that answer looking at how you can make that happen um so it's just a follow-up to that um you mentioned other responses around property crime and other strategies around property crime what might some of the what might some examples of that be a lot of places right now as it relates to property crime for example some of those reports are taken over the phone they're not they don't require a dispatch so you've got officers that have been injured they're on limited duty uh you've got civilians that can take uh reports over the phone i mean there are a lot of different ways you could do that you free up resource you free up time i mean in one breath we're talking about community policing which requires officers to actually spend time engaging community in a non-confrontational way just being out there and getting to know uh folks it takes time to do that and so when you're when you're tied to the radio and you're just going from one call to another i mean if if the presence of a police officer at the scene does not make any difference in terms of your ability to be able to you know solve the crime you went on vacation you came home somebody broke in your garage and took your lawnmower okay you need a report there's no question about that right but does an officer really have to respond to take that report or could that be taken over the phone and you get a report number if you want to report it to your insurance you can do it and so forth but don't tie up a resource by responding to that and so with many of these property crimes of traffic accidents in philly for an example we we stopped responding to property damage only traffic accidents where no one was injured and the cars were drivable we told people to go to the nearest police station uh and have a report made out and then later we were able to actually they could had a number where they could call in and we could take the report that's an insurance issue we saved 60 000 dispatches just by doing that per year i mean that's significant that's significant because it's a bigger city a lot more call volume but it gives you an idea of those are officers one it's a low priority call to begin with it's a priority three or four so by the time you get there everybody's upset and mad because they've been sitting on the side of the road for god knows how long waiting for some cop to show up to take a report for a fender bender when they could have been on their way if they had done it a different way so you have to just try to be creative depending on what it is it's only on tv where you you know your dust for prints to get find out who broke into the garage to take that lawnmower that you all know that does doesn't happen and so we find alternate ways of dealing with it and provide service to people at the same time yeah i just very quickly i'll give you a couple more examples um in saint louis this has been a couple of years ago but when uh there's a call for a burglary they you know go out they take the report the next day though the city had contracted uh with people to go out and do a safety check of the pres and if a lock needed to be put in they put the lock in if uh windows needed to have uh bars put at the lower level and and the owner agreed uh that uh third that that vendor did that work so not only did they respond to the burglary but they also put in a prevention effort because what we do know is that the probability that you're going to get hit twice is pretty good um another uh and so that's that's one example yes they responded took the report and maybe they don't even need to do that much as chuck said but there was real service provided to the resident and it came it was a referral by the police department that brought that other uh person out to do the safety check and the other area that police departments have worked uh in reducing responses with uh theft theft especially shoplifting theft and working with uh stores across their jurisdictions about how better uh that the stores could handle the reports the store uh is the a complaint and so it becomes more uh the responsibility of the store and not the responsibility of the police so again is is just stepping back asking what do you want him to do and then what's the alternative uh if not the police yeah and i think that's this moment past without adding that we really need to involve the community in this dialogue looking for our community engagement section of the report you'll see us talk about we'll use the term reimagining police but we're doing is talking you through the process of thinking through alternative response where police don't have to be present or be the ones to respond but we want you to make sure that as you're diving designing a community safety plan you're doing it in collaboration with the community in a deeply meaningful way because as much as these wonderful ideas are just that wonderful ideas without community input and understanding they might you might find yourself now on the receiving call why there isn't an officer fingerprinting for my lost gothy lawn mower which we all know isn't necessary but they'll need that education and need to be a part of understanding why that is the solution but when you add prevention like nola just said to that uh you also help to build that trust with the community because you're oh you're doing more you're not just taking a report as a means of service you're actually telling them how to not be re-victimized by providing i mean everybody loves firemen because when you call a fireman they come to your house and put out a fire or they give you a free smoke detector or what have you right i mean that's our way of doing something on a positive side as opposed to just being seen as the guys you call when you want somebody arrested right there's more to policing than just that and this gives you a way of being able to do that but also save resources at the same time council member hills thank you um i have a comment and then a question um thank you for all of this i know this has been a long time and the second round of this and i just can't help but notice that a lot of these recommendations are things that the public safety committee from last year had discussed and made recommendations on specifically um you know council member lawson's work on the disparate use of force data we talked about the civil service and the hiring outcomes and i know i've been talking for years about are the questions that we're asking the right questions and are those leading to outcomes that are maybe unintended in the way that we're asking questions and why you know obviously near and dear to my heart is the alternative to the mental health responses i hope that now that this has come from a third party that we can start making some moves on those um you know we have on some of these but the civil service piece is really really important um so i hope that that conversation continues i have a question and mayor this might also include city staff so is is it appropriate to ask it now or is there a section where we can ask city staff about things or no um go ahead and ask you now please okay so in the report on page 16. um it talks about how a really small number of officers are responsible for an outsized number of the use of force instances and that's obviously problematic for obvious reasons but i believe we've had conversations as a city about some kind of predictive programming that we have internally that's supposed to help us identify when officers might be escalating so that we can say hey what's going on in your personal life is you know um this to me looks like maybe that's not working as intended and so my question i guess is how can we do a better job of identifying those officers and then my my question for city staff would be what have we done about those officers because we have this information and we know that and it's a safety concern for the safe or anyone who comes into contact i would imagine with them so are they on kind of a training program or have they been disciplined are we evaluating have they been you know moved to a new um maybe position while that's being worked out because that to me seems like a pretty scary prospect for someone who could come into contact um with this opposition or at least the way that it that it's reading so i guess it's too much one how can we do a better job of identifying people before they get to 24 um of the call of the use of forces and then also what have we already started the process on for oh councilmember hills i wonder if it would be okay with you if we um had the chief come back and whoever she might designate the next possible brayoff study session and to uh respond to uh give a response to the whole report and respond to your questions as well would that be okay could we just get a brief a brief snippet for the general public because those you know that's a pretty scary number i think for the general public so i think we should at least hear from the chief on if there are plans to address that very well um so thank you yes mayor is that okay if i go ahead and respond please go ahead okay so um to your point um councilmember hills we do have what we call a personnel early intervention system which we are tracking officers uh if they have a use of force or we have some sort of life uh stressors uh the points are applied to them and then if they reach a threshold of those points they are contacted by their um by their supervisors and then wellness is involved and such but um i have to dig deeper into the specific results of of what 21cp is reporting on this and i would love to come back and talk in greater detail but as far as the uh percentage of officers uh their assignment made they may be in swat they may be an ert they may be in an assignment where they have a greater potential or risk of use of using force but we will delve into that and look deeper into it and if i could just go on and talk about um you know talking about efficiency studies that we have that we're bringing forward where we can limit the calls for service that we're going to with the uniformed officer i'm absolutely in agreement with that we've also been given six a pilot program for six traffic enforcement non-sworn individuals to help us with that as well as i'd love to expand it to going out to those burglary calls and not having an officer go and we nev we can't lose sight the fact that you know a burglary is a very very personal and very um scary situation and it's not just a routine call and so we want to make sure that our customer service is still there whether it's a person in uniform carrying a weapon or whether it's someone that's working for the city that is out there making sure that we're giving our our residents the attention they need and that they don't feel as though they are not important but i'd be more than happy to go into breaking down the use of force stuff and then i'm looking forward to getting benchmark analytics in i'm hoping by the end of the year is what it is telling me that is going to track um demographics location specific officers what the contact was it voluntary non-voluntary uh contact and you know like they said across the nation we've we've had issues with collecting this data but i'm really looking forward to bringing benchmark analytics on and hopefully showing the residents that we are being able to focus in if there is a certain officer and is it is it their assignment or is it something else and so um we're going to be able to extricate that data and share it with the residents uh hopefully by the end of the year and then implementing that next year in reports uh councilman mayor so yeah can i just ask one quick follow-up thank you when you're looking at that data can you also just look at the breakdown of who the use of force is being used upon to see if that is because if it is someone who that's part of their their assignment is just more i guess hands-on i don't know what else to call it um physician is that being um done in a way that is you know not not inherently biased on the on the output side um and then also i'd be just really curious in a future conversation to have a conversation around that early intervention system that's i forgot what it was called but um the report also talks about how you know there's a growing body of evidence that that's not the best way to be identifying officers and so if those officers that are at that higher rate are being um i guess flagged by the early intervention system which is supposed to flag people that are escalating um you know we can get into a cycle of being really ineffective in that and so i'd love to you know continue the conversation about how we can do a better job with that early intervention system too um but thank you to everyone for all of the work on this i know from city staff to chief wilson to um 21cp this has been a long um process thank you okay may i uh may i respond to just the follow-up question please okay um and and council member hill's just you know we are going to be able to create what is captured and obviously uh demographics uh location of the city all those different instances will be captured um and we'll be able to report out easily um you know the results of that and i will say that obviously we will continue with um implicit bias training dei training all those things to make sure that we are uh continuing to police uh and making sure that we're treating everyone equally and there isn't any sort of disparate uh impact obviously this report showed that we do have a use of force our reports have been showing a use of force on persons of color and so of course that is concerning to me but i also want to be able to have really good data and be able to track that and address those situations quickly further questions um uh councilmember mcconnell thank you sir um and yes i want to thank all of you for the tremendous amount of work you poured into this report uh it's very illuminating um i did have a couple of questions here um and i'll just be as brief as i can for time um on page 13 uh we're when we're talking about uh use of force and the tears of force um this is something that has i found was a little strange has been strange and i just want to ask um drawing a weapon is considered a tier zero use of force and using the weapon is considered a tier three use of force if i'm not mistaken and i find that to be a little odd seeing as you know you can basically go from zero to three in the blink of an eye so what would be uh is tier zero actually an appropriate um classification for drawing your weapon and if not where do you think that should actually sit uh based on our work with the department of justice and various consent decrees um uh the mere drawing of a weapon having it in a ready position not pointing it at a person okay that is not considered a use of force pointing it at a person is considered a use of force uh and is a reportable uh use of force so that's the distinction obviously if you fire it then that puts it in a whole different category but the mirror pulling of a weapon having it at the ready uh as they say you know because of the situation but you're not pointing it at anyone that is not considered a reportable use of force but it is if you point it at a person okay and then my second question um would be so let me see here yeah back on page 83 when we were talking about uh reimagining the role of policing uh you list five examples of areas that could potentially be offloaded to uh either other agencies or just another department in total um and i'm wondering if you have a more comprehensive list of things that you have seen be effective so as we're going as we're having this discussion we can you know um run off of things that have already been effective elsewhere so that's crisis intervention traffic incidents and things like that yep yeah we're aware of a number of things that are being tried in a number of different jurisdictions around the country i think this is uh but but this is an area as jessica pointed out um a few moments ago uh appropriately um where the community really needs to uh be sitting at the table to to discuss um those things um you know a lot some departments are something that isn't really necessarily listed here but some departments are employing what they call community service officers which are not uh sworn peace officers they're unarmed uh folks um and um you know they're the people that get sent out to uh to take uh the report of the lawnmower that got stolen out of my garage or my kid's bike got stolen those kinds of things um and and uh again non-injury uh um uh act traffic accidents uh and so forth so um uh there yes we're aware probably if we uh if you asked us to i'm i'm confident that we could come up with a list of probably 30 to 40 different areas where what we call a differential response model is being used and but but we're hesitant to impose um you know those things out of place where the community doesn't have adequate um input into that process because we think it's really important for them to have the education and and really to kind of guide the process and i'll let jessica talk into that uh more if she'd like to we spend a number of time on this and other um with other clients and and the thing is that just as sean said there's not much more better i could say there are a number of opportunities to diversify response but at the core of it if you look around page 88 we really start talking to you about that you have to have the community at the table to understand the concept of community safety and what a community safety plan will look like in your city and it's unique to your area it's unique to your demographics it's unique to your crime statistics and the problems that are arise from the most fear in your community and so you have to address those simultaneously i'm going to say an unpopular thing this is not a fast process this is a deep dialogue with intentionality that really takes you looking at the whole of your city's spending allocations and resources outside of just the police department because it truly is about safety upstream and downstream from the problem and so i encourage you to um reach out to me if you'd like i can send you some of our other documents that will get you deeper but at the first most important point and our final most important point is the community has to be at the table in their blood other questions mayor councilmember mcconnell um thank you i just have a quick follow-up comment um i i will absolutely reach out to you uh jessica see if we can get that list and i completely agree the community needs to be at the table and i'm very i was very excited when i got to recommendation 16 which is making our community police task force a permanent fixture so thank you all for that as well further questions i want to say we said that that's something or the like uh using what's already there you have many task force we did not prescribe to think that one was the solution rather that there needs to be some form of ongoing body who's building this idea out and being really intentional about bringing the community in so i'm going to just specify that for other questions seeing none uh i just want to thank you uh so much uh for all the work you've done uh and uh really appreciate it and you've given us a lot to consider and so thank you very much thank you with that uh the time is now 802 uh the city council will stand in recess until 807. we are now in recess [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the study session for aurora city council is now back in session [Music] consent calendar [Music] is there objection to moving the consent calendar forward item number two a through two e is there any objection saying none then the consent calendar will move forward items 2a through 2e uh items from the policy committees item number 3a rapport county opens spaces sales and use tax luke palmisano good evening mayor and council i'm luke pamasano intergovernmental relations manager tonight's item relates to the arapahoe county park sales and use tax ballot question recently referred to the november county ballot by the arapahoe county commissioners i do have arapahoe county commissioners baker and holland in attendance tonight and i'll turn it over to them in just a minute for a brief presentation i did want to note that the question before council tonight is does council wish to forward this item to a regular council meeting in order to discuss and take an official position of support on the arapahoe county parks tax ballot question also wanted to note that per the city's council rules a ballot issue resolution such as this must be presented at study session to determine to determine if the item would have unanimous support which is required for council to take that position i also have brooke bell and tracy young from pros on the line to answer any questions and with that i'll turn it over to commissioners baker and holland did you see on the line earlier yeah thank you very much this is commissioner holland can you hear me yes we can sir okay great thank you very much uh luke and thank you mayor for this opportunity uh with me today is commissioner jeff baker who will follow my my brief presentation with some additional comments first of all i want to thank everyone on the council for this opportunity to talk about the importance and significance of the current open space program arap county open space and use tax program has been in operation for several several years and supported unanimously by a majority of the of all of the cities within arapahoe county and special districts last week the board of county commissioner unanimously approved a resolution to pace to place a ballot measure on the november second ballot uh november 2nd election that will ask voters to approve a permanent extension of the open space sales and use tax we'd like to give a brief overview of the tax and then take any questions that you may have currently as many of you know the open space tax is used for a variety of programs dealing with recreation and open space and trails over 70 miles of trails built and or improved since since its inception in 20 2003 168 parks trail heads heritage area projects have been supported as a result of this tax and over 31 000 acres of open space have been conserved total revenues that we've generated as a result of this tax is over 360 million dollars 256 million were we have been awarded to 13 municipalities town and special district 71 of the revenues are given back directly to the communities aurora's allocation from 2004 to 2020 aurora has received a sh in its share back program that is that is based on population disbursement of over uh 1 102 million 260 2 796 dollars in share back nearly 8 million dollars in grants that is grants for special projects that are submitted through our uh staff program and seven uh 7.4 million in joint projects for a total of 116 million dollars and eight hundred and fifty seven eight eight hundred eight thousand eight thousand uh 57 and 513 dollars an important factor that has to be recognized also is the cu is the contribution that uh programs that have been funded in part or totally by uh the open space funds uh is the tremendous improvements in our in uh shareback funds and grants to the city of aurora for its sports uh programs as many of you know the the great uh improvements in our athletic fields within aurora have resulted with the help of the visit of aurora program in bringing in literally thousands of athletic athletics programs from out of state into the county making a tremendous opportunity for hotels restaurants and other economically beneficial programs that result from these operations i don't like to ask jeff baker to continue with the presentation commissioner baker thank you commissioner holland um what does this program funding mean to the city of aurora first of all we'd like to make sure that everyone knows that the city has received 94 of its investment back through both the share back and the grant funds we believe that this funding is critical to the city of aurora's general fund uh within the city's parks and open spaces department these funds represent about 12 of current operating budget for example that's around 30 ftes uh the city's capital budget 25 to 75 percent comes from the open space funding depending upon grant applications for example 10 million dollars has been awarded through um through those grants to supplement the city's general or i'm sorry capital budget this is why making this revenue stream permanent is so important to our partners as so that people can borrow against this money and there are a lot of smaller communities in arapahoe county some that i represent including bennett and deer trail that will be able to then use this money as matching funds for larger federally funded projects aurora receives 58.9 of the total shareback funds that share is likely to grow now this is in its 20-year history 58.9 of the total shareback funds goes to the city of aurora that will grow when aurora's population continues to increase based upon the current share the average amount of collection aurora would potentially receive about nine million dollars annually over the next five years in 2021 the county awarded both of its large grants to the city of aurora that was 500 000 for the fulton park renovation grant and 350 000 for peoria hills park and playground renovation grant and back to commissioner holland jeff i'd also like to point out that that open space funds and shareback funds from aurora have been used in other projects for example the toll great crossing neighborhood park is a is another example of collaboration between the county funds and and the city and i think one of the sterling examples of collaboration and cooperation is the effort that aurora arapaho county the department of defense the air department of the air force and several other entities uh involved in helping to protect the the buffer zone around buckley air force base where we turned it into a into a trail and park recreational opportunities in and around buckley this is a great project it has been recognized by both the department of defense and the department of the air force as a great collaborative effort between municipalities uh the county and and other uh entities that that benefit not only our national security entrance but also our recreational interests i would only add that it's that we have the united support amongst uh most of all the cities within the interact within arapahoe county who really find this program to be very beneficial to the uh to the overall recreational opportunities for our county residents and all these all these parks and and trails are used uh by all citizens of arapahoe county so i want to thank you for this opportunity at this point i'd certainly open it up for any questions thank you thank you i will recognize myself first and say first of all i think this is a great program and i don't dispute that and that we have had the ability to uh renew this program on a 10-year basis and that the um those uh proponents of this tax have had to go back to the voters and make their case and i think it makes for a better program and so what what they're requesting what the commissioners are requesting is that we completely remove that sunset provision and make this permanent do we really know 10 20 30 40 years from now what the demand will be do we really know you know um how the money should be allocated whether or not the the amount of the taxes appropriate i like the idea of having to come back to the voters every ten years and so i i'm in opposition uh to moving this forward uh other comments yes mayor uh been there for him and i have always um supported the tax um when it comes up for for renewal um and i i do think you know voters typically are going to continue to do that you guys have done a tremendous job and certainly the support to the city of aurora has been phenomenal we have certainly benefited from it i i i think my hesitation is making it permanent um you know every 10 years is it's a pretty good time frame and and again it seems to get renewed my concern is we don't have a crystal ball to know what's going to happen you know down the road 10 years 20 years 30 years and so i just think it it removes flexibility in terms of being able to deal with any kind of economic crisis that might come about um you know i again i i i think it's a great program i just i hesitate on making it a permanent questions uh councilmember lawson um so commissioner baker and commissioner holland i want to thank you for bringing this to the pfizer committee um when you did at our last meeting um i know that i had to ask the question but i also brought up the idea that you did a there was a robust kind of community engagement and this question was asked um and it seemed to be approved to get approval from most of constituents who were surveyed can you go into a little bit of that and um that process because i think that's really important for the public to know as well well thank you andrea the uh clear clearly uh we we sent out a survey uh and i think we had a response of well over four a broad range of over 400 respondees and nearly 70 78 of those who responded to the survey were overwhelmingly supportive of the program and nearly uh 65 percent were supportive of the permanency request and i think the issue there is that a lot of people are concerned about accountability we have a citizens committee that represents a broad variety of constituents within the county and your city is represented and the this is the oversight committee of citizens that determine basically the um where where specific grants go um also uh uh debate the the uh management of the funds in the program and also the uh the issues associated with uh policy uh as to the the use of those funds so i'm i'm confident that the oversight is is significant and we've worked we worked very hard to ensure that the interests of all the cities counties and special districts that received the funds have a voice in this process the the last two times that this this legislation or this legislative effort was brought forward overwhelmingly the citizens supported and i think our survey shows that uh an overwhelming majority of the of the constituents that were that responded to the survey show support we also go we've also jeff and i have been out to many of the communities around the the county i just recently spoke with with the city of uh glendale um and they're they're they're supportive of the program and we're going to get a uh a letter of support from from that uh city council as well so i think the the bottom line is that the citizens want it there's support for the for the permanency of the tax and um another important factor is that we're changing the formula to allow cities and special districts to spend more money on the on maintenance of the parks which i think is important as we as a parks age it's important to allow more more money to be spent uh on the uh on the maintenance of our parks and maybe jeff you can comment on that as well as the as well as the some of the cities in your jurisdiction we'll just point out that adams county made their open spaces sales tax permanent last year and the voters approved that by 78 percent further questions or comments mayor councilmember um yes i was just wondering if our city staff could comment on the projected growth and the need for recreation centers open space and parks to support the projected growth of the city broken these funds are not just used to build new parks these funds are used to renovate and improve all of the parks within arapahoe county and aurora so this is a really big part of our capital funding plan each year um as well as i think we just lost you our maintenance tracy i think you're cutting out a lot um can you hear me this is brook bell the director oh yes we can hear thank you as tracy was saying um these funds are a huge part of our capital budget and uh the ongoing not only building new parks but also maintaining existing parks and we also have significant staff tied to these funding sources which includes rangers um our naturalists at plains conservation center morrison nature center rangers at aurora reservoir and other trail projects and we also have tracy young's design staff and construction and also operation maintenance and so without these funds would be a significant challenge uh to maintain existing parks in perpetuity further questions of staff or further questions of um the commissioners or staff yeah uh councilman gardner um thank you for the presentation um council member uh i'm sorry commissioner baker at uh the pfizer uh meeting one of the things you had brought up when we were discussing the permanency of the tax was it would allow the ability to bond for future projects is that still the case and can you expand on that a little bit again a lot of the cities and towns in arapahoe county wanted to make the tax permanent because borrowers lenders i should say they're the borrower lenders want a more secure longer length of time when we were looking at possibly extending the sunset to 25 30 years much like you would prepare to get either a 25-year or 30-year mortgage a lot of the lenders were requiring that the income be consistent over maybe not consistent but there be a permanent level of funding in order to make those payments back and so in order to borrow against these funds that's what these lenders want is security and knowing that the tax is going to be continuing on the idea of just putting in extending the sunset from 10 years to 25 years or 30 years was considered but the fact remains that when you start talking about 25 or 30 years as a sunset most people say why not just make it permanent anyway and that was because that's when we did the surveys and polling and it did not make much of a difference i think there were four percent of the people that were supported supportive of the tax um then became non-supportive with the permanency it was only about four percent so i will point out also that a lot of the smaller towns bennett deer trail will be able to use this as a permanent income in order to show the federal government that they can match funds for federal grants further questions or comments interesting councilmembers thank you um yeah all right there's no doubt that you use this money wisely and we love every penny that aurora gets you know we've done some amazing things with it um my concern is the permanency you know the state of our economy right now is just it's going going bonkers you know and people don't have the money to pay their rent and you know they're getting subsidies for that and um you you're the third group that's come to council um that well not they haven't all come yet but you're the third group to ask for the same raise you know my question is what if what if we said yes to all of them uh what if they all passed i mean then aurora's sales tax would just be through the roof um that's that's a concern of mine um i'm always one to let things go on put things on the ballot but luke or legal you said that in order for us to totally support it it had to be a unanimous decision yes that's correct and that would be just to say aurora city council supports this but we could still we could still allow it to go on the ballot without 100 it's yes it's already on the ballot so this would be purely about the city taking a position of support on this ballot question and that position of support in order for council to take it does need to be unanimous oh so that's all we're talking about tonight it's already on the ballot so we're just sitting here spinning our wheels okay all right that's that's all i needed to know then okay further questions or comments mayor uh councilmember mcconnell thank you uh luke if we're not gonna get a unanimous vote which i suspect we may not um are those of us who are in support able to um issue that statement i guess if we band together and use like city letterhead for that uh that that may be a question for legal i don't think you're allowed to use city resources if the full council does not take a position of support i'll defer to rachel allen but i believe you would not be able to put that on letterhead so the specific council rule speaks to a resolution in support or opposing a ballot issue it's appendix f sub part b of the council rules that requires unanimity to do a resolution um and then there's also the fair campaign practices act so you can't expend city resources for campaigning for ballot issues and i think the city manager will be sending some additional information on that there are some things you can do and we're happy to talk through that further questions or comments uh seeing none uh is there opposition to moving item number um three a forward mayor objects any other opposition anybody else in opposition mayor i think we're voting on whether or not we're going to support the letter that's correct yeah not no no we're we're on the resolution i'm asking the question on the do you support a resolution where the city of aurora is in favor of a permanent open space sales tax and is your question is there any fight does anybody object yes i do okay okay well seeing um that um it is not unanimous it will not move forward thank you very much for the council member uh mayor chamberlain yeah i just want to say that i'm i'm happy that it's on the ballot and and to allow our voters to vote that just um i i could not vote for it to be permanent as as a fiscal conservative um item number three b resolution to inner lease purchase agreement for software renewal um scott newman good evening city council scott navy the cio for the city um we presented this item to the management and finance committee a few weeks ago um on an annual basis the it department has a requirement to renew software licenses for one of our core infrastructure products known as vmware this is the product that helps all 95 percent of the servers in the city run um so it's foreign critical to what we do in the city to renew it on an annual basis uh speaking to our resellers and our providers this year we had an opportunity to enter a lease purchase agreement and by doing so it's a three-year agreement that does have an annual non-appropriation class on an annual basis we could break the agreement if necessary um but by doing so uh we stand to save the city close to two hundred thousand dollars annually um there is a finance charge that goes with it which is a just over eleven thousand five hundred dollars for the total three year term but again uh that's offset by the two hundred thousand dollar savings um we did work with city finance and city legal both on the arrangement for this agreement and both uh provide a great deal of support and are in favor as well so we are asking for council approval to move this forward to a regular session for adoption as a resolution the uh finance company requires a formal resolution from council before they'll allow us to sign the agreement discussion on item number three b there are questions to staff a c note is there any objection to moving item number three b forward seeing that item number three b will move forward thank you for that presentation i'm number three see a resolution to approve the aesthetic enhancements of the uh nine-mile pedestrian bridge uh roberto bloom yes hi and i just needed to unmute i'm here to talk to you about the aesthetic enhancements for the nine-mile pedestrian bridge these enhancements are being funded through the art and public places programs reserve fund and i'm going to start by just walking through [Music] walking through the artist's proposal i think i need permission to share there we go okay okay can you see the proposal now yes okay great so the artist that we're working with is vicky scurry um she is um a top infrastructure artist she's accustomed to dealing with major infrastructure projects such as bridge bridges and um the proposal that she's put together focuses on using prairie grasses and colors from the prairie inspiration from the prairie as the basic motifs here are some images photographs of grasses in the area native grasses and her interpretation of that into a this drawing became the basis for grill work that will be along the bottom edge of the bridge as well as along um the top edge of the clear story the material that the artist is proposing for the cladding of the bridge is a newish material called cota xt this is a polycarbonate material that comes in 250 gorgeous colors and here you see the palette of colors that the artist is suggesting and again this is based upon the palette of the prairie um the material that was originally proposed for the cladding of the bridge was lexan and it is a similar material except for the fact that it doesn't come in a wide range of colors it just comes in what you see here this narrow range of neutral colors so here is an image of just a silhouette of the bridge really if it were done all in lexan and here you see the alternative image with the pattern proposed by the artist she is working within the concept of a single span tied arch bridge which is the bridge design that was preferred by a group of key stakeholders in a meeting held by the design team and here she's trying to show you the experience that people are going to have walking across the bridge from one side to the other side and at different places along the bridge the um the shadow play that you can see here at the bottom that's caused by the um the grille work as and also um i know because i've had these samples sitting in my window for several weeks now is that the sun coming through these panels of coda xt will also likely be casting colored shadows on the floor of the bridge so in addition to the cota xt colored panels and the grill work he is also proposing to include words she went through a public engagement process using the new engage aurora platform and got a wide range of input from various people in the community about what inspired them about aurora what they felt was important about aurora what she should be sharing about aurora and um she put together a list of 20 of the most common words and phrases her concept is to we've had these words here you see them in english and spanish since this proposal was put together her concept was to put them into english and the five other most common languages spoken in aurora so that includes um korean uh well spanish korean vietnamese chinese and amharic so we um working with the office of international and immigrant affairs we had identified or they had helped us to identify what those five most common languages were and then we worked with them to get translations into those languages and those will also three of those i think three of those languages are also written in their own alphabet so the bridge will include these you know different forms of calligraphy i think it's going to be very welcoming to our diverse community and also very visually beautiful so um in these next images she is trying to share with you the experience that people will have seeing the bridge from different perspectives the experience of the pedestrian and these blocks are just [Music] the elevator towers because at the point of this that this design work was being done we didn't know anything more about the elevator towers so here you see it looking south from the point and perspectives that you would have driving this is driving east on parker and driving west on parker and also trying to show it at different times of the day i i know we've spent a lot of time talking about many many topics tonight so questions of staff yeah questions for staff are there any questions for staff is there any objection to i'm sorry questions yeah council remember gardner so my understanding correctly in the back of uh the difference in the basic bridge and then to apply this artwork to it is 162 thousand dollars well the total amount al um recommended for this project and that had been set aside for this project is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars forty eight thousand what has been spent on the design process and um a total of two hundred and fifty thousand will be expended on the total project further questions please proceed follow up so we've already spent forty eight thousand dollars in this process before we've even approved the artwork i'm confused we spent 48 000 to get to the point of having artwork to review okay thanks further questions or comments uh where does the funding come from roberta this uh funding is coming out of the public art reserve fund so this is funding that's generated by our the city's one percent for um art ordinance on city projects thank you further questions or comments roberta uh councilman combs i'm sorry mayor yes thank you so [Music] can you clarify how this art budget compares to other art budgets for things like recreation centers and other public art pieces that have been approved in the city recently okay so for the scale of this project and the scale of the bridge here this is a very modest budget the city is really getting a significant bang for its buck the um the artwork for the central rec center cost about 350 000 dollars and i think the project for the southeast rec center their budget is of similar size further questions or comments seeing none is there any objection to moving item number um 3c forward assuming none item number 3c will move forward item number 3d a proposal for a new climate action committee jeffrey moore oil and guest division manager mayor um i think jeffrey is going to start sharing his slides and i'm going to speak first and he'll give some additional information very well please receive thank you so i'll just wait on that well i'll get started because i only need one slide for um kind of the end of what i have to say so the intent of this commission is to have a city entity that can or a citizen entity that can advise city council on matters related to climate issues which i think we're all acutely aware are significantly important at this point um not only for our city but for our world um and specifically in relation to the plan to bring forward a an environmental stewardship plan that is part of our strategic plan which we have all already approved of bringing forward and so this is about getting community engagement on those issues the ordinance is to establish a climate action committee and then also in that process because this will include oil and gas issues to end the oil and gas committee and the reason for that is because we are going to be addressing those issues among others that are relevant to climate in this committee and also because the city staff time that is taken up on boards and commissions should be as efficient as possible um and so the proposed membership of that committee is five general residents of aurora that are not do not fit the criteria of the other categories of membership members of an environmental advocacy sustainability or climate group at least one but not more than two uh representation from individuals employed with state entities working on climate related issues at least one but not more than two uh members working with regional and front range entities working on climate related issues at least one but not more than two members and from the energy industry and these would be at least one but not more than two members employed in the utilities construction energy efficiency renewable energy oil and gas or related fields and an aurora business owner at least one but not more than two so the total membership could be as little as 10 and up to 15 depending on how much representation we have from each of those groups and now i'm going to pass it off to jeffrey to talk a little bit more about the history around the oil and gas committee and the decision to try to merge these rather than having two separate entities thank you councilmember coombs and good evening mayor and council members i was asked to address two questions about the oil and gas advisory committee the first was to what extent is the oil and gas division now duplicating efforts of the oil and gas advisory committee and the second was to discuss the attendance at the oil and gas advisory committee meetings over the past couple of years so i'll first address the first question and that is a review of the oil and gas advisory committee i'm sure you're all familiar with the background but the committee was committed uh created by council in 2015 for the purpose of advising city council on matters related to oil and gas development in the city to provide advice recommendations to both city council and staff and to provide an educational forum for stakeholders this group has been very active and very important in the past especially during 2018 and 19 when the operator agreements were being negotiated and they also provided some support to our division by reviewing the oil and gas manual last year and providing comments to us there and helped in the creation of the oil and gas manual the committee meets every other month and provides a report to ped in terms of the new oil and gas division it was created by council in 2019 the first manager which i'm very honored to be i was hired in march of 2020 we hired a senior inspector and senior planner in november of last year and of course we recently completed the update of regulations the oil and gas manual through council those were effective last month i believe that we are currently fulfilling all the functions that the oil and gas advisory committee was originally tasked with including providing advice recommendations to both city council and other departments here within the city an educational forum for stakeholders as part of the process of the oil and gas manual we had multiple town halls a public comment period were able to engage with members of the public extensively during that process and then really serving as a point of contact for residents and industry i think the fact that the oil and gas division is a staff division we're here every day of the week and available rather than just once every other month certainly i get calls and emails from citizens and industry alike to address the second question about attendance at the oil and gas advisory committee meetings we went back and looked at attendance for the last two and a half years beginning in 2019 these numbers which is public is shown in the blue line and members of the industry are shown in the red line of course this does not include members of the committee itself or staff or invited speakers this is simply other members of the industry or members of the public that attended the meetings at different points and you can see on the graph most of these are single digits in terms of numbers of people at the meetings i would point out that we have a nice split here between both in-person meetings and remote meetings which have happened during cover time and there really is not a strong correlation between the two i don't think that if anything there's been fewer attendees during the remote sessions which are theoretically easier to attend than the in-person sessions over the past two and a half years there's been an average of 1.3 members of the public attending each meeting and two industry representatives attending each meeting that's an average excuse me over the past two and a half years i would also note that there's been no public or industry attendees at the meetings for the past six months and in fact for members of the public it's been almost a year since there were any members of the public that attended uh these meetings for reference here i'll put a green star early in the graph there in 2019 that's the point where the operator agreements were being negotiated over signed and you can see there were definitely a spike of attendance prior to that i think that was related to the negotiation of the operator agreements the second green star here is the point where the only gas manual was uh put into effect and again i think that to me what the graph shows is that the oil gas division is performing successfully and able to answer and address those questions from the both the community and industry and provide that guidance and feedback to [Music] the city council and to other staff thank you jeffrey anything else um i'd like to uh provide an opportunity um a former council member brad pierce who is the chairman of the oil and gas advisory committee didn't request to speak can i wrap up first well okay please do and then more then uh uh former councilmember pierce or chairman pierce will speak and then i'll open up to questions for any of uh any of you um so yes i just wanted to comment briefly as well on the process council member johnston began initiating this process prior to her leaving and when she realized that she would be leaving before it could be wrapped up she brought me into the discussion and she started the drafting and then i joined in drafting the membership and the purpose along with city attorneys and mr moore and then councilmember johnson did attempt to bring this item to ped i believe three different times may april may and june and at none of those points was it able to be heard at that committee so in july it was heard at the uh pr plus committee as well as at the oil and gas committee meeting and i did attend that meeting to get feedback and to listen to the members of that committee prior to having the discussion at the pr plus committee but i do also want to point out that pr plus is the committee of reference for policy issues related to boards and commissions so i know that there was some concern perhaps expressed that this never went to ped and so i did want to confirm that in the process it was attempted to go there multiple times and that ultimately um approval through pr plus does cover the fact that it is an issue of a board or a commission and therefore that's the committee of reference thank you um i i now recognize uh brad pierce uh the chairman of the oil address just point of order real quick point hilts yes i believe i believe that the oil and gas you're muted sorry no my my airpods died i'm back now um we've been on long enough for that uh the oil and gas gas commission's um bylaws state that no one can speak to members of city council without prior written authorization and this is independent of formal communication of positions that are supplied in writing so do we have oh you're coming in broken but he did right those are two separate things the bylaws of the book yeah with the city attorney opinion on this we have somebody from the city attorney's office mayor this is brad pierce can i jump in for a second if the city attorney is not available um well now there is a request from councilmember hiltz i need to get an opinion on that before i let you proceed what council member hills is saying is you should not have the opportunity to speak before tonight what i'm saying is i'm asking if prior written authorization to speak tonight was provided as outlined in the bylaws well i i responded in writing and so uh to his written requests and so if the city attorney general you are not the oil and gas commission in the bylaws which is why we're asking for the city attorney and some issues mr best who represents the oil and gas commission is on the line tonight uh and should be able to respond mayor point of order uh let's not allow the city attorney just posed a question i want that answer first mr best uh yes this is ian best with the city attorney's office uh i believe mr pierce did send a written request to speak i'm not sure if you did it for this study session however yeah it was for the study session right that's still separate from what the language reads that's what i'm trying to forget so it says it says no single member of the oil and gas commission may speak to members of the city council on ogc business without prior written authorization from the commission all formal communication by the commission including a position statement on an issue shall be supplied in writing so we have that portion of it being supplied in writing my question is do we have the prior written authorization from the ogc for a single member of the ojc to speak two members of the city council mayor this is brad pierce can i i can claim i mean uh um chairman pierce so when this first when this um proposed ordinance first came up i asked the i believe was that when it was going to go to ped committee at that time i know it didn't go to ped but prior to ped i asked the committee for written authorization and they voted in favor of me being able to speak at ped and that's in the minutes of our meeting so that to me is written authorization that i have the authority to to speak and i i don't think i need written authorization every time i address city council i spoke at the pr plus committee um and and hoped to speak at this meeting so i did get authorization from the committee to speak at ped which it didn't go to but i still got authorization okay maybe we can get this cleared up in the bylaws then at the next is there is there objection well mr pearson uh unless there's objection from the city attorney's office uh please proceed is there objection from the city attorney's office uh seeing that mr pearson please proceed okay thank you very much mayor kaufman and members of city council appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight on this proposed ordinance we believe the art committee has been a valuable forum for discussion of oil and gas development in aurora we support the use of best practices for oil and gas development we have dedicated many hours to discussions on a variety of topics including making comments on the oil and gas manual as mr moore indicated it seems unproductive to eliminate a valuable committee when we can provide a wealth of information knowledge and input we do not agree with the argument that because oil and gas division was created and the argument is that they are performing the functions of our committee we don't we don't agree that that is a reason to polish our committee you know to address jeffrey moore's comments on what our functions are our functions are to provide advice and recommendations to city council and staff regarding oil and gas development that is a committee function to me that is not a staff function that function belongs with the committee so i just think that that the function and duties are for the committee to provide advice and recommendations um one other point i'd like to make i don't believe we have abolished or the city council has not abolished the boarding commission in a very very long time probably 30 or 40 years and this is a i think this is a big deal to abolish a long-standing at least six years boarding commission so um again appreciate the opportunity to speak and i'd happy to answer any questions a question is there a further discussion mayor uh council member thank you mr pearson i appreciate you know your ongoing engagement in this conversation i guess my question is because the intent is to include um the topics of this committee into the climate action committee are you suggesting that you all don't want to be included in that committee that you would rather remain separate and do your work separately i think we can stay as we are as a existing board and commission and uh who you know if there's two up to two slots available for industry i don't see why um either members of our committee could apply for those slots in addition the slots reserved for industry are not just for oil and gas industry they're for renewal renewable energy and i don't have i can't remember what the slide said exactly but the two slots for industry are for five or six aspects of industry oil and gas being one of them so um i i think that we can we can continue to exist as a committee as we are and then if people on our committee want to apply or other people from the public want to apply for the two slots on the climate action committee that would be okay but i think we we perform a very a very vital and essential function the way we are if i could ask one question uh councilmember combs and that is that i've never seen a committee established by one echelon of government with memberships from higher echelons of government usually it's it's uh as let's say a state committee's formed a task force and then members of municipalities or county governments are included in that so is there a precedent for that i i did have a follow-up question for mr pierce but i guess i can answer your question the intent was to make sure that our actions as a city are coordinated with the regional and state level efforts so that's the intent of having those members on the committee so is there a precedent i don't know but i don't think there has to be a precedent to have an intent that is of value isn't there state organizations that do this right now that have municipal involvement they don't have formal municipal appointments no other than dr cog which only focuses on transportation and not the broader set of issues that would be addressed by this commission and so we want to make sure that for example folks that are involved in water quality and air quality that don't have municipal representation on those bodies or in those staffs that someone from those entities could have representation then back to this committee to help the city make sure that our decisions are in coordination with laws policies and other efforts being put forward at other levels of government so again it's not about precedent it's about intent um and about making sure that the work that we're doing isn't going to put us in conflict with other entities uh please receive i think yeah i had a follow-up question for mr pierce please proceed so you want to have the oil and gas committee continue as its own separate entity and potentially have two seats on the climate committee i don't think that we have a precedent or really i think it's questionable whether that entity should essentially get representation on another city board so um you know most of our boards and commissions address one broad policy area and so if oil and gas is going to continue to be its own standalone addressing that policy area it is questionable to me whether we then leave two spots on this committee that was intended to include oil and gas if you want to stand alone mayor persons councilmembers oh i'm sorry uh mr pierce did you want to answer that before i start i'm sorry i was going to be recognized by the mayor but i'm sorry mr uh i'm sorry chairman uh brad pierce and then we'll go to uh councilman our versions so if if let's say two members of the oil and gas advisory committee wish to apply for the climate action committee that would be okay it's not a requirement that two people from the oil and gas committee be on the climate action committee it's just if they if they wish they could apply i mean there's i think four or five uh examples of industry in that on that slide that was presented so i it would be just voluntary on anybody's part where the oil and gas committee members apply or just members of the public apply so then if we switch to those industry positions to not include oil and gas since you all are going to have a standalone or want to continue to have a standalone committee would would you object to that you know why actually council member berzins was next up and then we can go to council uh to chairman pierce councilmember burns thank you thank you i feel like we're jumping we jump into conclusions here um councilmember pierce and i were on ped he was the chair and i think i was the vice chair when the oil and gas commission was formed and one of the one of the main reasons we wanted to form it at the time so the oil and gas the people on the oil and gas commission could come to the meetings and learn about oil and gas and all the changes to the neighborhood and the industry and um then go out and talk to their hoas and their neighborhoods and their friends and their you know and spread the word as to what it was and there's hopefully they're still doing that that was one of the main reasons for the oil and gas commission so they could get the information out to other people i think it's a very important committee i wasn't really sold on it at the time but as i saw it progress and um people learning more about it because it has changed you know the rules have changed and people have have learned a lot from the committee but i want to say um you know our committees our commissions whatever you want to call them even though they are open to the public we just council does not uh ask you know outside people to come if outside people want to come that's fine um that's that's what we want them to do but to have a graph saying only 1.3 outside people came i mean since when does that happen since i mean the commissioners come the people on the committee come i i don't understand why you would even count how many outside people came i know miss sobey used to come all the time i don't know you know if she's come since we've been virtual or not i don't know i do know a lot of people are part of virtual meetings um and that's all i want to say about that i i personally want to see that too to uh stay because i think it does serve a good purpose um but from what you were saying a lot of uh councilmember coons is sounds to me like it would take some uh strength away or some of the teeth of our pfizer committee our pfizer committee listens to what is going on in the legislature what you know what is going on in the area and they talk about that and they vote on it i just think that would that would cut out a lot of the function of pfizer and i don't know how councilmember lawson feels about that but she and her committee does great job does a great job i don't always agree with them but they still do a good job and and to me that would be a little bit of crossover there so i i just don't i i feel like we're getting a little ahead of what a home rule city should do and you you've said something about we believe this we believe that i don't know who we is um but i i just wanted to say that about oil and gas so thank you mayor um so this wouldn't be affecting the role of the pfizer committee because it's a citizen committee so pfizer would still be tracking those issues as well this is for the purpose of keeping that citizen committee abreast of those issues um and making sure that they have that awareness as well in their discussions and recommendations and by we i meant those of us that were drafting the ordinance um so in case that was unclear from my prior discussion of the multiple people involved in drafting the ordinance also regarding them so there's kind of two separate questions tonight it seems like first we have the question of the um i guess elimination um of the oil and gas committee and then the second question is kind of the creation i you know they're obviously being presented as a package so we can't um vote on them like that but um you know as far as the elimination of the oil and gas um committee i i i guess i don't really see um or i don't think there's very compelling arguments for why we should eliminate it you know we have a budget office and we haven't eliminated the citizens budget committee we have a parks and rec department and we haven't eliminated the parks and rec board i mean i mean i could go on and on so i think there's already quite a bit of redundancy within kind of structures within the city departments within the city and our boards and commissions and and i think that's probably by design because um some of our larger and more important departments that impact our residents lives we have citizen input committees and and i would make the argument that um oil and gas is a significant industry some others might not agree or others might not like it to be the case but it is um as far as the climate action committee um you know i kind of guess i would defer to what i just now said but i see a lot of overlap um with what that um committee's charge would be based upon what's in writing and what could be done through several other boards that already exist um waterboard open spaceport like uh planning board building code i mean we could we could get input on those types of issues and how they might impact climate through boards that already exist you know so frankly if we want to have the conversation about elimination of boards i'm all for that because you know i could probably cut 50 of these um but you know i making one the enemy of the other um in this case i think is is wrong and um so i'm i'm not supportive of what's being presented tonight further discussion i respond your council member uh um councilmember gruber then councilman cruz so i want to follow up on what councilmember gardner said i agree with that i think that um you know mr moore i understand you've been here uh for a year and and you've you know thrust yourself into the political limelight but we had a large discussion prior to you being onboarded and we continue to have large discussions um we have at least six suas that are still active we have a number of oil wells that that can be drilled at some point in the future and i think not and i think eliminating a citizens board uh prior to those new wells being put in would would hinder our transparency and hinder our ability to communicate to listen to the uh to the public one thing you did bring up though that i thought was very interesting was the attendance at our meeting i'm looking forward to seeing those at some of our other meetings for example our citizens advisory budget committee is getting ready to brief council and i'm hoping that we can see attendance from each of the council members representatives at that meeting are at those meetings throughout the year when cabc makes those presentations so bottom line is is that i think the oil and gas is a very important group i think that keeping it especially in light of the fact that we have continued wells that are going to be drilled and having it as a venue that staff can talk to outside of itself is very important mayor councilmember home's going to respond to the prior concern having various different committees involved in the climate so typically when you're implementing any type of sustainability or climate plan a typical part of that process is having a citizen board that gives that input not taking it to six different boards this also gives a and the reason for having the comprehensive environmental stewardship plan proposed in the first place is to make a streamlined central place for us to be having those conversations because right now it's scattered across multiple departments so the intent of both that plan and this commission or committee which would support that plan is to try to streamline and bring together those variety of issues that impact our environment in our city and our role as a city in impacting the environment more regionally so that's the purpose of having something that talks about issues that may be relevant to other boards and committees um that being said you know i and you also mentioned that this has to be brought forward as both elimination of the climate action committee and establishment of the state sustainability committee um if what my colleagues want is to sever that piece of um eliminating the oil and gas committee and would support having a climate action committee with that severed then i would accept that amendment of removing the um getting rid of the climate action right of the oil and gas committee further discussion uh councilmember so reading through the functions and duties of the climate action advisory committee nowhere in there in fact does it say that there the purpose is to be a citizens group to create a climate advisory action plan i believe you called it in fact what it says is the committee shall review as requests by counselor staff and provide feedback on any ordinance resolution rule regulation or charter amendment including any specific specific policy initiatives so you're presenting it like it's a very narrow focus and perhaps could be disbanded once this this plan was created but reading through the functions and duties that are outlined in the ordinance in fact they have a very wide ranging task and would exist indefinitely to provide feedback at least according to this and any ordinance resolution or any other item brought forward right and so the it's not that the only intent is to support that plan but part of the intent was to support that plan council member johnson was already working on this as a broader project when i contacted staff about having a committee to address the specifically a comp an environmental stewardship plan is what we're calling it um i was calling it a climate action plan um but i think that that encompasses that work and so it became both um since there was already a plan to have a committee advising on climate related issues one of those climate-related issues understandably would be the establishment of that for further discussion uh councilman mcconnell thank you sir uh so yeah i just want to say you know a lot a lot has been said already but i just want to say that we currently don't have a home to discuss environmental issues in the light that we're all talking about here i have a lot of constituents who have been you know asking for something like this so i strongly support what council member combs is doing um i frankly don't believe that the [Music] oil and gas commission is necessary anymore with the oil and gas division but if that's something that is a deal breaker for my colleagues i would also support you know leaving that intact but i think having a um just you know a board like this a climate action committee is something that is long overdue for a city of our size further discussion mayor uh council member lawson i just had a question from mr moore so mr moore in your presentation you stated that um your division kind of really covers the civic engagement but does it really i mean it seems like maybe the commission they kind of get out i mean they have more variety of voices but i'm just trying to understand your comment about the your division really covers the covers the concerns or covers the civic engagement so can you elaborate on that for a little bit for me to explain a little bit more about how your division really covers that i know you have you've had the um this you know the town halls and things like that but it seems like maybe this commission which i believe i do agree that we should have a climate one i'm just not sure about dismantling this one um so i'm just trying to understand your your your comment about that so if you could elaborate on that for me just a little about what you meant on that i would appreciate it yes thank you uh councilmember lawson happy to do that um i think going back to the original purpose of the oil and gas advisory committee which was to provide advice to council um and that's one of the primary you know reasons for the existence of the committee um i feel like that our division is doing that very well at this point we've had numerous opportunities to provide that input because of the town halls that we had the input we had through the public combat period last year as well as just continued uh communication with members of the public um i get emails routinely from members of the public uh to discuss various topics they have various questions about our rules and regulations um they have questions about oil and gas development we are in the process now that the rules and regulations have been um the oil gas manual has been uh completed the next step for our division is to update our website our web page on the aurora gov website so we are in the process of that now we're undergoing opportunities to review educational you know components that we can add to the website to provide the education component to the public and going back to them and providing education about not only what we're doing but about oil and gas activities in general um so that's really the next step that we have to do as a division and so um really just feel like that you know and as far as industry you know on that side as well we have routine meetings with our operators we have a standing monthly meeting our team does with our major operator crest don't peak resources where you know in addition to you know routine emails and phone calls we are able to ask them questions get answers they're able to ask us questions discuss topics of interest that we need to to stay on top of we talk to our other operators you know on a routine basis and we get calls on occasion from other operators that are not currently operating in the city so i just really feel like it being a point of contact is a major uh effort there and a major point of contribution that our division offers to the city um and then you know coordinating communication between other departments as well we have a bi-weekly meeting with about 25 people from other departments here within the city our oil and gas check-in meeting where we communicate you know back and forth on permanent applications that are in process um topics of you know future concern that we need to be aware of um or what's going on you know in the uh the permitting and the inspection space and so uh there's quite a bit of effort that we have engaged in for education uh we feel like that kind of goes both ways both receiving information from the public and presenting that to staff and council amen can i do a follow-up to mr please receive and then mr pierce how are you how is the commission doing their civic engagement in terms of i guess we have this division what is what is happening on that side of the of the your commission doing for this outreach and civic engagement piece that you find that's valuable or more valuable now that we have the division yeah jeffrey has done a good job of engaging with the industry and getting calls and responding to emails from the industry i was kind of hoping um now knowing that he's engaging with these uh industry folks um we would we would like to be part of that conversation we um honestly probably need to do a better job with with engagement out in the public i mean that is something we've talked about doing going hoas the website improvements that jeffrey mentioned a minute ago to the oil and gas page he's really going to be a big help because once that is set up and created that is really an opportunity for our committee to go out and advertise say hey public can come and check our oil and gas website out so i think i think there's a lot of opportunity for us to engage and then engage not only with the public but engage with oil and gas division on his conversations with industry i have a question for you mr pierce and that is to what extent did did mr [Music] moore approach you about this issue and sit down with you and discuss this with you in the commission um i kind of heard about this proposed ordinance kind of second hand um and he so he never informed you that he would be in fact i would say giving testimony against the the commission that he's basically administered has administrative oversight for yeah and i understand i understand staffs you know being on city council before i understand staffs at a position when city council members ask for staff to do something normally they do it so you know maybe mr moore should have come to our committee ahead of time and told us about this ordinance but i think [Music] you know he had a request from council member to talk about this ordinance and that's what he did so i just you know that's just the way it goes in terms of staff interacting with council members i think sure i think there's a difference between providing information and advocating for or against uh further questions or discussions uh council members can i just provide a response to that because yeah initially um you know mr moore was requested to provide that information to council member johnston as she was drafting um and then as i picked this up certainly valued his input and opinion and asked him to continue providing that information um i don't think that it is fair or reasonable to accuse our staff of having some agenda to abolish commissions or committees um i yeah i don't think that it's fair to put that on him that did not come from him as far as i understand that originally came from councilmember johnston further questions um may or may i respond to your appearance as well please um so yes originally councilman johnson is the one that uh brought this ordinance to my attention it was her desire to bring it up originally i did not speak with mr pierce about it for the purpose that i wasn't sure where it was going or if it would be it would come forth councilman johnson did speak with mr pierce directly she informed me of that conversation and after that conversation we spoke about it uh and we talked about it at the next oil and gas advisory committee meeting after that conversation but you feel it's within your role to be an advocate for or against a particular position or or do you feel a more appropriate role might just be providing information uh because you seem to be an advocate here yeah if i'm trying to be an advocate if i appear to be an advocate i'm not intending to be that i'm trying to provide the information that i was requested to provide which was are we fulfilling the role that the oil gas advisory committee is was tasked with i believe that we are and the second question that i was asked to answer was what is the attendance are members of the public and our members of the industry attending the meetings are they asking questions is there a cross communication between the the committee and the public in the industry or is it just simply the the committee members meeting together uh every other month and so for the discussion further discussion mayor um the council member mcconnell yes sir thank you just a comment here i kind of feel like we're shooting the messenger um the way i understand it mr moore did the job he was asked to do i'm sorry if some of us you know take on bridge with the results but it seems like the committee has no attendance anymore and is its purpose is being filled elsewhere so just because we don't like that result i don't think it's appropriate to attack staff further questions or comments councilmember hills thank you yeah similar thoughts and also i just if we're going to ask staff to respond if the mayor can please give them the courtesy of allowing them to finish their sentences that would be great too thanks further questions or comments or governments mayor mayor oh sorry i'll let councilmember mudio go ahead with you thanks councilmember coombs also just allowing council members to finish their sentences as well i know that's a problem in the past there uh councilman overkills um yeah so again i think from my perspective and i don't know um if this was entirely the intent of council member johnson is that really the approach was to bring oil and gas issues into a broader committee again in order to have more voices on issues that are really interrelated across a lot of different topics um not just to eliminate those voices from the conversation at least that's the way i view the role of the committee and the purpose of having the oil and gas committee be wrapped into that is that this is climate is an issue that cuts across a lot of different areas and so i understand the view of the committee that they would like to remain a standalone committee and again as i stated i'm willing to support that and bring this forward instead with out the elimination of the oil and gas committee as part of it so bring it forward just as standalone creating the oil and gas commission so can i just get a sense from my colleagues if you would support bringing the climate action committee forward without the removal of the oil and gas company mayor uh councillor hills thank you um i support that i i was fine with it with the original version i do hope that moving forward um and i don't know if this would be um chairman pierce or if this would be someone else but i do hope that you know if the oil and gas commission remains as a standalone committee that there is a member who at least even if they're not a member of the committee formally um attend this this committee because that environmental concern does like you said cut across um you know a lot of different areas and i think it's really really important that our oil and gas commission have some more awareness about these larger conversations especially with where the um you know air quality is here in colorado we've had what more than 50 action days we were ranked worst in the world it's not just the smoke coming in from the wildfires noaa just released a new report about personal product vocs and transportation emissions the state has not been very good with their enforcement not even just including oil and gas i just mean across the board in reducing emissions there is a very large problem that we have in this state that starts at the top and as city leaders i'm not done thank you as city leaders it's incumbent upon us to protect the health and safety of our community so i really hope that given that we know that the oil and gas industry does you know impact the environment that they are part of those conversations at least listening in and attending the meeting so that they understand their role um and hopefully we can all do this for um you know together and i know that there are some industry folks um conoco's gone but they were very um open to these conversations about how to do things you know better so um i would hope that industry would continue to um follow their own previous comments on their efforts at sustainability by attending these air meetings thank you are you done thank you is there any objection uh oh don't interrupt me oh my god councilmember mario i just got interrupted can you believe that can you believe okay [Music] can i clarify that i would like to understand about moving it forward without the elimination of the oil and gas committee what we're going to do is we're going to move it forward first as proposed and then i'll allow you a second bite of the apple if it doesn't pass exactly is there objection okay there i object with the oil and gas i like it to be on the separate though to have a separate lots of objects bergen objects objects gardner further objection [Music] as objecting as it is or are there any other objections person's objective did you say me yes okay okay um with um five members uh uh in objection uh it will not move forward um council member combs yes mayor i think council remember muriel was trying to speak and she's really faint so we couldn't really hear her uh thank you my i was trying to give comments before the mayor's erratic outburst um a few moments ago which i hope we get emails about as well i i get emails about how i show up in in meetings but never about the rudeness that is displayed by the mayor to our colleagues so again just gonna renew the request to have kind of that parody and how people are treated um on council my my thought or my my comment that i wanted to express before we voted which i was trying to gain the opportunity to speak but i wasn't allowed uh so i'll share now was i liked that the oil and gas um excuse me climate action committee was broad i i liked that it was going to be a little more intersectional and a little more focused on climate issues um and still including you know key players um with you know in that conversation so i thought that was a benefit and i liked the the broad scope of it so i would have supported that um and also given um mr moore's comments um around you know the the state of the current oil and gas commission i would have also supported um removing that since they would have also had a platform in this new committee as well um so you know wanted to express that um since i am now allowed to do so thank you so now the question before us uh is that it would be severed if i'm correct in that council the oil and gas advisory commission would remain as a standing advisory committee and the climate action committee then would would still would move forward am i correct and then yes that is the request is to move the proposal forward with all aspects except for severing the or for eliminating the oil and gas committee okay there's no objection to moving it forward sorry i think somebody else objected did you get bergen uh no okay uh is there any further objection um mayor objects but it does not preclude um uh council member comes from moving forward mayor councilmember jones so i understood the objections about the um ending of the oil and gas committee the only person that i heard any objection to climate actually being addressed from was councilmember gardner um so i guess can i get some clarification from my colleagues on what would be required for us to be able to address this birth issue that literally is about me being able to breathe for the rest of my life all of our children and grandchildren being able to breathe and live and have water and air and land to be on for the rest of their lives like what is a reflectionable about having a community input on that issue and if so can you please provide me with some guidance about what it would take well you know councilman coombs i think that's a great discussion to have outside of the study session because um we've had a significant discussion on your proposal and the proposal did not succeed doesn't mean you can't move it forward and you can certainly have great discussions with other members of council during the interim uh and you can i believe you can make changes to it uh in accordance to those comments i don't think we're gonna resolve it tonight um i mean it's an item on the agenda tonight so it seems like a good time to talk about it and again the actual substance purpose was an address and if i'm going to bring it forward to a council meeting it'd be ideal to have some information from my colleagues about what they'd like to see differently other than leaving the oil and gas committee intact further discussion on the commerce proposal mayor uh councilman am i i'm honestly shocked um am i to believe that none of our colleagues have rationale for why they are opposing a climate action committee further discussion okay check people's campaign contributions folks mayor i'm sorry councilmember health thank you maybe we can do a poll on who believes that climate change is real maybe that's a good place to start um because because i can't take my son out for a hike these days because the air quality is too high and the new reports that are coming out have recommendations from the health department that are saying that if you aren't doing well here um you could move that's how bad the the air quality is and so i i know that a lot of people here already have children who are adults but i have a son that's going to grow up in this environment and is going to grow up breathing this air and for people who are constantly talking about how we need to be doing better for others and we need to be doing better for children and we need to be doing better for those who are more vulnerable i can't imagine that no one has a proposal for what would it take to actually move forward with discussing climate change and i just love seeing my colleagues looking down at their phones and texting each other right now i can see it um so thank you for your concern um you know for my family um i'm not done speaking but thank you mayor pratam so i think it is completely fair to ask what proposals do you have that would get this to a place where you would be comfortable with people talking about things like air quality or the environment or how we can do better for our climate or for a city or to protect the health and safety of our residents and if there isn't a proposal that you can offer that would make this better and a stronger ordinance that you could support then i have to assume that it's because you just don't um so what are the proposals because that's what study session is for well therefore thank you um i'm texting because my brother-in-law in colorado springs is in the emergency room that's why i'm texting so he's been there for three hours so is that okay i think that's acceptable i can't text my sister who's very concerned about her husband secondly secondly and secondly why are we just took a vote we don't do this in study session you don't vote and then continue a discussion and ask for new proposals if you want to have a new proposal let's go back to the drawing board let's go back to a committee and have a discussion on a new proposal it's not appropriate right now mayor uh councilman mcconnell so speaking from first-hand experience it's extremely difficult to bring forward a new proposal when people don't want to discuss the proposal in front of them or at least give rationale as to why they can't support it that's the purpose of a study session so i i'm honestly asking can y'all please let us know what objections you had to council member coombs's proposal because i think this is the committee that we desperately need uh no i think this is something that it should occur this is a regional problem and it's something that we can advocate for if it's not at the state level with representatives from municipalities which i think it is but if it's not then that's something we can argue for but it absolutely makes no sense having it at the local level when this is a regional problem further discussions would it be appropriate to perhaps have the tri-county health department that you just drafted a resolution for to have maintained weigh in on the importance of discussing these issues would that be appropriate given that we sit in three counties well i think it's a i think it's regional meaning different metro area so i think probably doctor carl okay your definition thank you so to clarify as our representative on dr cogg we literally just had a discussion at our work session about how as the transportation planning agency we can address only issues within our purview and that we can't for example address land use issues or address issues that are the purview of the local government i would also point out that most of the other cities in the metro area including many that are much smaller than the city of aurora have these types of committees in place um and so this is not unprecedented or inappropriate to be addressed at the local level there are numerous local issues that directly impact climate change and so certainly we need to have regional state national and global conversations but local government has a specific purview and we need to address the ways that we are impacting air quality the ways that we as a city are impacting water quality the ways that our specific decisions within our purview are determining whether or not we have a planet that's livable in the future it is 100 our responsibility and if we choose to shirk that responsibility then that's pretty shocking and appalling and again all all i would like to understand because actually the oil and gas committee said they fully support bringing forward a climate action committee they just want to continue to be in existence themselves doing the work that they've done so if the oil and gas industry and community members that support the oil and gas industry um support this i really i am confused like what specific things do i need to change before i bring this to the full council because yes i have the ability to bring it to the full council but if i do that and it fails if i do that and it fails then i have to wait six months so what can i do between now and then a question for the city attorney uh but we we have um i've gotten a sense of the um council and two iterations of this proposal did not move forward uh is there and i realize that we're just in a formal discussion uh but is there a is there's no call for the question in this but at what point in times is it this is a settled question for purposes of the study session oh you again the formal rules of robert's rules don't apply to study sessions nor do the the council's the council's rules allow promotions or items like that so what you're looking at is is simply the chair's discretion in moving the item forward well in moving the items forward well they next item is item 4b uh city council rit support expansion uh scott newman good evening or good later evening city council uh this item will probably be brief i just wanted to provide you a quick update as you know that previously we had already been providing council support monday through friday eight to five um we working with the city manager's office and the council support staff we've expanded those hours to be seven days a week from eight am to 8 00 pm um we do ask that you first reach out to um the council support staff right now man by stephanie swann until uh susan barkman's former role is filled and she will help you vet some of those issues up front see if she can help with them and if not then she will assist in opening any it support tickets um but just to be brief we wanted to let you know that we are now offering that support seven days a week from 8 am to 8 pm outside of city recognition holidays and if there's any questions are there questions of staff here i'm sorry who is it all right councilman thank you for the brief presentation um so i'm just curious what was the impetus for this was were the previous support hours um not meeting the needs of council and where i'm going with that is i'm just concerned about a the increased cost of having additional support hours and the impact to staff about having to be available um kind of outside regular business hours if it's not really necessary church that's a great question councilman gardner um we noticed we had several uh uh issues and requests that were documented that came in either late friday or on a saturday or on a sunday as you all know you have to meet on mondays and sometimes those requests came in late on friday or over the weekend specific to escribe or the packets that you were trying to achieve in advance of the meeting and there was just concern that we could address those issues timely enough to allow you to prepare for the meeting on monday all right thanks sure uh mr mayor you're muted okay um further discussion seeing no further discussion i don't believe action that was him for information only uh thank you very much scott yes sir uh number 4c capital infrastructure master plan uh public works thank you mary city council cindy collett public works director i'm here tonight to talk to you about the capital improvement master plan for public works specifically related to transportation uh we'll come back at a later time with the facilities so i'm just gonna jump right into it all right so the original master plan update was published back in november of 2019 and covet happened so things changed a bit at that time we had about 63 projects on there totaling about 980 million dollars so since that time we've gone through refinement we've removed some projects that have already been programmed we removed projects that have been or will be completed by development that we've firmed up we're going to be dividing a few of the projects into segments i'll talk about that in a minute we refine some of our scopes and ask estimates we categor categorize the projects into different types and then we prioritize the projects within each type and so when we came down to the refinements a little bit we ended up with about 55 of those projects about 770 million as i mentioned we've categorized them by type if you're interested in looking at them um so tonight a really brief overview of our capital project fund utilization i'm only going to talk about the top five priorities at the most in each category and then if there's any questions so looking at the annual appropriations for public works as most of you know a lot of that goes to our maintenance for streets and a little bit for bridges and traffic signals we have a amount of miscellaneous street improvements where we do minor improvements to fix little issues in the city and we have traffic signal construction bike head master plan implementation traffic calming and a few other items um what i'll note over for you here we also have one time funding but we've been very successful getting the doctor cog tip funding of about two million this year and then those matches are going to go to nine mile high lane canal trails and a transit improvements those are just a few of the doctor cog projects that we were successful in um so for bridges we have top-ranked projects we're always working around ensuring infrastructure that's well maintained and operated and so we've got five bridges here that came in at the top priority the first one being peoria over sand creek which is between 25th also fitzsimmons parkway and then also 30th we have a pinch point here where the bridge goes down to four lanes and it's six lanes on each side this is the lowest rated bridge that we have in the city as well and so it's kind of high on our priority list to make improvements and fix the issues out here for that excellent infrastructure so there are structural safety concerns it's not meeting the capacity needs multimodal is not really known here we have very narrow sidewalks we need to improve and also the travel reliability and mobility overall to get to our employment process for the anschutz campus next on the list this is our second lowest rated bridge in the city and it is peoria um over first creek north of 26 where we have a lot of development going on this is kind of close to where shamrock is being built and some of those other large developments it is our second lowest rated bridge as i mentioned the development community has some obligation but per the agreement we're responsible for 5 million this is in design right now so we're trying to track that to make sure we get this constructed in a timely manner again the benefits structural issues capacity issues with large trucks as you see no multimodal aspects out there next on the list is the gartral bridge lightning over e-470 aurora parkway is here to the right dry creek road and the super target are over here to the left and these are the off ramps and this uh six lane section on either side narrows down to a three-lane section and it really needs to be a full five-lane section so we can bring um all the vehicles through that are timed across the bridge there are also no pedestrian facilities or bike facilities on the bridge right now and the site distance is very difficult getting on and off of the on-ramps right now this project is going to be in design here shortly the design is funded by the south aurora regional improvement authority and this was a good partnership where they have funded the design but we have not identified the um capital funding yet although we've been talking with the board about it and this is also an important bridge for e-470 and then the alameda bridge over i-225 um abilene street over here on the right the i-225 configuration and potomac to the left this is a phase three that was developed uh 20 years ago when this was first reconstructed to this um configuration that it's in now as most as many of you know the southbound off ramp often backs up onto 225 and there's always significant congestion in this area here with the two ramps so our suggestion is going to be to actually reevaluate the area to make sure what the right solution is for aluminium 225 but there are no good pedestrian facilities the sidewalk is maybe three feet wide no bike facilities so that is our uh next priority and finally from the bridge side of things this is again over e-470 the on and off ramps north is up here we are seeing that these intersections at joule are needing to be signalized here fairly in the fairly near future we also have a narrow section here and getting a lot of vehicles from everything to the east for the city of aurora even with the hogan parkway extension so again capacity multimodal um accessibility there's a trail in the area now thanks to e-470s project and not good connectivity of folks getting to the trail and even some families trying to access the trail using the facility as it is now so all right and then we'll get to the roadway and intersections again ranking these by need capacity issues ensuring excellent infrastructure congestion problems so this is the gun club road improvements this right here is the intersection of quincy and gun club which arapahoe county just did a great intersection of improvement here it has improved from a level of service f to operating at a level of service b now but the missing piece is we have a two-lane section of gun club road all the way over here where um into aurora parkway as you're getting closer to the southlands mall area right now the syria board south aurora regional improvement authority is looking is doing the preliminary design and relocation and we're doing that in partnership with arapahoe county we've both put in seria and arapaho county have both put in 2.3 million dollars and that should get us through the preliminary design as well as some of the utility relocations again construction funding still to be determined this is a huge capacity issue in this area this roadway carries two and a half times the volume that it should be for a two-lane facility we've got safety issues no multimodal options and it again it'll improve the travel reliability and mobility in the area all right um moving a little bit further south um here is smoky hill road where it goes along blackstone and county line road on the other side of blackstone and we have a missing piece of agreement here for widening this roadway as development occurs in this area we continue to get more and more backups out here and especially as development occurs to the east as well so increasing the capacity trying not to get into some of those interesting two-lane roads where we've got good facilities on either side and we have a pinch point in the middle all right um this this project specifically we are actually working on phasing this a little bit differently um we have a project from airport boulevard to tower right now looking at a four-lane section it's one of city council's priority projects we're in design right now but the missing piece that we have is from tower tying into stephen d hogan parkway to the east in order to widen that section as well so ultimately it should be a six-lane arterial at some point in the future but as i mentioned we are going to phase this project and break it out and we're going to look at this tower road to stephen d hogan parkway potentially is only a four lane so this number will decrease and we'll have a little bit better information for the next presentation here is stephen d hogan parkway and piccadilly a couple miles or a mile or two up to the north we have our new i-70 and piccadilly interchange that will be constructed and this is a missing piece of road that needs to be reconstructed there are very significant vertical sight distance issues here um and so this completes our obligation for getting piccadilly to the correct section as we're going up to the i-70 interchange project and it will help help with access to and from um hogan parkway as well all right again out east a little bit we're at the quincy and gun club intersection here quincy avenue sorry about that is heading to the east here and this is the access not only to capstick but our future steam facility and we also have a significant number of bikes that use this as a training ground arapahoe county partnering with the city of aurora has completed a preliminary design for this section and we're looking at trying to do an interim section that will allow us to provide a little bit better facilities for the bikes even out here on a sidewalk construction funding has not been identified yet however this is also on the south roar regional improvement authority master plan and one of the benefits that we see out of here is that now that we've connected harvest road all the way past infinity middle school we're seeing a lot more traffic accessing this and so it's increasing the volume on a two-lane facility and although it's operating better at quincy and gun club there is a need to address the capacity and safety issues out there all right so the next is around traffic and then i have one more about ada with the bikepad update um so for traffic signal construction uh you saw on one of the slides that we have about hundred thousand dollars annually for a traffic signal construction whether it's a rebuild or a new signal right now that is about 1.5 traffic signals that's what we have budget for a year and we are finding that we have areas within the core of the city or that are not part of a development agreement that need signalization so by adding annual capital cost about two and a quarter million we'll be able to add about five signals per year that will also help us address some of our old span wires and also where we have um traffic signals that have probably been in service for 40 to 50 years and they're just failing in the condition that they're in um so the next three items are really around finding a way so that we can make our traffic signal system more responsive and adaptable to the traffic volumes as they increase and also getting us connection to the signal system in the appropriate manner so right now our traffic signal system which sits up at north satellite we don't have a system that can update remotely generally a lot of times we actually have to go out to the individual signals to make adjustments or make sure they're operating correctly so if we can upgrade the server at about hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's going to eliminate a lot of the need for us to go out to the sites and we can also then remotely check the traffic signals to make sure that they're operating properly and that'll help us also decrease delay in some of those associated environmental impacts so the next piece of the signal system is fiber communications i know this is a big number right here it's for a full 95 miles of fiber through the city however we are phasing this in and have a recommendation i'll provide some better information in the future where we would prioritize chambers smokey hill and aurora parkway to install fiber it would get us all the way from north satellite all the way down to talons reach and help improve some of the needs for the town's reach folks as well we're working with i.t and water also so that we can connect to their facilities along that route and if we were able to put fiber communications in along that stretch i just mentioned it's in the eight million dollar range if we added another series of arterials such as hampton or quincy parts of gun club for a little bit of redundancy it would probably be another 8 million so we're looking at a little bit better phasing on that to tie in not only with the server update but then the fiber to improve the reliability and response times because fiber is much more dependable than the wireless that we have now and then finally if we update the traffic signal controllers and those are the brains of the intersection a controller is at any every intersection and it tells the signal what to do many of our controllers are nearing their end of life and we're not compliant with current standards also the older controllers can't be updated remotely they don't support its or intelligent traffic systems including smart cities and some of those adaptive traffic control components we would like to install so um for controllers throughout the city it would be about five and a half million but again we would uh we're looking at a phase that would just address chambers smoky hill and aurora parkway right now we're confirming some of those adaptive traffic signal control costs for that area i think those numbers will come in somewhere between the 5 and 10 million range and that would be both controllers and confirming some of those adaptive control costs and so what that would do for that corridor is give us real good functionality and the ability to address the um the signal system remotely and improve our ability to respond to uh situations finally i'm done this is for our ada sidewalk compliance we do have dr cog funding to address um arterial issues right now it's about the total is about um three and a half million but a portion of that is also for um some of the collectors um so our capital cost to update the um the needs on the arterial sidewalks is still around the 4.7 million range and then we will be performing an ada transition plan update here shortly reading the rfp out now and that will include making updates on collectors and neighborhood streets and so we're suggesting an ongoing operating but capital costs so that we can address the needs of the ada transition plan update to meet the ada requirements and with that i will open it for questions thank you so much for the presentation you're welcome thank you uh 4d um opera community engagement update um charities canalis community engagement manager good evening mayor members of council my name is karise canales and i'm the new community engagement manager within the housing and community services department and it's my pleasure to provide you just with a brief update on our community engagement efforts that we'll be planning on over the next couple months or on the american rescue plan act so as a reminder um the city of aurora will be uh receiving a one-time direct payment of 65.4 million dollars in federal aid funding for coveted relief and this was part of a federal aid package passed this spring to support communities in their recovery for coven 19. we've identified a number of focus areas for this federal funding the first one being community assistance and that includes things such as small business relief could be a homeless shelter family assistance we're also looking at infrastructure support so that could be expansion of broadband services or hot spots to the community it can also support service preservation which includes items such as support to our nonprofit partners or support to our essential workers so really the goal of our community engagement around the arpa funding is to hear directly from our community members what their most pressing needs are and what's going to make the biggest impact on their lives in recovering from our kovid 19 pandemic so there has been a core team that has been meeting over the last month or so to really come together to build out this engagement plan around the arpa funding to prioritize how we'll make those allocations so we have folks from my community engagement division we're working closely with our communications team as well as our dei office and our office of international and immigrant affairs so really we're trying to look holistically about how we're going to hear directly from our community to get the community voice into our decision-making processes and so we're planning to launch a number of feedback opportunities this week and i'll dive into what those will look like in this brief presentation we'll continue gathering feedback over the next month and a half we plan to compile all of the community feedback that we receive and come back to council for the october 4th study session and in that conversation we can provide a snapshot of what the community told us their priorities were and what their biggest needs are in recovering from covid and help council make those decisions around how they'll allocate the funding so the first strategy that we plan to use is first to develop different opportunities and platforms to collect this community feedback and we want to make sure that we're creating a wide range of opportunities and platforms to ensure that this process is accessible to as much of our community as possible so the first tactic we'll use is to create a project on engage aurora our city's online community engagement platform and so on our arpa project page which we'll be able to find at engageaurora.org arpa the community will be able to fill out different surveys and provide their ideas to really tell us what their biggest priorities are and how they hope to see us allocate this funding we'll also be providing a survey and paper copy for those folks in our community who may not be as comfortable with the online format we can distribute that through our community partners we'll also be creating small input cards that we can distribute in our different community hubs like key restaurants or cultural centers and we'll be hosting four to six virtual community listening sessions truly have a conversation with our community and with our community partners around again what are the biggest priorities and what will make the biggest impact on the citizens of aurora's day-to-day lives and we do want to note that we are trying to make this as accessible as possible so we'll be partnering closely with the office of international and immigrant affairs to translate materials and reach out to those partners the second strategy once we've created these platforms for feedback we need to promote them and so the communications team will be leading a lot of this effort with doing press releases especially to non-english media and using our this is aurora electronic newsletter as well as our september water bill we'll use outlets such as social media our neighborhood organizations newsletter we can do a segment on mayor mike live and definitely partnering with our different community leaders organizations recreation centers to distribute this information far and wide because we want to use this as an opportunity to build relationships and build trust with our community to have them put their community voice in this big decision and lastly we'll be establishing a presence at key community events and at different key facilities to gather input so our team will make ourselves available for presentations at different council ward meetings we've developed a list of community events and hope to host different engagement activities at events throughout our community over the next two months and then as i said we'll be collaborating with key partners like our office of international and immigrant affairs to reach our diverse communities in aurora and working with partners like our library to do some static engagement displays so as folks are going into the community hubs that they already have trust in that they can continue to participate and weigh in over the next two months so as far as our next steps we'll be launching all of these different engagement efforts through early october we'll compile the results help come up with some key recommendations for council and then we'll come back to the october 4th council study session to help you all in that conversation around how we'll allocate those funds so i wanted to keep the the engagement efforts brief for you tonight as we're just ramping up but happy to answer any questions that comes when they have [Music] thank you and thank you for the presentation i'm really excited to see this um this was some feedback that i had shared from a conference that we attended around um a public process around this large tranche of money that we'll be receiving and i'm really excited to see that we have a robust coordinated effort to be able to do this because i think that um you know when people think about government accountability that's a lot of money and i think people should know where it's going and should have input in that as well so i'm i'm just really happy that you um that the team is taking this on um a couple of things uh in these conversations one of the things that i wanted to highlight or for us to be able to capture information on is um barriers to some of our programming um as an example i've gotten if maybe some other council members have as well around some of the other business relief grants and just other grants that we've had to pass through and just the amount of difficulty that people have experienced trying to access those dollars you know whether it's a requirement like really confusing requirements or you know three months later they still haven't gotten their check you know so my question is are we going to talk about and ask and you know ask people for barriers that they might have experienced in prior rounds of funding um so that we could try to overcome that this this time you know the point of these conversations is to make sure that they're as open of a dialogue as possible with our community so we want to hear things like that and so i certainly think that that could be included in especially the facilitated community listening sessions we want to walk through this whole process with our community to make sure that we can help them recover as easily as possible wonderful uh mayor i have another uh question you're immunity i think okay um and then the other thing was um i see that there's gonna be translation um for kind of the major languages um can we make it clear when we're advertising this the um potential to use our language access program because i'm just concerned that people i understand from like a financial resource that we can't translate it in all of our materials to over 130 languages i totally understand that i just don't want people to feel excluded and i just i want us to be able to communicate that we have other resources to translate materials um so that we are being as inclusive as possible i think it's particularly relevant um given you know that in some other countries there might be other ethnic minority groups that um you know we i think we want to be sensitive to the fact that we're reaching all you know minority groups all groups um within a particular country and that might be more than one main language absolutely and that's why we want to partner so closely with the office of international and immigrant affairs because we have those existing programs that they can make sure that folks know that we have access to we want to put this information about this feedback opportunity out to these diverse groups and and partner with different non-profits that are serving this so absolutely we will make sure to know that or to to outreach to the community that there are these resources and we want to include as many people as possible further discussion uh uh yes you said you were going to do four to six community listening sessions um i just want to make sure that there would be one in ward 6 since we're so far away from the center of the city would it be would you be doing it virtual or are you going to be doing it actually in our community we'll be doing these virtually and you know we want to stagger at different times of day different days of the week just to accommodate as many folk schedules as possible so really mindful of that and then you know obviously we'd want to reach out to council and make sure that you all are able to invite your constituents so that they're participating so this would be open to everyone in the city at the same time versus it's not segmented by areas correct and we our team can come to your different board meetings as well if you want something a little bit more targeted there will be those opportunities great thank you further questions seeing none thank you very much for the presentation thank you 5a amendments to the campaign finance reform finance ordinance uh councilman mcconnell thank you mayor i'm going to go ahead and pass it off to rachel allen to get us going thanks so much councilmember marcano um if i may um our outside counsel for this campaign finance item is having some connectivity issues would it be possible to do item 5b before 5a just to give mr gruskan a few more minutes to connect absolutely uh yes i'm number 5b ballot question changing the eligibility for registered electors to run for office by councilman gruber what we've learned in the discussions about our um about the ballots or about the campaigns in uh aurora uh are specifically that in order uh that that our charter is in in conflict with the state constitution our charter says that no felon is allowed to run for public office the charter i'm sorry the charter says no felon is allowed to run for public office the constitution state constitution says that some felons are allowed to run and what it does is to specifically exclude felons there's only two ways to modify our charter one is a vote and then another is by a judge uh who would rule part of our charter unconstitutional what this uh ballot initiative would do would be to ask the people of aurora to change our charter so as to comply with the state constitution so this would be this would go on the november ballot uh the the text is each council member when elected shall be a registered elector shall be a citizen of the united states of america and shall have resided in the city of aurora for at least one year prior to the date of the election and shall have reached their 21st birthday prior to the date of the election council members elected from ward shall also be one-year residents and registered electors of their respective wards from which they were elected a person who has been convicted of and this is where the change is currently our charter says a felony what the what the ballot measure will do is to change a felony to eliminate a felony uh so a person who is convicted of embezzlement of public money bribery perjury solicitation of bribery or subordination of perjury shall not become a candidate nor hold elective office no council members shall hold any other elected public office nor be a salaried employee of the city of aurora and it's a yes or no question so what i'm asking council to do tonight is to support this move it into a regular meeting and then at the regular meeting we would vote to uh put this on the ballot so the people of aurora can modify our charter discussion mayor councilman mcconnell thank you sir um could someone from the city attorney's office please explain the memo because the way i read that it shows that we would not be able to get this done in time to actually get it on the ballot staff uh yeah the memo does describe the process and the hurdles for getting this on the this election ballot uh the the problem is that the question or the ballot needs to be certified by the city clerk uh by september third uh an ordinance and this does require an ordinance uh for approval because this is a an amendment to the charter the ordinance wouldn't be final until the 16th that would be the second reading and then there's also a period for publication after that so roughly mid october before the ordinance would be fine uh the the big problem with this is the second reading falling after the uh the required certification of the ballot mayor uh um because of the timing because i think it is important to have this go to the voters so that we're not in violation of the charter and that the voters have that that ability to to um vote on this could we not um i mean i understand the timeline with the you know with the introduction of the ordinance and then the final reading similar to a waiver of reconsideration that we do is there no way to combine the first and final reading um due to this time the the ordinance for an ordinance it requires two publications the only thing you can do is with an emergency ordinance and that i addressed that in the memo that that eliminates the need for the the 30 days after publication period but it still requires two two two uh uh publication dates so the the short answer is no um and i i guess i would defer to katie if if if there was a an appetite for a another meeting just to handle one issue if that would be feasible based on the publication schedule uh i don't know the answer to that well i think that's a council question oh may i have a follow-up mayor uh may pretend yeah just so you have on here valley question blah blah blah okay city clerk required to certified by september 3rd why couldn't that be moved out so that is by statute that is the latest to participate in the coordinated election if she misses that date our election is not handled by the counties okay so if we could possibly move up the schedule is that what i heard or no but i i think it's unlikely and i'm asking katie not her not for the council calendar or the council willingness to do this i understand the mayor's concern that would be your call but but whether or not just from a calendar standpoint if a special meeting even calling a special meeting for the funnel would would satisfy the the publication requirements because you have to publish it at least five days before the second reading and i think we're too close on the publication dates with the sentinel but again katie i don't know if you know the answer to that yeah let me verify this but from looking at the publication dates for ordinances and then checking out against the calendar for the council meetings study sessions already put in place and then if you do have a special meeting it doesn't look like we would be able to meet the first and second publication and reconsideration period for it to be effective in time but let me do some logistics messing around with the dates and i'll get you a confirmative answer in a second um do you need time to where i should go move back to 5a katie um if you want to go on to further questions then i i can have some time to to look at the calendars and make sure and give you specific dates junior second recess that that's up to you has additional questions they want to address right now um find me mayor can i ask a question for over mr dahl i just had a question um in the language that we have here so it says i understand a candidate for cannot be elected for office no council member shall hold any other elected public office so and then i understand about being salaried employee of the city of aurora so if you're a council member and you are you basically holding that person connect can't run for state they couldn't run for federal i guess i'm just trying to understand we're trying to change the charter for council but our our charter but are we still subjected if you're a person a council member who who has done any of these things i guess is that what that's saying you can't hold any other office you can't run for anything at a state level and at a federal level school board anything like that i mean can we actually do that because aren't rules isn't that the decision kind of based on what those bylaws and those those rules are so i guess i'm kind of understanding that fair question and and jack or rachel may uh want to weigh in as well but my take on on that is twofold one the the charter of course your charter can only control what elected officials in aurora are elected to hold office etc uh they you know it can't effectively set qualifications for persons running for congress for example uh aurora can't do that what uh the i believe the intention of the uh provision here is to talk about elective office in the city now having said that you've received my advice that the colorado constitution does control and to the extent that other bodies school board etc need to conform to the constitution they have the same they're governed in the same way but for the for the scope of charter section 3-3 the intention i believe is to focus on the elective offices within the city just the way that looks to me and i'm just saying if maybe i'm looking no council member shall hold any other elected public office oh yes i'm sorry with respect to that that last sentence that's not uncommon to to to say uh in cornwall charters to say look uh we don't want you holding elective office as a county commissioner for example as a county treasurer that occasionally does come up and what that last sentence is saying is that's another restriction on the eligibility to to hold elective office in aurora we want you to only be an auror elected official not also being an elected official in some other jurisdiction or being a salary employee and the city's charter has full authority to make that restriction many cities don't have that in their charters but aurora does and that's a restriction that's absolutely enforceable i'm sorry i didn't fully understand your question to begin with mayor uh council member hills thank you i i follow council member lawson's concerns because we are a part-time council and it is not unheard of for an elected official i think you know at the state level to also hold a local school board position and so um i think that's the question because we're considered part-time none of us make enough money doing this to to be able to you know pay the bills and it's not always um conducive to having a traditional job and certainly not conducive to to someone who may be working um unconventional hours and so it's just i think an additional prohibition now if someone wants to run for two offices like i mean there could certainly be some conflicts of interest that would come up that would require a lot of recusing so that's something to be mindful of but um i do share some of councilmember lawson's concerns on that specific prohibition and i will say in response to that if i may you are recognize that appropriately and you're stuck with it because that is in fact a provision that is enforceable the voters have put that in your charter uh they said if you if you need to support yourself you're going to have to find something other than being a salaried employee of the city or an elected official elsewhere to uh to be able to do that and as you know very often a sitting council member will run for another office if they're elected it's decision time and they're going to have to decide which office they're going to hang on to further discussion thank you mayor this might just be a great time to start the conversation with the general public about making aurora a full-time council for those who are interested in doing that further discussion mayor councilman i just wanted to point out that the reason that we did this or the reason that i created this and it may not be able to succeed was that we had a person in the city that was running for who wanted to run for a city council position i don't believe that person has filed i don't believe that person has standing any longer uh because they have not filed i think we have passed the filing date uh but the point was is that that person had a felony conviction uh that wasn't one of the ones listed in the state constitution so the city had talked about creating an ordinance that would allow that person to run but the ordinance would have created a dilemma where we would have had to have violated the city charter this is an effort to fix that if we don't fix it at this year i hope that i will not be on council next year i hope that the council next year would add this to the ballot uh to make sure that the charter and the constitution are similar have the same wording mayor this is hello katie yes um i was looking at the dates for the publication and we would not meet the requirements we have to publish seven days prior to the final passage and so if the ballot question is introduced august 23rd and i have to certify the ballot content on september 3rd having a special meeting in between that time wouldn't allow for um publication and the effective date would be 30 days from the second publication which would be after the ballot certification on september 3rd further discussion mayor given the given that knowledge i will rescind this ordinance um you know again this was a good faith effort uh to make the charter follow the constitution and again i'll ask that council the following council add this to the ballot next year very well let me uh okay um if can councilman gruber move forward with a proposal that would they would even know that would make it effective for the what would it be i guess the next ballot would be 2020. fair point of order 2020. oh never mind sorry never mind mayor um i the question is i think i had a question uh for staff on that yeah the answer would be yes uh the the ordinance as it's presented now it has it going to the to the ballot in november of this year however that's obviously the issue um with uh with support of counsel uh it could be included on the uh for first reading at the next council meeting or a subsequent council meeting um uh prior to uh council member gruber being off council and then it would just stay and hold until until the whatever election it's designated to be okay okay very well the council mary hills thank you yeah i was just going to say this has come up in the past and typically we don't bind future councils to something that is a ballot related issue this came up um two years ago with could we hold over something and we as a majority i think unanimously at the time decided that we weren't going to force the next council to do that and with several of us automatically not returning just because we're either not running or we're termed out um you know i think it would be more appropriate for the next council to pick that back up and have that conversation as as a body further discussion further discussion uh councillor combs i would just add too that i would like to see more conversation about a charter review commission and other mechanisms for getting community input on changes to the charter even ones that seem pretty straightforward so certainly i appreciate the intent councilman gruber but i do think that as we're looking at doing this moving forward making changes to the charter that we should find a way to get robust public input in that process prior to adding things to the ballot further discussion uh mayor project so currently the way that section of the um charter is written where we've been told we're in violation of state statute so if we move this forward to i know we're not going to meet the the deadline for this november but we are trying to correct that situation so that we're not in violation of the state statute i think i think it makes sense to go ahead and move it forward if i can address that please you really have two issues here uh one of course is the timing and when you know what's the next election you really could uh do that change on and you just have that discussion but meanwhile and your question is meanwhile what what do we do what situation are we in and you'll recall that that question came up at the last meeting and i'll answer it in the same way which is that uh if there is a conflict between your charter and the constitution the constitution prevails it prevails here and so continuing to allow people to pull nomination petitions etc despite the fact of a felony conviction means you're complying with the state constitution and the advice you've received from me consistently and advice we've given to the city clerk consistently is where the state constitution prevails you form to it or that one particular provision of your account of your charter and and you are able clearly to defend yourself from not imposing the charter restriction because you're instead applying with a preemptive constitutional provision and that will protect you until you have the chance to have the charter changed meanwhile as i think i indicated in two previous meetings uh if the ordinance passes we'll likely also add a little note on the charter that we'll reference the discussion we're just now having so that people are aware that they should look at the constitution for that particular qualification list not the charter further questions the discussion um [Music] uh councilmember gruber um do you wish to withdraw oh withdrawal very well uh item number five a uh amendments to the campaign finance ordinance um councilmember o'connell um thank you mayor i will once again pass it off to rachel allen and mark griskin thank you so much councilmember marcano um at the request to council we are bringing this item back to study session with two attachments um the first attachment is on page 518 of your backup this was also distributed to council last monday august 9th and um what that first attachment is is the agreed upon language by opposing council to address the issues that were raised in the lawsuit that was filed earlier this year and um opposing counsel has agreed um that the language in the first um amendment and the first attachment would um would move the lawsuit the second attachment we also included at the request of counsel and that second attachment is um our amendments that would repeal ordinance 2020-58 that council passed late last year and it would re-enact the prior code provisions and mark gruskin is also online to answer any questions i'm also available to answer any questions questions to staff oh you know what um may pretend i'm going to turn the uh proverb the virtual gavel over to you to run the meeting from this point forward okay thank you mayor um do we have comments or questions from council members mayor pretend councilmember mark thank you um i just want to once again thank rachel and mark for all the work uh and the collaboration they put into this um the changes that are before you all i think uh maintaining the spirit and intent of the original ordinance uh while satisfying uh the county courts and the changes that you know the issues that they had with the language so i think this still enshrines a lot of the transparency and uh notifications and public information that we were really shooting for um while you know satisfying the court's concerns so okay further comments or discussion questions councilmember gruber i just want to point out that during the debate there were several issues in addition to the ones that were brought uh brought in the lawsuit uh where we were concerned about constitutionality and the fact that this was written by a left-wing organization i think it's created a lot of uh confusion in this ballot and i i didn't like it when when it was voted on i don't like it now and i think the best way forward is to repeal and replace uh the ordinance that we had prior to this was negotiated by council member johnson and council member richardson it was voted on unanimously it wasn't controversial and it served the city well this one has gone too far and i think it needs to be eliminated and and we'll go back to what we had before thank you [Music] mr mayor pro tem yes councilmember coombs um so i understand folks wanting to use a lawsuit as an opportunity to fully overturn items that were voted on by council by a council majority especially taking advantage of the fact that we have a vacancy to try to do that i understand that political motivation is one that one might have however um there's been a lot of conversation about compromise and how maybe we as a council need to learn to compromise and i think taking out significant provisions modifying significant provisions that are to the satisfaction of the opposing council um who represents a member of this body who filed a lawsuit against the city regarding the law is a way that we compromise we say okay you don't get to have all of the things that you voted for or that you thought might be good but you can still have some transparency some accountability and the you know the desires of opposing counsel and also their client are also met in terms of removing those aspects that were considered problematic legally so i think given that we have hired someone to address this issue for us to defend this lawsuit in court and that they have negotiated with opposing counsel um amendments that would be effective at getting rid of the lawsuit getting rid of the ongoing costs um that's the course that we should take um so that's just my opinion on the matter and that is what i will support mary berton yes that's a member so we need to take a step back we're not this is not about a compromise this is about the fact that this council passed an unconstitutional law and then you're right the mayor filed suit against the fact that it was an unconstitutional law so compromise is not this isn't that has nothing to do with compromise this is the fact that the city is going to lose this lawsuit the city is going to fight this lawsuit and and the fact that we're doing any of this is because it was unconstitutional that's why i go back the best compromise is that recognize that it was an unconstitutional law recognize that the best solution forward is to go back to an ordinance a law that was passed unanimously by council and move forward with that mayor pro um so if we can get mr gruskin to weigh in as to whether or not anyone has stated that the law in its entirety is unconstitutional and then if we can get rachel to weigh in on the severability clause that goes into our city's ordinances when they're being written mayor tim yes go ahead please was this did you want me to respond then if you could please sure no suggestion has been made that anything if if the council were to adopt the amendments to the current ordinance as proposed there's been no suggestion to me by opposing counsel or anyone involved in the litigation process that there are any remaining issues or allegations of unconstitutionality as to the amended ordinance and just as a matter of my independent judgment i i've reviewed uh the complete ordinance and uh i'm not aware of any uh based on my experience in campaign finance field i'm not aware of any issues in the what would be the amended ordinance uh that would be on uh that would present issues of unconstitutionality i have a question um if this or if it was repealed basically and then reverted back to the to the original uh campaign finance ordinance that was a bipartisan um approved by part by a bipartisan uh council i mean then it the fact that this is unconstitutional currently in its current stage that goes away as well i mean the lawsuit goes away because you would just be getting rid of this entire campaign finance ordinance that some some members on council did not vote for because they found other parts of it to not be worried and so anyway so if it was repealed it could be replaced with the with the original campaign financial defense correct is that question posed to the mayor or to me oh i'm sorry to you okay um if if the um fire ordinance was was enacted again in this place of the existing ordinance i am informed by council uh to the mayor that the um lawsuit would likewise be moot so both both actions would result in a a mooting of the lawsuit as described to me by by the mayor's council okay thank you and mayor i'm sorry did you want to say something yeah it's simply to say that the uh that this agreement strips the unconstitutional provisions from the from the uh proposed from the ordinance and so uh i support the agreement mayor pro tem yes councilmember i don't believe that we got the answer from rachel regarding the severability uh clause that's included in our ordinances when they're drafted all right rachel could you absolutely thank you in all of our ordinances we include language typically towards the bottom of the ordinance and it's a severability clause so to say it plainly is if one particular portion of the ordinance is declared unconstitutional or for any reason invalid or unenforceable the rest of the ordinance still stands so that's the language that is standard included in almost all of our ordinances so that again if if one particular part of the ordinance is unenforceable invalid unconstitutional the remaining portions of the ordinance still stand okay are there comments questions okay so we do we we still could vote to completely repeal the ordinance and that would that would make the lawsuit go away and then we would revert back to the former campaign finance ordinance that is the second attachment in the backup that starts on page 540 of your packet okay mayor proton yes council member who may ask a question thank you um what would that what would that look like on the staff side if the council were to just repeal the whole thing which i don't support um what would that look like on the staff side because i imagine that would be a lot of work to get everyone who's currently running to kind of revert back to a previous version and previous requirements and then also does that open us up to any liability for changing the standards of an election and candidate process in the middle of an election particularly when we're already operating under a charter violation as a council i just there's just a lot of questions i have around staff time and i know um fiscal conservatism is very important and so to be responsible with that um you know how much money are we looking at having to spend to to do that because i support the compromise um the person who brought the lawsuit supports the compromise why throw the whole thing out when only portions of it were considered unconstitutional which as you know rachel just explained is severable from the rest of the ordinance so i guess what does that do for for staff and candidates i'm not sure if you wanted the city clerk's office to answer city attorney's office either or both okay so we did not have a fiscal note prepared for that second option that ordinance that starts uh towards the back of the packet on page 540 but um certainly the work that katie the city clerk's office and our office did together to prepare the faqs and provide resources to the um candidates for the november 2nd election that would all need to be updated of course if it was repealed and uh the old ordnance were reenacted and then katie what other additional things can you think of off the top of your head yes we would need to work with it department to redo the campaign finance reports that were updated to be in compliance with the new ordinance so we would need to work with i.t to get all of that changed and reverted back do testing with them and then probably do another candidate training to let them know what the new requirements are so that for those are the the most basic things that we would need to do to um to make changes to refer back to the old ordnance so it would not be more restrictive though it would be actually less restrictive so in terms of candidates they wouldn't they they wouldn't have to refund money or anything like that rachel i just haven't performed that analysis mayor pro tem i um i generally think that you're right because um you know there's no contribution limits um and i believe there's less reporting but it's late at night and i have not performed that specific analysis um so so generally i i think what you've said is correct i just have not done that analysis i understand so by the calendar that we saw for councilman gruber's ordinance this would have to this ordinances repeal and replace would have to go into effect no sooner than october 16th and then staff would have to redo all of that stuff between october 16th and november 2nd is that how that would work exactly so that same calendar that you just walked through um with the uh charter amendment that uh my colleague jack badour just walked you through um the same would be true um for the for this ordinance either direction whether you do the first or the second option um again it it it would be first reading on august 23rd and then the subsequent dates that uh that jack laid out earlier uh was that burson's first and then group yes yeah it was could we couldn't couldn't we put this will take effect november 3rd or january 1st or december 1st it doesn't have to be bam bam bam um you know the the first available we could get through this election cycle and let's do it but but honestly now now we're thinking of poor katie's office after this horrendous 20 whatever many page page new campaign finance was put into place and then another huge uh rule was put into place i mean who was thinking of of city clerk's office at that time now all of a sudden everybody's thinking oh poor katie you know i i said that a long time ago but to get back to my original statement we wouldn't have to do it immediately it could be effective november 3rd or whatever the next the december isn't through a december campaign posting we could do it after that there is a december 5th 2021 with the current finance right now october 20th so it could be effective december 6. i mean there are ways you can do that council member so i think there might be an issue there and one of them is the fact that uh the mayor's lawsuit specifically asked for some relief on some of the issues that are in the current one so those issues would have to be addressed immediately uh in order to comply with the uh the lawsuit again there's an injunction against the city uh that's been imposed by a judge because the judge thought there was a high probability that the existing uh ordinance is unconstitutional so again my my thought is is that um but one i'm disappointed in staff in that council specifically directed at our last meeting to consider this option and the fact that there hasn't been work done to identify uh the financial impact of this option but there was work done to discuss the financial option to the other uh option item i'm not very pleased with that and then the second thing again is that uh we're making things less strenuous than more strenuous and the fact that if it doesn't take place until october there's still a month and a half to tell the candidates that a change is coming to instruct the candidates and then when that date actually occurs than to execute the new or the revised law that we had before and just real quick a question um for i guess for rachel so if that was the course that was taken um the injunction is still there so those parts that are being disputed still stand correct that there there's an injunction on those yes so we are enjoined from enforcing certain provisions of the ordinance at the order at the judge's order the remaining portions of the ordinance are still applicable and are still enforceable okay other comments questions just one more plan i think we're going to have you know we'll see how the vote goes but we may not have six votes to go either way and i think that if we don't have the six votes to go either way uh the lawsuit will continue and as we've discussed tonight there are sections of the existing ordinance that are unconstitutional so the lawsuit will continue the city will continue to pay for that lawsuit the city will lose the lawsuit because if it's an unconstitutional law and then council will you know people ask counsel what did you do why did you let the city get sued and why didn't you solve the problem okay may your pretense pretend yes councilmember marie uh i mean i had my hand raised but i didn't actually say it was council member i'll let councilmember helps go and i can talk to her either way well i was going to say the same could be true on the flip side you know we have a lawsuit we have the person who brought the legal challenge to the lawsuit we have a compromise that is acceptable to that challenger and to to vote for anything other than that would simply be a political maneuver because you didn't like something that got passed um and so that that ordinance that campaign fine ordinance which by the way has campaign contribution limits um you know is unpopular with some people and so this is just another um attempt to you know leverage that for political gain because if this was really about doing what was right um you know from a fiscal standpoint or doing what was right from a potential lawsuit liability standpoint it would be to do what's necessary to end the lawsuit which is a compromise that has been offered and and vocally supported by the mayor earlier tonight so i don't understand how we can pretend like this is a this is a choice and people are going to ask council what they did we have a solution it's being handed to us we can either take the solution or we can turn this into political fodder because we didn't like something that was passed last year and waste a bunch of money in a bunch of time that i mean those are the two choices okay thank you um i i don't know if i heard an answer to i think it was councilmember hilt's question around potential liability and changing the campaign finance rules kind of mid-election or just before the election because i guess it's closer to the election than not do we have an answer i i i i well i'm happy to kind of think out loud on that one um i don't really see that there would be a cause of action by a candidate who um let's say reported under um the ordinance 2020-58 and if we then changed it um they would then you know report under whatever changes were enacted um i don't know that they would have a cause of action because they relied upon the 2020-58 ordinance does that make sense um and so yeah so i can't think what the would be okay so you know maybe it's less of a a legal issue as opposed to an ethical one right like we'd be opening the floodgates right before an election um to unlimited campaign contributions um so yeah i guess it's less of a legal question than an ethical moral question about how we're going to move forward in this next election okay further discussion member tim is that councilmember gardner no go ahead thank you um so i guess i'm conflicted on this and and i can't i think where i land is i i don't support either option um you know while i appreciate the work or the opinions that the outside counsel has given us um recently you know i was given the same assurances when we voted on this last year um nobody from the city attorney's office spoke up um outside counsel that was part of drafting that ordinance didn't speak up and and so while i appreciate you know the opinion that we're getting today my preference would be to see um a judge rule on the validity or the constitutionality of the provisions in question and then make changes to our ordinance once we have that ruling happen council member garner any further discussion mayor pretend this is council member thank you um yeah i just want to re-emphasize that the council that we have currently retained for this matter um forgive me if i understate your credentials mark but is probably one of the most foremost experts on this subject in the entire nation at the very least in the state of colorado nothing against um common cause they do great work in the state of colorado as well um as i mentioned before they're the ones that helped draft our county commission state house state senate and gubernatorial um i might be missing some other campaign finance rules obviously a judge disagreed with what they proposed for the city of aurora but i think that the advice we are getting from mr griskin is sound and again there is um agreements between the mayor's council and our special counsel here so i would strongly urge a yes vote so that we can put this matter to rest and save the city ongoing expenses thank you councilmember gardner but but that's that's my point that's the same thing i was told last year i was told common cause or they're experts they know what they're doing um and even now our city attorney's office seems convinced that um this new version of the ordinance wouldn't have any constitutional violations but i didn't see them speaking up last year and so my point is is that all we're hearing are a bunch of opinions um and last year i heard the opinion that colorado common cause or whatever they're the experts they know what they're doing they i was given all these credentials um they you know it's gonna be airtight well it isn't apparently um and and so while i'm not questioning the credentials of mr grierskin at all um i you know he's obviously very well qualified again it's still one opinion and and uh we were given an opinion last year by a group that supposedly had airtight credentials at the time and they were wrong also so i i that that doesn't really um jive with me very well mayor town yes mayor um just to defer to council that uh our city our our council does not opine on the constitution i mean our our legal counsel does our in-house legal counsel the city attorney's office if i can hear from the city attorney's office on this as a matter of practice do not opine on the constitutionality of proposed ordinances but forward by members of council can somebody from the city attorney's office comment on that um yes mayor that that is accurate in terms of um our participation in the drafting of um worknets 2020-58 thank you i have uh drafted ordinances in my uh past six years of being on council and i have had advice from our attorneys on the constitutionality of provisions that i wanted to put in an ordinance one of them was the ticketed uh picketing ordinance that i proposed to council um and and so i i did get that actual legal opinion from our internal attorneys as to whether i should put a particular provision in there or not so they do that mayor protestant occasionally yes it's a member yeah i want to second that um last year i prepared my own version of a campaign finance ordinance that banned corporate contributions and i was prepared a memo by the city attorney's office telling me that that would violate citizens united supreme court decision so i was given um advice that there was would be unconstitutional thank you mayor proton yes i've also had a similar experience with other ordinances so oh they do not but um that's when that's if you request it uh if i if i'm correcting that but they do not opine to the committee of uh the council as a whole because i asked the questions uh during the debate on it and they would not uh state an opinion on the as to the constitutionality of it i think that might be because that was your your lawsuit but i i have experience on two ordinances where i was given advice on the constitutionality uh whether i should even go forward with particular provisions i got councilmember marcano then council member all right thank you ma'am um yeah i just wanted to echo that i have been uh given unsolicited advice about constitutionality it's the city attorney's duty their office's duty to protect the city to the best of their ability and i think part of the issue is just that campaign finance is an exceptionally complicated subject and frankly judges seem to have very different opinions depending on what district you are in um some of the items that were found unacceptable by our county court uh or a district court um are perfectly fine on the east coast so you know that's where those uh some of those items came from so just wanted to throw that out there i think kind of the council member gardner's point what really matters is the judge's ruling at the end of the day but this is just a large and complicated issue so that's probably why we didn't get a red flag from our city attorney's office council members so not to beat a dead horse but i could certainly provide you with numerous emails and memos where i received unsolicited advice about potential constitutional conflicts of things that i asked staff to draft ordinances on so i think uh it's not just about whether you ask or not was this drafted by um i don't believe that this was drafted uh by the city attorney's office i think it was handed to him are you gonna be acknowledging speakers yeah i'm i'm trying um i thought i heard council member health possibly yes okay go ahead thank you i i guess if if neither of these proposals pass what does that mean for candidates moving forward does that mean that the injunction remains on those components and the rest of the campaign fine finance ordinance stays in place until that goes to a judge which you know could be it at any time before or after the election um which i imagine that would make that the outcome in the short term is the same as accepting the compromise the difference is that rather than us accepting it we're getting a judge to tell us if it's okay is that do i have that correct in terms of i believe that's inaccurate moving forward that's an accurate reflection of what we'd have moving forward mark do you have anything to add no i think the the preliminary injunction will stay in effect uh it will stay in effect uh through uh the date of the trial on the merits which is scheduled for april of 2022. so um you know effectively the the the ordinance has been if you if you will uh amended by judicial decree for purposes of the 2021 election um the question is just whether or not the council is is going to act in order to uh avoid a trial on the merits and the expense that is associated uh with going to trial so if i could ask we much of what we are discussing now we discussed an executive session and my understanding is is that since we are not in executive session and discussing it openly now we can refer back to things that we discussed in exec session one of those things going back a couple of meetings was the option of reverting repeal and revert back to um the the original uh or not the original but the the previous one we negotiated three years ago um that was so at the last meeting we specifically directed but at the meeting before then we had talked about this as an option i just want to make sure that that that option was presented to the other side at the same time that they presented the modification option so do they have both options on the table or did they just see one or the other i'm not sure i'm not sure when you say the other side you talked about the other side of the litigation the mayor the mayor's legal team but the answer is they have had the advantage of reviewing both options and indicating that both options would root out their lawsuit sorry both options would boot out the lawsuit basically no i understand the word i couldn't hear you other comments or questions okay so um it's more just quickly uh if i could oh mayor go ahead during the debate of this ordinance uh uh and i i supported the um can't finance campaign finance limitations largely they were in the proposal that i put forward i think the only difference was that award candidates were limited to 400 and i had them in 500. i had um the uh at large and a thousand and and the bill came out the ordinance came out a thousand so um again the parts that i disagreed with were stripped from the bill in addition i think there was an improvement made the the one part that we differed on was the requirement to have the names of three of the largest donor individual donors on every single ad when they would be reported anyway for the ie and we replaced that with more reporting uh and so i i think there was a fair compromise on that part so i always you know okay when he's saying repeal and revert back to the ordinance that was in place i think he's referring to the ordinance that that council member johnston and council member richardson um proposed and was passed unanimously by the council not not your abortion right so so um so my question was specifically was that option presented to the mayor's attorneys uh with the understanding that um either option uh with your you know both options would come up to counsel for a vote i guess maybe i need to ask the mayor if if no discussion on but i think we um there was one if you go back to the prior i think it was a study session it was a study session or the regular meeting i can't remember where the um uh where i expressively uh stated that okay there was a compromise that i disagree that was put forward by councilmember mcconnell and i said that i disagreed with one provision on that and it was that provision that was subject to negotiation to find an agreement an agreement was found on that singular provision under mcconnell's last revision that's wrong if i could clarify i i don't think i'm making myself clear right please that's that's what i that's what i supported and that's what i signed off on period okay so real quick i think what i'm hearing is that mr brewskin maybe could answer did was that option that council member gruber is talking about was that presented to mayor kaufman's attorney as an option and councilmember gruber is that what you're looking for yeah let me let me again clarify we discuss an executive session this is after the lawsuit occurred and after the lawsuit occurred none of us were allowed to talk to the mayor uh during executive session council had a debate and during that debate we talked about two ways forward one way forward was modifying the um modifying the existing law to deal with the unconstitutional parts another option was to simply go back to the previous law and and use that one instead so the question um were both of those two options introduced in the mayor so this has nothing to do with the mayor's um draft ordinance that was off the table but going back to the to the ordinance that we had prior to this whole issue coming up no we did not discuss that but we discussed what i mentioned when there was no discussion about let's repeal the entire thing so given the fact that our attorney did not share the council's options with your attorneys i think i've had a problem with that because i think that that would have been the simpler answer right off the bat and then we could have ended this much earlier than we have i have a question for mr gruskin i remember councilmember gruber asking you to please you know to to make to have that option presented to the opposing council so you didn't it didn't sound like i i did i did you did okay let me just uh it seems to me and you all have been at this a lot longer tonight than i have let me make very clear after the executive session where that issue was posed i it was clear to me that my direction was to do two things make sure that the proposed amendments would resolve the lawsuit and secondly make sure that the repeal and replace option would resolve the lawsuit i presented both options to the mayor's council the mayor's council i have no idea what conversations he had i imagine he he that's he's ethical i'm sure he had conversations with his client but but he related to me that both options would make the lawsuit terrible and if i could um sherman i mean i would not have support under any circumstances it just doesn't matter because i would not have supported the option of of repealing the entire thing period uh you know we focused on the area of disagreement and i you know that i made clear uh in the last previous debate that was the focus uh we came to an agreement over that narrow area of disagreement and that's what i support and that's what i support today and i don't support repealing the whole thing right there are some council members that do any other discussion sure no okay so we are to vote on as two different options option which is which is a the amendment so mayor pro tem we if you would just um see if there are objections to moving the two um attachments forward please thank you are there objections to moving the um amendment forward attachment and bergen so that's four that leaves five that did not object but that fails i'm sorry that moves forward wait a minute so yeah okay i thought you needed six to move it forward sorry so the answer it will move is to the next uh council meeting okay thank you very much and both both both versions will move forward to the next council right okay uh councilmember coombs can i ask a question of the city attorney oh god thanks mayor i just i i just never read um so city attorney um so when we get to the floor if the mayor does not vote to create a tie then five is the majority of the remaining council members on this issue is that correct or do we still have to have six even though we're short the person you're short of person but but you'll you'll still have 10 members of council yes the mayor doesn't vote but you'll have 10 members of council so you need six right okay you always need perfect clarification about that because the mayor doesn't vote on ordinances actually rachel provided us a memo i think a week or two ago maybe a couple weeks ago that showed the uh what the process is for how many votes you need and we'll and we'll resend that what we'll make sure it addresses this and we'll resend that memo with the packing okay very good okay i'm going to return the gavel to the mayor adjourned the meeting's adjourned thank you very much everybody there is no further business before the council it's still monday [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you